How Yoga Brings You Closer to Your Baby
Prenatal yoga can make pregnancy much less scary as the focus becomes more about the profound connection between mother and unborn child. Women in various stages of their pregnancy can do safe poses.
Meditation Creates Essential Stillness
When you meditate, you are still. In today's on-the-go world, the only other time you’re perfectly still is when you're asleep.Yoga can help you still the mind so you can meditate and be still for longer.
In meditation, you are more consciously aware of the life growing inside of you. Yoga and meditation can be a helpful way to connect to your unborn child. Not only do you offer the child a relaxing place of refuge while it develops, you also send it love. At a deeply spiritual level, you can tune into your baby. Just like music can be heard, your baby will feel a sense of spaciousness when you are feeling that too.
Becoming Physically Strong for a Better Birth
The mat can be a powerful place to keep the body physically strong. This allows mothers to withstand a lot of pain during delivery. When a women is having an extremely tough labour that taxes her body, the baby can feel this too. When she is more relaxed with the process, she can focus on intentions of creating a peaceful welcome into the world for her new baby.
Meditation throughout the pregnancy allows a mother to visually connect and love her unborn child. This energy can be felt and the mother/baby connection becomes stronger and stronger.
Taking Time Out to Offer Love
Yoga has a lot to do with mindfulness. It is a quiet practice that promotes you to go inside of yourself. Moms have the opportunity to really connect with their unborn child throughout yoga. You can breathe loving thoughts and feelings into your belly.
Just taking that time to really be with your baby in the silence creates an unspoken connection. Your sense of relaxation is theirs also.
Different Positions Puts Your Baby in Different Positions Too
When you put yourself in positions like downward dog, you accommodate your baby. In a sense, you’re moving together with your baby. You are upside and maybe so is baby. Then again, maybe not. The point is, you’ll feel your baby responding on the inside as you do yoga on the outside.
Once the baby is born, doing yoga together in similar positions brings similar feelings to the surface. You’ll both be smiling as you cuddle up with one another.
Deep Breathing
Breathing calms you down and you become more physically more relaxed. The baby will also feel this and they may feel more at ease as well. Certain breathing techniques can slow down your heart rate. Your baby hears your heart much like a constant soundtrack.
Deep Awareness of the Body
If you create a state of mindfulness every day where you check in to your body, you learn to make friends with the energy that exists in you. You hone your instincts more so even the slightest change can create awareness. You become aware of ongoing changes that are happening inside of you. This may be helpful during times where there’s discomfort.
Becoming so tuned in that you can visualize the living being inside of you allows you more peace of mind that everything is okay. It also brings you closer to the baby.
Yoga and Being Close to the Baby When It’s Born
Becoming a mom can bring with it some fear and self-doubt. With a daily practice of yoga, you will have an incredible foundation to be the best provider you can be. Fear won’t get in the way of fully loving this new addition to your life. When you’re calm, you bring peace to your baby. In turn, the baby is often healthier and happier. Even if your baby does have problems eating, sleeping, or other discomforts, you will have all the support you need within yourself to care for their needs.
Yoga allows you to feel the real little being that is growing inside of you. As you build up your strength in all levels of yourself, you also create a calming safe haven for the baby. Whether you’re expecting or you’ve already had your baby, yoga can be a beautiful way to be close with your baby. How close your baby feels to you is an important building block to how they will have relationships throughout their whole life. You have the opportunity to give your baby the gift of stability and a feeling of safety that really does matter.
Article Contributor
Meera Watts is a yoga teacher, entrepreneur and mom. Her writing on yoga and holistic health has appeared in Elephant Journal, Yoganonymous, OMtimes and others. She’s also the founder and owner of Siddhi Yoga International, a yoga teacher training school based in Singapore. Siddhi Yoga runs intensive, residential trainings in India (Rishikesh, Goa and Dharamshala), Indonesia (Bali)
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