A Russian woman, who stunned millions of viewers by swinging infants around her head and body, is back with another video, and the scariest part is that there are mothers willingly handing their babies over to her.
To the horror of millions around the world, Lena Fokina, aka the "baby yoga" woman, is back with a new video, and yes folks, the babies she is swinging are real.
Maybe you missed Lena's first video posted earlier this year because YouTube banned it pretty quickly; they called it "shocking and disgusting" content. In it, Lena held onto the arms and legs of a two-week old, swinging the infant around her head and body and flipping it over and over. The most recent video contains more baby tossing and twirling and a bit of an interview that gives us some insight into the self-proclaimed ‘child-learning expert.'
Lena thinks her methods have caused the children in Dahab, Egypt, where she runs her practice, to swim, read, sing, talk, and develop much faster than children elsewhere. Regardless of the fact that many of the babies she performs the practice on can't even hold up their own heads, Lena's not concerned with safety. She has been doing"baby yoga" for the past 30 years on hundreds of kids, including her own, and can't recall anyone getting hurt.
Although I don't believe her for a second, it turns out that there are mothers who do. In the video, these ‘concerned' parents watch Lena twirl their crying infants around, and they learn how to do it themselves. The mothers say that this is "the best thing they can do to improve their child's health," but my goodness, where oh where is any shred of real evidence that would make them believe that?
In a Gawker interview, Lena was asked if she invented the tradition. She answered, "Life invented it; it was conveyed to us by the teacher and author of these ideas, Igor Borisovich Charkovsky." Oh boy. And to make matters worse, she can't understand why the practice makes North Americans so squeamish.
Now, I may not be a child development expert, but I can recognize dangerous behavior when I see it. This Lena Fokina surely has one too many screws loose in that she truly believes no harm can come to these kids. And ok, let's just for the sake of argument say that dangling and swinging a baby by its arms and legs doesn't pull joints out of sockets, dislocate shoulders, or cause shaken baby syndrome. If you take away those aspects, there still remains a major chance of error on the part of Lena and the other adults, making the practice incredibly unsafe.
Let's use an analogy. I pick up my cellphone multiple times a day. I love my cellphone. I would never want to hurt it. Inevitably though, there are times when I drop it. It just slips out of my hand and falls to the floor. I really don't want this to happen because I am invested in this cell phone and my life revolves around it, but alas, I drop it because I am human and I err. Luckily, my phone has a case, so it doesn't crack. Newborns, unlike cellphones, don't come with cases. So when you drop a newborn, it cracks.
Obviously, dropping babies is not as common as dropping phones, but when you swing those babies around your head, dangle them behind you and flip them over repeatedly, the chances of a fall increase dramatically.
So to anyone considering taking the practice up, ask yourself if it's really worth the risk.
http://news.sympatico.ca/oped/coffee-talk/baby_yoga_woman_swings_back_into_public_view/c9359da5
Read more...