Whenever I start talking about my open hips, hubby loves to chime in with  few off color jokes, but this story is actually about Yoga.  Not the little green guy from Star Wars and not the bear who was filthy for picnic baskets, I’m talking about the ancient art of health and relaxation with such wholesome poses as “downward dog”, “camel pose” (I said pose) and the “easy plow pose”.

When I first started yoga I learned that I have very wide, open hips (ugh, I can already hear him laughing).Before you let your imagination run wild, I don’t mean that in a slutty way. I was born this way and can literally sit in a butterfly position, with the soles of my feet together and my knees touching the floor, then lean all the way forward until I’m lying flat. Go ahead…try it. Most people are lucky if they get halfway there. You’ll be lucky if you can lean forward enough to decide if it’s a “Summer’s Eve” kind of day, much less fold yourself like you’re being shipped out by Amazon.

Freshness aside, let’s get back to my open hips.  Last week I was in yoga class doing Pigeon Pose and was literally lying face down on the floor. This is something that usually amazes my instructors, and I even had one announce to the class not to use me as an example because it’s just not normal. So there I was, one leg straight, one tucked underneath me, staring at the floor while doing my deep breathing.

Naturally my mind wandered.  Not to enlightenment.  To Subway sandwiches.  To be fair, this isn’t even close to the weirdest place my brain has gone during yoga.

• Was Snow White having sex with any of those dwarfs? Is there hidden meaning to them singing “Hi Ho”?
• If a smurf couldn’t breathe, what color would he turn?
• Every hand I’ve shaken has held a penis.
• Why is W called double U, shouldn’t it be called double V?
• If I fart in the shower before I turn the water on will it still smell as bad?
• Is a hotdog technically a sandwich?

…and speaking of sandwiches, I’ve loved the veggie sandwich at Subway long before I became a vegetarian. I’ve tried desperately to recreate it at home, but it never tastes the same.  As PR nightmares go, it’s hard to top Jared. But I think we all remember the “yoga mat” controversy about what was being put into Subway’s bread. The word on the street is those ingredients have since been removed, which is obviously great news. But for this health-conscious, open-hipped mama, it got me thinking…

What exactly was I rolling around on three to five days a week?

I spend a lot of time on my yoga mat. I’m face down on it, breathing into it and occasionally drooling on it after a particularly relaxing class. If I was making an effort to eat cleaner and live healthier, it only made sense that my yoga mat should be as “clean” as everything else I was bringing into my life.

After way too much research (you’re welcome), these are my top three picks.

(1) Jade Harmony Yoga Mat: Made in the USA with natural rubber in a sustainable manner. Contain no PVC, EVA or other synthetic rubber and BONUS…for every mat sold they plant a tree. This was one of the more expensive mats I bought but I reasoned that I can use it for a long time and it was so highly recommended that I splurged on myself.

(2) Manduka Welcome Yoga Mat: Eco-friendly manufacturing, free of solvents and toxic glues. Made with energy efficient manufacturing as the company strives to minimize environmental waste and make products that last. This is the mat I bought my pre-teen daughter and it was perfect. She was starting to go to yoga and I wasn’t sure if she’d like it so I didn’t want to buy her a more expensive Jade YET I wanted her to have a safe and “clean” yoga mat too. This was a perfect choice for her. After we started going together we got confused on whose mat belonged to whom and would switch off. I found myself using this one more than my Jade.

(3) Gaiam Yoga Mat: This one I don’t personally own…yet but tons of yogis in my studio use it. Both my mats are a plain-Jane blue color but these come in all sorts of fun colors and designs on them so you can be eco-friendly, safe and stylish all at the same time. These are made without the six most harmful phthalates (DEHP, DBP, BBP, DINP, DIDP and DNOP – it’s like the alphabet soup of toxins), latex free and they even sell mats just for kids. They’re reasonably priced and this is definitely going to be my next birthday gift to myself.

So there you have it. Three yoga mats that let me focus on my breathing instead of wondering what mystery chemicals I’m lying on.  Hubby still isn’t convinced about yoga, he thinks it’s more like if Twister was a one player game.  After showing him some of the latest poses I’ve been working on I’m pretty sure I hear him upstairs shopping online for “2-person yoga mat, washable”.

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When it comes to parenting, my husband has a primary goal. “It’s our job as parents to teach you how to exist in society”. I personally think keeping them out of the adult film industry should rank slightly higher but I get where he’s coming from. All the life lessons we struggled through to get where we are now are the greatest gifts we can give to our children. Sure, there’s plenty they have to experience on their own but any leg up we can give them, in my opinion, is worth it. Now to be fair, just like 80s fashion choices you can’t have the good without some of the bad (acid wash jeans, really?). They certainly pick up our bad habits and “colorful” language but hopefully they pick up more of what we have to offer that’s, let’s say, “socially appropriate”.

As a mom I think for the most part I have my shit together. Oh don’t get me wrong, I get frustrated and lose it just like the next sleep-deprived mom out there. I’ve mouthed the words “Karma’s going to get you someday” when my kid’s back was turned but I try to keep my mini meltdowns on the DL. As an avid yoga fan, when one of my kids start pushing all the wrong buttons I remind myself to breathe. My yoga instructor calls it “Take 5”. Five breaths in and 5 breaths out – to the count of 5. It calms my inner demon and probably keeps Child Services out of my house. Five In Five Out…FIFO.

While both of my kids present hubby and me with unique challenges, it’s my younger daughter who definitely needs more “managing”.   Her spirit animal is apparently the Hulk and honestly if she was born first she would probably be an only child.   I love her to the moon and back, but sometimes I want to move to the moon just to get a break from her.

They say patience is a virtue, they also say cleanliness is a virtue and she doesn’t have that one either. She will go from zero to frustrated almost instantly and change from Norman Rockwell to Norman Bates. How could such a cute little girl turn into such a witch? My first thought obviously was to blame myself. Did I scream too much in childbirth? Was I demanding too much? Is this how Hitler’s mother felt? She would literally blow her stack right in front of me. I tried ignoring her screaming meltdowns watching in horror expecting her head to spin around and vomit pea soup…that didn’t help. I’ve taken away her iPad and her computer…that didn’t help either. I took away every single stuffed animal and toy in her room, but then guiltily left her one to sleep with. She brought it into my bedroom, threw it on the floor and said “you forgot one” (true story)…so obviously none of this was working. To make things worse, her temper was becoming contagious and was turning me into a banshee where I would start screaming back at her. Five In Five Out…FIFO was the only thing that kept me sane.

Nothing was working and although my good natured mommy friends assured me this was just a stage, I knew that I couldn’t listen to this shit for years or worse…let it continue and have a teenaged Attila the Hun under my roof. My only saving grace was that she just did it for an audience of one…me. No one else knew my dark little secret…”Hi, my name is Ellen and I am the worst mother in existence”.

As some of you unfortunately know all the words to this familiar song, this started to change. Her inner-Hulk started to reveal itself on playdates and at school. To be fair she wasn’t a nuclear meltdown 24/7, but when she did pop she popped big. The stares, the begging (from me) and then I got the dreaded phone call… her teacher wanted to have a meeting with my husband and me. I figured we weren’t walking in to an award ceremony for “Best Parents Ever” but you can always hope (I made room on the mantle just in case we were taking home some kind of trophy, but I think you see where this is going).   Apparently she becomes so frustrated in school at the other kids, she will scream at them until they burst into tears. Now mind you, she wasn’t a sociopath, meaning she didn’t smile while they cried, she felt bad but just couldn’t control it. I sat there and patiently listened to her teacher ask if there were problems at home or any life changes which could be affecting her, to which there were none. My only thoughts were “I’m failing…worst parent ever”. Five In Five Out…FIFO

Now back to me…I’m not a screamer but I get overwhelmed like everyone else and I’m grateful for my yoga outlet and what it teaches me, Five In Five Out…FIFO. I’m taking care of me, my hubby, my mom, two kids and two doggies and there’s just not enough hours in the day. I want to scream bloody murder and lose my shit too, but I don’t (well, mostly). I’ve learned that when life gives you lemons there isn’t always an opportunity to make lemonade.   Sometimes life takes those lemons and squirts you in the eyes and rubs them in your cuts. You have to keep your shit together and keep on living. It all sounds great, right? If only life was as easy as some blogger makes it out to be. My life isn’t perfect and neither is my daughter’s…neither is anyone’s. Most of the bad shit in life is out of our control and the only thing we can do is choose how we react to it. I recently started teaching “little Attila” that nope…life isn’t fair and hell is other people. Like her dad constantly points out to them, you need to be able to function in society even when society sucks.

I’ve started bringing my little rage monster into the FIFO fold and we’ve seen a dramatic change for the better. She’s starting to recognize when things are making her frustrated and before it gets out of hand she starts to calm herself down.   I’ve seen her in mid-conversation with her sister; she stops, closes her eyes and start deep breathing.

As happy endings go (no hubby, not that kind) this sounds like a great one. I’d love to tell you that she has completely changed her ways and turned into a shining beacon of joy and happiness. As Americans we love our stories to have happy endings where all the problems are solved, the hero wins and the villain has been defeated. Unfortunately in real life sometimes the definition of a win is no one ended up in the hospital and the cops were not at my house.

My little short-fused firecracker has certainly mellowed out when she reached double digits (almost in time for teen-dom, hooray!). She practices her FIFO and the meetings with her teachers are now more focused on her love for history and her disdain for math. While definitely not at a helicopter-mom level I still keep one Bionic Woman ear on her play dates, and I’m happy to share that she is growing into a conscientious and thoughtful young woman. I’m sure, like anyone else, she’ll have her outbursts and meltdowns and that’s OK.   My hubby says “that’s just the cost of doing business”. I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but he says it with such an air of wisdom that I just nod and smile (hey what can I say…he’s pretty).

I look forward to a long life filled with offering unrequested pearls of wisdom and nuggets of advice to my girls. Late night talks about a broken heart over a quart of ice cream, helping fill out college applications and reassuring a hormonal pregnant mom-to-be that she’s going to do just fine…these are all hopefully in my future. As parents we have a lot to teach our kids and as a mom of girls I feel like I have a specific responsibility in raising these potential leaders of tomorrow. The benefits of teaching both of my kids about FIFO is twofold. I’m helping them develop the coping mechanisms they’ll need throughout their lives as well as practicing myself which I think makes me a better mom and gets us all a little closer to our Happy Ending (that one’s for you hubby).

Five In Five Out…FIFO

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