Postnatal Women in your classes?
Are they really safe with you?
Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, tutor for the British Wheel’s Short Course in Postnatal Yoga, makes a plea for all yoga teachers to consider the needs of postnatal women in their classes.
A
s increasing numbers of women attend yoga classes during pregnancy and
the popularity of yoga during the postnatal recovery period is also growing.
This brings mixed blessings. Heavily pregnant women are easy for a yoga teacher
to spot, but a postnatal woman may not appear to have any noticeably different
needs from the rest of the class.
When confronted with a very heavily pregnant woman, most yoga teachers will make sensible choices about the range of practices that are safe for her (including recommending that she attend a yoga for pregnancy class taught by a specially trained teacher). However, when accepting a postnatal woman into a general classes, most yoga teachers may not even think to ask whether she is breastfeeding, how old her baby is, if she is still bleeding, or other crucial questions to determine an appropriate range of practices. More often than not, as a response to the intense pressure to ‘get back to normal’ after birth, the postnatal woman won’t willingly identify that she has any special needs, so her yoga teacher doesn’t know to treat her any differently from other women in the class. So, postnatal women can easily become ‘invisible’ in a yoga class. This does them a great disservice and can be damaging.
A postnatal woman is one of the most physically and emotionally vulnerable students that you are ever likely to teach. Very special care is needed when teaching a woman recovering after birth, and I would define the recovery period as extending for up to two years minimum. During this time, a woman’s musculoskeletal structure can be very delicate. This is a result of the hormonal changes of pregnancy and birth that render joints unstable, but also because she is likely to be carrying injuries from pregnancy or birth. In addition, at the same time she is adapting at speed to a whole range of powerful physical stressors such as baby feeding, carrying and changing.
At an emotional level, a postnatal woman can be intensely sensitive; she is also very likely to be suffering from exhaustion as a result of sleep deprivation (a widespread experience in early motherhood). This combination of powerful experiences means that a postnatal woman can be very easily damaged and injured (physically and emotionally) by inappropriate yoga practice.
With proper information and understanding it is easy to avoid inappropriate practice and to offer instead a healing and nurturing form of yoga that will support and encourage a postnatal woman in her journey of recovery after birth. So I make a plea for all British Wheel teachers to consider the needs of their postnatal students very seriously.
I have been teaching postnatal recovery and baby yoga classes for the past eight years, and designed the BWY’s Short Course in Postnatal Yoga to educate those teachers who want to run classes dedicated specifically to the needs of postnatal women and their babies. The numbers of these specially trained postnatal teachers is growing slowly, but the numbers of postnatal women in yoga classes is growing faster. In the absence of sufficient specialist postnatal classes we need to ensure that general yoga teachers have a better understanding of the particular issues that affect their postnatal yoga students.
In the following suggestions, I draw on my experiences both as a postnatal yoga teacher/trainer and as Breastfeeding Counsellor for the National Childbirth Trust. I also include recommendations that are presented more fully both in my new book/CD set Mother’s Breath and in the postnatal section of the DVD set Mother Nurture: Gentle Yoga for the Transition to Motherhood.
In the first place, it’s crucial for a yoga teacher to be fully informed about the general health of any students s/he teaches. So, in addition to the usual questions which may be asked on a medical questionnaire prior to accepting students in classes, I would strongly recommend that general yoga teachers ask the following questions of all their female yoga students of childbearing age:
1. Have you had a baby in the past two years? Many of the concerns associated with postnatal period continue for at least two years. If a woman is presenting for classes within eight to sixteen weeks after giving birth a teacher will also need to know if the woman is still bleeding [‘lochia’ flows for between eight to sixteen weeks after the birth] and during this period, the same precautions as those observed for menstruating women apply.
2. How many children do you have and what are their ages? The ages and spacing of a woman’s children can have a big impact upon her level of health, her energy and joint stability, especially in the pelvic joints. It is important to have this information to respond safely with appropriate asana practice.
3. Are you breastfeeding? If so, how frequently? All lactating women have hormone levels that create laxity in ligaments that may equal that of pregnancy. The softness of the joints usually decreases with frequency of breastfeeding, but is not likely to disappear until they have completely finished breastfeeding the child.
4. Did you experience any injuries during the birth of your child/ren? There is no need to go into too much detail, but it is important to discover if, for example the woman sustained lower back strain, or damage to the pelvic floor or sacroiliac joints. This will have major impact on appropriate yoga practice. It goes without saying that any woman who had a Csection for the birth of her child should be treated with the same cautions as anyone who has undergone major abdominal surgery.
The answers to these questions will give the yoga teacher a pretty clear picture of the needs of the postnatal student, and will provide a framework within which appropriate yoga practice can be provided safely. Without this information a yoga teacher is in danger of unwittingly offering unsafe or inappropriate practices to postnatal students.
Within the British Wheel we are fortunate to have a clear and simple set
of guidelines for yoga teachers on how to handle pregnant students safely
in their classes. The guidelines were written up by Wendy Teasdill (BWY DCT
and Pregnancy Yoga Module Tutor) after consultation with many teachers with
experience in this field. The guidelines are available from BWY Central Office
or can be downloaded from www.sitaram.org. The guidelines are especially
helpful for general yoga teachers who, for whatever reason, don’t have
the option to send pregnant students to local specialist pregnancy yoga classes,
and so need clear advice about what’s safe to do with the pregnant
students in their general classes.
I have proposed to my fellow postnatal yoga teachers that the Wheel should also offer a sister set of guidelines for general yoga teachers on how to handle postnatal students safely in their classes. At the time of writing, I am beginning to co-ordinate a consultation process to create such guidelines. Wheel members who have so far agreed to be involved include Wendy Teasdill, Sophia Ansari (BWY teacher and Ayurvedic Health Practitioner with special experience of teaching postnatal recovery yoga), and Tara Fraser (BWY DCT and Special Developments Officer). If you are a teacher with experience and comments to offer on the care of postnatal students please do contact me by email: yoga@sitaram.org. Your suggestions will be gratefully received. I aim for the guidelines to be available within the next few months, along with one-day training sessions on how to care for postnatal students safely.
To date, the first draft of the guidelines includes the following general precautions for teachers who may have postnatal women in their classes:
1 Most importantly, before teaching any yoga to any postnatal woman, inform yourself about her needs and circumstances, by asking (verbally or in writing) the four key questions (listed above).
2 For women early in the postnatal period who may still have a flow of lochia (i.e up to 16 weeks after birth), avoid all inversions. Also avoid standing poses. Focus mostly on gentle floor-based work, (supported vajrasana or dandasana makes a helpful base) full yogic breath and relaxation.
3 For women in the mid-postnatal period (i.e. around four to eight months), proceed to a fuller range of asana with extreme caution: avoid wide-legged standing poses, focus on gentle but effective ways to re-build core stability.
4 For women recovering post caesarian section avoid asana or pranayama that strains the abdominals. Only after the scar is healing well and she is comfortable, process to gentle strengthening.
5 For breastfeeding mothers, note that the ligaments are likely to be lax, so avoid anything which overstretches or stresses joints, especially pelvic joints.
6 For all postnatal women, be attentive to the need to strengthen and tone the pelvic floor and rebuild abdominal strength.
7 Above all, be especially gentle and supportive in your manner, encourage rest and relaxation, actively provide opportunities for postnatal students to do less, not more, and avoid strenuous asana work and overstretching. Be aware that the most valuable practices for postnatal women are likely to be restorative poses, energising pranayama (no retentions or pumpings), and deep relaxations.
Training
For further training in running classes for postnatal recovery, the next BWY Short Course in Postnatal Yoga runs for six days: 19-21 April and 12-14 July.
For training in running family yoga classes for mothers and fathers with children from birth to four, you may be interested in the Early Years Yoga Training offered by Uma Dinsmore- Tuli through The Life Centre Education.
To experience effective postnatal yoga in a retreat setting, consider Shakti Rising Women’s Yoga Retreat from 3-7 June where tutors Uma Dinsmore-Tuli and Wendy Teasdill warmly welcome postnatal women.
For more information on these courses and events please visit www.sitaram.org or send an SAE to: Sitaram Partnership, 7 Holmewood Gardens, London SW2 3RS.
Resources
Useful new resources to support the safe teaching and practice of postnatal recovery yoga include Mother’s Breath: a definitive guide to breath, sound and awareness practices during pregnancy, birth, postnatal recovery and mothering [book and triple audio CD], and the triple DVD set Mother Nurture: Gentle yoga for the transition to motherhood.
Both are available to buy from: www.yogamatters.com/acatalog/Sitaram.html
For any queries about postnatal recovery and baby yoga please email Uma Dinsmore-Tuli: yoga@sitaram.org