Yoga can ease stress for pregnant women

By maintaining a regular yoga practice during pregnancy a woman can have a more active labour.

LONDON:

Practicing yoga during pregnancy can help you reap health benefits like stress reduction and a decrease in a woman’s fear of childbirth, according to researchers.

In addition to its many other health benefits for pregnant women, including reduced cortisol levels, less difficult birth plus more full term and healthy weight neonates, pregnancy yoga is a low cost intervention too.

Five yoga poses to try every day while you’re expecting:

Butterfly

This position allows the baby to move down and uses all the muscles that a woman draws upon in labour. If a woman practices this pose every day it will take the pain out of child-birth.

Wide-legged seated

It’s a great position to do every day if possible and leaning forward will gently stretch the back too and towards the end encourage the baby into a good birth pose.

Staff

Staff pose is wonderful to sit in and circle your ankles and legs each day which will help with any puffiness you may be experiencing. When you combine breathing work, you’re helping to release your shoulders as well as creating much needed space in your abdomen and chest. It’s a good one to try if you’re getting heart burn.

Cat with arm and leg lifts

Being on your hands and knees is wonderful for any pregnant women as it relieves symptoms of backache and encourages the baby into a good birth pose  — our mums would have been told to wash the floors.

Down dog

A lot of women experience back aches during pregnancy and Down Dog is a great stretch to try. Though when you’re pregnant you shouldn’t do the full pose, so using the wall instead will give a similar stretch but it’s much safer.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2014.

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