Yoga on Parental Leave in Stockholm: At Home, When the Day Allows It
Yoga on parental leave almost never fails because you stopped wanting it. It fails because the class starts at 10.15, the trip there takes twenty five minutes, and she finally fell asleep at 09.50 and you are not about to wake her. So you push it to next week, and next week looks exactly the same.
There is another way to do it, and it is less glamorous than it sounds: the yoga comes to you instead. No travel, no fixed hour, no mat in an unfamiliar room. A private class at home in Stockholm is built around your day rather than the other way round, and it is allowed to pause when it needs to.
Why the practice disappears right now, and why that is not a discipline problem
A normal group class is designed for somebody with a predictable schedule. You do not have a predictable schedule. You have windows: forty minutes here, twenty there, and you rarely know in advance which ones you will get. That does not make you someone with the wrong priorities. It makes the group class the wrong format for this particular stretch of life.
The other thing that gets in the way is the idea that it does not count unless it is a full hour. Twenty minutes counts. Ten minutes counts. What gives you something back is that it happens with some kind of regularity, not that each session was long enough to feel like an achievement.
You do not need to get back to anything. You just need to move in the body you have today.
What your body is actually asking for after months of carrying
You do the same thing a hundred times a day: lift, carry on one hip, lean forward over a changing table or a car seat, sit hunched through a feed. The body shapes itself around that. It is not an injury, it is a habit, and habits can be evened out.
The four places that usually get stiff
- –Upper back and chest, collapsed inward from leaning forward for most of the day.
- –Shoulders and neck, carrying the weight of a child who gets heavier every month.
- –Wrists and forearms, which few people think about but which work constantly during lifts.
- –Hips and lower back, stiff from standing on one leg with a child on your hip.
What we do about it is simple and undramatic. We open the chest, move the spine in every direction it can go, soften the hips, and add a little strength where you need it so that carrying stops hurting. No advanced postures, nothing that has to look impressive.
What a private class at home actually looks like
The practical side is deliberately simple, because everything else in your day is already complicated enough.
- –We book a time you think will hold, and you tell me if the day turns out differently. Cancellations need 24 hours notice.
- –You need about two square metres of floor. The living room is fine, toys in the corner included.
- –We start with two minutes on how the night went. That decides what the class becomes. Four hours of sleep makes a different class than seven.
- –The baby stays in the room. That is not a problem, and it is not something you need to apologise for.
- –If we are interrupted, we pause and pick it up again. The class is yours, it is not a schedule you have to keep up with.
- –We finish with a few minutes of stillness, unless you would rather spend that time on something else.
When can you start after giving birth?
Let me be straight about this: that is not my call to make. Talk to your midwife or a physiotherapist first, particularly after a caesarean, or with abdominal separation or pelvic floor symptoms. I am a yoga teacher, not a rehab specialist. What I do is work inside whatever you have been cleared for, and ask properly before we begin. If a physiotherapist has given you specific instructions, we can build the class around them.
If you are further along, and this is more about a year of sitting still, carrying a lot and sleeping badly, then the starting point is different and we can begin gently straight away.
Classes in English, when the rest of parental leave is in Swedish
If you are on parental leave in Stockholm and Swedish is not your first language, you will have noticed that most of it happens in Swedish: the open preschool, the parent groups, the baby classes, the letters from BVC. Doing one thing a week in English is a small relief that is hard to explain until you have it. My classes are taught in English. I am Australian, I understand a fair amount of Swedish, so speak Swedish to me if that is easier for you.
When getting someone to your home does not work, we meet live on Teams instead. Same class, no travel at all. You can turn the camera off when you need to, and you can put the session at an hour you could never have travelled for. Plenty of people choose that through the winter, or when it is the only way to fit something in while someone sleeps.
What this gives you permission to stop doing
Chasing a body you used to have. Measuring the session in minutes and calling it a failure when it ran short. Postponing it until life calms down, because life does not calm down on request. Yoga on parental leave is not about getting back in shape. It is about half an hour where nobody needs anything from you.
- Yes. It is the rule rather than the exception, and the class is built to handle interruptions. If you need to step away to feed or settle her, we pause and pick up where we were. You do not need to arrange childcare in order to do yoga.
- Your midwife or physiotherapist decides that, not me. Many people wait until the postnatal check, and longer after a caesarean, but it is individual. Once you have been cleared, we build the class within the limits you were given. If you have not been cleared yet, we can still do breathing and very gentle movement, provided your care provider says that is fine.
- An hour is the most common, but thirty or forty five minutes works well and is often more realistic with a small child at home. A short class that happens is worth more than a long one that gets cancelled. We set the length by what your day can carry.
- No. Plenty of people start exactly now, and a private class is a calmer place to start than a group class, because nobody is watching and nothing has to look a particular way. We cover what you need to know as we go.
- English. I am Australian and I understand a good deal of Swedish, so you are welcome to speak Swedish to me, but I teach in English. For a lot of people on parental leave in Stockholm that is the appeal, since most other things on offer are in Swedish.
- Usually yes, if you are still employed and your employer allows it during leave. The rules are set by the employer, so check with HR first. I send a receipt you can submit.
- Central and southern Stockholm for classes in your home. Further out is often workable too, and otherwise we can meet on Teams instead.