What is Prenatal Yoga?
Well, Prenatal Yoga is specifically designed for pregnant women in all three trimesters to connect with this transformational journey into becoming a mother. Basically, connecting to the mother within the growing body and the growing baby.
Through Prenatal Yoga you’ll learn tools and techniques to relieve aches and pains that come and go throughout pregnancy and even during labor and through regular practice, whether that’s three times a week or up to seven times a week.
What are the Benefits of Prenatal Yoga
- It can improve your sleep
- Reduces stress and anxiety
- Manage your weight through Prenatal yoga and even your moods during pregnancy and even during postpartum
- Increasing strength and endurance, reducing tension, aches, pains, and even possibly experiencing a calmer, quicker, more comfortable birth.
Dos and Don’ts in Maximizing the Benefits of Prenatal Yoga
- Do focus on presence
- Focus on your breath
- Focus on your growing body and the baby
- Do take breaks
- Take it easy
- Take modifications
Your body is changing every day and your practice will change every day. This isn’t the time to focus on getting a six pack and pushing yourself as hard as you can. This is a time to connect with the nurturer, the mother within and take care of yourself, listen to your body and all of that will reflect on your baby.
What’s More?
- Do stay hydrated. Bring a bottle of water with you to your mat every single time you come to practice.
- Take sips of water whenever you’re feeling thirsty.
- Take water breaks.
Now What are the Don’ts
- Don’t use heat
- Don’t practice in a heated room
- Don’t go outside and practice if it’s very hot. The thing is is that your body or your baby can’t regulate its own body temperature, so your baby relies on you to do that for it
- Make sure that you’re regulating your temperature and if you start to feel heated or warm at any point, then take a break or step outside to cool off
- Don’t do any big twists
- Don’t do big back bends
- Don’t practice any newer advanced postures
- Don’t lie on your belly
- Don’t do core work outside of prenatal guidance
The reason for all of that is that this is a time to make space for baby. And you want to do what you can to create a loving and nurturing environment for baby.
Just because you’re not showing doesn’t mean that you’re not pregnant. So even very early on in your pregnancy, remind yourself to avoid the big twist, the big back bends, the lying on your belly, the new and advanced postures.
You definitely want the area around baby, the muscles and the ligaments to be able to relax so that when you grow it can all stretch and grow with you. And some of those things I mentioned, like the big twist and the back bends and the core work could lead to strain or possibly injury.
Therefore, be careful, be mindful and the good thing is that in Prenatal yoga, you’re not going to have to worry about any of that because your guide or the prenatal yoga teacher, will make sure that that’s not a part of your class anyway.
Prenatal Yoga Modification During Pregnancy
Let’s move on with some helpful modifications. You might experience swelling, a lot of fluid or even relaxing during your pregnancy that can cause your joints to feel sore and tender. Here are some helpful modifications if that’s the case, you can prop your hands on fingertips or fists instead of yoga hands on the mat.
Anytime that your wrists start to feel sore, you can use a blanket underneath your knees. Whenever you come into a tabletop or anytime you come to stand on your knees, it’s encouraged to take a wider stance in prenatal yoga and not only to make space for baby, but it helps with forward fold and helps with balance throughout your class and sitting on a bolster instead of sitting on the ground can help relieve tension on your lower back.
It can help align your pelvis and it can be really good for baby positioning later on. Anytime that you start to feel nauseous or hot in downward facing or maybe it’s just your wrists, you can always go to a table top and it’s very easy to go to different postures from tabletop the same way you would from downward facing.
Then finally, lie on left side instead of your back. If you ever start to feel hot, nauseous or dizzy. Now this is something that in the later part of your pregnancy, like third trimester and the second half of year pregnancy.
Anytime you’re lying on your back or just supine positions, and you start to feel hot and dizzy, that’s your body telling you to roll over just roll over and that’s all there is to it. These are some modifications and benefits of Prenatal yoga that you can use.
amzn_assoc_placement = “adunit0”; amzn_assoc_search_bar = “true”; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = “huraira19-20”; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = “manual”; amzn_assoc_ad_type = “smart”; amzn_assoc_marketplace = “amazon”; amzn_assoc_region = “US”; amzn_assoc_title = “My Amazon Picks”; amzn_assoc_linkid = “cede4e7096bf4ace355d5a0ecfe0bc10”; amzn_assoc_asins = “B07J5SMJQJ,B01B5ITZ4M,B07JR3T1G6,B07JBNVJ9Q”;
