To teach yoga for pregnancy in these times is to be of real service to others who are in need of support, of care, understanding, solace, of tools to help them navigate a hugely transformative period of their lives.
Your help is needed now, more than ever. In March, I begin teaching the next Kundalini Global, Radically Inclusive, Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training, an incredible opportunity to really step up in service.
The anxiety epidemic before, during and beyond pregnancy is enormous and growing. The impacts are far-reaching, intergenerational and not enough support is available.
Our teacher training aims not only to create excellent yoga teachers for pregnancy, but to create teachers who approach the field with a radically inclusive intention, who understand the vast array of human experience that fertility, pregnancy, birth and parenthood encompasses.
In the first module we will be exploring fertility and conception, a topic around which there really is a huge amount of suffering. Of course, there will be lots of practical learning on how to make yoga safe, potent and enjoyable for the pregnant client, but we will, too, gain a deep understanding of the underlying experience of what those who come to yoga in pregnancy may be facing.
If you are a yoga teacher, and unsure if you would like to expand your offering to those who are pregnant, perhaps this may help… to look at some of the scientific study that supports how incredible and impactful access to yoga can be both in and beyond pregnancy.
Yoga in pregnancy may reduce the likelihood of medical interventions (induction, epidural, caesarean) and lead to less pain during labour
There are several studies out there that suggest that pregnant people who take on a regular yoga practise experience lower levels of discomfort in labour. Most notably in the earliest stages of labour.
Studies also suggest a yoga practise often leads to less need of pain relief in labour and fewer medical interventions during childbirth. With such interventions at an all-time high, and the physical and mental ramifications of such interventions being vast, the potential of yoga to help in transforming individual experiences of childbirth, here, is enormous.
May Reduce Fear of childbirth and, from there, reduce the risk of postnatal depression
To be fearful of childbirth, and anxious during pregnancy, has been shown as a marker for an increased risk of postnatal depression. To take on a yoga practise has, in many studies, been shown to reduce fear in pregnancy and therefore reduce the likelihood of developing depression in the post-natal period.
Helps the pregnant person to feel more in control and, from there, leads to better birth experiences
A yoga practise can have an empowering impact on all people, not only the pregnant, as many of us know. Anxiety is a lack of trust in the universe. Yoga helps build that trust and can allow for the pregnant client to hold more trust in their bodies and to be more intuitive in their experience of birth.
When classes for pregnancy are taught by teachers who can hold an awareness of how to work with the fears, and can walk clients toward holding themselves… feeling they have agency, this can have a huge impact on the client being able to make choices, decisions and to experience a more empowered birth. That does not have to mean a ‘natural’ birth, on the training, we will be looking at empowered inductions and empowered caesareans too.
Read the syllabus and sign up for the next training, which takes place over 5, 2 day, weekends from March 2023, over on the Kundalini Global website:
