5 Exercises to AVOID during pregnancy

Transcript

whether you're new to yoga or you have an established practice when pregnant the first question generally is can I practice yoga and then the second question is generally well which yoga poses should I avoid during pregnancy so in this video I'll discuss the benefits of practicing yoga during pregnancy and I'll also show you which poses should be avoided and which modifications you can make during your pregnancy so regarding the first question can I practice yoga when pregnant even a quick Google search with that exact question gives us this answer research suggests that prenatal yoga is safe and can have many benefits for pregnant women and their babies okay so now that we've cleared that up let's have a look at some of the benefits of prenatal yoga so Mayo Clinic that same website that we looked at Rick has four main benefits and these are number one improve sleep number two reduce stress and anxiety number three increase the strength flexibility and endurance of muscles needed for childbirth number four degree increase lower back pain nausea headaches and shortness of breath and so from personal experience let me just say I'm almost nine months pregnant and I've tried to keep a consistent practice throughout my pregnancy and it's really helped me deal with lower back pain and also with just feeling that much better and so if you're thinking oh wow I want some of that well I'm about to release my course Mama bump which has classes tailored to each trimester and there's also a really special collaboration with her pelvic floor specialist who will be teaching some very very interesting workshops regarding pelvic floor Health which are all about helping us prepare for childbirth so if you're interested in finding out more or if you're interested in signing up for the waiting list click the link in the description box below and you'll be notified about enrollment okay so back to the poses we want to avoid and how to modify so there are five types of poses that we want to avoid and these are number one lying on your back number two lying on your belly number three deep pop bins number four close twists and number five feet together in forward folds so the first one is lying on your back so why don't we want to lie on our back during pregnancy well the reason the doctors discourage this is because when you lie on your back the growing weight of your baby and your uterus can press down on the main vein that carries blood from your lower body to your heart and this means less oxygen for you and for baby so when do we normally lie back in a yoga class we'll generate at the very end of the class when we lie back in shavasana so let's have a look at the modifications modification number one is you can lie back with a bolster so I can get my bolster I can get one block I can get two blocks and if it's elevated we're fine so here we can lie back and this is a lovely version of shavasana now another variation we can do is where we rely on our sides we want to lie on your left side so we can have one block for our head and then the bolster goes between our legs and then we can lie down like this and this can be a really lovely shavasana throughout your pregnancy especially the bigger your belly gets the second thing we want to avoid is lying on your belly this is due to extra pressure on your uterus and on your baby especially as your belly starts to grow so regarding lying on your belly one of the main places we would practice this is during a sun salutation or during a Vinyasa so let's say for example we come into our plank pose lower down the knees and then instead of coming all the way down you would learn to hover and then from there open up into for example a cobra so you don't want to bring your belly to the floor you just want to hover so you're nice and protected the third one is the back pains now the reason we want to avoid deep back bends during pregnancy is because we want to avoid diastasis recti which means with a separation of the abdominal muscles now for me at least my body very naturally is able to do deep back bends and I was love practicing them but what I noticed very early on in pregnancy is that I my body really did not want to do back bends and so as my belly started growing I totally cut out back pains from my practice and even upward facing dog I do a cobra and that just feels absolutely great for me so with deep back pains and especially instead of practicing full wheel pose a full backbend what you could do instead is you can find a lovely comfortable Bridge so you would lie down and then from there lift up the hips and this could actually feel really really nice and he's actually kicking right now I can see my belly moving so he obviously seems to be liking this pose the fourth thing we want to avoid is closed twists now close twists can actually limit the space that the baby has and it can restrict blood flow to the uterus so regarding twists we have to discuss what is an open Twist and what is a closed twist so for example an open with is where there is no restriction on the belly so one lovely example which I absolutely love practicing is say I'm sitting cross-legged like this left hand on the left knee right hand behind me and I turn to the right this is an open Twist because I'm not restricting any movement here in my belly my belly is open and there's tons of space for me here an example of a close twist for anyone for example who might practice Ashtanga Yoga is marichiasi is when I bring my right leg in and then I twist to the right now this is a close twist because this actually restricts any space I have for my belly if you're an Ashtanga Yoga practitioner you're wondering okay do I just cut this out you can just leave this pose out or what you could do is you could do a variation where instead of turning to the right you turn to the left lots of space for your belly and this can also feel really really nice and last but not least this is a bit of Common Sense especially as the belly grows is that we don't want to practice especially like when we start our sun salutations with our feet together we space our feet apart and this is because there's no room to fold forward when our feet are together okay so our last one is when our belly gets quite big when we're doing our sun salutation so we want to fold forward if our feet are together because our bellies are quite a lot bigger now there's like no there's like no space to fold forward so instead what we have to do is we have to have our feet hip distance apart and that's how you would start off your sun salutation as your belly starts to get even bigger you can actually have your feet to move from side like your right foot to the right left foot to the left and this can feel really nice and this can give a lot more space for your belly to come down so just find whatever works for you for me now that my belly is getting a bit bigger it helps to have my feet you know pointing a bit to each Direction because this gives me a lot more space to pulled forward and so if you now want a yummy prenatal yoga class then check the video here and I'll see you in the next video bye