Authoritative yet thoroughly accessible, this user-friendly book provides yoga techniques for your journey from bump to birth and beyond, helping you to deal with all the physical and emotional changes you experience along the way. The authors explain the importance of breathwork to relax your body and reduce stress. They also provide guided meditations and visualisations to help you feel calm and positive, as well as fully illustrated step-by-step routines to energise you and relieve muscle tension and pain. There’s a guide to the beneficial postures for a range of common pregnancy-related conditions, including back pain, breathlessness and swollen ankles, and there’s detailed advice on preparing for labour and childbirth. The book concludes with a range of post-natal exercises to get you back in shape and energised as a new mum. Throughout, the emphasis is on how every woman can take charge of her whole self to ensure a happy and healthy pregnancy and birth. The foreword by internationally celebrated Dr Gowri Motha, creator of the Gentle Birth Method, reinforces the message that pregnancy and childbirth is a positive experience to cherish and enjoy.
Being a prenatal yoga instructor for over ten years in South Florida, I’ve seen a lot of prenatal yoga books and DVDs. This is a wonderful book that’s easy to apply at home during your pregnancy. It’s the first time I’ve seen a pregnancy yoga book organize the yoga exercises depending on your energy level. And it’s fantastic! Yes! This is what we all need – a book that meets you where you are instead of trying to fit you into a sequence that you may or may not be ready for that day. The format is perfect for pregnant women who are new to yoga or don’t have a lot of experience with yoga.To break it down, each section starts with simple affirmations. Sprinkled throughout the book are inspiring birth stories that are easy to relate to. All of the instruction in the book, from the breathing exercises to the yoga poses is excellent and easy to get. You don’t need to run out and buy a million props to be able to do the yoga in this book. The authors explain how to use things you have at home to help you do the poses, like a chair or pillows. The authors also give modifications and poses for common pregnancy problems.The graphics in this book are really nice and calming. There are numerous breathing exercises that are explained in an easy to understand manner but not so many that you are overwhelmed with which one to pick. There are also several meditations that are easy to practice.All in all, this is a book that is exactly what most pregnant women need. It’s simple to understand, simple to practice, and inspiring at the same time.I loved the book, but I would consider the DVD that comes with it as “supplemental” rather than one that’s going to be a mainstay of your prenatal yoga practice. There is no menu to choose which section you want to go to or to turn off the voice instruction and just practice with the background music. You basically have to play the whole thing through or manually fast forward to the section you want. Even then, I would imagine the voice instruction would get annoying after more than a couple of times. The instruction sounds a little fast paced rather than peaceful, but that may just be my reaction to it. I would use the DVD to get an idea of a full practice and then mainly rely on the super great book.