Blog Post Written by Lara Harsh. Photo: Eliza Skye (8 months pregnant!)
While growing en utero the baby’s relationship to stress is forming. Birthers who do regular practices to de-stress are imprinting that important skill onto their growing child.
(Everything going through the Birther’s blood is also pulsing through baby’s. That includes cortisol, oxytocin, etc. read: for better or worse.)
Prenatal yoga can help make the massive changes that a pregnant body goes through feel more balanced and comfortable. So much changes in pregnancy, even your center of gravity, so it really helps to support all those changes with regular pregnancy-focused self-care.
Stretching the hips and pelvis during prenatal yoga can significantly impact the comfort of labor and birth.
Likewise, in prenatal classes we have opportunities to “breathe into” or “breathe through” intense sensations sometimes. Training our minds and bodies to stay calm through those sensations is good practice for birth.
Baby is in there, listening, more and more as they grow. Taking weekly time to spend undivided attention on them is a great way to start to bond with baby, and get to know them. They definitely notice.
Even if one is a seasoned yoga practitioner, pregnancy brings so many changes to our ligaments and tendons (they get stretcher, to allow the body to accommodate for the growing uterus, and eventually so that the pelvis can do its birth gymnastics), so one’s practice needs some extra modifications to keep it safe.
Because of the same extra-mobility that pregnancy brings, it is actually a great time to gain flexibility (as long as you are very careful not to over-stretch anything along the way). With proper mindful stretching, some people find that after their pregnancies they are comfortably limber in ways they never could be before.
It makes you feel lovely. People walk in and kind of float out. Feeling great is awesome, and who could be more deserving of that than the people who are growing the future.
It’s by-donation. We don’t want any pregnant person to stay home for lack of funds, so all prenatal-postpartum individuals (and babies up until age crawling) are welcome to come and pay literally anything that works.
It helps people find community with the other local birthers who are sharing a similar pregnancy timeline. Some lifelong friendships begin before birth - when their parents meet at prenatal yoga. ☺️