The Know with Nikki Spo: Episode 11: Mindful Parenting with Josephine Atluri
Josephine’s experience creating her modern-day family of seven children via In Vitro fertilization, international adoption and surrogacy inspires her work as a highly sought-after fertility and parenting mindfulness coach.
THE KNOW PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Nikki Spo (00:03):
Welcome to The Know Podcast with me, Nikki Spo. Hey friends. Welcome to another episode of The Know with me, Nikki Spo. I am glad you're here. Today, I have the great pleasure of speaking with Josephine Atluri. Josephine is an expert in meditation and mindfulness, helping thousands of people overcome adversity to find joy. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Josephine couples her business background with her meditation training to teach corporate mindfulness sessions. Plus, her experience creating her modern day family of seven children via in vitro fertilization, international adoption, and surrogacy, inspires her work as a highly sought after fertility and parenting mindfulness coach. Josephine's new book, Mindfulness Journal for Parents, and its online companion course, aim to help caregivers transform and enrich their parent child relationship. Josephine hosts a popular podcast called Responding to Life: Talking Health, Fertility & Parenthood, and interviews guests on their inspiring responses to life's challenges. Her fertility and parenting mindfulness expertise has been featured in Motherly, mindbodygreen, The Bump, Prevention Magazine and Woman's Day. Josephine offers private sessions and online mindfulness courses at jatluri.com. I'm so excited for you to hear from her today. Let's dive right in.
Nikki Spo (01:29):
Josephine, thank you so much for being here. I'm really happy that our paths crossed in the internet and social media universe.
Josephine Atluri (01:37):
Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. I'm always happy to talk.
Nikki Spo (01:40):
Awesome. So I don't know if you know this, but I am a mom of two toddler boys and it is so overwhelming sometimes and I straight up can not even imagine having seven children. And based on what I've seen on your social media, your journey to motherhood feels very courageous to me. I would love to hear more about this leg of your journey if you're comfortable sharing it, of course, and I also want to let you know that I bought your book, Mindfulness Journal.
Nikki Spo (02:06):
Mindfulness journal for Parents: Prompts and Practices to Stay Calm, Present and Connected and I love it. I started it. I started doing some of these things and I kind of realized that, we'll get into this later, but I realized that a lot of like my parenting stuff has more to do with me than my kid.
Josephine Atluri (02:25):
Yeah, no, yeah. That's why I started the book that sort of that way focusing on the individual first versus you as a parent because it totally stems from that, but like you said, we can get into all that later.
Nikki Spo (02:39):
Yeah, no, I totally feel that and I get so easily distracted sometimes and it takes away from, well, it's really insidious the way that it happens. Like it takes away like slowly it chips away at like my being present and finding joy in the moment, right? And so like, it starts off like a slow thing. Like I might be multitasking, or whatever is that I'm doing, but then like it builds up over time. And then I find myself completely detached and usually overwhelmed in that scenario. But like I said, we'll get to the book in a little bit because you released it this year and I'm sure that a lot of its inspiration has come from your personal experience and so that's built up over time. So first, I want to know about your story and how you came to be a mom of seven. And I really just want to hear about your journey into motherhood.
Josephine Atluri (03:25):
Ah, yeah, no, I love talking about it because it encompasses many avenues - very different paths to parenthood that we took. So, we knew going into it that we'd have to pursue IVF. So we went straight into that and it didn't work for a number of years. We did it back to back and then we finally did become pregnant only to lose our twins in the second trimester. And I was at that point that, you know, I finally had an opportunity to pause and be honest with myself during that whole grief process and realize that, I mean, it was one of the hardest decisions that I had to make because I don't like to quit and so, that was when I realized that, you know, there are many different ways to become a parent and that I was exhausted - physically, mentally, I couldn't do it again. Another IVF cycle. So we pivoted to international adoption. And a year later we, went through a faster program - doesn't usually happen that quickly international adoption. We adopted our son from Kazakhstan and we had to live out there for a month. It was such a wild experience and I've never done that before - living abroad. And, and then we brought him home and now it felt like this cloud had been lifted off of us, the weight on our shoulders. And we enjoyed being parents finally, for a year, and then we decided, you know what, let's try IVF one more time. We did it at a whole different facility, did it out of state and became pregnant with twins again. It wasn't the pregnancy I had imagined because of the trauma from before and now we're a family of three, but during that process, you know, if you're familiar with IVF, we were able to save a number of embryos - of frozen embryos - and after working so hard to create them, the thought of just letting them sit just was really painful for us to bear, but I couldn't carry again. So there's a big gap between the kids. We saved up for five years decided to pursue surrogacy and she carried boy twins for us. And then we had a few remaining left and after like many years of conversation about what to do, we decided to just see what would happen, and worked with a different surrogate, and she carried our latest, um, a set of twin girls, who are now four months.
Josephine Atluri (05:58):
Yeah, so that's our journey, international adoption, IVF, carrying myself and then surrogacy - who are two different people, two different agencies - and you know I always say whenever I talk about this part of our lives is that families are just created based off of this common bond of love and it doesn't matter how the kids come into into your lives, but that's sort of the, the thing that binds everyone together.
Nikki Spo (06:30):
Like your story just opens up like a whole can of questions for me and I think it will for a lot of listeners as well. It's like I have, okay, let's go to the beginning. Like, how do you get to the point where you're like, I, I'm not able to conceive - we are not able to conceive on our own - and IVF is going to be like what we have to do. So I like, and to give you some context, I've had people on the show that talk about their IVF journey, and how difficult that is, and how there's a whole world of support within that because it's so difficult, like you mentioned, but how do you get to the point where you're like, okay, like we're going to go this route.
Josephine Atluri (07:07):
So we were lucky actually, because of an illness that my husband had back when we were dating, we knew that this was just our only option and so we went straight into IVF and after working with so many fertility mindfulness clients, it really dawned on me how lucky we are that we, you know, I always try to look at the positive side of things, but lucky that we knew what path we had to go onto, because many people have to go through several years of trying different things before they can finally get to something that actually works for them.
Nikki Spo (07:41):
So when you say like your life was chaos and that really triggered your desire to become a mindfulness coach, can you elaborate on that a little bit?
Josephine Atluri (07:51):
Yeah, so, you know, I was working in fitness and nutrition at the time so I felt like for myself, that, that was always on point, but I could always feel like there was something missing. Like there was a piece of sort of overwhelm and stress that I could not address through, you know, my nutrition and my working out habits. And so that's when, you know, I had a friend who insisted that I give it a shot, but like many of my new clients or people that I'm trying to work with will tell me, I always hear, and I was always the same as well, I can't turn off my mind. There is absolutely no way that I can do this, but she insisted. And I'm so glad that she did because I tried out one of the many apps that are available and I became hooked.
Josephine Atluri (08:43):
I think it was the first time that I had given myself, if it was a simple three minutes where I had given myself a moment to just pause and to breathe and to really just look inward and just be present in who I was, you know, I would do that with working out, but with working out, like, I hear a lot of people, especially marathon runners and things like that, who say that's their meditation - that's their form of doing that - and I get that, I do, but there's a component to it with working out where you're still, you know your mind still is active in a certain way. Whereas this, for me, this was the first time where I could just focus on my breathing and focus on how I was feeling in that moment and become mindful and aware of me versus everyone else.
Josephine Atluri (09:35):
I was so used to just caring for everyone else except for myself. And so that's what really did it. And once I started doing that regularly, it became something that I needed to keep pursuing and keep doing for myself. And then I decided to take a workshop or like a teacher training for the purposes of my job to incorporate it into, into the work that I was doing, but ended up loving it so much that I thought, you know what? I am going to pivot in my career and pursue this because this is so helpful. And if it's helped me deal with and like navigate the challenges of being a working mom, then it can help so many other people.
Nikki Spo (10:22):
None of the books, like you can read all the books, right? Before you have a child, and nothing really prepares you like being in the workforce, doing it firsthand. I remember feeling super overwhelmed in the new baby phase. Like that phase for me is really, really difficult. Um, and so reading the books and then applying it into real life scenarios is, is hard. It's not easy. It's something that you actually have to practice, right? It's called a mindfulness practice. I always think about that. It's called a mindfulness practice because you have to practice at it. You have to work at it, you know? And it comes with time and like a lack of judgment. How much time passed between the, like the, the point where you said, okay, I'm doing this for myself and now I'm ready to help other people?
Josephine Atluri (11:11):
When I fall in love with something, I just jump in with both feet, and that's how I've always been with all the different careers that I've ever dabbled in and tried out. And so maybe it took me about half a year of doing it regularly for myself and then I signed up for that training program and deep dived into it. So, and at that point, it still wasn't going to even be a career. It was just more like a retreat for myself of like a two month intensive training course, just for me to further explore it.
Nikki Spo (11:48):
How is it different, really, working with families who are experiencing fertility struggles versus parenting?
Josephine Atluri (11:53):
It was, it really came full circle for me because it kind of like that idea of paying it forward. So back then, back then, it was very different. Like when we first started IVF that was over close to like 15, over 15 years ago. And so we didn't have like all the social media, all of the access to all these different groups and all these support groups, which has just been phenomenal to see because it's such a lonely process. You feel so alone, you feel defeated, and it's helpful to have people who understand what you're going through. So with that regard, I, you know, with doing the fertility mindfulness, when I'm working, when I started working in this sort of field, it brought me back to all the experiences that we did and it gave it purpose. It gave it meaning. To actually have had that experience and not just to end up with, with the kids, which is a blessing in itself, but then to have used that experience to be able to now help other people through it.
Josephine Atluri (13:04):
So it gave it purpose. It give it meaning. And the mindfulness is just such a perfect pairing to it, which is why I just feel like shouting it out to everyone who's trying to conceive, which is, or that are using fertility treatments, which is one in eight couples have to go through a fertility treatment, and it's very different then, and to your question about addressing people who are actually already parents. So it's just totally, I mean, it's still stress that you're dealing with. It's still anxiety that you have and worries. It's just different. Here, you're trying to get to one end point, and then with the other one, you already have this end goal that you had dreamed up, but now the worry is that you have a whole other human being that you're responsible for, and that you are the one in sort of molding, and you're worried that you're messing up. There's a ton of stress and anxiety that comes with that.
Nikki Spo (14:10):
So the biggest benefit, in a nutshell, what would you say that it is from your clients? Like what are the benefits that they reap from doing this work whether they're dealing with infertility struggles or parenting stress?
Josephine Atluri (14:26):
One of the benefits, I mean, there are, there are a number of them, but the ones that I feel to be most important. One is the ability to be present because so often we just get caught up in, you know, life. And as you mentioned before, like beings end up happening on autopilot and you miss out on the joy of what's happening right in front of you, so mindfulness definitely brings you and anchors you into the present moment in order to enjoy those moments that you are working hard to have. And then the other benefit of mindfulness is the ability to navigate the challenges of stress and to be able to do so in the, in the moment. So by utilizing things like affirmations, breathing techniques without necessarily having to go off and meditate, which I'm a big proponent of meditation, obviously, but I like to be practical with the people that I am dealing with, the people that come to me. And so you do need strategies that you can do. For example, when you're sitting in the waiting room of your fertility doctor's office, and you're getting all worked up and spiraling into negativity about what's going to happen, or you need something to use when your toddler's having a tantrum and to manage that stress that's hitting you in the face and being able to respond in a calmer way to your child so that you can have a productive and conscious and mindful communication and exchange with your child.
Nikki Spo (16:01):
Yeah, I think that's personally, it's one of my bigger struggles. Like I objectively can, like, I, I'm an intellect and I can emotionally process and understand like what to do, right? I'm like, I get it. Okay, cool. Got it. I'm like, I hear the, I'm listening to my audio book. I listened to the podcast. I read the books. I'm like, yes, got it. Information stored. It's a completely different thing when it's in the moment, like you're saying, and I love that this book, and your teachings, help navigate the challenges of stress in the moment, because I think that's what a lot of people struggle with. Like, we can understand something objectively and we can say it makes sense and it's another thing to put it into context and real life scenarios. And on that note, how much of parenting has to do with our own realities as individuals.
Josephine Atluri (16:48):
Yeah. Right. So as we were talking about before, that's why I structured the book in that way, because, you know, in the beginning, it's primarily about yourself as an individual, not as a parent, I don't address you as a parent. I just talk about things that like your intentions, sort of where you're coming from. You know, I'm looking at your stressors, your triggers, things like that. And eventually towards the second half of the book that when we talk about and incorporate it into your parenting style and into your interactions with your children. But first and foremost is this understanding of yourself. And I always talk to people about mindfulness as being essentially, it's an awareness, right? It's an awareness of yourself, how you're feeling in your body, your emotions, and then an awareness of everything surrounding you, your physical environments, but then also how you're interacting with other people.
Josephine Atluri (17:41):
So when you lay mindfulness as a foundation, it touches upon everything else in your life. And so you're laying awareness as your foundation. And so you can describe to any other sort of parenting style that you want, any sort of lifestyle that you want, but having that awareness underneath all of it, it amplifies everything else that you do. So for example, you can be mindful when you're eating. You can be mindful when you're exercising. You can be mindful when you're at work and you can be mindful when you're sleeping, like all these different things that you can be mindful and aware of. And it just makes your experience in life richer because you're there in it, right? And you have ways of navigating it when it is challenging because mindfulness strategies also help you with that.
Nikki Spo (18:28):
In your book, you mentioned a lot about the parenting styles and how mindfulness can really compliment and even strengthen most parenting styles. And I think that there's a lot of like, you know, opinions on parenting styles in general. And I just love that you're touching on how this practice of mindfulness can - it doesn't matter what your parenting style is - if you have a mindfulness practice, it can amplify that, right? And so whatever the goal is, or the method is, this is going to be amplified. If we are practicing mindfulness, what, how often are we practicing mindfulness, Josephine? How often are we supposed to do, this all the time?
Josephine Atluri (19:08):
Right? No, that's, that's the goal.
Nikki Spo (19:12):
Let's be mindful once a week. Not enough. Clearly, not enough.
Josephine Atluri (19:18):
Yeah. I know. It's tough to always to add something, we're always well-intentioned. But if you start off with, and that was the intent of my book is that it wouldn't be sort of this lengthy book that you have to like dig deep into and then figure out how am I supposed to implement this in my life, right? I mean if we can even get to reading that book as parents But the point of this was that if you just flip to any page and you open it up and you read the prompt, have a question in the back of your mind that will make you wonder and make you think about and be aware of something in either yourself as an individual or yourself as a parent or your interactions with your child.
Josephine Atluri (20:06):
And just having that question in your mind is you being aware, right? And so if you can just start off that way, I think that's sort of an easy way for people to segue into something that's new to them that they may be worried about because they don't know if they're doing it right or if they're doing it enough. This is just all I'm asking you to do is just to question something and think about it and think about the answers. If you do the next step of writing them out, you'll be surprised by what, like falls out onto the paper, because that always - putting pen to paper - will always allow things to just rush out and it's amazing and so therapeutic. But even if you just think about that question, like, you know, there's a question on there about what we were talking about before - what are my triggers?
Josephine Atluri (20:54):
You know, why was I feeling this way when I woke up? And do you ever take time to just think about that? Or do you just go through the motions and then figure out, okay, well, I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Well, maybe that's not enough because maybe tomorrow you don't want to wake up on the wrong side of the bed because then it affected every single other part of your day, right? From work, to your kids, everything. So, you know, if you just want to ask yourself and, and dig deep, you know, it requires work to think, well, what happened that led up to this, you know, and you can think about that while you're brushing your teeth. You can think about it if you're commuting back to work, whatever it is, it can just be a question versus doing something else.
Nikki Spo (21:37):
I have to be honest about this. It's like the biggest deterrent for me for picking up a book like this or any of my other like self-help books or like workbooks that I work on because I like, I need to schedule them, right? Like one day I'm going to do this and the next day I'm going to do this because I'm always like working on something different, but like the biggest deterrent for me - and it doesn't matter which self-help workbook I'm working on at the time - is I don't want to know what I'm going to write. I'm scared of it. I'm like, I don't want to face the music, right? Have you ever had clients who tell you that? They're like, I, you know, it's like on, in the back of my mind, I'm like, I know why I do this. I know I operate this way.
Nikki Spo (22:12):
Um, and I don't want to face the music and it takes a tremendous amount of courage sometimes for me to open the book and actually write it down. So on that note, I'm going to do what you said. You just flip, we're going to flip, we're going to do a little exercise. We're going to flip to a page in your book. I'm going to read it. I'm on page 63 if anybody has the book, which you should totally get the book, it's amazing. Shift to acceptance. No matter how hard we try, for the most part, we can't change people who don't want to change. Instead, a shift in your viewpoint could be key to improving your relationship. Name some qualities of your child that make up their unique essence. Circle one trait that you find problematic. Write how you can shift your perspective to accept this quality as a part of their individuality. That is so hard. The things that like drive me crazy about my child, for example, I'm like, how can I see that in a positive light? Sometimes it's hard to.
Josephine Atluri (23:19):
Right, especially in the moment.
Nikki Spo (23:21):
Yes, absolutely. This is actually what I'm going to start doing. I don't know that I'm going to go in order with a book anymore. I'm going to take your advice and I'm going to actually do it at random.
Josephine Atluri (23:31):
Yeah it makes it more fun or interesting. But to your point about being scared of what comes up and it taking courage, I actually did, um, talk about that. Or maybe I even wrote about it because people always say that, you know, maybe they're worried about meditating or being mindful because they don't know how to do it. But another real thing is maybe they're scared of what will pop up, you know? And, and in that silence, if, especially if you're meditating, you're so worried about like what will truly pop up and, you know, it definitely takes courage and giving yourself some grace as you proceed into anything like this.
Nikki Spo (24:15):
And when we do this work, what does that mean for our children's experience?
Josephine Atluri (24:20):
Oh yeah. It transforms it. It enriches it. Because now you are coming from a place of empathy and kindness. And when you can get down to like you did, you got down to your child's level and wondered, just simply wondered, well, why are they feeling this way? Where is this coming from? What does it feel like to be them? Whenever you can step into someone else's shoes, it gives you so much awareness and clarity of where they're coming from and then it makes it easier to then interact with them. And you're better able to respond to their needs because now you're hearing it. You're not just listening to it. You're actually hearing what they're trying to say. And especially the younger that they get, they don't have the words to convey what they're really feeling which is why it comes out as these big feelings and, and so on. And so when you can really figure out and give them that safe space to express themselves and know that they're being nurtured and understood and heard, it really does - it transforms the relationship for the better.
Nikki Spo (25:26):
And so how do you, how would you advise nurturing during tantrums?
Josephine Atluri (25:31):
I always get that.
Nikki Spo (25:34):
That's where I'm at and I have a lot of friends that are in that space too. Like how do we nurture during the tantrums? How do we do that?
Josephine Atluri (25:41):
So in that moment they're not listening. So anything you say, just save your breath, just let them have that safe space. I know it's so hard and believe me, it's hard for me too. And you have to practice at it and you have to implement other strategies at the same time so that you don't go off the deep end. So like, in those moments while my child is having a tantrum, I'm giving them that safe space. I'm not judging them. I'm not scolding them. I'm allowing them to cry if they need to cry because it's okay to express themselves, right? You know, growing up, I was always told, don't cry - that you don't need to be doing that - but that's my form of expression. So why would you say that they can't do that, but so anyway, while they're doing that, as hard as it is to listen, I'm implementing my breathing strategies because it instantly brings my heart rate down and instantly brings down my blood pressure.
Josephine Atluri (26:32):
I don't feel so sweaty. Like those are all the physical symptoms of like you being stressed out You're in your fight or flight state. So I'm just breathing and I'm allowing them to be and do what they need to do. But also coaching them in saying that I hear your feelings. I hear you're frustrated. I'm so sorry that you got hurt or I'm so sorry, whatever it is that happened. So acknowledging, like, I hear you, I understand this. I'm so sorry this, um, because at that moment, that's all that they can really hear. They don't want to hear what your solution is at that moment, they just want to feel heard, right? And it comes out really big because they don't have the right words to say at that moment. So often it depends on your child. If they respond to like physical acts of love and support, then that's when I would bring in a hug.
Josephine Atluri (27:31):
And, and that was actually one of my things in the book, which for one of my kids, hugs were the best for him. And as I'm hugging him, he's still crying, but what I'm starting to model is that deep breath, and you can feel your breath when you're breathing deep, your chest and your belly, they're moving up and down. And if you're hugging them close, they can feel that too. And over time they can start to feel like, okay, well, and I'll even coach them towards the end of the tantrum. Let's just take deep breaths together so we can, we can get to a calm place and then we can talk about what we need to do next. And if they see me doing it, then it's much easier for them to, to follow along because we're modeling for them all the time. Like this is not just a disclaimer, this is not something that will like magically happen in that first instance when you try to implement it, it takes so much practice.
Nikki Spo (28:25):
So can you walk us parents through a few practices that can help with resetting, staying present and enjoying the moment - even if that moment is chaotic - but I want to know, like anything that you can offer the parents, right? Like I, I just asked you about like what we can do with our kids and their tantrum. What do we do for us? We have breathing, right? So like, is there a specific breathing exercise that you implement?
Josephine Atluri (28:51):
There are many different ones. It's really just, all you're doing is your altering your pattern of breath and by doing that, you are taking the focus away from whatever is triggering you. So it's two-fold. it's one it's taking away that focus because if you're counting your breath, say you're doing a square breath, which is four seconds inhale, four seconds, pause, four seconds, exhale, four seconds, pause - this square breath. What you're doing is you're counting - you can't think of anything outside of the moment, outside of that count. You can't think of the past and any past mistakes you can't think of the future and all of the endless things you have to do, you're just in that moment. But then the other benefit of it is like, what we discussed before is slowing down your breath moves you from that fight or flight state, that triggered my life is in danger state, into that calmer rest and digest state.
Josephine Atluri (29:42):
And so that's why, you know, as to your point, breathing strategies are an excellent way of returning back to the moment. Other things that I like to use are mantras or affirmations. So when I feel myself spiraling with anxiety, what I'll do is I'll ask myself a question such as, what do I know in this moment to be true? Because a lot of times when you're anxious, what sets it off is uncertainty and your inability to control the situation. And so if I can just ask myself in this moment, there are certain things that I know to be true. Like everyone in this house is safe. This like goes to COVID. You know, everyone, what I know right now, everyone is safe. Everyone is healthy to the extent of that I am aware of. So what is the point of me worrying about something if I don't have the facts to support it yet?
Josephine Atluri (30:35):
I'll worry about it when I need to worry about it when it's factual, when it's truthful. And so that sort of pulls me back from that spiral that you can get into of all the what ifs. I mean, the, what ifs are what really can just send you on a tangent and in a spiral of negativity. So those are, you know, those are things that it's like a constant talking to myself. Like that's what I use mantras and affirmations for and these mindful questions. Cause it's always, instead of having that inner critic, that voice in your head, that's always like telling you you're doing things wrong or telling you everything's negative. Instead I balance it out with this voice that provides me with positive feedback, provides me with questions and support that help me stay rooted into the present moment.
Nikki Spo (31:26):
So Josephine tell us about your other book.
Josephine Atluri (31:28):
Yeah, no so this actual book, it comes with an online companion course, and you can go to mindfulparentclass.com, and essentially it takes many of the exercises that are in the book and it gives you video guidance on it. So if you have never done a meditation before, you can just go onto the class and take a look and be guided on it. And so it doesn't feel so foreign to you.
Nikki Spo (31:53):
So where can we get your book? Can we get it on Amazon? Where are we buying your book?
Josephine Atluri (31:57):
Yeah, you can get it on Amazon. You can go to mindfulparentclass.com and you can buy the book there. You can buy it with the online course bundle. You can connect with me on Instagram. I'm always putting on sort of mindfulness and parenting and fertility sort of tips and things that you can do. My handle is @josephineratluri and then I have a podcast called Responding to Life: Talking Health, Fertility & Parenthood, where I talk about all those things. It starts off with my journey, but then it starts to delve into other people's as well.
Nikki Spo (32:31):
Awesome. Josephine, thank you so much for your time. This is awesome. I'm so glad we got to connect.
Josephine Atluri (32:37):
Thank you so much. It was so great to speak with you.
Nikki Spo (32:43):
Thank you so much for listening to The Know. If you loved this episode, go ahead and share it with a friend. Words are so powerful and someone may need to hear what we covered today. And if you really loved this episode, please take a moment to rate the show and leave a review. Your comments are so important and valued, and they give other listeners insight on what to expect on The Know. You can connect with me personally via Instagram @nikkisappspo, and The Know with Nikki Spo. My hope for you today is that you are fearless and looking inward so that you can be your highest, most authentic self and go after the life of your dreams.