12 Reasons to do Pregnancy Yoga
Birth is a psychophysical experience which means your mind and your body both play a role. Some women will go on to birth their babies easily with little or no preparation, but a large majority will benefit from having done both physical and mental preparation.
Our prenatal specialist yoga class is like no other locally as it offers you expert guidance from a birth educator with over 20 years experience helping women prepare for birth. The physical preparation includes: trying out birthing movements, yoga, understanding your physiology, building confidence and strength, mobilising your pelvis, helping to ease and balance your body as you grow. The mental preparation includes: evidence based birthing tips, learning how the breath impacts on your mindbody and practicing this on a weekly basis becoming embodied knowledge, uplifting quotes and stories, affirmations, mindfulness, hypnobirth and deep guided relaxation.
1 Yoga is a safe way to exercise throughout your pregnancy. Research tells us that 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week means you are likely to a have shorter, easier, and less complicated labour. This also improves mental health, cardiac function, you will have less weight gain, decreased risk for gestational diabetes and a lower chance of having a caesarean birth and a quicker recovery time afterwards.
2 Prenatal Yoga improves strength and flexibility. If you stay strong as your pregnancy develops you will manage your growing weight more comfortably. Also, this will give you the stamina to stay mobile and upright during your labour which will help your baby to be born more easily. In our yoga classes we try out different movement and breathing techniques that you may find useful during labour. Flexibility means you will be able to adopt different positions more easily.
3 Confidence - Research suggests that if we feel strong in our bodies then we have more confidence in ourselves and our abilities. Subconsciously if you are strong then you have more chance to fight off someone trying to hurt you or run away. Yoga helps you to feel confident in your body. Our classes also include empowering and evidence based birthing tips and guidance. If you have confidence in your body and your ability to birth your baby, then this effects your stamina and determination and this can impact on how your birth plays out.
4 Being grounded and feeling connected to your body. Your body may be doing all sorts of things that its never done before and for some women this can feel disconcerting. The transitions into motherhood can bring with it all sorts of emotions and there may be times when you get lost in worry some thoughts about the birth or becoming a parent. learning to pay attention to your body will help you to deescalate a negative mindbody feedback loop. It will also help you feel connected to you body and tuned into the subtle voices with which your body communicates to you which will help you to identify your needs during labour.
5 Intuition: Pregnant women tend to be very intuitive. Their body wisdom is communicating with them in a very loud voice. During our yoga classes we encourage a connection to this inner body wisdom. Cultivating intuition which serve you so well during any decisions you need to make during your pregnancy & birth and throughout your life as a parent.
6 Easing Discomfort: Pregnancy effects every single one of your body systems. Some of these changes can be notable and some can be uncomfortable. Back ache, indigestion, morning sickness, pelvic pain, swollen ankles, breathlessness, headaches, difficulty sleeping, the list goes on! Our yoga classes offer advice, guidance, tips and remedy’s to help you navigate the sometimes difficult territory of your changing body. The yoga helps to ease muscle tension and balance your body so you can traverse these changes more comfortably. We also release energy blocks in the body which can make you feel less tired.
7 Learning to yield / surrender: Every woman who births a baby will have to surrender at some point. Surrender can be a hugely positive experience in that you decide either consciously or subconsciously that it’s time to let go. This could be the moment when you decide to surrender over to the power of your labour in those final stages when women often feel overwhelmed and unable to go on, but suddenly you can. Or maybe you surrender your previous birth preferences, exhausted after a 24 hour labour you decides that you want to bring your baby into the world with an abdominal birth. In our classes we use the mild challenges of the yoga poses to learn to yield and surrender to the body – always connecting this back to the breath and it’s primary forces of energy and release.
8 Identification of pelvis and pelvic floor. During the classes we bring awareness to the bones, the joints and the muscles of the pelvis and pelvic floor. We work both on the qualities of tone and release. These help you to understand the physiology of birth, help to keep your pelvic floor in good tonal condition, help with the concept and feeling of release, which will help in the bearing down phase especially if you have had an epidural. Good pelvic floor health in pregnancy will help you to recover more quickly afterwards.
9 Breathing. The single most valuable tool during your labour. If you can control your breathing you can control your nervous system and your brain waves which ultimately controls how you are feeling. We learn different breathing techniques which can be used at different points in labour and help to keep you emotionally balanced during the ups and downs of parenting.
10 Relaxing: Learning to relax and tune into your baby. Pregnancy can be a time of some anxiety for women. Day to day pressures of work or other children, worries about the pregnancy, worries about birth, financial worries or the almost inevitable pregnancy home improvements that look like they won’t be finished before the baby comes!
Anxiety causes muscle tension, this amplifies our experience of pain which makes us tense more which increases pain and the cycle continues. Learning to relax into intensity will help you stay more comfortable, dissipate anxiety and conserve energy. Our yoga classes give you a weekly decompression chamber with a 15 minute guided hypnobirth relaxation. We also know that babies like to be in a relaxed mum – so it’s something that you are doing together.
11 Mind Training: Mindfulness meditation, affirmations, hypnobirth, pain psychology are all easy techniques that will without a doubt help her with reframing, resilience, resolution, mental strength and help her to process her birth afterwards and navigate the ups and downs of parenthood.
12 Community. Our classes offer a wonderful opportunity to meet other local mums-to-be and create your village as you step into this new chapter of your life. I’ve been teaching in Tunbridge Wells for the last 17 years and still bump into women who have remained friends from the very first classes that I taught down here!