September/October 2004

Yoga Journal Book Review

Itsy Bitsy Yoga: Poses to Help Your Baby Sleep Longer, Digest Better and Grow Stronger by Helen Garabedian

A Certified Yoga Teacher, infant developmental movement educator, and certified infant massage instructor, Helen Garabedian has compiled some 70 yoga postures (well, some of them are simple stretching or movement exercises) and nearly three dozen sequences for moms, dads, and other caregivers to do with baby, from infancy to about two years of age. Organized by developmental stages, the poses and sequences are fun, affectionate, easy, and the babies shown are as cute as all get-out. Some of the claims in Garabedian’s text are hard to verify (and she offers little or no proof), but there’s no doubting the overall benefits of taking baby through gentle movement routines; besides the physical good they do, there is one supremely good and often-overlooked by-product: bonding—which, you know, most babies today (and the grownups they become) sure could stand more of. - Phil Catalfo