All You Need To Know About Prenatal Yoga

From your physical body to your emotional state, prenatal yoga can help promote a healthy, happy pregnancy.

prenatal yoga

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If you get the OK from your health care provider, staying active during pregnancy is a good idea. It can help decrease your risk of issues, including preeclampsia, and ease annoyances like back pain and constipation.

Looking for a way to stay active during pregnancy? Prenatal yoga, which is yoga modified for pregnancy, may be the perfect activity to adopt, especially because of all its benefits.

"Prenatal yoga is designed to support the changes that happen in a pregnant body," says Jane Austin, a pre and postnatal yoga teacher based in San Francisco and the founder of prenatal yoga school Mama Tree. It offers safe, healthy ways to stretch and strengthen the pregnant body, as it continues to change rapidly.

Here's what you need to know about prenatal yoga and how it can make a positive difference in your pregnancy.

What Happens in a Prenatal Yoga Class?

Along with grabbing a mat, here’s what to expect during a prenatal yoga class:

  • Breathing exercises
  • Stretching 
  • Yoga poses that are safe for pregnancy
  • Cool down stretches and relaxation

Benefits of Prenatal Yoga

Prenatal yoga can offer physical and mental health benefits to pregnant people. Here are some important ones to know.

Tones your muscles

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 Massachusetts-based yoga teacher and the co-author of Yoga for a Healthy Lower Back.

A properly 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, can help minimize the aches and pains of those nine months, and are key in bringing your body back to a toned condition after delivery, explains Owen.

Prepares the body for labor and delivery

Prenatal yoga helps teach people to trust their bodies and how to use breathing techniques. Working to connect with yogic methods of deep, mindful breathing can help the body loosen and relax, Austin says. This can facilitate giving birth and research shows yoga can improve the outcomes of pregnancy and childbirth.

Helps with common pregnancy complaints

By stretching and toning muscles, you can help blood circulate throughout the body in a healthy way. Also, deep breathing can bring much-needed oxygen to your muscles. This all may help ease common pregnancy discomforts, such as lower back pain, nausea, insomnia, headaches, shortness of breath, and carpal tunnel syndrome.

Boosts mental health

Pregnancy can be a stressful time for anyone. Prenatal yoga has been found to help a pregnant person manage stress and anxiety, which can both impact the fetus as well.

Even more, a study shows mindfulness yoga, which combines physical poses with meditation practices, can bring relief to the depression that can accompany the emotional journey of pregnancy.

Of course, not all symptoms are guaranteed to disappear through yoga and mental health conditions before, during, and after pregnancy are critical to take care of. It's important if you are struggling with mental health to seek professional help.

Promotes a healthier pregnancy

Along with increasing strength, endurance, and flexibility, research has found doing yoga can help reduce blood pressure. That's important as a high blood pressure in pregnancy can harm the kidneys and other organs and may cause preterm birth and low birth weight.

If you are dealing with high blood pressure in pregnancy, it's important to seek medical attention as treatment can allow for a safe pregnancy.

Can improve sleep

Getting a good night's sleep can feel impossible during pregnancy. Yoga has been found to promote better sleep quality because of the physical and mental exertion the muscles experience.

Creates a much-needed community

One of the greatest benefits of prenatal yoga may be joining a community with other expectant parents. "The class becomes a pregnancy support group of sorts, where women connect with other women who are making the same choices and lifestyles changes," says Karen Prior, an Oklahoma City-based doula, childbirth education, prenatal yoga instructor, and creator of the Mamaste Yoga program.

Having a support system like this can be a great way to help ease anxiety about impending parenthood and have people to lean on.

What Trimester Should You Do Prenatal Yoga?

You can do and start prenatal yoga in any trimester as long as your health care provider approves. You just may need to make modifications as your belly grows or you experience various pregnancy symptoms.

Safety Guidelines for Prenatal Yoga

It's important to avoid hot yoga classes during pregnancy. Excessive heat during pregnancy can increase the risk of neural tube defects and other fetal malformations. Hot yoga may also cause dehydration or heat exhaustion.

A few other things to consider:

  • Don’t overdo it. It’s OK if you can’t exercise for at least 30 minutes, fives times a week. Do whatever your body allows and don’t push too hard while in a class.
  • Watch your poses. Avoid being flat on your stomach or back after 16 to 20 weeks; use a wedge or pillow to tilt uterus off the vena cava. (That's your body's largest vein and the inferior vena cava is between the lumbar spine and the uterus.) Also, avoid performing deep bends forward and backward, and putting too much pressure on your abdomen by stretching. 
  • Drink water. Staying hydrated during pregnancy is important, especially when exercising.

Most importantly, make sure to consult with your health care provider before starting prenatal yoga and continue to check in with them if you experience any pain or issues that may arise after the exercise.

Where To Do Prenatal Yoga

You can attend a prenatal yoga class at a fitness center near you or follow videos online. If possible, opt for an in-person class to ensure you are doing the moves safely; an instructor will be able to guide you and answer any questions you may have. But make sure to seek an instructor experienced in prenatal yoga.

Updated by Anna Halkidis
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Sources
Parents uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
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