Friday, September 03, 2010

Prenatal Yoga

Can I just say before I begin the essence of this post that I am fully frustrated that I can never remember my password for this blog on the first try!  I wonder how many passwords I will create in my lifetime?  My head is already swimming in them.
Moving on, as you can imagine even though I removed my "eating and exercising" tab a while ago, I have still been trying to eat healthy and exercise regularly.  As you may know, my goal is to attempt having a VBAC and I am going to give myself the best opportunity by keeping myself fit, avoiding gestational diabetes, and keeping my body limber.  I admit that flexibility has never been a strength of mine.  With a husband who has a black belt in Tae Kwan Do, I get teased about my lack of flexibility pretty regularly.  No, I can't touch my toes, but they are gross anyway, so I figure I'm not missing out on much.  
10 Minute Solution: Rapid Results PilatesIn my effort to become more flexible and more fit for this pregnancy, I have been looking into prenatal yoga DVDs.  I have been doing (non-prenatal) Pilates for quite some time, but eventually this DVD is not going to be conducive to my belly that is continuing to grow (this is the DVD I use, by the way, and I love it: 10 Minute Solution: Rapid Results Pilates).
So, I first checked out a library DVD to see what Yoga was all about.  I have read many things that made me leery of trying yoga, specifically the spiritual aspect of it that makes me want to vomit, but I thought if I could find a video that stayed away from that and just focused on the poses, I could deal.
Prenatal Yoga CompleteThis first DVD I tried, Prenatal Yoga Complete, was hilarious.  I knew I was in trouble when I saw a hyphenated name on the box.  But wow, worst exercise video ever made.  This lady wants to seriously show you how relaxed she is in everything she does, including the time it takes for her to formulate a sentence.  Also, the props are just so time consuming to set up that I never actually get to any of the poses.  I nixed this DVD pretty quickly.
The next DVD I tried was a gift from a friend.  I actually just finished up just now, and I am much more pleased with the outcome.  I was also nervous about the name of the trainer, Shiva Rea, because it just sounded made up to sound like she is an awesome yoga-gal.  But, I guess the name is real- too bad for her.
Prenatal YogaWell, the video, Prenatal Yoga, is miles and away better than the aforementioned yoga video.  Yes, I had to roll my eyes (I've been doing that a lot lately) at some of the comparisons she made between motherhood and yoga, but other than that I didn't feel over-spiritualized, and I felt like it was very practical in its approach.  Something that was also great was that she had two other ladies doing the exercises with her, one in her 2nd trimester and one in her 3rd trimester.  Rea exampled the first trimester while the other ladies modified their poses for the stage of pregnancy they were in.  So, it is a DVD that I can continue with down to the last days.

Well, I can tell right now that it is going to take me a while before I will be ready to do the full 50 minutes, but I did about 25 minutes and my body can feel the activities in a good way.  Here's to 27 more weeks of preparation.
Did you do yoga during pregnancy?  Did you have a favorite DVD that you can recommend?  

1 comment:

finsama said...

I love Rapid Results Pilates!

I didn't do prenatal yoga, although I did yoga before I got pregnant. I was so scared of having a miscarriage, or early dilation, that I really didn't exercise more than going for walks during my pregnancy. Then I ended up dilating early and going into preterm labor anyway. How lame.

I like yoga, though. I think it's 100% possible to just do yoga as an exercise and leave behind the spiritual/religious connotations.