Benefits of Prenatal Yoga and Safe and Unsafe Postures During Pregnancy

There are many benefits to prenatal yoga, but it’s also important to understand how to keep your students or yourself safe during practice. Keep reading to learn more about the benefits and the ways to keep yoga safe.

Benefits of Prenatal Yoga

Improves strength, flexibility and endurance.

Yoga improves and balance strength, flexibility and endurance in all major muscle groups, preparing expectant moms for the physical demands of labor and child birth.

Reduces back pain and sciatica.

The stretching in yoga helps relieve tension in the muscles in your low back, while also stretching the muscles in the hips and hamstrings, which, if tight, can place strain on the low back. Additionally, the increase in body awareness helps you be more conscious of how you move in daily life and how those movements may affect your back.

Relieves stress and anxiety.

The focused breathing exercises in yoga help to eliminate mental chatter and relieve stress in the mind and body. Yoga helps you remain in the here and now rather than worrying about giving birth or about the changes that will be happening in your life once the baby is born.

Improves sleep.

Yoga helps relax your mind and body preparing you for a better night’s sleep.
Reduces swelling and inflammation around your joints. A regular and consistent yoga practice improves and promotes the circulation of blood and oxygen throughout your body, which helps reduce swelling and inflammation around ankles and wrists.

Aids in digestion.

As your baby grows there is less room for the organs of your digestive tract. This can lead to indigestion. The stretching of yoga helps promote circulation and digestion.

Helps maintain good posture.

Yoga teaches you how to keep your pelvis in a neutral position and lengthen through your spine to maintain proper posture. During pregnancy, many women begin to have an excessive pelvic tilt due to the weight of the baby, causing a sway in the low back and leading to back pain. Yoga helps women notice changes in their center of gravity and find correct posture throughout their pregnancy.

Safe and Unsafe Postures During Pregnancy

There are so many yoga poses that are safe and beneficial during pregnancy. Why take a chance with others? Below is a list of poses that are safe and poses that are contraindicated during pregnancy. As always, listen to your own body and follow its wisdom. If any pose causes pain, or simply feels wrong, modify or stop doing it altogether.

Yoga positions not suitable for pregnant women:

Full back bends (too much lumbar spine pressure)
Breath holding
Child’s Pose with legs together (use modified Child’s pose with legs apart)
Double leg lifts (too much pressure on lumbar spine)
Forward folds with head down (Use props or place hands on knees to keep from folding completely down).
Front lying postures (cobra, locust, pigeon)
Jumps (too jarring on the placenta)
Overstretching (could lead to instability of hips, ankles, knees)
Inversions (placenta at top of uterus could dislodge, umbilical cord can twist)
Full body twists (too much pressure on the placenta)
Low spinal twists (too much pressure on the placenta)
Supine postures – lying flat on back (see back side of this handout)

Yoga positions suitable for pregnant women:

Mountain Pose (Tadasana – standing tall)
Sunflower warm-up (stand in straddle, feet pointing out, sweep arms towards floor while squatting down, then sweep arms up when coming back up)
Swinging arms warm-up
Chest Expansion (hands clasped behind back, roll shoulders back, opening chest)
All fours
Spinal flexes – all fours rounding spine, then looking up, pulling shoulders back, arching
Spinal Balance – from all fours, extending arm and opposite leg (repeat other side)
Child’s pose (modified with knees spread, big toes touching)
Modified Forward Fold (use block or chair or place hands on knees, look towards ground)
Side plank (modified with one knee down)
Kneeling plank (top of push up with knees down, hold, press back to modified child’s)
Hero’s Pose (sitting back on heels)
Pigeon
Butterfly
Sun worshipper (sitting on heels, bring hands behind, roll shoulders back and open chest)
Frog (like child’s pose, but hips lifted, chest lowered towards ground)
Half lotus
Seated straddle
Down dog (or half dog against the wall)
Chair pose (squat down like sitting in a chair, arms at shoulder height)
Warrior 2 (and side angle poses) using chair for support during late pregnancy
Triangle
Dancer’s Pose (stand on right foot, bend left knee, hold left foot in left hand, bring left heel towards buttocks, repeat on other side)
Hamstring stretch
Seated one leg staff pose (sit with one leg extended, bend right knee, bring foot to left thigh, sit towards front of sitting bones, bring arms to shoulder height, reach forward, lowering belly towards space between two legs – repeat on other side.
Hip opener (sit on chair, cross right ankle to left thigh – just above knee, fold forward, bringing belly to open space between legs)

Special Cases

Some women will be advised to not exercise at all during pregnancy. These include women with the following conditions:

Joints and Overstretching

The hormones produced during pregnancy cause the ligaments that support the joints to become more mobile and more at risk of injury. Avoid jerky, bouncy or high-impact motions that can cause injury. The hormone relaxin makes a pregnant woman’s joints and muscles more supple and flexible than usual. Help your students avoid the temptation to overstretch loose joints, including hips, ankles and knees, as this could cause future instability.

Heart Rate

The extra weight carried during pregnancy will force the body to work harder than before pregnancy. Exercise increases the flow of oxygen and blood to the muscles being worked and away from other parts of the body, so it’s important not to overdo it.

Why No Supine Postures? (Lying on Back)

During the second trimester the uterus will become heavy enough to compress the vena cava. The vena cava is a large vein that brings oxygen poor blood back from the legs to the heart for re-oxygenation. It flows from legs to heart along the right side of the spine. Like a large rock sitting on a garden hose, the uterus sitting on the vena cava will cut off the blood as it tries to return to the heart. Less blood returns to the heart. Consequently, there will be less oxygenated blood for the heart to pump back out to the body. The cardiac output drops. This causes blood pressure to drop. Lowered blood pressure reduces the amount of blood flowing into the placenta.
Hypotension from obstruction of the vena cava makes many women dizzy and nauseous. Reduced blood supply to the placenta cuts off the baby’s lifeline and can theoretically cause harm. Clinical studies have shown ominous looking changes in fetal heart rate patterns in response to supine hypotension when pregnant women were placed flat on their backs.
For this reason, lying supine, or flat on the back, for any yoga posture is discouraged. Lying on the side avoids the problem and is much safer.

Why Back Problems During Pregnancy?

The normal “S” shape of the spine allows optimum strength and efficiency of movement. Any force that shifts the body’s center of gravity can change this natural curvature, producing stress upon the spine that can weaken it.
During pregnancy, the weight of the enlarged uterus in front shifts a woman’s center of gravity back over her heels. This progressive lordosis or “swayback” effect increases the lumbar curvature, throws the body off balance, and leads to the chronic low back pain of pregnancy. The head and neck compensate by flexing and slumping forward.
Spinal Flexes (cat/cow) help to relax the lumbar muscles and often help. Modified Child’s pose and Frog are also beneficial. Finally, Mountain pose can help you become aware of your spine and posture in relation to the forces of gravity, and how to hold your body in a healthy posture.