Misadventures of a Parenting Yogi
Cloth Diapers, Cosleeping, and My (Sometimes Successful) Quest for Conscious Parenting
Brian Leaf is a yogi and the owner and director of the holistic New Leaf Learning Center in western Massachusetts. He is also the father of two small boys, easily identifiable as such by pockets full of teething biscuits and articles of children’s clothing (both clean and soiled) rather than with bookstore receipts for yoga treatises and handouts of quotes by Rumi and Kabir. Things have changed a lot for Leaf since his first book, Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi, came out. Though fatherhood has left him little time for yoga classes, Leaf says that conscious parenting has made his attempts at mindfulness and union “better than ever.”
New parents grappling with decisions like whether to have a hospital or home birth, circumcise or not, use cloth diapers or none at all, have baby sleep in the family bed or in a crib, or which of the many child-raising philosophies currently in vogue to adopt will have a lot of fun following along as Leaf immerses himself in being the best possible “conscious parenting” dad.
Funny, enthusiastic, a bit neurotic, and thoroughly in love with being a parent, Leaf meets each challenge with typical OCD angst and not just a little charm. From wrestling a two-year-old into a car seat (how did any of us ever survive without them?) to keeping his sex life alive (“Once you have kids, your sex life gets a lot more yogic”), Leaf shares what it’s like to bring one’s spiritual practice to the place where the rubber really meets the road: raising healthy, happy kids.
Reviewed by
Kristine Morris
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