The theme for this week’s pregnancy yoga class was feminine strength and softness and childbirth as a perfect balance of the two.

For me personally, one of the most powerful motives from Yoga Sutras is bringing together the opposites of constant efforts (abhyasa) and detachment (vayragya), finding a balance between being strong and letting go. In yoga we strive to find a way to reconcile these seemingly conflicting qualities so they could become one – understanding that a relaxed body is a strong body and a relaxed mind is a strong mind.

Applied to the birth, this means that strong muscles and a fit body are not enough to prepare you to go through the challenge of opening your body for the new life to emerge. Especially in the last part of pregnancy it’s all about melting and softening, learning how to relax and go inwards, taking the mind out of the way of the body, allowing the cervix to soften and open. Besides cultivating the strength in ourselves we need to learn how to embrace our weakness too. Instead of fighting against pain you need to be able to dive into it, relax into it, letting go of any inhibitions, giving up your ego in hands of a force much more powerful than your own will – the force of nature.

Photo credits: uwenna

Finding inspiration somewhere in between Yoga Sutras, Vinyasa Flow, Hypnobirthing relaxation techniques and Tantric visualisations, think I finally managed to strike the fragile balance between a restorative and enough physically challenging class to keep all my mums-to-be happy.

Since I have a very mixed group of expectant mums in different stages of pregnancy, with very different levels of previous experience with yoga, I’ve been experimenting with various ways to make the class suitable for each of them. So far I had the best experience with combining active segments with frequent short relaxation, either in one of the restorative poses (e.g. child pose and its variations), either in a form of active relaxation through slow and relaxing movements. In this class I’ve tried to go a step further and make the active segments shorter but more intense, interlacing them with guided relaxation, visualisations and deepening techniques, trying to reach a very deep level of relaxation in a short time. And it worked perfectly! All the mums-to-be were able to follow the class without any strain.

Here are some drawings I made planning the class: