4 ways yoga can support childbirth
Like many first pregnancies, mine was filled with worry. I worked full time and pushed my body to its extreme with client work and spent evenings holding my belly, wondering if the baby was okay. Now that I’m pregnant with my fourth child, I notice a distinction in how I feel about my body and my baby. I’m less anxious and more connected, both to my own needs and the needs of my baby. The main difference? A steady yoga practice.
Because I have been practicing yoga for a few years now, the ease in which I'm able to navigate this pregnancy is so apparent. I’m in tune to my body, listening to giving her what she needs.
Yes, you’d think that as a therapist and yoga instructor this would come easy to me, but like most women in our culture, it’s something I’ve had to work towards.
You see, it’s common for women who have experienced trauma to be reticent when it comes to yoga practice. I’ll talk more about trauma in a moment, but it’s important to acknowledge that yoga might be an uncomfortable experience because sometimes its difficult to be in our own bodies.
If this is you, I want to invite you to listen to that voice inside you that experiences the discomfort. Honor it, and explore how my approach to prenatal yoga might provide a container for you to be present in that, and find freedom in your body.
This isn’t a magic trick or quick fix by any means. In fact, because the practice of yoga in and of itself is self-paced, guided by the needs and desires of the body, it models the natural rhythm of a women’s changing body. As your body makes room for the baby, yoga helps make room for you, your mind, and your body.
If you are an expecting mama, or hoping to be pregnant soon, I hope that these suggestions can empower you to create space for your body and your needs.
Here’s how a steady yoga practice prepares women for pregnancy and childbirth:
Yoga helps connect your mind and body
While there are great prenatal yoga classes that focus on exercise, there is a deeper level that is often missed: the mind and body connection. Connecting with your body during pregnancy is crucial to a mama’s emotional health– creating a space for peace as she navigates her body changing and hormones raging.
In my previous pregnancies, I did the culturally typical approach: take prenatal yoga to prepare my body for birth. I’d take drop-in prenatal yoga classes that felt pretty restorative. With practices that focused on opening up the hips, like pigeon or Child's Pose or Malasana, I remember walking away from those classes feeling a sense of confidence and comfort in my body.
But with the yoga class that I'm doing now, I feel a sense of peace. Yes, I’m preparing my body, but I’m also preparing my mind for pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum.
The primary goal of prenatal yoga class should be to help your body and mind feel more connected. This will have a domino effect on every aspect of your preparation, from the exercises you implement to knowing what you need during labor itself.
Yoga helps prepare your body for labor and delivery
First, it’s important to remember that there is no single best position to use in labor. That’s a total myth! Ultimately, it’s up to the laboring mother to determine what her body needs and what feels good to her.
It’s common for women, myself included, to wait until the 3rd trimester to practice yoga in preparation for labor. But I encourage expecting mamas to begin practicing yoga as early as the first trimester (or before!). I know this as a yoga instructor, but I also see the difference in my own body during this fourth pregnancy.
When you use yoga early on, you give your mind and body a longer on-ramp to transition into the final stages of labor and delivery.
As with any yoga practice, I encourage you to pay attention to what your body needs. If you’re in your first trimester, you may be too sick to do much in your practice. In that case, try restorative practices like Child’s Pose.
Once you hit the second trimester and start to regain some energy, here are a few ideas:
Chair Pose
Try practicing it like a wall-sit, sitting up against the wall and holding it for one minute—the general length of a contraction. Then repeat that pose three times.
The goal of this exercise is to simulate the length of a typical contraction, so your body begins to understand what a minute of concentrated pain looks like.
The practice allows you to notice what’s happening in your mind, how you fight the movement, and how you can manage the pain.
Pelvic Floor Focus
Yoga emphasizes noticing your pelvic floor, and how as a mom, you can use that in a way to be mindful during pregnancy, but then also in labor.
The "pelvic floor muscles" consist of the area from the tailbone and pubic bone (see picture).
In order to support the pelvic floor, try a seated pose, such as seated on a block on your knees, where your hips are elevated. Inhale the breath down. Then let go of your jaw and release your mouth as if it’s connected to your pelvic floor.
When you open and soften that area, it mimics the release that brings the baby down once it’s time.
Notice how your body is expanding in your belly and if it’s putting pressure on your hips.
If you’re feeling hip or lower back pain, it's not just about stretching that out, but it could also be about increasing strength by doing squats or Chair Pose.
Labor exercises
To engage the baby at the top of the pelvis, try deep squats and pelvic tips or tilts and externally rotating the hip help to engage the baby at the top of the pelvis.
When you’re in early labor and the baby is in mid pelvis, that's when sideways stair walking or lunges or using a peanut ball can be really helpful.
When you’re in transition and the baby is at the bottom of the pelvis, it can be helpful to do upright positions with the knees together and the feet apart.
Remember that your baby wants to be born, and your body knows what to do. Listen to both your body and your baby to determine the most optimal movements in the moment.
Yoga breathwork can help with pain management during labor
If you’ve had a baby before or watched a movie with a woman in labor, you likely know how important breathing is. But too often, maybe it’s because of the movie versions of labor, women aren’t taught how to breathe in a way that is empowering. It’s not something we do to just get through labor; it helps women manage pain and bring the baby down.
Focus on softening not just strengthening
In prenatal yoga, there's often a focus on key goals, which some people do need for strengthening.
But typically, a lot more women need softening. Softening happens most easily through breathwork.
This looks like inhaling down to release the pelvic floor and then exhale passively, which helps bring the baby down when it’s time.
Practice Deep Breathing
Deep breathing is a technique that can help to soothe our nervous system and grant our body permission to do what it needs to do in order for the baby to be born.
In this type of breathing, you focus on a long exhale, which allows a laboring mother to embrace what is happening rather than resist it.
To practice this, inhale counting to 4, and then exhale counting to 6.
Vary how you call in the breath
Sound can be really powerful in helping to change your breath to match the needs of your body.
Try visualizing something like the ocean and your breath flowing in and out like the waves, or visualize your breath coming through and out of your body.
Pranayama breathing is an extremely supportive practice, especially when the body is in pain or when the mind is interpreting this experience as dangerous.
Yoga can help manage previous birth trauma
First, it's important to define what birth trauma means. It could stem from miscarriage, infertility difficulties, eating disorders, or an abortion. The trauma can also stem from a previous birth where there was trauma during the labor experience, or White Coat Syndrome, which is anxiety related to a challenging experience in the hospital or with a doctor.
As a trauma-informed yoga instructor and therapist, it’s important that I develop the practice with my clients based on the trauma they have experienced. If you have previous birth trauma, I encourage you to honor that pain as you develop your yoga practice.
Yoga is a very supportive and gentle way of helping to prepare women for birth after a previous trauma and helping them be present, even in the middle of the pain.
With awareness in mind, trauma-informed yoga practices focus on choice for the mother-to-be, helping them determine what they need in that moment. It’s not about alignment and holding a pose in a certain way; it’s about being able to explore the body in that pose with curiosity.
So for instance, if you’re holding a triangle pose, and you’re feeling strong sensations in your legs or shoulders and it's creating discomfort, a trauma-informed teacher won’t say, “hold it and focus on holding it.” Instead, a trauma-informed teacher will cue you to listen to your body and move your arms and see how that feels.
Another way to empower a woman who has dealt with trauma is to teach them self-soothing skills. One example is the “safe-havening technique.” It's a more intense technique, but it teaches self-regulation through self-soothing. You'll start by rubbing your hands together, and then you'll rub your arms up and down, and then you'll rub your face, and then you'll connect all of this to your breath. The goal is to slow your movements down and match them to your breath.
The primary goal of a trauma-informed yoga practice is to help you be within your body.
We want you to practice embodiment, listening, and responding to the pain that might well up in a yoga practice, especially because labor can often trigger very deep and powerful emotions related to that previous trauma.
So if you’re reading this, sensing a bodily reaction to the topic of birth or trauma, I encourage you to explore a trauma-informed yoga practice in preparation for childbirth.
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More than any one technique, I want expecting mamas to know that the most powerful tool yoga offers is the ability to listen to their body, quieting the outside voices as they transition to the different stages of pregnancy and motherhood.
As Don Hanlon Johnson says in his book Diverse Bodies, Diverse Practices,
"Exercise....can be taught and performed as that the exerciser struggles so hard to accomplish certain external goals that she or he becomes habituated to give little value to experience. Or it can be taught so that a person can develop his or her sensitivity to experiences of toning, stretching, and vigorous effort, coming to further knowledge and appreciation of oneself."
This is why yoga can be so helpful for prenatal support: it guides mama to be in her body, to experience what is happening, and to appreciate and be present to herself. This is the process of birth and the beginning of the journey into motherhood.
For more information on yoga for prenatal support, I’m offering a four-week therapeutic group for expecting mothers, both in person and virtually. You can find more information here.
