(Meet Lauren)
Food Allergy Mom, Certified Lactation Counselor, Certified Yoga Instructor
Lauren Buckles, CLC, E-RYT, RCYT
The entire Free to Feed team couldn’t be more excited to expand our sphere of influence and start working alongside Lauren Buckles, a certified yoga instructor, Allergy Mom and Free to Feed trained Infant Food Allergy expert.
As a certified yoga and mindfulness teacher for both adults and children, Lauren understands the importance of setting aside time in your daily life, especially when that time is a means to reduce stress and find peace of mind as you navigate a reintroduction or elimination diet. Lauren uses the art of yoga to help parents and caregivers attain the tools and techniques they need to reduce stress during their quest to find the freedom to feed. Lauren is solutions oriented, and compassionate about helping families do just that.
As a food allergy parent, Lauren has first hand experience and knows just how difficult it is to execute an elimination or reintroduction diet and thankfully, she was able to complete both of these tasks with the help of Free To Feed’s very own Dr. Trill. After she completed her journey, she realized that she wanted to be more involved in this community and she started looking for ways to use her expertise in yoga to do just that.
Lauren also realized the difficulty parents face as they expand their knowledge base when it comes to infant food reactivity. During Lauren’s food allergy journey, she had to eliminate all of the Top 12 Allergens. While she was on that journey, yoga and mindfulness provided her with the strength she needed to navigate the process with her Free to Feed Food Allergy Expert. Her Food Allergy journey with her little one included 3 years of exclusively breastfeeding a little with multiple food allergies to several of the foods she was accustomed to eating daily….egg, oats, gluten, and fish. Once she gained an understanding of what was going on, she removed these foods from her diet. You can also understand how difficult this task was!
During Lauren’s journey, she:
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Conquered the Top 12 Elimination Diet
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Gently navigated Reintroduction
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Learned how to rapidly identify GI symptoms such as bloody and mucousy stools and she used this information to determine next steps
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Breastfed a little with Food Protein Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome (FPIES)
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Used Yoga and Mindfulness daily as she balanced her desire to breastfeed a child with multiple food intolerances
Lauren loves helping parents best understand how to implement elimination and reintroduction diets. Sometimes, just having knowledge is not enough, especially when you also have stress and fear creeping in.
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Are you stressed about your infant food allergy knowledge gap?
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Are you stressed about elimination and reintroduction diet execution?
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Are you stressed about feeling like your feed concerns are just too hard to explain?
We understand and we have a wonderful solution to alleviate your stress!
Yoga and mindfulness practices are proven stress reduction techniques. As you search for your freedom to feed, you’ve most likely heard/read things about gut permeability, leaky gut, that breastmilk does not contain allergens, that it takes 8 weeks to fully eliminate cow’s milk protein from your breast milk, how bloody stool and skin rashes are not allergy related, that bloody stool is not problematic and your infant will just outgrow it, or that switching to formula is your only option. There are just so many untruths circulating the world wide web that are not rooted in science or even common sense. It is hard to sift through all of that information, find some practical truths and determine the best next steps. The stress of it all is just tiring.
Setting aside time to complete yoga and mindfulness exercises will help alleviate stress and certainly make your end goal feel like it is in reach. When you couple stress reduction techniques and a Free To Feed Allergy consultant, you will be ready to get your baby back to baseline!
Lauren is dedicated to teaching YOU practices that are not only accessible but can support your families as well. Through mindfulness practices, you can learn to soothe stress, build compassion, experience joy and broaden your horizon. Lauren will couple Yoga tactics with her allergen detection expertise to help mother’s pinpoint allergens and achieve their feeding goals.
Lauren lives in the Hudson Valley in upstate NY with her husband and her son. Lauren’s love for and proximity to nature supports her work, her teachings, and her life.
When you need peace of mind and gently guided support and you realize going about this on your own is harder than you thought, there is an expert at Free To Feed who’s got your back and knows how to promote wellness during your journey. A consultation with Lauren will not only make you realize that peace and tranquility are attainable - but will also help you feel like you can conquer that pesky elimination diet and reintroduction strategy with deep inhales and a renewed sense of self. She will help you realize that “you got this”!
5 Fun Facts About Lauren and her family:
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Lauren exclusively nursed her son through multiple allergies. He self-weaned at 39 months.
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Lauren, her husband, and son love to spend time in nature either hiking, biking, camping or hanging out by the creek in their backyard.
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Her family loves to travel. One of Lauren’s favorite places to travel to is California, where her Grandma and other family live.
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Lauren lived in Long Island, California, and New York City, but upstate NY is her and her family’s current home.
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Lauren has a passion for holistic health and exploring the connection between mental, emotional, and physical health. She loves acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. She also has a lot of knowledge about western medicine, making her the one her friends send their diagnoses and labs to for an extra review.
What Lauren wishes most parents understood about food allergy babies….
“Infant food allergies are more common than it seems. As a food allergy parent, you are not alone. We will work together to understand the facts, explore your options, and determine what works best for your baby and for your mental and emotional health. During a consultation, you will feel seen, heard, and understood. We will practice techniques to help soothe the inevitable stress of this experience, all while remembering there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Your food allergy baby and you both deserve attention and proper care!”