Description

Rhonda Kantor explains the benefits of yoga for the pregnant woman.

Transcript

Rhonda Kantor: Yoga for pregnant women is great for many reasons. Firstly, it helps women strengthen their bodies not only during pregnancy and to help relieves issues related to pregnancy. Such as back pain, swelling and it helps with circulation. But it also helps strengthen women physically to prepare for birth. Elizabeth Reichelt: Well, I think a lot of the stretches with the squats and stretches aimed at opening the hips and the pelvis will help more during the labor process. Plus I think the breathing and the relaxation and the practice of clearing the mind and focusing on your body and you’re breathing rather than the other things that are going on around you is also helpful. Rhonda Kantor: Many of the yoga poses help firstly, stimulates circulation which is often I'm concerned for women who would get swollen hands, feet, lower legs. So doing deep stretches through yoga poses, helps stimulate circulation we do a lot of poses to strengthen the back wants it but also stretch the back muscles. So were getting on our hands and knees off and then doing long spinal stretches. Of that getting the babies weight of off the spine helps. So we do many forward bending positions. We help women with upper back tightness often women because the breasts were larger and shoulders drew, helping women straighten their posture. Megan Littlefield: I think yoga offers a benefit of having a group of people that you are doing the exercise with and you see—start have a community of people that you're with and it also, its helpful to have someone leading you through a guided meditation which helps you to relax and refocus and addition to doing the actual stretches. Rhonda Kantor: In the yoga we pay attention to our naval center. To our baby center of our body with our breath and with our awareness and were conscious of the babies movements when were in poses. So it’s a wonderful way to connect to your pregnancy and to connect to the—your growing body in a really calm and peaceful way.