From your own physical body to your emotional state, prenatal yoga is really a key ingredient to a healthier, happy pregnancy. Prenatal yoga sounds such as a healthy practice to adopt during pregnancy – and it is. But what specifically can prenatal yoga do to assist you feel great and stay calm during the most crucial nine months of your lifetime? Read on for seven important ways yoga may make an optimistic difference in your pregnancy. Supports Your Changing Body
"Our bodies are always changing," says Jane Austin, a pre- and postnatal yoga teacher based in San Francisco and the founder of prenatal yoga school Mama Tree. In pregnancy, your body experiences "an accelerated pace of change," she says, and needs help adjusting and compensating. "Prenatal yoga practice is designed to support the changes that happen in a pregnant body," Austin says, by offering women healthy, safe ways to stretch their muscles and strengthen their health – their lower bodies in particular – to help ease the procedure of supporting a growing belly. Tones Important Muscle Groups
Prenatal yoga "tones the physical body, especially the pelvic floor, hip, and abdominal core muscles, in preparation for the birthing process," says Liz Owen, a Boston-based yoga teacher and the co-author of Yoga for a Healthy Lower Back: A Practical Guide to Developing Strength and Relieving Pain. An adequately toned muscle has the right balance between length and strength – it is neither too lax nor too tight. Building and maintaining muscle tone during pregnancy, with yoga poses like lunges and gentle backbends, will help minimize the aches and pains of those nine months, and are type in bringing the body back again to a toned condition after delivery, Owen says.
Prepares for Labor and Delivery
A premier priority in Austin's prenatal yoga classes is teaching women "they could trust that their health will open" as much as labor and birth. "When we're afraid, we tighten up," she says, and that tightening leads from what she calls a "fear-tension-pain cycle." This can sabotage a woman's efforts to remain present and calm in labor, particularly if she hopes to experience childbirth with minimal or no pain medication. Working to get in touch with yogic methods of deep, mindful breathing can help your body loosen and relax, and help women get to a "mammalian place," Austin says, where they could let their health do what they instinctively already understand how to do: give birth.
Promotes Connection With Your Baby
Even the act of planning to a prenatal yoga class once (or more) weekly is a gentle reminder to make an effort out of an active work and home life to look after and bond with your growing baby. As your pregnancy progresses, your body's different responses to yoga poses would have been a reminder of other physical changes happening in your body. Certain poses, such as for instance Hero pose, in which you sit back in your heels and then sit up directly to lengthen your spine, may become meaningful if you breathe deeply during it.