Prenatal yoga is different from regular yoga in that it’s more soothing and is just meant to get you moving.
1. Benefits of practicing yoga
Practicing yoga for pregnant women can enhance physical strength and muscle tone, enhance the body\’s sense of balance, and improve the flexibility and elasticity of the entire muscle tissue. At the same time, it stimulates the glands that control hormone secretion, increases blood circulation, accelerates blood circulation, and can control breathing well. Practicing yoga can also play a role in massaging the internal organs. In addition, yoga that targets abdominal muscles can help reshape your postpartum figure. yoga pair
Improve sleep, eliminate insomnia, and make people healthy and comfortable. Develop a positive and healthy attitude towards life.
But it\’s important to note that yoga isn\’t the only way to make pregnancy and birth safer and smoother. Yoga simply helps pregnant women perform appropriate exercises throughout their pregnancy. Childbirth is physically demanding, so it\’s normal for most pregnant women to feel fear and anxiety before labor arrives. Practicing yoga can make the process easier and help pregnant women maintain peace of mind before giving birth.
During pregnancy, although expectant mothers should be very careful to protect the fetus, they should not be too cautious in stopping exercise. Appropriate exercise during pregnancy not only helps expectant mothers to strengthen their physique and control their body lines, but also helps to give birth to the baby smoothly.
During pregnancy, pregnant women are in a state of mental stress due to the constant changes in their bodies, especially the increased pressure on their backs. Yoga exercises can balance your growing belly and maintain good posture. Stretching and strengthening your body can help open your pelvis before birth. Adjusting the pelvic floor can provide better control of labor, reduce complications, and speed postpartum recovery.
Yoga stretching exercises, such as kneeling cat breathing, lateral stretching, etc., can not only relieve tense and painful muscles, but yoga breathing can also help stretch the ribs, enhance the elasticity of chest and back muscles, and stabilize mom\’s mood and muscles. Develops relaxation and blood pressure regulation.
In addition to back pain, many mothers often feel breathless and constipated after pregnancy. These can all be improved through pregnancy yoga.
Gentle yoga for pregnant women can increase cardiopulmonary function, promote blood circulation and metabolism, and reduce fatigue caused by increased oxygen demand during pregnancy and asthma caused by poor breathing.
Many mothers also suffer from esophageal reflux or constipation because the baby is growing day by day and the uterus is compressing the intestines and stomach. Many yoga movements for pregnant women can promote gastrointestinal motility, help defecation and exhaust, and relieve bloating and constipation.
Yoga for pregnant women can also control weight and improve edema
Pregnancy makes some mothers’ hands and feet swell, making them look like big balloons from a distance. The deformation of appearance is often unacceptable to beautiful mothers. This is because after a woman becomes pregnant, progesterone in her body begins to increase, helping the embryo to implant. But progesterone can also increase the concentration of sodium in the urine, which can lead to edema. Yoga for pregnant women can improve your healthIt improves the body\’s blood circulation and metabolism, reduces edema during pregnancy, and makes mothers look more beautiful.
2. Parent-child yoga starts from pregnancy
All pregnant mothers have similar worries. Usually, their bodies will undergo the following changes. For example, their breasts will become very plump, and fat will begin to accumulate on their waistlines, hips and thighs. They often feel soreness in their waist and legs, but they have to continue to indulge their appetite in order to supplement their nutrition. A pregnant mother\’s body has undergone great changes, but she is extremely careful about the fetus and dare not act rashly. In fact, there is no need to interrupt or reduce normal exercise during pregnancy. Arranging some exercises scientifically is good for both mother and fetus. Yoga with soothing movements is a good choice, and talking to the baby in the womb during exercise is also the earliest form of mother-child yoga.
Benefiting expectant mothers
Proper exercise can keep expectant mothers in a good mood and prevent them from gaining too much weight. At the same time, it can promote blood circulation, enhance myocardial contractility, increase oxygen uptake, and promote metabolism; the secretion of digestive juices increases, which is beneficial to the digestion, absorption, and utilization of food; it can also improve muscle coordination and help pregnant mothers adapt to the shift of the body\’s center of gravity and weight gain.
You can realize that exercise can relieve tension, make the joints of the waist and pelvis softer, and make the muscles more elastic. In particular, consciously exercising the muscles of the abdomen, waist, back and pelvis can avoid weight gain and changes in the center of gravity during pregnancy. Low back pain and leg pain, and helps reduce labor pain and promote vaginal and natural childbirth.
Babies are good too
Since the fetus and mother have blood connections, appropriate exercise by pregnant women is also beneficial to the growth and development of the fetus. Enhanced maternal blood circulation also increases the supply of oxygen and nutrients to the fetus, promoting the development of the fetal brain and body. Expectant mothers should get more sun exposure during outdoor activities, which is also beneficial to the growth and development of fetal bones. Moreover, the mother always maintains a good mental state, which plays a certain role in the formation of the child\’s optimistic and cheerful personality in the future.
Special Note:
Pay attention to self-protection during activities and avoid falling or bumping your abdomen. During the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, pregnant mothers should not bend over or squat for long periods of time to avoid compressing the abdomen or causing pelvic congestion. Try to do as little exercise as possible in the third trimester of pregnancy, because at this time the weight increases, the lower limbs often suffer from mild edema, and the feet tire easily. You can do some slow mat exercises.
3. What should pregnant women pay attention to when practicing yoga?
First of all, although the practice methods and types of yoga for pregnant women will vary due to changes in the body, one thing remains constant, which is the pursuit of physical, mental and spiritual balance. In other words, proper breathing and meditation can not only relieve physical discomfort, but also make emotions more stable. Usually pregnant women can try to practice these two parts at home.
Regarding asanas, everyone is very concerned about: What movements can be done? What can\’t be done? firstFor women in the first three months of pregnancy, it is best not to do yoga poses because the pregnancy is still unstable, but breathing meditation and gentle stretching are still good. In the next 6 months of the second and third stages, you can do some actions to help relieve discomfort during pregnancy to facilitate smooth delivery in the future.
Do not do
1. Backbend action. Such an action will make the waist, which is already under a lot of pressure, even more vulnerable. So don\’t do it. Even if you want to do it, you can only do simple breast enlargement.
2. Absolutely do not allow the abdomen to move on the ground.
3. All abdominal muscle training exercises are bad. Because the pressure on the abdominal muscles of pregnant women is already great, abdominal exercise will cause a greater burden. It may even cause cracks in the rectus abdominis muscle
Open, making the lower back less supportive.
4. Deep twisting movements should also be avoided. You can only do simple shoulder, neck, and upper chest rotations.
5. Never stand on your head. Because during pregnancy, a woman\’s abdominal bulge has shrunk the chest cavity, and inversion will put more pressure on the chest cavity. If you do headstands during the third trimester, it may cause abnormal fetal position, so don\’t be careful.
6. Lying down is not suitable after the second trimester because it will compress the large blood vessels.
7. During breathing exercises, make full use of the possible breathing space but do not emphasize abdominal breathing and do not particularly contract the abdomen.
8. Always remind yourself to keep your feet parallel when standing. Avoid standing outside. Causes greater burden on the lumbar spine.
9. During pregnancy, hormones change, and more relaxin is secreted, making her softer than usual. Therefore, be sure not to stretch too much when doing movements, otherwise you will easily get injured.
Actions that are easy to do and should be done frequently
1. Squat-like actions to train the underlying pelvic muscles of pregnant women. You can open your legs as wide as your shoulders or slightly wider, with your toes facing outward (so you can squat easily), and then slowly squat down halfway. Another action is: open your feet wider and squat down completely. Then put your hands on the inside of your knees, clasp your hands in front of your chest, and push your arms outwards. However, those whose abdomen is too heavy after 36 weeks, or whose fetal position is still incorrect after 32 weeks, or who are troubled by hemorrhoids, should not do full squats. They can do the exercises while sitting on a mat or yoga brick.
2. Practice more vaginal retraction and imagine the feeling of holding back urine (but don’t really hold it in). This can prevent postpartum urine leakage and relieve perineal lacerations during childbirth.
3. Pelvic tilt action. The simplest method is to stand with your whole body flat against the wall and try to rotate your tailbone forward, that is, try to slowly flatten your lower back against the wall. This can relieve the lower back pain of pregnant women~
4. Do standing movements against the wall. Especially for single-leg balancing movements, you can support the wall with one hand or one foot.
5. The best breathing method is to expand the chest. Bellows breathing (rapid and rapid exhalation) is not suitable. Breathing through the left and right nostrils is good.It can purify the nervous system and help focus the mind for meditation. Purifying breathing method, inhaling deeply through the nose and exhaling deeply through the mouth, can relieve fatigue and stress in the body and mind. This breathing method is also very good and can be used during labor pains.
6. To avoid cramps in the middle of the night, you can do calf stretching before going to bed, and usually supplement calcium.
It is best for postpartum women to gradually resume yoga practice after 6 weeks and after the lochia has completely ended. The only movement that can be done immediately after giving birth is the practice of closing the vagina. Don\’t do sit-ups too early. When doing sit-ups, use your hands to support each other\’s abdomen to prevent the rectus abdominis from splitting. Mothers who had a caesarean section need more time to recover. Remember to massage the wound frequently to help recovery.
Warm reminder: It is still necessary to find an expert
Many of the above suggestions are different because everyone’s body is different and the situation is different. If you are worried that you have a condition, or know that your physique is different, it is best not to practice yoga at home, especially for beginners who have never been exposed to yoga. It is best to find a professionally trained yoga teacher for pregnant women.