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Now that you are pregnant, people are giving you all types of tips and tricks to get through the process with as little discomfort as possible. Someone told you yoga is great for pregnant women, but they did not explain why it is such a benefit to your pregnancy.

No need to worry! We have done the research for you and are going to list seven benefits of yoga surprise that pregnant women need to remember.

Is Yoga Safe for Pregnant Women?

It is important to stay active during your pregnancy, but as your belly gets bigger, you will feel like you need to be more cautious about the activities you indulge in for the safety of the tiny life you are trying to protect and nurture to completion.

Yoga is an exercise form that focuses on four important elements:

• Breathing
• Meditation
• Relaxation
• Good posture created through physical exercise

Yoga develops the crucial connection between your breath, mind, and body through a healthy practice of breathing and maintaining poses that create a balance between the three. This understanding of the balance and how to control it is the connection needed to assist you in maintaining every facet of your pregnancy, childbirth, and post-childbirth.

Practicing yoga while pregnant will provide you with tools you can utilize for the rest of your life in every imaginable situation.

1. There Is No Need to Be Scared

Childbirth can be a scary thing, especially if you have never given birth before. There is always an element of the unknown, no matter how many times you have been in the position to give birth, so yoga can teach you how to prepare and handle your mind and body for the unknown adventure of childbirth through breathing and meditation.

2. You Can Promote Good Circulation

Good blood flow is crucial for the health of all of us humans. Poor blood circulation can create a multitude of health issues for all of us and major issues for pregnant women.

Our blood flows easily and unobstructed when we are healthy and do not have a tiny human growing in our body taking at least half of the nutrients we have ingested. When pregnant, the blood has to circulate, not only through the normal path it is used to flowing to reach our heart, but it also has to flow to take away waste and flow throughout the placenta.

Your heart tends to work harder when you are pregnant because of the extra work needed to circulate the blood through these extra parts of your body. If your blood is not circulating properly, you may suffer from

• Dizziness
• Edema
• Preeclampsia
• Hypertension
• Exhaustion

Yoga promotes healthy blood circulation to assist in preventing these ailments from happening.

3. Your Discomfort Is Real, But Not Necessary

Pregnancy is not a comfortable experience. Your body is constantly changing, and those changes can hurt, feel strange, and make you feel like an alien is invading your body. Yoga can help you manage the discomfort you will experience during the nine months your baby is baking.

Some of the typical discomforts you will experience during your pregnancy are

• Lower back pain
• Carpal tunnel syndrome
• Insomnia
• Nausea
• Shortness of breath
• Headaches

The poses, breathing exercises, and meditation exercises performed during your yoga class will tone and stretch your muscles, provide your body with the appropriate amount of oxygen it needs to function, help you focus on the pain centers to decrease your pain through breathing into those areas, and increase your blood flow for better circulation.

4. You Need Good Muscle Control, and You Will Have It

Every aspect of your body will be in use once you enter the labour and delivery process. You will need strong muscles to get through it successfully.

Yoga creates that mind and body balance so you can focus on specific areas of your body and control those areas for the appropriate outcome. You will need a strong pelvic floor, abdominal muscles, and hips, particularly during your delivery.

The stronger these muscles are, the easier childbirth will be. Yoga tones these specific muscles, so they are prepped for the task at hand.

5. Support Your Body and Your Mind

Pregnancy can be taxing on your body and your mind. Pregnant women have been known to suffer some form of depression at different stages of their pregnancy.

The necessary changes in your body can be jarring and will bear weight on your emotional health.

Yoga will help ease your anxiety and mental stress throughout your pregnancy by teaching you how to meditate and focus on connecting your mind to the changes in your body. If you can learn to embrace the changes and work through them, you will find the process of living through it willingly will be more valuable than fighting against it.

6. Connect With Your Baby Pre-Birth

Often, we think about the connection we will develop once our baby is born without considering the bond that could be created before our baby’s introduction into the world outside our womb. The constant focus on connecting your mind to the actions of our body can apply to connecting with the fetus that is growing inside of us.

During your yoga class, you can focus your mind on your baby and imagine the loving experience your baby is getting when you take out the time to focus on the home that child is living in when you perform every stretch and pose.

Your baby will be experiencing the wonders of yoga as you are. So, loving on yourself will do the double duty of loving on your baby as well.

7. You Can Make Your Labour and Delivery Easier

Giving birth is as natural as breathing. Women have been doing it instinctively for centuries before modern medicine.

It is natural to be afraid of going through the process because we do not know what is coming, however, it is important to trust that our bodies know exactly what it needs to do to get the job done.

Our fear of the unknown can create a fear-tension-pain cycle that can cause conflict during pregnancy. When we allow fear to take over, we tend to tense up, and that can make dealing with the pains of labour difficult.

Using yoga breathing and meditation will help keep you relaxed, focused on the task at hand, and relieve you of a portion of the pain so you can give birth naturally with ease.

Being pregnant, childbirth, and raising a child is a beautiful experience for every woman privileged to experience it. It is important to be at the moment with every aspect of motherhood.

Children grow fast, and you do not want to miss any moment of the experience.

Taking yoga while pregnant puts you in a position to develop the focus muscle in a way that can last a lifetime. Of the seven benefits of yoga surprise that pregnant women need to remember, the most important benefit is developing focus.

The focus you will develop teaches you to stay at the moment so that you can experience each wonderful moment of your life as a mother and as a human on this planet with your full attention.

Hannah Tong is the founder of Omaby.com, a blog dedicated to providing advice on mother and childcare and truthful information. She loves taking care of her kids and teaching them the right things. She is enthusiastic and enjoys sharing her experiences about how to protect family’s health.

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