Pre & Post Natal Pilates

Mindfulness and Body Awareness, primary focuses of our Pre- and Post-Pregnancy Program, are crucial to experiencing a stress-free pregnancy and delivery. Nothing interferes with delaying a woman's labor like fear, and nothing combats fear like awareness.

As an expectant mother in our Pilates Pregnancy Program, you will come to know your body, how and why it's responding as it is, and how best you can respond in return. And when an expectant mother can come to completely trust her own body, the fear melts away.

Professional midwife Stacey Haugland acknowledges the positive effects of Pilates during the birthing process:

"Pilates helps my clients be aware of their body, and that awareness is invaluable in labor," she states. "When we feel what our body is doing, labor has meaning and we are less afraid. By taking that fear away, we can be in our body and labor is so much easier."

One of the primary reasons Pilates and pregnancy go so well together is that there is nothing quite as effective as Pilates for building core strength. During pregnancy, your tummy muscles are stretched over your growing baby and may weaken as a result.  This may cause back, hip, and pelvic pain. Your pelvic floor muscles are also placed under great stress and tend to stretch and move lower down into the pelvis under the weight of the baby. If your pelvic floor muscles are very weak, you may find that you are leaking urine when you cough or sneeze.

Our Pre and Post-Partum Pilates Program will gently and deeply strengthen and tone the supportive relationship between your abdominals, diaphragm, back and pelvic/kegel muscles, ensuring a more comfortable pregnancy and delivery. Many Pilates exercises are performed on hands and knees, side-lying, or using a Swiss Ball to support movement, which is ideal for pregnancy. You will dramatically improve your body's postural core awareness, enabling your spine to lengthen and your body to feel more grounded. By taking the stress off your back and pelvis, it will give you a more comfortable pregnancy, give your baby room to grow, and help to position your baby for delivery. If your pelvic floor muscles are very weak, you may have trouble controlling your bladder and may increase lower back pain as your pregnancy continues.

As your baby grows inside, your center of gravity shifts, affecting coordination and balance. As a woman's posture changes during pregnancy many women experience back pain. As the baby moves your center of gravity forwards, your low back experiences additional sway. In addition, the extra weight of larger breasts may cause your shoulders to round forward, putting strain on your neck, shoulders, and upper back.

In our Pilates Program, you will learn how to release tension in these areas, while gaining enhanced coordination and balance by strengthening and toning the core muscles in relationship to how your whole body functions. In turn, this will allow your mind to release its natural tendency to go into protection mode, which can cause even more stress. A calm woman, who can let go of her physical tension and mental anxiety, will handle labor pains more easily.

Moreover, the upper body strength and internal support that you'll develop in your Pilates Pregnancy program will prove invaluable in meeting the physical demands of lifting and carrying your newborn. As hard as it is to fathom, many doctors do not even check the abdominal muscles postpartum, nor do they explain to their patients about diastasis recti (abdominal separation). This is why it is so vital for mothers throughout their pregnancy, and after their baby is delivered, to be with a professional who will coach and guide them in ways that will allow them to fully rejuvenate. Be sure to consult with your doctor about this and let him know if you are considering a Pilates program to assist in preventing this from happening.

Pilates is famous for helping new moms get their figures back after baby is born! And there's no better way to stave off any chance of postpartum depression. Practicing Pilates regularly throughout your pregnancy and beyond helps to promote good recovery from labor and birth.  It also  provides a basis to lose unwanted belly fat and regain your former figure. 

Because both your legs and upper body are off the mat, it increases the circulation of blood and lymph throughout your body, stimulating your organs, making this movement both an internal and an external workout.