quick clicks

moms today articles

moms today q&a

message boards

research baby names

prepare a birth plan

content channels

ip channel rss feeds

read birth stories

read parenting stories

recommended books

e-newsletters

safety recalls

ip diaries

ip store

mom of the month

dad of the month

editor's letter

letters to the editor

Still Steel!

Pregnancy Hasn't Stopped Leisa Hart

By Carma Haley Shoemaker

Her interest lead to her next project and to what is sure to be her next major success. "Over the past four years I started studying yoga and picking out some of the moves that my students and I could execute," Hart says. "I then began combining these yoga moves, Pilates and some traditional toning exercises that I know to be really true and effective. And that's what I came up with in the videos I produced last year called 'MBC Yoga' – that's mind/body challenge."

Hart's new technique has put a whole new approach on the way she – and many of her students, clients, friends, colleagues and even family – exercise. "Now, I dim the lights in the workout, and the music is 'Enigma-type,'" Hart says. "It's just much more low-keyed and slowing. People are never looking at the clock, and when we've finished, they can't believe that the session is over. It is much more of a mind and body connection. That's why we called it the mind-body challenge. We're breathing oxygen into the working muscles and just going much more slowly and flowing into it and really feeling what we're working. The breathing has so much to do with it; it helps the time, and you are so much more into it. You'll think more clearly, and you burn more fat. It makes the workout much more efficient and works the abdominals much more, too."

Want to see more?

• Check out our Article Library.
• Balls, Bands and Bikes: Exercise Equipment for Pregnancy
• Have Baby, Still Exercise: 5 Fitness Solutions
  for the First Year of Life
• Workout Mama: An Interview with Fitness Guru Kathy Smith
• Talk about it!