Today in our Inspiring Stories Category we are delighted to feature the inspirational work by Rebecca Ryan, one of our Board of Advisers. She lives in Melbourne, Australia with her family.
Rebecca is the founder and principal yoga and meditation teacher at Surrender Yoga and Meditation. She has been teaching meditation, prenatal and postnatal yoga, and mums & bubs yoga since 2007. Rebecca enjoys sharing her passion for meditation with other mothers, whether long-term meditators or newbies and encourages her students to allow mindfulness to seep into their daily lives. A full member of the IYTA (International Yoga Teachers Association), Rebecca was also a faculty member of the inaugural IYTA Diploma of Yoga Teaching (Pre & Post Natal) in 2012. Before all this, she had a career in Finance, working in Singapore, London, and Sydney for companies including Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and IAG.
This is what she had to say about her current focus of work:
“My passion is teaching mothers how to meditate and showing them that they can make mindfulness part of their daily lives. I believe that this is achievable, even if mothers are busy and feel like they have no time to themselves. The main way I do this is by facilitating Mindfulness for Mothers Workshops around Australia. In my workshops, I teach many different types of meditation including guided meditation, mantra meditation, loving-kindness meditation, walking meditation, and even a shaking meditation! I talk about using habits, and the ebb and flow of our days, to establish and integrate our mindfulness practice into our lives. We also do a ‘know your sense preference’ exercise to discover our sense preferences and I discuss how to use this knowledge to help us personalise our practice.
One other way that I share my teachings with mothers is through my book, Mindfulness for Mothers. This is available internationally as an ebook and in hardcopy in Australia and New Zealand.
I am working to get the hardcopy available worldwide. In my book, I show how mums how they can bring mindfulness into their lives. There are many different exercises from simple 10-second breathing practices, including many practices that you can do with your children present. These practices can transform our experience of motherhood from reactive and frazzled, to calm and connected.
My second book, Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask, with many more self-care and mindfulness tips for mothers is currently looking for an international publisher.
I am also a regular guest on podcasts. I had the pleasure of talking about mindfulness and meditation for mothers on The SuperMum Podcast with Lisa York, earlier this year.
Recently, I have started conversations with neuroscientists who are interested in tapping into the knowledge of wisdom traditions, such as yoga, to understand the scientific benefits of these ancient practices. At the moment we are looking at objective measures of mindfulness and meditation to be used in research.”
Rebecca would like to see more research on the potential benefits of mindfulness and meditation that is conducted specifically for pregnant and postnatal women.
Further details of Rebecca’s events and the book could be found on her website. rebeccaryan.com.au
On behalf of the IFWIP team, we wish Rebecca all the very best for the future.