My usual yoga classes: I go to a real awesome place called Yoga Vida. (www.yogavida.com). Their vinyasa classes are super affordable which is pretty rock star. I'm definitely not the type of person that can do the meditative style of yoga. I get lost in my own head. Vinyasa is more about the transition from one position into another. So its very fluid and mostly constantly moving. It gives you a great workout. Then the last 10 minutes are used as the more relaxation/meditative time.
My expectations of pre-natal yoga: I assumed that since preggo women don't have much mobility or balance, that they would spend more time just sitting and meditating. It made me a little nervous because the class was an hour and a half long (my usual yoga classes are an hour) and that just seemed like a ridiculously long time to be at one with myself. I thought I was just going to sit in a room with a bunch of preggos listening to them huff and puff and rub up on their bellies. I wasn't totally down with that.
How it actually went: It wasn't too bad! I was the smallest person there. Most of the ladies were at least 20 weeks, but mostly more. They were so plump and cute. :-) A couple of them kept looking at me smiling. I couldn't tell if it was "aw, how cute, she doesn't know what she's in for" or if they were just acknowledging that I'm at the beginning of my journey and they were in my shoes not too long ago. I'm gonna go with the latter.
The first 30 minutes was spent on introductions and a reading. Each woman introduced herself, how far along she was, and any issues she was having physically for the week. The yoga instructor then read this passage from a book (which I have to get the name of) about sphincters. Yeah, that word is gross. But it was actually interesting learning about sphincters, which I found out is ANY muscle that operates more independently and doesn't function completely by the brain. So for women it would be your butt hole (obvi) and your vajayjay. Sometimes those muscles just start doing things no matter how hard you try to get them to stop. Like pushing out a baby!
Then we got into the yoga portion. It wasn't as intense as the vinyasa that I'm used to, but it was still great. We did some various warrior poses and leg stretches and such. The relaxation portion was longer than usual, and we laid on our sides with a pillow between our legs.
I didn't mind the relaxation part at first, but it definitely went on longer than my brain could handle. I started thinking about my best friend from college, who I just found out is also pregnant and due a week before me. She lives about 6 hours away though. Then I started thinking about my family, they live 4 hours away. And I started to realize how badly I actually miss them and how much I hate that they are all so far away. I have definitely made great friends in NYC. And Michael's family is super great. But sometimes this experience of being pregnant feels so lonely. Not because I don't have people around me to love and support me, but because the people who have watched me grow physically and emotionally as a person aren't getting to see this humongous step/change in my life. I wish I had more time to go see them, but thus is the life of a working mom.
So, as expected, I started to tear up. Luckily I wasn't facing anyone (I effing hate crying in front of people, and it seems to be happening more often) and I had a nice lil cry to myself. It didn't make it any better that my nausea is still pretty crazy, so all the movement of the yoga class was making me ill.
Overall, it was a great experience. It was nice to be in a room with women going through similar experiences. It felt like I was part of a group that was way bigger than myself; pun kind of intended. It's going to be a little while before I go back because my nausea has been getting really bad the last two weeks. But I'm ready to get back and join my fellow bendy, plump mommas to be.
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