Pregnancy Yoga 2nd Trimester! Pregnant Yoga Workout, Safe & Easy! 20 Minute Workout w/ Tessa

Hey guys, welcome back to my second trimester prenatal yoga series. There's a few different topics that I'm going to cover in this series. It's a 10-part series and today we're going to be focusing on stress relief. Pregnancy is really exciting but can also be pretty stressful, so I'm going to give you some poses that can really help with all that. You will actually need just one prop, so we are going to need... I'm actually sitting on a meditation pillow, so if you have something like that, better than that even would be a folded up towel or blanket, something fairly firm. So go ahead and grab that and we can get started. If you don't have time to watch this video right now, go ahead and save for later and just do it whenever you get a chance. I do want to mention a few things just for your home practice. If you are not following a video, there's a few things you should really know. You want to be really careful of overstretching your abdominal muscles, so any sort of deep backbend is really out throughout your entire pregnancy. There's some gentle chest openers you can do. Also, twists can be very dangerous in overstretching certain muscles that can actually lead to tears. Also, I do want to talk about it's important to breathe deeply, but when you're doing your prenatal yoga, you want to focus on umbrella breathing. Throughout the course of your pregnancy, you want to let go of deep belly breathing. It's actually not healthy. You want to focus on... In umbrella breathing, you want to feel like your lungs are expanding like an umbrella, so really breathe into the backside of your ribs as well and really feel everything expand. You want, as you focus on deep inhales, you want to stop about where your ribcage ends, so you don't want to bring that inhale much lower. I'm just going to keep all that in mind. We are going to start in child's pose and go ahead and just bring your big toes close together and knees nice and wide. They're going to be a little bit wider than usual to accommodate your growing belly, and you can just let your head rest. A lot of pregnant women wonder if this pose is safe, and it is safe just so long as you feel comfortable in your abdomen, so it's really important that you listen to your own body in your practice. Just allowing the head to rest on the floor and allowing the hips to sink down towards the heels starting to tune into our breath a little bit more, and in this forward fold, just starting to get more familiar with that umbrella breathing, letting the back of our ribs expand on the inhale, and go ahead and bring the hands overhead so you can straighten your arms, pressing the palms, feeling that stretch in your low spine and your hips, rolling the shoulders away from your ears, feeling space in your neck. Slow, deep breaths. Just because you're not breathing into your full belly doesn't mean you can't breathe really deep. About two more breaths here, really pressing those inner palms, rolling the shoulders away from the ears. Coming up, go ahead and bring the knees in. You can tuck the toes under and coming right into Downward Facing Dog, pressing the thighs back and just enjoying the space in our low back especially. You know, in the second trimester, the low back can start to feel a little bit sore. And just let your face soften, staying focused on your breath, drawing those thighs back. About three more breaths here, keeping the thighs engaged, the spine nice and long as you press through the palms, drawing the shoulder blades in. And Child's Pose with the knees a little bit wider than last time, just stretching the hips a little bit more, really allowing the tailbone to sink down towards the heels and allowing the abdomen to soften, practicing that deep umbrella breathing. Can walk the hands forward, bringing that stretch into your low spine, not crowding our ears, rolling the shoulders back. We press our palms. Just notice if you're clenching your jaw, grinding your teeth, just soften your whole jaw area, let your tongue rest on the lower part of your mouth. Let your abdomen soften, just allowing that breath to deepen. Breathing into those hips, allowing our tailbone to sink down a little bit further. One more deep breath and go ahead and come up and stacking our hips over our knees and our shoulders over our wrists, doing a few Cat-Cows. This is one of my favorite prenatal things to do. It's a very safe way to stimulate the spine. So on your inhale, just round. And on your exhale, go ahead and open and just really listen to your own body. Be careful of overstretching your abdomens. It's hard to overstretch in this position, but just listen to your body and do a few at your own pace, moving one vertebrae at a time, really full rounding of the shoulders, tucking the chin in. Just a few more breaths here. And coming into a neutral position with the spine. So I do like to talk about when we enter our second trimester, we start to feel this tendency to just let everything hang out. So this creates a sway back and it's really not healthy for the low back, especially as we move closer to our third trimester. So this is a great place to just practice a healthier position for the low spine. So I'd like you to practice a pelvic tilt where you're tucking your tailbone in and drawing your lower abdominals in towards your spine. So you're not rounding your low back. You're just creating a neutral position and scooping your pelvis in a little bit, drawing your abdominals in towards your spine again. Just take a moment. This might feel a little uncomfortable or foreign, but just be mindful as you walk around. If you start to feel that sway back, that exaggerated curve, just second trimester is a great place to build healthy habits. So just keep that in mind. So moving out of that tabletop position, if you're not at the wall already, go ahead and grab your mat and just find a spot at the wall where you can, um, kind of do the second half of our session. So I'm positioned at the wall and we're going to do a half forward fold. So I'd like you to just bring your hands in line with your hips and go ahead and walk your feet back. Nice wide stance here and hips are over the ankles. Go ahead and look up. You want to make sure that your fingertips are lined up. And, um, this is another area to practice just healthy position of the spine. So you can kind of notice bad habits start to creep in that sway back. So I want you to just scoop your pelvis a little bit, creating a nice neutral spine, but feeling length in between each vertebrae as you press your palms into the wall, feeling rooted through your feet. So see if you can keep that neutral position in the low spine and at the same time, encourage that upper back to open, drawing the shoulder blades in really allowing the chest and heart to open a little more because we can't do deep back bends in our second trimester, really any trimester. This is a great way to just open up the upper back in a safe way. And a few more breaths here, really enjoying that length in the spine that opening in the upper back, one more breath and go ahead and release. And we're going to do a few forward folds. So nice wide stance here, wider than hip distance. And I want you to just remember that nice integrity of the spine as we move into our forward fold. So keeping the spine long, hinging at the hips and go ahead and just let your hands slide down the legs. So wide stance is for two reasons. So we're more stable and we have a little bit more room to bend forward a little more. And a few breaths here, just allowing the neck and head to relax. So go ahead and shake yes with your head and shake no, just letting go of any holding in your neck area. You can grab hold of your calves or your ankles, just moving a little bit deeper. All those hamstrings, calves, really plant your feet, engage your thighs, go ahead and bring your arms overhead, nice long spine. And one more forward fold, keeping the spine a little bit longer this time, moving a little bit deeper into those hamstrings and calves. Just don't let those shoulders crowd your ears too much, rolling the shoulders back as we draw our torso in. A couple more breaths here. And press through the feet, come on up, nice long spine. And you can just relax your arms. And in this nice, stable position, go ahead and root down through the feet and draw your energy up, feeling your thighs engage. And in the standing position, just really building that mind-body connection of what a healthy low back position is as we get bigger. So just scooping the pelvis forward, drawing the thighs back, relaxing those shoulders, and relax your face, relax your jaw. So just feeling strong and stable. Mountain pose, our weight's even through our feet. And go ahead and relax. And you can just grab your support. So we're going to go ahead and situate ourselves at the wall. So you can go ahead and just bring your prop right up against the wall. And I'm going to do a bound angle pose. So you can actually just allow your butt to touch the wall. And plank is a great place to just clean the slate. So lengthening through those inner legs, go ahead and press through the balls of your feet, long spine, allowing the shoulders to relax. Just let your face soften. And go ahead and bring those feet in towards your pelvic floor. And go ahead and just lengthen through your spine, staying rooted through your sit bones. And as you move a little bit deeper, you can hinge at the hips, moving deeper into that inner groin area. Notice if you're starting to kind of grip in your abdomen and just allow your abdomen to soften as you feel more of a stretch in your groins and your hips, staying rooted through your sit bones. Let's take about 20 seconds here. Kind of scan from left to right, see which side might feel a little tighter. And just allowing those hips to release, not forcing anything. And a few more breaths here. You can go ahead and bring those knees up and come into whatever seated position you're most comfortable in. And I'd like you to situate yourself right up against the wall so that your shoulder blades are touching. The wall's a great teacher for just teaching us about, you know, bad habits we might have with our posture and just really practicing a healthy position as we breathe. So you can close your eyes if you would like. And we're going to practice some deep umbrella breathing. As we breathe, I'd like you to just soften in your hips, keep that spine long. And so let's all start with an exhale. Full exhale, breathing in and out through our nose. As you inhale, letting your whole rib cage expand through the back. And exhale, just relax your face, let your jaw soften. And on that inhale, just remembering to let the breath stop just where the rib cage ends. And notice if on your inhale, if your shoulders start to lift, and just see if you can keep those shoulders nice and relaxed, spine long, and allowing the breath to deepen a little more. Do about three more breaths at your own pace. I'm just getting used to this deep umbrella breathing. The abdomen is going to naturally expand a little bit, but you just don't want exaggerated movement there. One more breath. It's really amazing what just a few deep breaths can do for feeling more relaxed when it goes stress. So let's go ahead and we're going to finish our practice today with a very safe inversion that's really good for lowering blood pressure. It's really good for the heart. So you want, I'll go ahead and show you guys. So with your prop, if you're using a folded up towel or whatever, you want just enough space in between your prop and the wall for your butt to kind of flow over. So it's just your back that's supported. So we're going to cartwheel ourselves up. And obviously, since we're pregnant, we need to be, you know, I would encourage you to move nice and slow. And so you want to bring your left hip right up against that wall, and you can just cartwheel yourself up so that both legs are above the wall and your legs don't need to be pressed up against the wall. It's fine if they are. But the most important part is just that your legs are elevated. And go ahead and just let your palms face up and you can rest them wherever feels comfortable by your sides. And the legs are softly engaged, just pressing through the balls of your feet. And notice if you're holding your shoulders up or you're kind of holding yourself up from your prop and just really let go into that support. Go ahead and soften your shoulders and tuck your chin in towards your chest a little bit, lengthening that spine along the neck. And go ahead and soften your knees a little bit and just engage your thighs enough to keep the legs fairly straight. The most important part is we're getting fresh blood to our heart. This is lowering our blood pressure, just feeling supported and allowing the breath to be whatever it wants to be right now. Letting go of any gripping in the abdomen and the jaw. Let everything to soften. If you get distracted, just bringing your attention back to breath, letting it anchor you without trying to control it. Just a few more breaths here. Before we come out of this inversion, I want to just say a few things. So as we roll to our side, I want to make sure that when you get up, you're supporting yourself with your hands and your arms. You don't want to be leading with your core. And I want to say, especially when you're getting out of bed in the morning, you don't want to be trying to just sit up. You really want to support yourself and make sure that your abdominals are supported because it gets even more important as we move further along. So just kind of keep that in mind as we come out. So if you want to just bend your knees and you can gently roll to your side. And whenever you're ready, you can come up. And that is all for our practice today. If you enjoyed today's video, you should check out our app yoga plus there's some really great content on there. 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