MAY 2019 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 13
FINDING PEACE AMID CHAOS
are very yin and yang, you can’t find
people who are more different than
the two of us.
With a full household, what is a
typical day for the Baldwins? The
beginning of the day is the same,
where I bathe my kids morning and
night. My children mostly eat together,
but I will be there and pick at the
food with them because I heard that
it is very important to have your kids
feel like you are eating with them. At
this age they are so small, so you can’t
really sit down and eat because they
need to be fed, but we all sit around
the table for breakfast and dinner.
Then it is getting everybody out for
their school and their activities. And
at nighttime, it is dinner, bath, and
then stories and bed.
As an advocate for healthy living,
are you teaching your children
great habits from an early age? Any
advice for those of us with picky eaters?
We had the pediatric nutritionist,
Jill Castle, recently on our podcast.
She said that it takes almost 50 instances
of presenting food to a child
to get them to want to try it. She said
to make it fun. She gave the example
with broccoli that one day you could
roast it, and the next day steam it, the
next day make broccoli soup. I also
put the food in the middle of the table,
and the kids get to put it on their plates
because one of the things with picky
eaters is that it’s a question of control.
Especially as someone who has recovered
from an eating disorder myself, I
don’t want to just tell them, “Hey, you
have to eat this.” If we go to a birthday
party and they had cake, we talk about
how they feel after. If they say, ‘my
tummy kind of hurts,’ it is probably
because we ate these things that we
don’t typically eat.
Tell us more about why you decided
to launch your own podcast. Daphne
Oz, my friend and co-host, is about to
have her fourth child, and I have four
children. We had a lot of children in
a short period, and it was new for us
that all of a sudden we couldn’t sleep
in on the weekend, we couldn’t just
walk out of the house, we had to have
child care. So we would just sit and
chat for hours and hours. We were
saying for a long time, wouldn’t it
be fun for our mommy group to be
bigger? As we discuss topics on our
podcast, you see in the comments
that listeners are developing relationships
between themselves or
giving people support when times
are hard — it really becomes this nice
community.
How did you end up launching
your yoga studio, Yoga Vida? I
was a dancer looking for something
healthier for my body but I was
afraid to try something new, even
though my body was suffering. I
had heard about yoga, and I decided
I was going to try it since there was a
studio nearby. I finally developed the
courage to take a class. I loved it immediately
and started teaching very
soon after that. After a few years, one
of my students asked me if I would
open up a yoga studio with him. We
wanted it to be yoga for everyone, so
we kept the price point low.
How does yoga help you navigate
your everyday life as a mom?
Everybody should do a little bit of
yoga every single day. Stretching
and focusing on your breath helps
with stress, overall health, and circulation.
Doing yoga as a mom helps
me take a moment before I lose my
cool if my kids are driving me crazy.
If you are aware of your body, you
notice when your shoulders start to
scrunch up. If I soften my shoulders,
I am less likely to lose my temper.
Yoga is about practice, it is not about
perfection. I always tell my students
that it is like learning to touch type.
Little by little you start to learn with
muscle memory where the letters are.
Then you can make words, sentences,
and then your thoughts just flow
through your fingers.
What inspired you to write your
book, The Living Clearly Method? I
struggled previously with an eating
disorder, anxiety, and just trying to
figure out what the ‘good life’ is that
we’re all struggling to achieve. I developed
The Living Clearly Method
method, which helps me to feel I am
a grounded and a happy person. It all
starts with perspective. Then the next
step is the breathing. And then you
start to notice your ‘grounding.’ A lot
of times when we get stressed out we
are not present in our bodies. When
we bring our awareness to our bodies,
we are in the present. Next I focus on
my core, and then finally breathing.
This story first ran in our sister
publication, New York Family.
newyorkfamily.com
"Doing yoga as a mom helps me take a
moment before I lose my cool if my kids
are driving me crazy."
Hilaria Baldwin runs a yoga studio called Yoga Vida.
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/newyorkfamily.com
