In her interview with Women Fitness, Shilpy Jain, a yoga and reformer Pilates instructor and mother to 16-month-old Om, explains how five minutes, three deep breaths, and a kinder inner voice can change a mother’s day. Real self-care, she says, doesn’t need a spa day or a long retreat.
Two Practices, One Question
Shilpy did not come to yoga for peace. “Yoga first came into my life as a workout,” she says. “I was looking for cardio and fast movement.” After a couple of years, she realised that approach was stripping away its real benefit. “Yoga taught me how to just be. It’s what I come back to when I want to come back home, when I need peace of mind, or when I want to challenge myself both physically and mentally.”
Pilates arrived with motherhood. “I needed to rebuild my body all over again, and Pilates taught me how to build myself: how to build core strength and feel comfortable in my own body again,” she says. “It’s not just about aesthetics; it’s about feeling strong enough to run behind my little one.” Neither practice needs much equipment, which suits her habit of practising at home while the rest of her day stays the same. Her view is that women need both, “just not on the same day.”
To decide which one a woman needs, Shilpy asks a single question: how are you arriving today? “If she’s wired, tired, or running on caffeine and no sleep, she needs yoga: breath, slow movement, a chance to land.” If she feels foggy, flat, or disconnected from her body, Pilates offers “precision, focus, and the feeling of ‘I’m strong and capable.’” On messy days, she says, “I give her both: five minutes of breath, then twenty of strength.”
What Self-Care Really Looks Like
Shilpy is wary of how self-care is sold online. “Social media loves to glamorize the ‘self-care day,’ and most of the time, someone is trying to sell us something,” she says. In her view, self-care for a mother is “simply taking a moment for yourself.” That might be sitting down and doing nothing, sipping tea or coffee in the quiet, moving on a mat, or even deep cleaning the apartment. “Everyone has a different thing that fills their cup.”
The noise, she argues, makes us stop listening to our inner voice. Face masks and shopping “can be fun, but they’re often a temporary fill that helps us avoid the real problem.” For Shilpy, self-care is stepping onto her mat, or sometimes just drinking a cup of coffee before her son wakes up. “Real self-care doesn’t need a lot of money. It just needs you to connect with yourself.”
A Day That Rarely Goes to Plan
Her mornings begin before the household stirs. “I protect those first few minutes: water, a few deep breaths, and a moment of quiet before the day starts asking things of me.” She then teaches early morning classes, “which are my movement time as much as my work time.” The rest of the day is what she calls the real-life part: her son’s routine, content and studio work through the early afternoon, then family time, dinner and bedtime. In the evening she winds down with a few stretches, legs up the wall and slow breathing.
When plans fall apart, which she says happens often, she shrinks her practice rather than skipping it. “Five minutes counts. Three deep breaths count. Lying on the floor while my toddler climbs on me counts. Rest counts too.” The shift that changed things for her was how she measures a day. “I stopped measuring a good day by how much I did and started measuring it by how I treated myself in it.”
A Five-Minute Reset for Overwhelming Moments
For a mother who is exhausted, overstimulated, or close to losing her patience, Shilpy’s first rule is safety: make sure the child is safe. After that, “take care of your own body, because a calm nervous system is contagious.” She offers a five-minute reset that can be done standing at the kitchen counter.
In the first minute, plant both feet on the floor and breathe in through the nose for four counts, then out for six to eight. “A longer exhale tells your body it’s safe.” In the second, drop the shoulders, unclench the jaw, and soften the hands. In the third, hold the counter, step back, and fold forward with a flat back, then do a few slow cat-cows. In the fourth, put a hand on the heart and say, “I’m overwhelmed, I’m not failing.” In the fifth, take a sip of water, lower your voice, and go back in. Even in the middle of a tantrum, she says, “One long exhale before you respond can change the whole moment.”
Moving With Your Cycle, PCOS and Menopause
Shilpy’s guiding rule is to “listen to your body and adjust, not push through.” She stresses that this is general guidance and that anyone with a medical condition should check with her doctor.
During a period, she recommends gentle, restorative practice such as child’s pose, supported bridge, reclined hip openers, legs up the wall, and slow mat Pilates. With cramps or heavy flow, she avoids intense core work, deep inversions, and “anything that feels like forcing.” After the period, as energy rises, is “a great time for strength work, reformer sessions, and trying new things.” Around ovulation, women often feel strong and energetic, though she advises staying mindful of balance and joints. In the luteal phase, before the next period, she suggests going steady rather than hard, with controlled strength, longer holds, and calming breathwork.
For PCOS, she says strength training and low-impact work like reformer Pilates are “very supportive,” while constant high-intensity workouts can leave the body more stressed. Her emphasis is “consistency over intensity.” In perimenopause and menopause, she prioritises strength and weight-bearing work for bones and muscle, balance work, pelvic floor awareness and breathwork for sleep and stress. If hot flashes are an issue, she avoids overheated rooms and does not push through exhaustion.
Practising With Her Son
Shilpy has practised with her son, Om, since he was about eight weeks old. “I put down my mat, I put down his mat, I play some music, and I move through my practice. Often, he just joins in.” Now 16 months old, he sometimes copies her, “which is such a beautiful thing to see.”
Her approach to introducing children to movement is to avoid teaching. “Kids don’t want to be taught; they want to join in. So I don’t turn it into a lesson or a chore. I just move, and they come.” She suggests keeping it playful and low-pressure: be a cat, a tree or a mountain, or let a child rest a soft toy on their belly and watch it rise and fall with each breath.
Her message to other mothers is that perfection is not the point. “You don’t need to set up a separate space to practise, and it doesn’t have to look perfect.” Often Om is sitting on her, and her practice turns into playtime, “and that’s exactly the point. Practice doesn’t have to be rigid. It flows with you and adapts with you, and children do what we do.”
Rethinking “Bouncing Back”
The phrase “bounce back” bothers Shilpy because it treats a body that grew and carried a baby as something that needs to return to how it was. “My body didn’t go anywhere,” she says. “It did something incredible.”
She rebuilt her relationship with her body by changing the question she asks of it, from “how does my body look?” to “what can my body do, and how does it feel?” She began noticing what strength gave her: better energy, better sleep, a steadier mood, and the confidence of carrying her child and her day without feeling worn down. For mothers who move for strength and peace, she says, “Everything shifts. Exercise stops being punishment and becomes support. She’s more consistent because she isn’t fighting herself, and she starts to feel at home in her body again.”
Lightening the Mental Load by Shilpy Jain
Shilpy Jain is candid about what yoga and Pilates cannot do. “Yoga and Pilates won’t take the to-do list off your plate, and I won’t pretend they will. What they change is the person carrying it.”
A calmer nervous system, she explains, means clearer thinking, better sleep, and less reactivity. Pilates in particular demands focus on breath and body, so “for that short time you have one thing to think about instead of fifty. That’s a rare break for a mother’s mind.” The effects are small and real: pausing before snapping, noticing shoulder tension before it becomes a headache, and making decisions with less overwhelm. “The load is still there, but you carry it with more space.”
What Children Learn by Watching
For Shilpy Jain, children absorb far more from what they see than from what they are told. She hopes Om comes to understand “that prioritising your health is important, irrespective of gender. Showing up for yourself counts, but so does giving space to your loved ones.”
She wants him to enjoy movement and to know that “it’s an absolute privilege to have a body that we can move and challenge.” Above all, she wants him to learn that “we are a lot more than the way we look. It’s about our heart and the kindness we carry.” If watching her teaches him that, she says, “Hopefully it helps make him a kinder human being.”
Three Promises to Start Tomorrow
Asked what she would say to a mother who has not done anything for herself in years, Shilpy offers three small promises. The first is five minutes that are only hers, taken before picking up her phone, to breathe, stretch, or sit quietly. The second is one meal a day eaten sitting at a table, “without rushing and without scrolling.” The third is asking a partner, friend, or family member once a week to take one thing off her plate, “and let them.”
“That’s it. No big overhaul, no perfect routine,” she says. “You’ve been showing up for everyone else for years, and these three promises are how you begin to show up for yourself too.”