Prenatal Yoga Nidrā

Why is Yoga Nidrā so beneficial during pregnancy
and in preparation for birth?

Promotes Deep Relaxation and Optimizes Our Physiology 

Not only does this help to relieve anxiety and stress, but the natural physiological functions of the body operate much more seamlessly when the body and mind are relaxed. Yoga Nidrā helps you to become familiar with attaining this relaxed state, which can then be more easily tapped into during your birthing time. This ultimately helps your birth to move more harmoniously in alignment with nature and your innate birth physiology. And when we are relaxed, it is much easier to hear the voice of our intuition, which is not only beneficial for birth, but also will help carry you through motherhood and all of life!

Fosters Deeper Bodily Awareness 

Attuning to your body’s wisdom through feeling and sensation in the practice of Yoga Nidrā can help you become better acquainted with your body, and to harmonize with your body’s messages and signals. Birth is a fully embodied experience - the more deeply connected you are to your body, the easier it will be to open and surrender to your body’s instinctual, physiological process when your birthing time arrives. Your body knows how to birth your baby, and it is often only the mind that gets in the way.

Deepens Your Connection To Your Baby 

Your baby inside your womb is a wise being who is constantly in communication with you in many subtle ways. Yet life is busy, we have tasks to accomplish, and we need to think, a lot. But when you are spending all of your time outside of yourself in thought, you miss out on those precious opportunities to hear and authentically communicate with your baby. Yoga Nidrā gives you this space to just be present with your baby. And when it comes time for your baby to be born, the more attuned you are to one another’s energy, the more synergistic your teamwork will be!

Anchors Your Pregnancy Affirmations 

Yoga Nidrā invites you to create a Sankalpa – which is an intention born from the heart. In Yogic terms, San = truth and Kalpa = vow, so in it’s purest essence your Sankalpa is your vow in connection to your highest truth. It’s like taking your most resonant pregnancy affirmation, and anchoring it into a higher frequency, the frequency of the heart. Then within the practice of Yoga Nidrā, your Sankalpa is seeded into the deeper layers of your awareness, beyond your conscious mind, so it becomes a part of you, and then can flower out into your life in new and beautiful ways.

Helps You Become Familiar With Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness

During labour, if left for the most part undisturbed, a woman will enter into an altered state of consciousness – which is where we want to be for birth to unfold in it’s optimal, instinctual, intuitive capacity. This shift is facilitated by a transition in brain wave states from beta, into alpha and eventually towards theta and delta. Adult humans in our modern society operate from a beta brain wave state for the majority of their waking life. For the most part, the average human being of today is not familiar, nor comfortable with moving into transcendent states of consciousness. Aside from the most experienced meditators, most people only experience alpha, delta and theta while they are asleep. The practice of Yoga Nidrā guides us into a non-ordinary state of awareness where we can experience this shift in brain wave states while remaining awake and aware. This helps us to become more comfortable surrendering into these non-ordinary states, which is what is required of us to optimally align with our natural birth physiology when the time comes. We’ve been conditioned to think our way through everything else in life, yet we cannot think our way through birth!

Helps You ‘Catch Up’ On Sleep!

Studies have shown that a 40-minute practice of Yoga Nidrā is as restorative as 3 hours of sleep! Yoga Nidrā guides you into delta brain wave states, similar to what we reach in deep sleep, which is when all our bodily functions replenish themselves each night. This means that if you are having trouble sleeping at night, which is common during pregnancy especially in the later stages, you can ‘catch up’ on what you missed through your practice of Yoga Nidrā. Thus you can still receive the healing benefits of deep rest and a full night’s sleep, and help to restore your energy in preparation for the big day!

And that leads into… Why is Yoga Nidrā so beneficial during POSTPARTUM?

It helps you ‘catch up’ on sleep!!