Yoga is rapidly becoming a popular form of exercise across the world. It is seen as physically beneficial for a lot of reasons like weight loss, breathing problems, stress reduction and even pregnancy. In fact, many experts believe that yoga is an ideal form of exercise and meditation during prenatal days. The breathing and relaxation exercises help you adjust to the physical demands of pregnancy, labor, and birth. Yoga calms the mind as well as the body during the pregnancy providing the much-needed release for the physical and emotional stress during this time. These many beneficial factors make yoga the ideal form of prenatal exercise.
Gurmukh Khalsa, a Prenatal Yoga Teacher in CA, quotes –
Your spirit as a woman has all the knowledge you need to give birth and nurture your child. It is in your genes, it has been with you since you yourself were conceived. You can trust its wisdom.
1. Develop Your Body Strength
You are growing a life inside of you, and as expected it needs a lot of strength physically and emotionally. As the baby grows, it needs for you to build your strength and stamina to support the little life inside. The various yoga asanas help with strengthening the hips, backs, arms, and shoulders and give you the stamina to carry the weight through these rigorous months.
2. Calm the Nerves
If you are going through any kind of emotional turmoil, your baby will feel it too. It is important to be peaceful and calm your nerves even in stressful situations. Sometimes it can be hard, but that’s where yoga can help. Yoga trains you for deep breathing, which calms the nervous system and helps you maintain a relaxed demeanor. The calm nervous system also aids with digestion, helps you sleep better and maintains good immunity, all of which help keep the mom and the baby healthy.
3. Increase Blood Circulation
Yoga involves a lot of stretches and moves to get your blood flowing. These postures are designed to help improve blood circulation in the body. Improved blood circulation decreases swelling of the body particularly feet, which is a common problem during pregnancy. It also helps improve immunity, which creates a healthy and nourishing environment for the baby. Other benefits of improved blood circulation include improved sleeping patterns, digestion, and overall stamina as your body receives the optimal doses of oxygen.
4. Improve Balance
Your posture changes and your center of gravity shifts as the baby grows. You start feeling more pressure on your lower back and need to change your position even in simple daily movements. This change can affect the physical balance. On the other hand, the rising and raging hormones also throw your emotions out of balance. With yoga you practice breathing and holding each posture. The holding of each pose helps to focus on the balance that needs to be maintained physically, training your body to accommodate to the changing balance of weight. The focus on breathing once again helps calm the nervous system which helps keep your emotions in control.
5. Prepare Your Body for Labor and Birth
Each pose in yoga requires you to focus and fine-tune your breathing. It teaches you to consciously breathe correctly. As the doctors will also tell you, proper breathing is important during the labor and birthing to ease the process and also to alleviate the pain. Since you are used to breath correctly even through the difficult yoga poses, it becomes easier to focus on correct breathing during the discomfort faced in labor.
Are you set to try prenatal yoga? Please perform the yoga postures under the supervision of a master yoga teacher.
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