How Yoga Helps Before And After Baby
One of the challenges of pregnancy and postpartum is that it may be difficult for moms to stick to their workout routines. Some doctors even forbid their pregnant patients to exercise strenuously for health reasons. However, if your wife’s doctor allows it, she may want to consider switching to yoga. Here’s some guidance on the benefits of this exercise for new moms.
How Yoga Helps Pregnant Moms
Doing yoga while pregnant is a popular method of self-care for moms who want to remain in shape yet avoid exercise that has a higher impact. There are lots of benefits in doing prenatal yoga as well.
Mindful breathing and numerous poses are encouraged. According to Mind Body Green, breathing is an important part of labor and delivery. The focused breathing your wife will learn will help “still the mind,” a useful tool in calming her for delivery. The poses will also strengthen her lumbar area, which may reduce lower back pain during labor.
Fit Pregnancy shares the benefits of each pose that should be used during prenatal yoga, which include relieving tension on parts of the body stressed by pregnancy, improving circulation and calming the nervous system. Many of these also will help keep your wife in good shape for your baby’s birth.
Using Yoga To Recover After the Baby Is Born
Once your child is born, your wife doesn’t have to give up practicing! Yoga can help get her body back in shape, but there are other benefits, too.
Practicing yoga, breathing exercises, and meditating can refresh your mind and keep you productive.
Stress and postpartum depression are common problems after pregnancy. According to Yoga Journal, Kundalini yoga is a practice that can help combat both of those. The regulated breathing in Kundalini triggers a mechanism that can alter brain chemistry and balance both sides of the brain. Slowed breathing impacts stress hormones, helping to reduce stress.
What To Expect reports on a study that supports exactly that idea. In fact, yoga and similar mindfulness techniques reduce the odds of a new mom experiencing depression.
To maximize the stress-busting benefits of postnatal yoga, help your wife set up an area in your home to practice that’s devoid of clutter, which has a way of creating a negative atmosphere.
The body can become stiff after delivery. The lower back and spine are tense, and the abdomen and pelvic muscles have gone through a lot as well. The stretching component of yoga is a quick way to improve flexibility, but yoga also can improve energy, strengthen the back and boost the immune system as well.
Yoga With Your Child
The great thing about yoga is that you and your wife can do it with your child, even while she is still a baby. You will be doing her moves for her, of course, but that’s OK! Your wife will get the postpartum health benefits while you both enjoy bonding with your little one. Plus, you’ll be laying a good foundation to make sure your child grows up with fitness in her life.
Yoga can have other benefits for your baby as well. Care.com writes that baby yoga can actually aid your child’s digestive process, which may help if your child is colic. It may help her to sleep better and can be a soothing relaxation tool. Be sure to select the right poses for your child.
Yoga is an ideal exercise for women during and after pregnancy. This amazing low impact routine can prepare your wife for labor, get her body fit and flexible afterward and prevent depression. It can even be used to bond with your baby.