What My Yoga Practice Actually Looks Like as a Mom of 3

If you've ever wondered what my actual yoga practice looks like behind the scenes, this episode is your real‑life sneak peek. I’m giving you full access to how I’ve woven yoga into motherhood—amid naptimes, school pickups, marriage, business, and all the beautiful chaos.

You’ll see how I make time to nourish myself consistently, even when the mat feels miles away. And honestly? It might just shift how you think about your own practice—helping you deepen it, show up more often, and soak in the benefits without guilt.

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Come Home to Your Body - free somatic yoga practice for women

->https://kerimarino.eo.page/comehome

Daily Devotion - 21 day therapeutic home yoga practice 

-> https://www.kerimarino.com/daily-devotion-21-day-program.html

The Nourished Woman Sanctuary - on-demand and live somatic yoga for women ready to feel wildly whole & free

-> https://www.kerimarino.com/the-nourished-woman-sanctuary.html

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Connect with Keri at https://www.kerimarino.com/ and @the_nourished_woman

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:27

When most people picture a yoga practice, it's a woman on a yoga mat at 6 a.m. in the most beautiful, clean, and quiet space. And to be honest, that's just not my life. And honestly, I don't think it's most women's lives. So today I want to talk to you about what a real yoga practice actually looks like for me as a mom of three kids running a business in a full and beautiful chaotic life. And so one of the things that I want you to know right from the start is that there is different kinds of yoga practices. It exists on two different levels. There's the formal practice of yoga, and then there's the informal practice of yoga. And so formal practice is that picture that you probably have in your mind. It's rolling out your yoga mat. It's doing a specific meditation. It's a dedicated time and practice. It is you sitting to do some pranayama. It is you going for a chanting practice. It might be going to a studio to practice, it might be practicing yoga at home, it might be going to your local YMCA. You can think of that as a formal way of practicing yoga. And then there is also the informal practice of yoga. And this is different because it's not these like structured on the mat practices or specific meditations that you're doing. It's a living philosophy that's woven into every moment of your life. It is the mindset that you have. It is the relationship that you're cultivating to your own spirit, is the breath that you return to and notice. It's the mantra that you're playing out in your head as you're moving through the day. It's the quality of the presence that you're bringing as you're breastfeeding your toddler or cuddling your husband. It's yoga as a way of living. And for me, it's this sort of inner compass that I carry. And I think that this is a really important thing to note right from the start of this conversation, because if you're only looking at yoga practice as formal practice, like if that's the only way you're relating to how you might weave yoga into your life, it's probably gonna feel like you don't have that much time for it. But the moment you start to understand that there are these different, there's there's two different layers of practice, there's the formal and the informal, becomes a moment when you start to understand that your practice of yoga is something that you're actually able to engage in all of the time. It doesn't have to look a certain way and it doesn't have to check a certain box in order to count. I'm doing air quotes for those of you that are listening to the audio version podcast of this. It doesn't like not count if it's not an hour on the yoga mat, or it's not less worthy if it's something informal that you're doing. And I think that so many of you have fallen into this sort of black and white thinking or this like perfectionist ideal of what a yoga practice actually is, when I honestly just think that's not that practical for the average woman who is moving through the fullness of motherhood or a caretaking role or simply just has a very busy life. And so I want to dissolve some of the barriers that you might have and not even know that you're carrying about what yoga practice looks like, and show you an actual day in my life as a mom of three kids, as a woman running a business and a household and being engaged in a marriage and friendships and all of the other things that we have to do every single day. And as I'm telling my story, I hope that you'll see ways that you can start to weave some of these practices into your own life more often because quite frankly, a once-a-week yoga practice is a good thing, but a daily engagement in your practice is an actual game changer. I was describing to one of my one-to-one clients that I was seeing today that she's going through a lot of trauma recovery and healing from old wounds and building emotional skills. And I was talking to her about how a yoga practice that she engages in on a daily basis is really establishing a different baseline. It's working its yoga medicine in a way that really creates the bandwidth, the room, the frequency energetically, the space inside of you to be open and available, to let yourself experience your life in the way that you want to. It's less of the dramatic dips of stress. And I'm not saying that your life's gonna be like messy and calm, um tidy and not like emotional anymore. You're still gonna feel big feelings. I tell people all the time the goal of healing work, the goal of yoga is not to make you just calm and peaceful all the time. It's to really reconnect you with your whole self, your like messy, beautiful, wonderful, full-range self that past experiences and disconnections from yourself and lack of like scaffolding and inner resources around has made you live without. All right, so let's get into it. In the morning, so we currently bed share with my toddler. So it's me, my husband, and my toddler in our bed. And I wake up every single morning and I practice mindfulness and breath work before I ever get up. And so generally, right now my toddler wants to have a little nursing session in the morning, and so I'm laying with him and feeding him some milk, and I'm just kind of noticing the bird sounds. I'm feeling the warmth of my husband nearby. Maybe we're cuddling some, and I'm just getting into a relationship with the present moment and with my breath and with my soul, because a huge part of yoga, the word yoga actually means to yoke, and it's about yoking us into our own highest soulful self and also the infinite as you understand it, the divine, goddess, God, as you understand it. And so I'm starting my day before I'm getting into do list, to-do list mode, or preparing our breakfast, or tending to the kids' emotional needs or connection needs, my other kids, right? I've got three. Before I'm taking care of all of those other people, I'm starting my day off with this connection with myself and with the present moment. And you may hear that story and be like, cool, but that's not yoga. It's yoga, it's totally yoga. So just know that. From that point, I'm diving into cooking breakfast for my family, getting kids dressed and ready, brushing hair and teeth, all of the different things. And so often I will play some mantra music in the morning. I'll play Krishna Das, or I'll play Nikki Slade, or Sean Johnson in the Wild Lotus Band, or I'll put on some chant music that I've learned from my teacher. I don't always play mantra music, but I do fairly often. On occasion, especially if it's not a school morning or if I've gotten up a little bit earlier, I'll take myself over to this big navy blue and pink and orange and cream-colored rug in our living room, and I'll do just a couple of minutes of sun salutations, like literally maybe one round of a sun salutation. And I'll be honest that I don't do that very often in the morning because frankly, there's just a lot to take care of in our house. There's a dog to take out and all of the things that we need to do. And even during the summer, we've just transitioned to summer break for my kids. There's no school right now. There's still, even though we're not having to get to school for them, there's still just so much to do in the morning. So, as much as I love the idea of a morning practice, it's just really not something that works for the structure of my family. I know that there are moms, there are women who get up super early and have that time to set the tone for their day with a morning ritual, or maybe you don't have kids and so you have this more open space in the schedule, or you don't get to work super early, morning practice can be great. It's just not my life. Other ways that I weave my yoga practice into my day are that I often wear mala beads. And if you've not, I don't have it on right now, but it's a necklace, you've probably seen it in some of the other videos or pictures of me. And I practice Yapa mala. And so I'll I'll do a practice of repeating a mantra and moving my fingers along the beads as a way of meditating and prayer and connection to my yoga practice and to God in general. I'll do these when my kids are at a playground. I'll do them when I'm waiting to pick somebody up at a car line. I will do them when I have a moment just to pause. Also, because I am a yoga therapist, I can very often weave my yoga practice into my workday. And so, particularly if I am filming yoga videos for you all, for all the women that are inside the Nourished Woman Sanctuary, or even the small number of them that I put up on YouTube, when I'm filming those yoga videos with you, I am fully immersed in my own experience of the practice. And yes, I'm channeling that practice for you. Yes, I'm giving you cues, but I really feel the therapeutic effects of that practice. Now, when I'm working with my one-to-one clients or in person or online, or when I'm out teaching a class or leading my embody program called, leading my group program called Embody, I'm not really getting the medicine of those yoga practices when I'm doing so, doing them. So I'm engaging with them in a more informal way as a facilitator rather than feeling the formal benefits of the practice whenever I do videos or do my own practice. I also find that for me, there has been something really important of really embracing bite-sized formal practice that are woven into my day. And so it could be that I'm doing that as part of content creation for you all, but it's also just me doing short practices on my own outside of fulfilling my commitment to you all to make you these videos. So I'll do 15 minutes of yoga in the middle of the day. I'll do 30 minutes of yoga after my kids go to bed at night. I find ways to weave this into my life as regular rituals that I am doing on an ongoing daily and weekly basis. There is not a day that goes by that I'm not engaging with my yoga practice on the formal and informal level. Another thing is during my toddler's nap time. So when my toddler is napping, I am resting with him during that time. And I do meditation every single day at that time. It's seven days a week. It's a period of time where my house is quiet and we are taking some time to be together. And sometimes I'll do a guided meditation that's 15 or 30 minutes. Frequently, these meditations are 30 minutes and they're with one of my teachers because I still, even after 20 years of yoga practice, still really love to be guided and held by someone else. And a lot of times also those meditation practices during my toddler's nap time are just my own free style meditation practice where I am focusing on my breath, or I'm repeating a mantra, or I'm doing chakra meditation or muscle relaxation or other different yoga practices. Maybe I'm meditating on a yoga concept and I'm really focusing in on that for a period of time. And I'll be honest that sometimes those meditations, when they're my own freestyle one, are 10 minutes. Sometimes they're five minutes, sometimes they're seven minutes. I give myself permission to practice in a way that matches where I am on the day-to-day basis while also staying in touch with this rhythm of practice as daily touch points, as daily ways to nourish myself and to work on that baseline. And then the bulk of my formal yoga practice actually happens after my kids go to bed. So that period at the end of the night is a really important time with me. With me, with myself. Because, gosh, life is full. There's so many wonderful things to pour my energy into, so many just like logistical responsibilities that I am carrying throughout the day. And at the end of the night, just like a lot of mamas out there, it's finally the time of day when you have some time that's just for yourself or just for you and your partner. And so that is a really important time for me to have my own yoga practice. And I try not to do anything that's too active and energizing at that time of night, just because, frankly, I really value my sleep and I don't want to like get myself really jacked up or get my nervous system really aroused with my yoga practice. And so it's oftentimes me either like not even rolling out a yoga mat, but just using a rug. This yoga studio that I have is actually attached to my house, if you haven't realized that. So it's got a private entrance for all of my local clients, but it's just connected to my house. And so I walk out here and I'll chant, I'll get my harmonium out, and I'll just spend 30 minutes playing my harmonium and chanting and getting into that like it's deep yummy absorption with chanting practice. If you've not experienced the feeling of being completely immersed and absorbed and at peace and transcendent in a chanting practice, I highly recommend it. But also, I do a lot of restorative yoga at night. I will get myself all cozy on bolsters and blankets and pillows, and I'll meditate and breathe and relax. And I find that especially in this season of my life, there's just so much holding that's happening. Holding, cooking, driving, so much of this. And so I've been doing a lot of practices that like really just help me open up my chest and open up my side body and let myself be held and supported in that way that really opens your heart, but through passive stretching that we get to do in restorative yoga. I consider my journaling practice to be part of my yoga practice. Mudra work gets woven in throughout the day and also just yoga philosophy. I want you to know that a big part of my informal off-the-mat practice is actually has nothing to do with physical poses or meditation techniques or pranayama or any of that stuff. It has everything to do with just seeing yoga as not something that I do, but it's something that I am. It's this inner compass, it's this thing that I return to, it's this lens through which I interpret the world. To me, the yoga philosophy is this living, breathing part of my experience of life. And so as I'm moving through the day, I'm exploring the world through that lens of satya, what is true, what is truth, how can I show up in a way that is true and authentic? Ahimsa, how can I show up in a way that is non-harming in this situation, that is not malicious? Because let's be honest, sometimes, especially as a mom, you'll find, I find that I get triggered. And sometimes there's so many different layers coming on at one time that I'll feel a little snappy. And rather than beating myself up for being a little snippy or something with one of my kids, I'll acknowledge that. I'll acknowledge that maybe, maybe my truth in that moment is that I am feeling quite activated and that I need a moment, and that maybe the most compassionate thing that I can do is to actually take a moment for myself or to communicate, like I need two to four minutes of nobody talking to mommy so I can regulate. Or I need to go express some anger on the exercise ball, and I'm going to go punch it and scream a couple times, and then it has nothing to do with you guys. But also things like Santosha. So Santosha is this concept in the yoga philosophy of contentment. And it is really like contentment is not about just accepting everything exactly as it is. To me, contentment, contentment means having this appreciation and this reverence and this awe and this delight in something. And so as I'm moving through small moments, I'm really looking at it through that lens of Santosha, of just getting in there and feeling that's that like mix of those emotions around it and letting myself appreciate it. And another big aspect of yoga philosophy that oh, it's just it's one of those ones that you can never stop learning from. And I feel like, gosh, that just relates to all aspects of yoga philosophy in general for me, but it's this idea of non-attachment. And non-attachment is really about letting your work, letting your love, letting be, letting your effort, letting your intention be enough, and not feeling like you have to white knuckle your way through things, not feeling like you have to try to control an outcome or push really hard for a certain result. It's allow, it's about getting into alignment and allowing. And it's also about accepting. It's about accepting other people for where they are and what they're feeling. It's about accepting other people's choices. It's about really just letting go of all the ways that we cling and attach and hold tight and try to look for results and evidence. Non-attachment invites you, it invites me to keep showing up in a way that is really soulful. And I could go on honestly, endlessly talking about yoga philosophy that's kind of this like underlying premise of how I'm working through my life, like bhakti in general, as a form of yoga, where it's this devotional practice. So I believe that we're having conversations with God or goddess all day long. Every thought, every action, every every choice, every moment that you pause and appreciate the majesty of a tree, right? Every email that you send is a conversation with God. It is this devotional experience of living. And I think that this is really important too, because this also is what yoga practice looks like. And if you have been clinging tight to an ideal version of a yoga practice that involves hour-long practices on a yoga mat or is all about these like really intense meditation commitments where you're doing 10 days and you have to get it right and you're beating yourself up if you don't, then I want to invite you to look at yoga practice through this lens of the formal and the informal and to explore how you can integrate these into your life in a way that actually feels good to you and lights you up and you can create a real daily sadhana practice. And so if you're not familiar with sadhana, it's this idea, it's like the structure of the formal and the informal practice coming together. It is the spiritual practice that you're doing, it is the commitment, the devotion, the desire to do those practices on a regular and consistent basis. Because, as I have said about 2,999,000 times, a more consistent practice will do more for you, love. And if you want a at-home-based yoga practice that actually fits into your real life, not the Instagram version or the TikTok version, but a real one, then I have built something for you that is exactly that. Inside of the Nourished Woman Sanctuary, you'll have access to over 160 encounting different practices, like real deep yoga medicine, not just like surface level practice, like deep, wide-range yoga therapy. That's all in these 15 to 30 minute bite sized practices that you can just weave into your daily life in the way that I've described here. You can find out more about that down in the description or in the show notes. Happy practicing, ladies. I'll see you in the next video or podcast.