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Going Alternative: Yoga, Reflexology and Massage For Children

What’s new for baby’s health

By Maayan Jaffe

What felt “very granola” to Lisa Ziv five years ago has become a staple of her parenting style. The mother of three, including twins, Ziv is the owner of an organization called “Time In,” which teaches yoga to children. It all started about five years before, when Ziv and her twin sister were invited by their recently widowed mother to attend a meditation seminar with Deepak Chopra.

“I just didn’t think that any of this could be for me,” says Ziv. “When my mom told me what it was, I said, ‘I’ll go walk on the beach — you go.’”

But Ziv was dragged to the workshops. Midway through one of the classes, her skin began to crawl as Chopra, co-founder of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing and a world-renowned authority on mind-body healing, requested she envision her own personal gods and goddesses. She says it felt so anti-Jewish. Then her sister nudged her. “‘Picture the Matriarchs and Patriarchs,’ she told me,” she recalls.

It was, for Ziv, an “aha” moment. She started incorporating some of Chopra’s meditative techniques into her own life, taking 10 minutes to herself to breathe and reflect, to break away from her routine of caring for three small children.

“I thought to myself, ‘This is really transformative,’” recalls Ziv. “It really made a huge difference for me and I was wondering if there was any way to make sense of it for the kids.”

Ziv began replacing her time-out punishments, which she never really believed in as an effective means of discipline, with what she coined “time ins,” giving her children the tools they needed to stop, take a deep breath and count to five in order to feel better. If son Jacob’s hand went into the air and he was about to pounce on sister Yael, Ziv would say, “time in,” and Jacob would reflect. She immediately saw results.

“I remember this one time, Jacob was getting upset and Yael turned to Jacob and said, ‘Just take three deep breaths — one — two — three.’ He did it and it was like someone flipped a light switch. He calmed and went back to playing,” explains Ziv.

Watching her own children, Ziv realized she could help others, too. She became trained in basic yoga and wrote a year-long curriculum, which she has been teaching at area Baltimore schools, including the Jewish Community Center. It combines breathing, body awareness and fun yoga poses, taught through a Jewish lens. For Tu B’Shevat, for example, Ziv teaches the “tree pose,” which improves balance. Concurrently, she dialogues with the youth about patience.

“It takes many years for a seedling to grow bigger and become a tree,” she explains.

Growing Trend
Ziv’s work is not an anomaly, but part of a growing trend of young moms looking for alternative and creative ways to ensure their children’s physical and emotional well-being.
“People used to believe they had to commit themselves to alternative therapies to engage in them. In this area, alternative is not the model they grew up with — it’s very crunchy granola. It was either, I am alternative or I go to a pediatrician,” says Rina Levin of Pikesville. “I think nowadays, people are more educated, more discerning and more open to using whatever tools and techniques they need to in order to get results and do what is best for their family.”

A reflexologist, Levin specializes in working with new moms and their babies. The philosophy is this: Newborns are getting used to being in the world — it’s a transition and they are neurologically immature. Touching the feet in the correct manner will help balance their entire systems.

“There are 7,000 nerve endings on the bottom of the feet,” says Levin. “It’s like pushing buttons on a telephone or keys on a keyboard. They all attach to different points. The reflexology — in a very soothing, gentle and safe way — balances the neurologic system and is very important for many newborn issues.”

Levin says she sees many babies who are experiencing colic, for example. She’s also worked with children with more severe issues, such as spina bifida.

“I had this one mom who was having an issue getting enough milk supply because her baby had trouble with his mouth and jaw, and could not suck enough. She had called in a lactation consultant and they had the baby on one side and the pump on the other,” Levin recalls. “She just wasn’t producing. So I got down at her feet and started hitting certain points and you could literally see her body respond.”

Dr. Warren Silver has had similar “wow” experiences. A chiropractor and certified enzyme nutrition replacement therapist, Silver runs Silver Wellness Center on Security Boulevard. He helps his patients to determine whether they are under physical, chemical or emotional stress and then “adjusts” their treatments accordingly.

“I see many children in my office and I have four children of my own. They could have many different kinds of conditions — chronic ear infections, bed wetting issues, psoriasis … which between chiropractic and enzyme nutrition therapy can usually be helped,” he says.

Silver works with what the medical world calls “subluxations,” misalignments of the spine that put pressure on the nerves.

“The healthier someone’s nervous system is, the less likely they are to get sick, the more likely they are to get better quicker,” he says.

Silver tells a story of an eight-month-old girl who had been on four different antibiotics for ear infections and was placed on a reflux medication. The mother brought the girl into Silver. He gently adjusted her, took her off certain formulas and started on a gentle digestive enzyme.

“Within a month, she was off all medications and in two months, her ears had completely cleared up,” he says.

TLC is part of the rationale behind Cindy Neuman’s infant massage class. Like all the other options described above, Neuman, JCC outreach coordinater, has seen the effects of massage on babies. She says that her classes, which take place at the JCCs and at hubs throughout downtown Baltimore, draw a lot of first-time moms.

“Bonding is a huge result of infant massage,” says Neuman. “We are teaching parents to focus 100 percent of their attention on baby for 45 minutes. In this day and age, with cell phones ringing and Blackberries, the computer, the iPad — everything — having the gift of 35-45 minutes with your newborn, uninterrupted, is a real gift. Parents learn so much about their babies.”

Just this year, Neuman filled two downtown classes, partnering with the Downtown Baltimore Family Alliance.

“City moms are very interested in this,” she says. “This tends to be a group of people who are into things holistic and natural. There is also a group of moms who are going back to work quicker than they used to, who tend to be very receptive.”

Jaime Pseres and Brooke Chesler were two of her recent students. Both are first-time mothers.

Pseres says her baby, Lucas, “gets a big smile,” when he knows he is getting a massage. Chesler says the class served as an ideal way to bond with her baby, Hayden.

Both women say they met new friends and used the course both to soothe baby and empower themselves to be stronger, more hands-on moms.

Chesler notes that before infant massage she would not have considered herself as being into alternative therapies, but now she is much more open — for connection and for keeping Hayden healthy.

“The least amount of things that aren’t natural that I can put into his body, the better,” says Chesler, who plans to make her own baby food and even tries to refrain from giving baby Tylenol. “I guess my message to all new moms would be, ‘Be open-minded about different treatments. The doctor is not always right.’”