The benefits of yoga during pregnancy

by Lee Kennedy Copyright © 2005 - 2009 The Mayo News
For the past six years, I have been experiencing the blessings of teaching yoga for pregnancy. The challenge is to teach techniques that will take my students a long way in the relatively short amount of time that pregnancy lasts for. The ultimate aim is to make pregnancy more comfortable and help with the childbirth process itself.Find some breathing spaceAs our babies grow, we often feel we’re running out of breathing space. Our uterus grows upwards, constricting lung capacity, and it gets easier to fall into the habit of short, rapid, shallow breathing into the upper chest. This shallow breath can bring on rapid heart beat, triggering anxiety, which is common in pregnancy. Learning to direct your breath downwards into your abdomen will bring oxygen in contact with the deepest lobes of your lungs, practicing habitually will help you to expand your lung capacity. The more time you spend connecting with this practice, the better able you will be to draw upon it when you really need to – in labour! (To find out more about yoga and labour, watch out for my next article in two weeks’ time.
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