The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › Injuries, Restrictions, Ailments, Pose Modifications › Pregnancy, Childbirth and beyond › new to yoga and pregnancy
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Hi,
I used to do Bikram yoga years ago, but haven’t recently. I just got all my stuff in the mail from you when I found out i was pregnant. I would still love to do it! right now I am about 8wks. I have been going slow, just doing the 35 min class and i’m doing it in my living room. it’s summer and we have no air so it’s pretty warm in our house, not as warm as a studio would be, but still warm and i was thinking that would be fine, especially since i’m not accustomed to any of this to begin with. Most posts on here as far as pregnancy goes are with people who have been doing yoga for a while, so that’s why I’m writing. Do you think i could continue even tho it’s all new for me? The few i’ve done so far i have LOVED, but I have never been pregnant before so of course i am unsure what is too much.
Thank you for your time and this forum!
Liesl 🙂Hello Liesl,
Thank you for this post. I have been doing research myself about hot yoga and pregnancy but I specifically wanted to know what Gabriel thought about pregnant women doing hot yoga during their first trimester or after their first trimester when they have taken a break in their practice for some time.
Thanks for asking this question. I’m really interested in what Gabrielle and others have to say.
Namaste!
Hello Liesl and Azita
A little look around the pregnancy posts and you will find that I practised right up until the end of pregnancy and had a wonderful experience with the yoga and my baby.
I can only tell you that you need to do what you want to do. A few times when I practised I felt a little uneasy because it was my first pregnancy and I didn’t know what I didn’t know. If my girl was not moving inside I would imagine stuff (as one does) wondering why no movement during class. She was just resting and was active at times when I was NOT doing yoga.
Liesl, if you have had a practice before and you are familiar with your poses then go ahead and do it if you want to. You will, if you haven’t already, rebuild your body’s physiological acclimatization to the heat.
As for practising in the 1st trimester: Many people do because they don’t know they are pregnant. So if you feel good about it, then continue. Generally speaking more people feel nauseous during the first 3 months so if you get through that then doing the other 2 trimesters should in theory be more easy. That of course says nothing about changes in the body making certain functions like breathing and digestion a little less easy and the modifications one has to make to poses to accommodate the growing life inside.
Practising made breathing a breeze for me and I am positive that it made a huge difference to the birthing process.
Taking a break from practice – if it’s a long break – can be challenging to get back to because the ability of breathing and your ability to do your asanas is usually lagging way behind what your body remembers what it could do. The trick is really to be humble enough to keep up with the physiological challenges without imposing the mental expectations of performance.
And enjoy your practice
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂 -
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