Prenatal yoga can be a great way to prepare for childbirth. Find out if this type of prenatal exercise is right for you.
Prenatal Yoga Poses
Pregnant women hear all the time that we should rest, relax, and set our feet up. Using the various changes taking place in your body, yoga will go a long way in keeping your mind and body relaxed and also at peace. Yoga is a discipline that focuses on the total amount between mind and body. Yoga combines asanas, pranayam and relaxation strategies to achieve this balance. A pregnant woman must take into consideration her health history before beginning using the exercises. For those who are doing yoga for the first time and also have not been following a regime otherwise shouldn’t rush into the same without prior medical consent.
Some yoga poses are particularly beneficial to you and your baby. Certain poses can help your baby turn, yet others tone your body for labor as well as for being a mom. You need strong legs and arms to birth a baby, and carrying a child around is a lot easier with a strong body, too!
The poses are divided below by their focus. Pick anything you are in the mood for or that your body craves. You can mix and match for a well-rounded yoga and relaxation practice!
Child’s Pose
Child’s pose is a relaxing posture that opens your abdomen and stretches the rear. Like the squat, it helps open the hips. As your belly gets bigger, you’ll probably have to modify how you do child’s pose. In early stages, you can do it as usual – with your knees together. While you grow, you’ll need to separate the knees, so your belly can fall together. Listen to your body when you practice this posture, and discover the knee position that works good for you.
Chair Pose
The Chair Pose strengthens your thighs and pelvic muscles. It is a great exercise for pregnant women, that provides great benefits. To do it, stand erect with some 12 inches between your feet, keeping them alongside. Inhale for two seconds, raise your heels and arms to shoulder level and keep your palms facing down. Exhale slowly, then squat on your toes. Keep your hands within this position, inhale, get up slowly and stand on your toes. To complete, exhale while bringing your hands and heels down in the same time. This exercise works your arms and legs, but additionally stimulates the diaphragm.
Bound Angle Pose
Bound Angle Pose, sometimes also called Butterfly Pose, is another hip-opener, and in addition it gives a nice stretch towards the inner thighs, improve posture and help stretch the rear and neck. Bound Angle Pose could also help stabilise the pelvis, that is helpful for many women in pregnancy. It was one of my personal favourites to labour in, while leaning over a birth ball.
Triangle Pose
Approximately remembering to take your vitamins and prepping a nursery, have you start to feel like you were losing your sanity just a bit? While pregnancy is a duration of celebration, it is also a highly anxious some time and you may find yourself carrying around a bit an excessive amount of tension. Try a modified triangle pose to regain your feeling of balance. This all-around good pose works the legs, stretches along side it body, energizes the hips, and reveals the shoulders, which (we’re guessing) have learned to cave in a bit under the pressure.
Mountain Pose
The Mountain Pose can help you get rid of any backaches you might have. It is a way to improve your posture, but the important thing about this yoga exercise during pregnancy is that allows for gentle stretching of the back. To do the Mountain pose, sit on the mat in sukhasna. Keep straight and inhale, raise your arm and join your palms in a ‘Namaste’ position. Keep your elbows straight and then leave your hands near your ears. Maintain this position for many seconds and then return to your normal position.
Downward Dog
One of the best known poses is downward dog, and during pregnancy it’s amazing for your legs and back. It helps you relieve stress that you simply feel in the back of your neck and shoulders, improves blood circulation through the body and brain, and it releases any crunching along your spine in the increased weight of your belly. It is also amazing for working out soreness in your hamstrings and calves. My teacher recommends a downward dog every morning to get a boost of one’s.
Twisted Pose
This pose trains your spine, legs, hands and neck. To assume this pose, sit erect with your feet stretched before you in a straight line. Inhale, raise your arms to shoulder height, using the palms facing down. Exhale, while twisting your body from your waist to your right. Move your head and hands within this same direction, simultaneously. Hold your arms back as much as you are able to and refrain from bending your knees. Inhale again, and return to your original position. Then, repeat by twisting left.
Prenatal Yoga Poses During Pregnancy
Cat and Cow Pose
During pregnancy, cat pose and cow pose are both ideal for lower back pain, and taking the pressure and weight of your baby and belly off your hips and back. It provides a gentle stretch for both the lower back and abdominal muscles. Practing a cat/cow sequence may also help encourage your baby to move into a ‘good’ LOA position for labour.This pose ought to be on your labour ‘to do’ list, and a birth ball can be used to lean on to accept pressure of the arms and wrists. This is an especially helpful pose if your baby is posterior – it may help relieve the intensity of ‘back labour’.
