60 Yoga for Speech-Language Development
In bound angle pose (Figure 4.1b), the adult is also seated on
the floor, but the baby’s head rests face up near the caregiver’s
feet. The adult can vocalize, sing, or otherwise talk to the baby
providing infant-directed speech. For example, the adult can lean
in toward the baby while saying “hello” or his name. In addition,
as the adult’s hands are free in this pose, she can cover then expose
her eyes to play “peek-a-boo” with her baby. This can provide a
highly engaging context for prelinguistic communication.
Figure 4.1b Bound angle pose
In bridge pose (Figure 4.1c), the adult lies on her back with
knees bent and feet flat on the floor, then raises and lowers her
pelvis while the baby sits on her abdomen, which lifts the baby
up and down. The caregiver can add fun words such as “whee”
which, like the chant “om,” provides maximal labial contrast.
In the syllable “whee” the lips move from a rounded posture
for the consonant /w/ to a spread lip position for the vowel “ee”
written phonetically as /i/. For the production of “om,” the lips
move from the rounded vowel position for /OU/ to the bilabial
closed position for the consonant “m” written phonetically as /m/.