Are you making these pregnancy yoga mistakes? Learn how to practice yoga safely during pregnancy.

Transcript

whether you're brand new to yoga or you've been practicing for years but now that you're pregnant the rules have changed let's talk about what not to do during pregnancy yoga I've created two free guides on this topic one specifically for yoga teachers and one if you're just practicing yoga whilst pregnant I'll leave both of those Linked In the description box below for you the first thing you want to avoid when you're practicing pregnancy yoga is compressing the belly in any way so this means you don't want to do any poses where you're lying on the belly or any twists where you're compressing the knee into the belly at all we want to keep this space nice and soft and while it's super unlikely that you'll do any damage to baby in this way because they're super protected in the womb it doesn't feel very comfortable when we're pregnant to be compressing the belly so we want to avoid any of those poses I want you to avoid lying flat on the back for long periods of time which doesn't mean that you can't briefly move on to the back as you transition through poses and if you're feeling comfortable and okay in that position you can take a few breaths lying flat on your back and then move into something else but I don't want you to be practicing shavasana on your back for that entire period of time and the reason for that is we have a main vein that runs down that right side of the body so if you're lying flat on the back it might put a bit too much pressure on the vein and can compromise blood and oxygen flow to baby as well as making you feel light-headed if you're super worried about this and don't want to lie on the back even for a short amount of time you could put a pillow or a cushion under that right side of the body just to lift you up a little bit which is going to help relieve that pressure off that main vein typically lying on the back isn't super comfortable during pregnancy anyway especially during the later stages where your lungs and diaphragm are compressed by the room that baby is taking up I always found when I was lying on my back especially in the third trimester I would feel a little bit suffocated it felt like I couldn't breathe properly so propping up that upper back with a bolster or something is going to help this as well another thing you should completely avoid doing when you're pregnant and practicing yoga is trying to get a six-pack and now I know this sounds ridiculous but basically this means we're not doing any poses that are actively and strongly crunching or acting evading the core area of course we can still Engage The Core area and this is going to be important to stabilize in certain positions and keep that mind-body connection going with the core that we can use in the postpartum period but we really want to avoid any poses that are crunching in action so sit-ups or vote pose and then in the second and third trimester I'd be starting to avoid things like plank or bringing it to the knees and making it more gentle doing a tabletop variation instead so that we're not having to do such strong core work and straining the body in any way obviously during pregnancy we're not able to make a six-pack so let's forget about trying to by straining those muscles too much we can potentially make abdominal separation worse and that's something we just want to completely avoid on that same note we also want to avoid strong back bends so any poses that bring us into a really deep back bend we want to avoid and if you think about the position we come into during pregnancy we're often in a back bend already throughout the day that weight at the belly is pulling us forward and creating an exaggerated arch in the back so we don't want to put any extra strain on the body by increasing that back bend and training the body in that way another reason we want to avoid really strong backbends is strong back bends require core strength to bring us out and if we don't have the core strength we can do ourselves some damage trying to get out of a strong back bend so just avoid them all together I'd also encourage you to avoid active inversion so I'm talking about headstand shoulder stand handstand anything where you're upside down and really using that core to keep yourself there again our core muscles aren't as strong during pregnancy so the risk of injury is higher but then there's also that extra element of potentially falling I really want to encourage you that pregnancy and pregnancy yoga should be a time to slow down to turn inwards active inversions are really strong energetic poses and maybe something that we don't really need to be doing at this time if you still feel the need to get upside down you can do more gentle options you can do bridge you can still practice downward facing dog some people sit on the fence with downward facing dog during pregnancy and say that it's dangerous because the head is below the heart personally I think this one should be taken on a case-by-case basis if you still feel good in downward facing dog you can still practice that as a more gentle variation to those other ones like headstand and handstand before I keep going I know you might be starting to feel like whoa there's a lot of things I can't do during pregnancy yoga and yes I do admit there are a lot of contraindications around pregnancy yoga because we want to keep you and baby safe but that doesn't mean you can't practice pregnancy yoga if anything I would just recommend you find a yoga teacher who specializes in pregnancy yoga and who can guide you safely through poses that are going to be right for you if you would like to practice with me I have lots of pregnancy yoga here on my Channel or in my online yoga Circle membership both of those will be linked down below so the next thing I want you to avoid is holding poses for too long the reason for this our blood is already pumping at a higher rate during pregnancy our blood volume is higher and the pressure on those veins and arteries is increased because of this that means those poses that you're holding are going to feel more intense so just maybe hold for two breaths instead of five lower the length of time that you're holding poses and move into a more flowing State when you're practicing pregnancy yoga I want you to avoid pushing yourself in pregnancy yoga and overheating because of that extra blood volume our temperature is higher when we're pregnant so we're more likely to overheat more quickly pregnancy is not the time to be pushing ourselves as hard as we can doing those power flow classes or those really strong Vinyasa classes it's the time to slow down to use yoga to restore our body body is already doing so much literally making a human from scratch and I think it's important to get your head around how special and incredible that is and really give your energy to making that baby rather than feeling like you need to push or exert your body in any way to avoid overheating make sure that you're wearing really comfortable breathable clothing and have some water beside you to sip to cool the body down taking rest whenever you need you also need to avoid moving too quickly during pregnancy yoga because of the difference in blood volume it can also affect blood pressure which means when you're moving from high to low you can feel dizzy more often and it's super important because of our change of gravity our balance is off that we just move nice and slowly so we're not going to topple over and fall during any of our pregnancy classes so just slow it down and this is going to be the theme of pregnancy yoga where slowing it down we're being even more mindful than we would be in a regular yoga class and we're really tuning into how does this feel in my body so go nice and slow so that you can tune into that and then the final thing is I want you to avoid over stretching when we're pregnant our body releases the hormone relaxin which does exactly what it sounds like it relaxes all the ligaments and joints in our body because our pelvis needs to open to allow baby to pass through during birth unfortunately relaxin doesn't just Target the pelvis it affects all the joints in the body which means if you are over stretching in any poses you are more likely to do damage during pregnancy than when you're not so just keep in mind when we're stretching you might be finding that edge of your stretch and then backing off a little bit not pushing past that edge at any stage during pregnancy and this goes for postpartum too that relaxin can stay in the body up to two years post breastfeeding so if you breastfeed that time is going to extend when you need to really be mindful of over stretching the most important thing is find a teacher who can guide you who is experienced in what you should and shouldn't be doing in pregnancy yoga if you'd like to practice with me remember those classes are linked below and if you are a yoga teacher and would like to learn more about teaching pregnancy yoga I'll leave a link to my teacher training as well see you soon