I’m often asked if it’s OK to keep doing yoga when you get pregnant. The answer is YES! Be sure to tell your teacher straight away, even if you are just a few weeks pregnant. Take care, in your first 12 weeks especially, to avoid abdominals, strong twists and backbends, and your yoga practice will enhance your pregnancy. If you’ve already been doing headstand and shoulderstand confidently, it’s also good to continue these inversions – they can be a great boon for digestion in the first months of pregnancy.
Just as pregnancy is different for everyone, and each birth is unique, the same is true of a yoga practice during pregnancy. You’ll feel different at different stages. Some people will feel strong and energetic, others will need the restorative resting poses more. If you’re in a class, let your teacher know how you’re feeling.
A useful guide to yoga practice before, during and after pregnancy.
You will also want to alternate your practice – active some days, resting others – depending on how you’re feeling. It’s all about balance and tuning into what you need. If you are feeling nauseous sometimes, your liver might be getting compressed, so you’ll need to find ways to sit or lie back that lift the ribs off the liver and release the pressure. You’ll also discover different poses are useful for different aches and pains. The leg stretches and standing poses can help with leg cramps, sciatica and sacroiliac pain, but again, it’s not the pose that works like a magic panacea, it’s the way that you do it and your connection to your body, your concentration, your presence of mind while you are practising, that makes yoga work. Use your yoga time to explore the poses and find what works for you. Experiment with supports – chairs are good for leaning on while you do the standing poses as you get bigger. Be creative. You probably won’t be able to do this if the phone is ringing, the radio’s blaring and the kids are screaming. Try to find 30 mins to an hour that is your sacred space for you to connect with your body in your yoga practice, thereby connecting with the baby inside you.
At this time, when there is a new being inside us who is dependent on us, we are highly motivated to make lifestyle changes that we might have wanted to make for a long time. Alcohol has been proven to be bad for babies, for example, so that habit needs to go. What’s good for the baby is no doubt good for you too, in the long term. Change is difficult and resistance is strong. In pregnancy, we are on a change trajectory – our lives are about to change significantly! It’s an opportunity to embrace change graciously and let go of parts of ourselves, habits and attitudes, that no longer serve us well.
Pregnancy gives us a chance to replace bad habits with good ones, not just for nine months, but for good. Establishing a yoga practice for ourselves happens one step at a time, and there may well be interruptions as we put our children’s needs in front of our own. But if we look after ourselves first, we are much more capable of looking after those who depend on us. Like the analogy of oxygen masks in aeroplanes – parents are told to put their own masks on before their children’s – something that actually goes against our instincts but makes sense when you think about it! If we can prioritise our need to look after ourselves and establish that habit before the first child comes along, we have more chance of keeping it going in the chaos of parenthood! If you can free up some time each day to practice, and guard that time well, you start to make space for those healthy, self-nourishing changes to happen.
Yoga is popular today not because it’s a fad, but because it offers people a way to give more meaning and integrity to their lives. Ayurveda says when we give birth we are giving birth to ourselves – it’s an opportunity to connect with who we really are, with our fundamental or soul self. If all goes well, pregnancy can be one of the most nourishing and exciting times of our lives, becoming more of who we are as we give birth to another.
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