Want help preparing for labour? Pregnancy Yoga can help prepare you for giving birth, just use these simple poses during your pregnancy!
This is a real mainstay of pregnancy yoga, opening up your pelvis and hip joints and stretching your perineum. In the last few weeks of your pregnancy it will encourage your baby’s head to engage in preparation for birth. You may not have squatted since you were a toddler but all children adopt this pose naturally when they first learn to walk! It’s also a comfortable birthing position offering the ideal angle for the baby’s descent and making use of gravity to help the process.
If you can’t manage a full squat, practise by squatting on a low stool or yoga blocks.
Stand with your feet about shoulder width apart, keep them flat on the floor and simply lower yourself into a squat – resting your buttocks on the yoga blocks if it’s more comfortable.
You may prefer to keep a block, or a rolled yoga mat under your heels – or hold onto something (or someone) secure.
Squatting will lengthen and relax the muscles in your back, buttocks and pelvic floor improving the blood flow to the whole pelvic area whilst at the same time relaxing and stretching the perineal tissues – all excellent preparation for labour.
Try dropping into a squat instead of bending over when you go to pick something up so it becomes easier and more comfortable and natural to maintain the pose.
For more prenatal yoga poses to help prepare your body for giving birth follow these pregnancy yoga videos regularly in the last few weeks!
Pregnancy Yoga: what to wear
Mamaste 🙏 specialist maternity activewear designed to bend and stretch with you, but never riding up or exposing you. However you practice 🧘
