the benefits of yoga for pregnancy
Yoga is a lifelong opportunity to find centeredness; it’s a gentle but powerful workout; and it’s an opportunity to join together with millions of people around the world who incorporate yoga into their lives for countless benefits.
While I would highly encourage yoga for all stages of life, it is especially helpful during pregnancy! That’s why I am so excited to become a prenatal yoga teacher. I cannot wait to teach pregnant persons not only how to best care for their bodies during pregnancy, but also show them how yoga techniques can easily translate to the birth room.
Here are just a few ways yoga is SO helpful to you in pregnancy:
1) Yoga teaches focused breathing, which is incredibly helpful to learn when you start to experience shortness of breath. (This is caused by the uterus pushing on the diaphragm.)
2) Going to a prenatal yoga class in a studio automatically gives you a community of pregnant people to lean into. In my yoga classes, I plan to start each session with a little check-in that encourages vulnerability and offers space to complain about aches, pains, or emotional burdens that no one else around you quite understands. But the other pregnant people in your prenatal yoga class will!
3) A lot of yoga involves stretching and strengthening your muscles. Prenatal yoga focuses mainly on the muscle groups that will be worked hardest during pregnancy. Becoming familiar with the sensations of those particular muscles has incomparable value to your birth preparation.
4) I personally know many parents who attribute their labor success to the prenatal yoga classes they took. Honestly, it can’t hurt anything, so why not just do it for the simple fact that so many pregnant people love it?
5) Many of the postures you will learn in a prenatal yoga class can (and should) be used as effective laboring positions like: cat/cow, goddess pose (supported while in labor), yogi squat, and puppy dog pose.
There really is no reason not to do yoga while you are pregnant. If you cannot find a prenatal yoga class in your area, a restorative or gentle yoga class would also be fantastic. I’ll be updating my website after my certification is complete to offer prenatal yoga to all of you. Let me know if this is a service that interests you! I would love to teach you yoga!!