4 Benefits Of Prenatal Yoga You Should Know

Prenatal yoga is a great way to stay healthy and active during your pregnancy. It helps increase muscle tone, relieves stress, reduces back pain, prepares you for labor, and may also help promote bonding with your baby.

1. Increases Muscular Strength

Pregnant women need to have strong muscles to carry the extra weight they are carrying throughout their pregnancy. Prenatal yoga provides many different opportunities for pregnant women to build up their leg muscles without putting too much pressure on the lower back area by doing standing poses that mainly target the buttock and thigh areas of the body. Some prenatal yoga instructors have clients do squats to work out the thigh area as well as lunges which are excellent ways of working out both legs at once.

2. Relieves Stress and Anxiety

Many women struggle with the physical and emotional toll of pregnancy. Prenatal yoga is a great way to relieve stress as it combines breathing techniques, meditation, relaxation poses, and core strengthening exercises. The deep stretching during prenatal yoga can actually help release tension from your body as well as from within your mind.

3. Reduces Back Pain

If you have ever been pregnant then you know how much back pain can affect you throughout the nine months that you're carrying a child. This is because your center of gravity changes, which adds even more pressure on your back muscles than before. Fortunately, prenatal yoga has a lot of poses that help strengthen your lower back and abdomen. Some of the most common poses pregnant women do are deep squats, cat/cow stretches, downward facing dog pose, forward bends, and standing poses with strong core muscles to help stabilize the body.

4. Prepares you for Labor

Aside from relieving stress and physical discomfort, pregnancy also brings about many anxieties which can make it difficult when it comes time to prepare for birth. Prenatal yoga is a great way to release all the fears and doubts you may have about going into labor. Yoga helps strengthen your breathing and can help you stay calm during this time. It also teaches you the proper way to breathe that will be useful when it's actually time for your baby to arrive.

Prenatal yoga is a great way to practice mindfulness and relaxation techniques so you can have a safe, productive birth for both you and your child. These are just some of the many benefits prenatal yoga has to offer expectant mothers so why not give it a try! If you're interested in seeing if this type of exercise is right for you then talk with an instructor at a studio such as Harlem Yoga Studio today. You will likely find that prenatal yoga is just what you need to make your pregnancy a healthy, positive experience.