3 WAYS YOGA HELPED ME IN PREGNANCY
I loved being pregnant.
Pregnancy for me was this beautiful time where I had this new awareness and appreciation for my body. I felt more tuned in to what my body needed and how it felt and I was more keen than ever to focus on my health. Of course I’m not alone in this! The majority of us stop doing anything that is bad for health and that could affect the baby the minute we find out we’re expecting.
I had this little life inside of me who depended on me for everything. And my decisions were also impacting him or her. So I made a decision really early on that I wanted to learn how to give my baby the best start - and I also wanted to have an enjoyable pregnancy.
Aside from daily vitamins to take and what to foods to eat and avoid, I kept coming across how good yoga was for pregnancy.
Ahh, yoga - I’d practiced yoga on and off since my late teens/early 20’s so I knew it was good for me. So great, I’ll give that a go.
So I jumped online and found some pregnancy yoga sequences on YouTube. They really did help! I continued to practice throughout my first pregnancy and I am convinced that it was a big contributor to my healthy, enjoyable and calm pregnancy.
I fell in love with yoga so much that when my daughter was born I started my yoga teacher training. I knew then that I wanted to share my knowledge with other mums. that I wanted as many mums and mums-to-be as possible to feel the benefits of yoga in pregnancy.
I became pregnant with my second baby during my two year training. Now I had the tools and experience to put together a Pregnancy Yoga Plan for myself and I felt great.
Spoiler: I’m currently putting a course together for pregnancy so I will share my plan with you soon! (sign up to my mailing list to be the first to hear!)
If you’re thinking of taking up yoga to support you in a healthy pregnancy then here are 3 ways that yoga helped me during pregnancy. Hopefully they will inspire you to do the same:
1.It helped me to build strength
Yoga helped me to build strength in both my body and mind during my pregnancies. I have always been active and wanted to continue that in pregnancy. Yoga helped me to build strength in a gentle way and I loved feeling strong and powerful when I was pregnant.
And the bonus is, that yoga can also helped me to build a stronger mind too. A regular mindful and meditation practice helped me to approach my pregnancies and any challenges that arose with more awareness and a stronger sense of how I could deal with them.
2. It helped me to be present
Taking in this journey is so important. The saying is true that it really does go by so fast! So being aware and taking time to really tune in and take it all in was so important to me. I can still remember sitting quietly on my yoga mat, my daughter wriggling and kicking inside of me and a complete sense of calm and happiness washed over me. I felt us bonding in that moment. And if I wouldn’t have taken the time to slow down and notice those moments then they would have passed me by.
Yoga allowed me to slow down, to observe and to be present during those wonderful months.
3. It helped me with my breath
There is a lot of focus on breathing during pregnancy, especially as we approach birth! Hypnobirthing is so popular as it really does work. Yoga, meditation and breath work can help in so many ways too.
Yoga reminded me to tune into my breath, if my breathing was supporting me and how to breathe more deeply. I used my breath to calm down in moments of anxiety, to remind me to slow down and of course I used it to empower me in labour and birth.
There are SO many ways that yoga can help you in pregnancy and I am so excited to bring my plan to you soon so you can experience it for yourself.
