Yoga in pregnancy.

Yeaterday i participated in a prenatal yoga class. I had never been to yoga before, just becosue absolutley everyone goes, yoga to me started to symbolise clishe-spirituality. As in pregancy new weight and a lesser excercise of musicles starts to induce back and legg cramps, I decided it was time to let go of prejudice and yoga seemed the easiest form of excercise for the body, and i liked the marketing, how trough yoga one connects to the baby more.

The yoga space smelled like a Harry Krishna temple, candles and incense, and i like when someone takes care of the setting to complete and experience or at least distance me from the everyday. The studio is in the very heart of Zagreb almost on the main square, whilst a glass wall decorated with a lotus flower, allows the tram lines to be visible during exercise. In fact the tramlines, and the rush of the noisy center, with scents of heated oils,low lighting and eastern music, united in creating a sense of bring in India. The home of noise, mess, masses and spirituality. Yet in another way the homogeneous setting, like hotel architecture, is styled to take everyone feel at home, comfortable and yet equally as if you are no where specific, or every where, where women go to yoga in pregnancy, new york, london, bombai.

Four big bellied girls waddled into the space, spread out green mats on to the parquet, and awaited instructions of the yoga master. We observed one another the way hippopotamus immersed in water peer at each other out of the pond, before they get out with their enormous belies, and instead of shying away as they do in the general world, where we still open doors for bitter grannies, here we could rejoice talking about our bellies. A bout babies. About theams we generally think about all day but fear strangulating others with. None of us had exercised since discivery of the pregnacy to one another's general aprovement, and we had just adjusted to the altered state enough to attempt at being active.

The yoga master had given birth twice, but never the less had no mercy in her expectations of a pregnant woman shaped like a hippo's balance when standing on one leg, with arms in the air and head on the floor. In bursts I felt sick and dizzy, but I did not give up. The most difficult of exercises where making as a bird and flapping the arms as wings until they practically turned into stone. Crouching as if laying and egg or giving birth cave woman style was not much fun ether. The best part was lying down with feet propped up on the wall and hands on the baby relaxing. Talk to your baby said the yoga master, communicate silently. Silently? My baby had for the entire duration of yoga class been practicing kung fu. And as I calmed down, thinking perhaps that we're home, it started its main act " Mummy ,daddy, can you hear me, look, i can dance the can-can!"

In all a positive experience i would say ,though little fears pass trough the mind, like should i be stretching my hips that much? Doctors trough out the pregnancy do a very uncomfortable check to see if the uterus is opening, and here was yoga lady doing everting to make the hips open. Yet she had given birth, she might know. Fears in pregnancy are frequent due to a lack of knowledge, so perhaps its best to relax to someone else's expedience . The socialising with other mothers who amongst our self did not even care to exchange names but know all about one anothers baby, was happy and encouraging. Its good to go somewhere where one can converse with others without preassure of negativity such as can be met talking with women in the queue for the doctors, where fears of other's horrors stories keep me buried in a book at all times. And if one was to believe the yoga master the pre natal yoga can be practiced until the birth it self, and most likely does help when one learns to breathe properly whilst in stressful body positions and prepare muslces for the big showdown.

And there, thats how my first yoga expirence ended.