Prenatal Yoga
As I mentioned in my last post, throughout my pregnancy, I did my best to exercise regularly. I did a ton of prenatal yoga and would go on daily walks. It was truly the best thing for me to keep my body moving and myself in-check mentally. There’s so many physical, mental and emotional changes that you experience during pregnancy and exercise helped keep me focused and energized. There were days that I was simply not in the mood to exercise, and I listened to my body (most important thing to do!) and rested instead. But, all in all, prenatal yoga, specifically, helped me feel connected to my pregnancy and to my baby while allowing me to move my body in a safe way. I stretched and got a good workout doing so!
Now that I’ve been cleared by my OBGYN, I have jump-started on exercising. I listened to my body and didn’t do anything besides daily walks & light stretching for the first 12 weeks after I gave birth to my daughter. Then, I started with postnatal yoga, which involved a ton of breathing and re-connecting to my core. I went to pelvic floor therapy and exercised through the moves my physical therapist gave me - they were such a huge help for me physically. Then, I joined a postpartum fitness class, where we worked slowly on building strength throughout the weeks. As of a month ago, I have started to exercise doing tons of barre, pilates, strength and cardio classes, modifying when need be.
I did want to specifically shed some light on prenatal yoga
Benefits of prenatal yoga include:
Prenatal yoga helped me stretch out all my muscles and alleviated a lot of body pains I was experiencing (neck, back, arms, legs, etc.). It also helped with swelling that I had all over my body.
Yoga is such a stress relief. So much is unknown (in pregnancy and in life in general) and it’s easy to feel stressed regularly. It’s also super common to feel anxious about delivery and what’s to come. Yoga helped me relieve myself of a ton of stress and uncertainty.
Yoga allowed me to feel connected with my baby. It centered me and allowed me to focus inwards more closely. This was my special time with me and my baby.
It improved my blood flow for both me and baby.
Yoga itself has a ton of positions that are good for labor. I practiced them and I do think they helped strengthen my body for delivery.
