blog

Prenatal yoga can help reduce stress in expectant mothers, improve their health and aid with childbirth. Lisa Corrigan, an HRB funded SPHeRE PhD scholar in Trinity College Dublin, is completing research into the effectiveness of pregnancy yoga for maternal health and birth outcomes. Using her own experience as a mother and as a practising yogi, she and a team of researchers from University of Dublin, Ireland, sought to guide the development of pregnancy yoga programmes to optimise and ensure the safety of mother and baby.

In this blog, Lisa discusses the team’s Study Protocol, published on HRB Open Research, a partner platform with F1000, for their review to assess the appropriate volume, intensity and type of prenatal yoga practice for expectant mothers, and their aim to provide valuable high-quality information for clinicians and health policymakers.

Yoga meaning ‘union’ is a mind body practice that aims to bring harmony or homeostasis to body, mind and spirit.  It is a popular practice among pregnant women and has been adapted to suit the pregnant body.  During a pregnancy yoga practice the heart rate slows, breathing becomes deep and rhythmic and stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol dissolve. Learning to relax deeply is a life skill that pregnant women can carry with them into labour, birth and motherhood. 

Building strength and endurance

However, pregnancy yoga can also be challenging. Labour is akin to training for a marathon, nobody would arrive at the start line unprepared.  Pregnancy yoga builds strength and endurance in the body and teaches women to use the breath to work through discomfort, so they are better able to cope when faced with the surge of stress hormones labour generates. 

By building leg strength, they can move around easier to alleviate pain and the postures learned support them to create space in the pelvis to birth their baby.  If they feel overwhelmed, they can use the breathwork learned to regain focus and control.  

Some benefits during the pregnancy itself are:

• Improves sleep
• Reduces levels of stress and anxiety
• Increases strength and stamina to maintain a healthy pregnancy
• Improves circulation which can alleviate swelling
• Creates a dedicated time out from busy schedules for women to connect with their body and growing baby
• Improves digestion and offers relief from heartburn
• Strengthens theimmune system
• Relief from lower back pain and other common complaints of pregnancy such as sciatica, carpal tunnel syndrome, restless legs, leg cramps, nausea and heartburn

For health and wellbeing

For many women, pregnancy yoga is the first time they’ve stepped on a yoga mat and all levels of experience are supported.  A knowledgeable yoga teacher can modify poses to suit anyone’s needs, including women with pelvic girdle pain, gestational diabetes and hyperemesis gravidum to name but a few. 

Yoga in pregnancy is a great way to stay active and help women to meet the recommended physical activity guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity each week. Current evidence shows that engaging in physical activity during pregnancy supports appropriate weight gain for mother and baby, reduces risks of developing gestational diabetes or high blood pressure, lowers stress and improves mood.

The research journey, moving from the yoga mat to developing a research study

I always feared childbirth, so when I became pregnant, I knew I had to find a way to physically and mentally prepare myself for childbirth. I had practiced yoga for over 13 years, so I decided to attend 2 pregnancy yoga classes a week. I really believe this yoga practice supported me to alleviate that fear and have the natural birth I had hoped for. It also sent me on a journey to become a pregnancy yoga teacher. 

The more I teach pregnant women, the more I realise the support and reassurance they get from their weekly classes, so my research evolved from a desire to gather sufficient evidence on pregnancy yoga to encourage maternity care providers and policy makers to consider including it as part of standard antenatal care. 

I chose to focus on pregnancy yoga programmes specifically as there is huge variation in the literature and in the practice of what comprises a pregnancy yoga class.  I therefore hope to explore this to determine which components are effective and for whom. 

Creating an effective pregnancy yoga programme

By rigorously exploring the literature we can understand the components that make pregnancy yoga most effective. My review will look at not just maternal health and birth outcomes, but the frequency, timing and type of pregnancy yoga used in randomised control trials.

This study has been followed up with interviews of pregnant women, mothers, maternity care providers and yoga teachers to determine their experience of the key components of pregnancy yoga. The accumulated evidence has been used to support the design of a manual for an optimal pregnancy yoga programme for a feasibility study.  Due to COVID19 restriction this study will now be run online and recruitment will commence soon.    

Looking beyond the provisions of modern medicine alone

The body of evidence on pregnancy yoga is growing and pregnant women are seeking supports outside typical medical models. Overall, the evidence suggests that yoga is well suited to pregnancy with positive effects on mental health, reductions in perceived and physiological stress, improved birth outcomes such as shorter labour, lower rates of caesarean section and less need for pain relief in labour.  However, methodological challenges in published literature and insufficient robustly designed published trials mean further research in the area is warranted.

Awareness of the evidence about the benefits of pregnancy yoga can help maternity care providers and exercise professionals make informed choices about recommending it to pregnant women.