Research on pregnancy yoga

By Sarah Wickham (see sarawickham.com)

A reminder that researchers looking at the effectiveness of prenatal yoga on delivery outcomes undertook a meta-analysis with interesting results.

They identified that yoga improved vaginal delivery, decreased premature delivery and birth weight of newborns, and shortened the labour duration (Rong et al, 2020).

A note about the birth weight finding, in case anyone asks. This doesn't mean that the babies were compromised or didn't grow well. The average weight of the babies in the yoga and non-yoga groups was within normal limits and the researchers seem to be suggesting that this might mean that women who did yoga in these studies had babies who were less likely to be affected by gestational diabetes, but this needs more research.

The authors concluded that "Prenatal yoga is an effective complementary medicine to improve delivery outcomes and not to increase the risk to the fetus, which is worth recommending to pregnant women”