What Your Posture Says About You as a Stay-at-Home Mom

How often are you spending your days rushing from one thing to the next with your head down and shoulders rounded, believing that there will never be enough time for everything you have to do? 

We often start motherhood this way, as we rush headlong into survival mode with breastfeeding and pumping and bottle cleaning and sterilizing, and then somehow get stuck there as the years go by, moving from one “should” to the next as the kids get older.

But what if one way out of this cycle was as simple as paying attention to our posture and using it as a compass to inform us of where we are, and what it is we feel we need to get us to where we want to go?

The proof is in the posture 

Take a moment to check in with your posture right now. Are you hunched over and stooped under the weight of everything you're telling yourself needs fixing in your life right now?

Are you feeling helpless, powerless and out of control because you believe you’ll never be able to create the experience you want for yourself as a stay-at-home mom, or to show up as the parent you truly want to be?

When we’re in this stooped posture and feeling this way, we can remind ourselves that we’re coming from a place of fear rather than love.

Jessica Maguire at repairing_the_nervous_system on Instagram says: “You might feel at risk of losing yourself easily if your spine is collapsed because a solid sense of who you are is related to an aligned spine and active core….When your spine remains chronically slumped, your feelings about yourself can be impacted - you might lose confidence, avoid putting yourself out there and not stand up for yourself. This can reinforce limiting beliefs like…‘I need to do what others want to feel safe’.”

So how do we create that safety? 

I lived under the limiting belief that I was not capable of creating the life I wanted for myself for the first seven years as a stay-at-home mom, and stayed stuck in survival mode for most of that time, barely pausing for breath long enough to even get clear on what I really wanted.

When I started to pay attention to my posture, and then paired this with a new awareness of my thoughts after I discovered Life Coaching, I realized that my stance was a helpful signal for me to be able to see where I’m not in my power. And that adjusting my posture would be an effective way to spark a shift in my beliefs towards myself and my situation, leading me to start taking full responsibility as the creator of my own life. 

Some of the ways I found to help me adjust my posture - and subsequently my mindset - are following Mel Robbins’ suggestion of giving myself a high five in the mirror whilst looking myself in the eye (as recommended in her book “The High 5 Habit”), standing in the superhero pose with my fists on my hips and my chin high, and celebrating my wins from my day (however small!) whilst smiling to myself.

Dancing for the win

But the most effective method for me personally has proven to be dancing to music I love, which is something I felt powerful doing as a kid and something I feel powerful doing now.

This is a form of “play” I have discovered truly lights me up - and it never fails to boost my mood or put me firmly back in my power and my belief that I can create whatever I want for myself in my life at home.  

Reading this, you may feel resistant to the idea of trying something as “frivolous” as play if you’re feeling lost and are already believing you don’t have enough time to do everything you need to do. But what’s interesting here is that the patterning of play already exists from our childhood, so hijacking this to step into our power actually feels pretty effortless. Which means you quickly get to feel the lightness, joy, freedom and power you felt when you used to play as a kid without having to talk your brain into getting on board with the idea first. 

What I get from dancing is the experience of feeling joy at being me - exactly as I am - and a certainty in my belief that there is nothing I cannot do. Remember: No one can out-you you, so when you’re showing up authentically in the world, not caring about what you look like or what anyone else thinks of you (even for just a few moments!), you feel solid and safe in who you are.

And when you’re feeling low, you can choose to pick a sad song and dance it out with compassion and understanding for how you’re feeling. Or if you’re full of energy, you can move madly to the beat and express yourself wildly until you stop, breathless and full of joy.

In this way, dancing develops your trust in yourself that you know exactly what you need, and that you’re always in touch with what’s best for you at any given time.

Giving yourself the opportunity to focus fully on you in this one moment of your day can also result in you being more productive - not only because it boosts your mood and motivation, but also because you learn to not waste time and energy on the act of constantly switching between tasks (there’s actually no such thing as multi-tasking because we can only ever focus on one thing at a time anyway).

And as you do this with your full focus, you start to get to know and understand yourself better, until you reach the point where you know you’ll always have your own back and can hold yourself straight and strong because you’re fully aligned in who you are and the life you choose for yourself.

If you want to learn more about all the ways you’re at your most powerful when you’re the most YOU, come and work with me in my six-week 1:1 coaching program. You can create the exact experience you want for yourself as a stay-at-home mom with my support (one hour of coaching once a week) plus 15-minutes of daily exercises in the Positive Intelligence app, customized to you.

We can get started as early as next week by signing up for a free consultation call at the link below, or you can join me in my 6-day challenge ‘BE What Lights You Up’ at joyFULL.mama live on Instagram from July 11-16 a 9am EST.