How pregnancy has changed the way I teach and practise yoga

Please note the below blog is written with the intention of sharing my own personal experience: every pregnant body will be different, every pregnancy varied. If You feel you may be triggered by the content of this blog, please do not read any further.

Being a yoga teacher has always been a challenge in more ways than one. I have often daydreamed about setting up a secret blog called The Reluctant Yogi (guess it’s not secret anymore!) to share all my frustrations, anxieties and confusion. Big industry based on supermodel-esque women doing perfect asana did not inspire or motivate me and I often questioned the validity of what I was doing, whilst having many moments of losing my confidence in my own body and ability. I also have had profound moments of feeling so blessed to do this work. Pregnancy has taken my teaching and my practice to a whole new dimension…

3 months in…

Seven weeks into my pregnancy and I already couldn’t fit into my jeans. By 12 weeks it was becoming very clear that I was not going to be one of those women with neat and tidy bumps and glowing skin, but rather I fell into the less-photographed category of putting weight on everywhere. Belly, bum, boobs - but also my forearms, my face, my back. This was an interesting experience. I knew this was a good sign, my body was storing the fat it needed to create a whole new human being from nothing, I knew some of it was water retention, I knew I had more blood in my body. In the same way that whilst feeling constantly sick I had to remind myself this was the best reason to feel sick, it still wasn’t that fun feeling sick all the time, knowing my body was changing for all the right reasons didn’t always make it easy to experience.

However: this became yet another moment in my life when I have been spontaneously and deeply grateful for yoga. Despite the onslaught of model-like images of yoga practitioners, yoga has always helped my body confidence. Even though those first 3 months saw me taking two hour naps and getting about 10 hours of sleep a night, leaving not much time for yoga asana, the simple of acting of responding to what my body needed was empowering, and made dealing with the changes of my body much easer. Sleep definitely became a regular yoga practice!

Second trimester…

It was true what they say, that the second trimester feels good. The nausea stopped, my energy stabilised, I felt like I could eat my regular food again (not just beige salty foods), and I was getting used to the changes in my body. I had already cut back on my classes, and was able to make more space for the one-to-one teaching which I find so valuable. This trimester was a lesson in staying present to my own needs. As I felt more like myself, it was tempting to carry on as if I was still my ‘old self’. Yet despite feeling so much better than the first trimester, I was still more tired. and still needed time to lie down and rest. I noticed my legs becoming heavier, and having to do much more to stretch and release my calf muscles to avoid painful cramps. Yoga asana became really important to me, as a way to create the space in my body for the breath, which becomes more challenging as the baby grows and forces the abdominal organs and diaphragm up into the lung space. I realised my portion sizes needed to be bigger, carbs became essential, and eating first thing in the morning (when I used to be able to go a few hours before eating) a must.

Teaching during this time was easier, so long as I moved at a slower pace. It was interesting that the demand for my work increased just as I needed to slow down! Another lesson for me to practice ‘radical rest’, and avoiding the grasping that our culture so much loves. Balancing my material and financial needs with my emotional and physical needs became a bigger part of my yoga practice.

28 weeks later…

Next week I will be 28 weeks pregnant, more or less 7 months pregnant, and moving into the third trimester. So far of course I have no reflections on this, but I do know that from 6 months on I felt much bigger. It was no longer necessary to explain to people that I was pregnant - the bump spoke for itself - and unlike the first trimester I finally felt more of a pregnancy glow. This was when my appetite increased again, unlike the first trimester where I was eating to keep the nausea at bay, now I genuinely feel more hungry. I remember doing my pregnancy yoga teacher training a few years ago with my friend and first teacher Laura Gilmore, and she said that being pregnant really dropped away the conceptions of what it was to be ‘a lady’ and took you into your mammal self - and this has been totally true for me! Eating and sleeping are needs which I cannot push through or override, and rather than guilt, I feel amazement that my body has so much wisdom to share with me. I of course also know that sleep is going to very much change shape once the baby is here, and so it makes sense that my body wants to stock up whilst it can!

My expectation for teaching in this third trimester is that I will continue to slow down. I am very grateful to have a wonderful assistant joining me for my September retreat, to help lead the morning walks and demonstrate the postures. Much of August will be spent writing the course material for my teacher training programmes next year, and I feel fortunate in my decision to finish teaching almost a month before my baby is due.

My work on the menstrual cycle has helped prepare me for this new cycle, my experience as a yoga teacher has helped me remember that sometimes you have to let things go for the sake of your own wellbeing, and my study of yoga philosophy often brings me to the concept of isvarapranidhana, surrender to God or a higher power, and reminds me to accept where I am not in control, and to recognise where I do have some control, and choice.

My work as a teacher has been a big part of my life and identity for the last seven years (seven years, a Saturn quarter cycle), and so it is with some degree of nervousness and a lot of anticipation that I move through this transition and into tjhe next seven years, and beyond.

I look forward to seeing you on the other side…