This is Part IV of a four part series on how yoga can support you doing labor and childbirth. Haven't read the first parts? Go back and visit, Part I, Part II and Part III.

As I mentioned in previous posts, there’s no magic yoga pose that you can do in labor that will make things easier or less painful, but what you can do is yoga poses during pregnancy that will help better prepare your body for labor. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but think of it this way: you wouldn’t go out and run a marathon one day with no prior training, labor is the same thing. Yoga poses can help build strength and create opening in areas that will be post impacted by labor and childbirth. Here are the places of focus that yoga poses can help with to prepare your body for birth:

This is Part II of a four part series on how yoga can support you doing labor and childbirth. In the first and second parts we discussed how yoga can help connect you to your breath and your strength  Haven't read them yet? Be sure to check it out Part I and Part II.

Relaxation and labor seem to be polar opposites right? The trick with labor is that there are moments of relaxation, even in active labor. Between each contraction there is always a resting period. We might think about contractions as a wave that rise, peak and then ebb. Following the ebbing of a contraction is an opportunity to rest. The closer contractions get to one another, the shorter this rest period is, but taking advantage of these rest periods can make a world of difference in labor, particularly in longer labors.

This is Part II of a three part series on how yoga can support you doing labor and childbirth. In the first part we discussed how yoga can help connect you to your breath. Haven't read it yet? Be sure to check it out here. 

Our own strength can surprise us sometimes, and nowhere more so than in childbirth. However, it often takes our yoga practice to help us understand that strength and how we can push through something even when it is physically demanding or difficult. Here are some ways that yoga can help us explore how strong we are as we prepare for the physically demanding reality of birth:

Yoga is amazingly helpful and effect to help address so many of the aches and pains of pregnancy and also offers a powerful time for you to connect with your ever-changing body and bring balance to energy and emotions during this roller coaster ride. People often look to yoga to help support them during birth as well. The thing is there is no magic yoga pose that will be helpful in birth, but what yoga can help you do is learn how powerful your body is, strengthen your body in preparation for the physical needs of birth and help you connect to your breath which is the one thing you will have with you as a tool throughout your entire birth.

​Here's Part I of a four part series on how yoga can support you during birth...

Generally for most folks this shows up in the third trimester, though if you had a it in your previous pregnancy, chances are good it will show up again (and earlier) in your following pregnancies. For most people this shows up as a sharp, shooting pain in the region of the pubic bone. See the thing about the pubic bone is its actually a joint, there are two bones that meet at what we think of as the pubic bone, and like any joint, there is connective tissue that holds the joint together.
 
Because of our good friend relaxin, connective tissue in the body is softening over time the course of the pregnancy. As baby grows, added weight is also added to the pelvis which puts strain on this joint and for some folks this ends up causing pubic symphysis dysfunction. It will usually show up one of two ways 1) when doing lunges or after long walks or exercise where legs are going forward and back or 2) when opening the knees away from one another in things like rolling over in bed. 

The last of a three part series exploring a very simple question, "are you pregnant?" which was asked of me several times in the last few months and why a question like this is so harmful. If you didn't catch part 1 or part 2, go back and check them out. This las section will layer on some of what I discussed in part 2 about the postpartum body. The postpartum body is just that, its our body after baby, not our body before baby and assuming folks should be able to get back there is a disservice to every ne parent out there...

Part two of my analysis of the question "are you pregnant" that has come my way in the last few weeks and has made me really sit down and unpack this statement. Outside of my own wrestling with body image postpartum, these encounters have really stayed with my lately. I felt it was important to sit down with them and really give them my attention to understand why they were brining up such strong feelings for me. Here's part 2 of 3 of that exploration (if you missed part 1, check it out here)...

Over the course of the last several months I have had several students ask me if I'm pregnant. Being a yoga teacher, I'm often "on display" in front of students. I'm moving, sometimes wearing tight yoga clothes and my focus is on teaching not on what my body looks like. That being said I am NOT pregnant, I am two years postpartum and while it comes from a place of curiosity and interest I have several problems with this question. Here is my first issue (part 1 of 3):

Let's face it, pregnancy, no matter how active you are, does a number on your core. Outside of general core weakness from the muscles being stretched out as baby grows, many folks also get some level of diastasis recti, a separation of the abdominal muscles that can contribute to additional weakness, pouching of the belly and bigger issues if left untreated. In the face of this it may feel like the best thing to do is to dive right into sit ups as soon as baby is born. Which is absolutely not the right answer. The best answer is doing core work, every day, in slow, incremental movements to help build core without doing any further damage. Here are four exercises you can do (once you've got clearance from your provider) to start rebuilding your core safely.

When we think about pregnancy we don't really think about having a core, we generally think about losing it, which is something that happens to a certain extent. But understanding what happens to you core during pregnancy can be very helpful in understanding how to avoid issues in the core during pregnancy (like diastasis recti) which can have an overall impact on the health of your core as your start to heal postpartum. Curious to find out what's happening?