Table of Contents
Advance Praise forYoga for Pregnancy
In Yoga for Pregnancy, Judith Lasater draws upon her experiences as a mother of three children, and her love of yoga practice and teaching. Her yoga program and Mantras for Mom and Baby will help pregnant women and new moms access the relief, relaxation, self-awareness, strength, and courage needed for motherhood.
Regina Brunig, R.N.; labor and delivery nurse, and yoga teacher
Judith Lasater is a masterful yoga teacher who embodies the feminine. In this book, she brings together her vast knowledge, deep wisdom, and experience as a mother for the benefit of women and their babies. A pre- and postnatal yoga classic is born!
Shiva Rea, yogini; featured in Yoga Journals Prenatal Yoga and Yoga Journals Postnatal Yoga (videos).
Judith Lasater is one of our countrys master yoga teachers. Her primer is a much-needed addition to the books that truly help women prepare their bodies, minds, and spirits for the potentially transformative journey of birthing and mothering. And transformation is what its is all about, isnt it!
Suzanne Arms, author of Immaculate Deception
To my children:
Miles, Kam, and Elizabeth
Acknowledgments
IT IS WITH A FULL HEART that I acknowledge the extraordinary learning experience of being pregnant with my three children: Miles, Kam, and Elizabeth.
Thanks, too, to my husband, Ike, who not only lovingly contributed to their conception, but also stood by me during my pregnancies and labors.
I acknowledge my friends Toni Montez and Geri Herbert for their loving presence and hand-holding during my labors with Kam and Elizabeth.
Thanks to my friend Elise Browning Miller, yoga teacher and photographer, who shot the yoga photographs with good humor and skill, and to my daughter, Elizabeth, for her photograph of me. I appreciate yoga teacher Lisa Brill Robinson, who modeled for the Yoga for Pregnancy, Labor, and Delivery sequence, as well as yoga teacher Ruth Owen, who is pictured in the Practicing Yoga After the Baby Arrives sequence.
Namaste to Suzanne Arms, Regina Brunig, R.N., and Shiva Rea for their generous and heartfelt contributions to this work.
I am grateful each day to my first yoga teachers, Sally and David Ellsberry, and to B. K. S. Iyengar and his children, Geeta Iyengar and Prashant Iyengar.
My gratitude goes to my publishers, Donald Moyer and Linda Cogozzo, as well as their team: copy editor Katherine L. Kaiser, indexer Ty Koontz, and designers Gopa and Veetam, at Gopa & Ted2, Inc.
Most of all, I thank my studentspresent and pastwho have given me the gift of allowing me to teach them what is in my heart.
Part One
Practicing Yoga for Pregnancy, Labor, and Delivery
AFTER GOING THROUGH pregnancy, labor, and delivery with my three children, I can testify wholeheartedly to the tremendous value of a yoga practice for each of these three phases of becoming a mother. Conversely, I learned many things from my pregnancies that have helped me to practice yoga in a more committed and compassionate way.
Pregnancy taught me to accept each day as a new experience. When I was pregnant, I couldnt predict how my body would feel on any particular day, just as I can never predict how my yoga practice will go. Because of my yoga training, I was able to be more accepting of what was happening in my body, even as I marveled at the profound changes that were occurring.
Before I was pregnant, practicing unusual and sometimes demanding yoga poses (asana) taught me that I could trust my body. I had discovered that I could depend upon, as well as enjoy, my body as it stretched and let go into strange new positions. This sense of acceptance helped me to trust the process of pregnancy, to trust that my body would, miraculously and yet mundanely, grow a baby.
Labor, on the other hand, taught me more concentration than I had previously imagined possible! I continually used my yoga training to remember to connect my breathing with the uterine contractions during the hours required to give birth. Many times I reminded myself that each contraction was simply a difficult yoga pose, and that breathing, relaxation, and persistence would get me through it. Finally, the actual birth of our children gave me a greater understanding of the joy of life and a recommitment to opening my heart to the present moment, even if that moment was difficult or demanding. With each birth, my soul felt wiped clean for those few hours while I focused on the intensity of the moment. Without my yoga training, Im not sure that I would have embraced the intensity so wholeheartedly or learned so much about myself. After these experiences, I know that practicing yoga is the perfect preparation for pregnancy, labor, and delivery.
How can a regular yoga class or a personal yoga practice specifically aid you as a pregnant woman? The most important way is by increasing your awareness of your mind and body. Moving the body into the various postures and sitting still in meditation involve observing the body, breath, and mind in actionas well as in interaction with one another. You learn to observe the tightness in your muscles, the restrictions of your breath, and the constant flow of your thoughts. Thus a yoga practice teaches you a new habit: the habit of clear self-perception, even during difficult moments. This habit of self-awareness is exactly what pregnancy, labor, delivery, and motherhood demand if these are to be healthy, rich, and fulfilling experiences. Living with clearer perception helps you to make conscious choices about health that will positively affect your body and your baby.
Practicing yoga helps you as a pregnant womanwhether you are an advanced practitioner or novicein three other specific ways. The first benefit is physiological: yoga allows you especially to cultivate the art of relaxation. Relaxation is well documented as beneficial for health; it is especially salutary for the pregnant woman.
Fatigue is common during pregnancy, both because of the extra weight that is being carried and because of various hormonal changes that occur, especially in the first few months. I remember actually falling asleep at an important dinner during the first trimester of a pregnancy; I just got up from the table, found a bedroom, and went to sleep on the first bed that I saw. I couldnt help myself! This type of experience is more common earlier in pregnancy; fatigue from carrying extra weight occurs later in pregnancy. I used to dare my husband to strap a hefty backpack across his abdomen and carry it all day, even during sleep. (He politely declined.)
Yogic relaxation techniques can alleviate fatigue before it becomes incapacitating. Specific poses to enhance relaxation will be presented later, along with poses to help with some of the other common physiological trials of pregnancy. Besides fatigue, these common experiences include lower back pain, nausea and indigestion, swelling, and leg cramps.
The second major boon that the practice of yoga offers you as a pregnant woman is a balanced mental state. Yoga teaches that wholeness is experienced through a balance of focus (abhyasa) and surrender (vairagya). Without focus, a yoga pose has neither integrity nor stability; without surrender, it has neither heart and nor flow. In learning to balance focus and surrender, you become able to respond flexibly to the demands of the moment.
