Parental Yoga — Why Yoga Is Healthy For Baby and You
Forget about the baby bump and acknowledge and celebrate your body. Feel elevated and happy about carrying a life within. Feel honored, important and beautiful. Love yourself and you’ll love your baby too. Being positive and celebrating your pregnancy can help in the long run, even after you’ve delivered your baby. Find things that will help you stay healthy and active, and do the same for your baby too.
Yoga is a great workout and activity that will help you and your growing baby healthy, active and strong. Whether you join a yoga class, a dance class, or just choose to do it at home, here’s why you should make it a regular routine to reap all the amazing benefits:
Helps keep you grounded
One of the struggles of pregnancy is dealing with a lot of extra weight on your tummy; so much so that it changes the center of gravity. Yoga helps you learn to balance your body as the baby grows with time.
Yoga pose for balance — the tree pose is the best one for expectant moms to maintain balance throughout pregnancy. Standing on one leg with both hands up together stretches the entire back muscles and also helps you stay grounded.
Relaxes Muscles
As you progress from one trimester to the other, the weight of the baby grows that puts stress on your entire back, hips, chest, and neck. These muscles feel a lot of pressure and stress. Incorporating yoga exercises relieves tension in the muscles and hence relaxes the body.
Yoga pose for relaxing muscles — the cat-cow pose is ideal to relieve tension in the back, neck, shoulder, and chest and hips as it opens up the chest and stretches the core and back. It’s one of my personal favorites too and works as a big stress reliever after sitting for too long.
Eases Childbirth
Practicing yoga helps ease childbirth as you learn to stretch different muscles of your body. Stretching your back, legs, thighs, shoulders, eases tension in the body and relaxes you. Proper breathing practice also helps ease labor pains.
Yoga pose to ease childbirth — the warrior pose is the best yoga position for pregnant moms as it helps to open up the hips and stretches the thighs, abdomen, shoulders and back.
Calms Your Nerves
Yoga is all about creating harmony between the body and soul. Deep breathing practice helps you become relaxed as you gradually learn to be more aware yourself. As a consequence, you’re more relaxed, happy, and healthy which automatically impacts the health of the baby. Calm mom equals to calm baby.
Yoga pose to calm your nerves — child pose is the best to relax your nerves and regulate your breathing. It helps relax the entire back, shoulder, neck, thigh and leg muscles and puts you into deep awareness of yourself, and hence the baby.
Joining a yoga or yogalates class can be a great way to ensure a healthy pregnancy. Make sure you talk to your OB-GYN before you decide to start yoga, to ensure you and your baby are in good health.
