The Benefits of Yoga During Pregnancy
“Yoga is so much more than mindful movement, it can awaken the soul.”
If there is any time to tune into yourself, it’s during pregnancy and prenatal yoga is the perfect vessel to get you there. My love for yoga has blossomed over 20 years. As a young dancer, yoga helped me build physical strength and reliance. An obsession with challenge and discipline. At 24, my partner and I relocated to Sydney and my mat became my friend. I had no job, no friends and was navigating a new city. During this time, the practice gave me a purpose to get up each day. After giving birth - “the yoga,” evolved once again. It became a space of softness, a haven that allowed me to process who I was becoming.
Bannie Williams, founder of Fort Green Yoga, the studio which hosts our beloved course, explains…
So if you’ve been considering shifting things up or perhaps need a little motivation to get back to your mat, here are 10 valid reasons why prenatal yoga is so damn good for you. Because ultimately practising prenatal yoga during your pregnancy can help to determine a more positive birthing outcome. Let us tell you why.
It can relieve body aches and pains. Like all therapeutic practices during pregnancy, it's only positive to remain active (in a healthy pregnancy) to increase strength and flexibility. Common anatomical concerns people experience during pregnancy are (not limited to) back pain, pelvic girdle pain, stability in the sacroiliac joint, and abdominal shifts. The combination of strength work and deep shapes shifting whilst breathing can assist in opening up fascia tissue and make more space for a changing and growing body.
Yoga decreases stress, reduces anxiety and provides pregnant people with coping techniques that help to manage cortisol levels. Multiple scientific studies prove that our cortisol levels affect our children's development, so yoga is a beautiful way to resettle the nervous system. Through space, breath work and meditation, you can train the body to turn off the ‘flight or fight system’ and turn on ‘the rest and restore system’. How powerful is that!
Increased self-regulation equates to better lifestyle choices. For example, a regular yoga practice will naturally help you eat more mindfully, sleep deeper, and increase your awareness of environmental toxins.
The pelvic floor's softening and letting go action is often overlooked but pivotal for childbirth. Good prenatal (like the kind we teach at Radiant Birth), will help you to build awareness of your pelvic floor (a grouping of muscles that hold your bladder and lower organs in place). Prenatal yoga can help you tune into accessing these muscles and how to turn them on and soften them. Yoga can teach you how to tune into your pelvic floor in various positions and is a wonderful way to help prepare the body for the pushing stage.
Labour is often likened to a marathon, so it's important to get physically ready for it. You would never sign up to do a half marathon without doing some training before. If you did, think about the repercussions this may have on your body. Deeping squatting, hip openers and back strength will non doubt come in handy for being in the depths of labour.
It carves time to connect with your baby. Sometimes it takes being locked in a room without the distraction by way of screens, work and external noise to reconnect to what you are growing inside you.
Yoga can help you flip your baby. You may have heard of the term Spinning Babies. This birth education draws heavily on the “physiological approach to preparing for and caring for birth.”. Their practices use staple inversions that yogis have been doing since the dawn of time. A great inversion during labour can, yes, in fact, move your baby to get them in the optimal position for birthing.
Yoga teaches are to move toward sensation and not shy away from it. The practice of yoga teaches us all sensation (good or bad) is always temporary and fleeting. This is a fundamental lesson to take with you in the birth space.
Yoga can connect you to new soon-to-be mums and community.
The philosophies of yoga teach us patience, softness, surrender, humility and of course, the act of accountability. It’s amazing what you can learn by being still. Having space to be present is, quite honestly, the best way to self-actualise and grow.