roughly 40% hip-rocking
Oct. 20th, 2008 07:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraSo I went to prenatal yoga. It was the first time I've been in a group of pregnant women being addressed as pregnant women (with instructions like "now point your baby towards the front of the room") which was kind of neat, as a milestone, although I felt small and flat and not-obviously-qualified surrounded by all those big gorgeous bellies (but was not the least-far-along person there, which I had been sort of nervous about.) Other cool things about prenatal yoga:
- much less grueling than ordinary beginner yoga but still satisfyingly back-loosening-upping
- everyone has to leave to go pee at some point so there is none of the "how close are we can I make it" business and no feeling self-conscious about needing to step out
- fewer balancing poses, pregnancy having presumably reduced everyone to something like my normal level of tippiness
A challenging thing: I can have most of the pieces of something and just be getting one aspect of it wrong, and if the instructor comes over to correct me I will instantly get flustered, go into frozen panic mode, and lose all sense of what I'm doing. (This is true of any yoga (or other coaching situation) and not just prenatal.) I may or may not keep blindly moving until they go away and I can try to process what they were saying, but they often don't immediately go away because they want to see me start getting it right as a result of their correction, which is pretty much never going to happen because all I'm thinking about at that point is staying alert against the immediate threat. It occurred to me last night to wonder if this would happen if I was being "coached" on breathing or whatever while in labor, or if the actual labor will be so clearly the immediate threat that my normal alarm triggers will be turned off. I think I will make it a goal in prenatal yoga to try to practice holding onto my breathing and body awareness when under attack by the instructor, though. I guess if I'm going to be able to breathe and not panic through contractions I need to be able to breathe and not panic through fight or flight responses?
- much less grueling than ordinary beginner yoga but still satisfyingly back-loosening-upping
- everyone has to leave to go pee at some point so there is none of the "how close are we can I make it" business and no feeling self-conscious about needing to step out
- fewer balancing poses, pregnancy having presumably reduced everyone to something like my normal level of tippiness
A challenging thing: I can have most of the pieces of something and just be getting one aspect of it wrong, and if the instructor comes over to correct me I will instantly get flustered, go into frozen panic mode, and lose all sense of what I'm doing. (This is true of any yoga (or other coaching situation) and not just prenatal.) I may or may not keep blindly moving until they go away and I can try to process what they were saying, but they often don't immediately go away because they want to see me start getting it right as a result of their correction, which is pretty much never going to happen because all I'm thinking about at that point is staying alert against the immediate threat. It occurred to me last night to wonder if this would happen if I was being "coached" on breathing or whatever while in labor, or if the actual labor will be so clearly the immediate threat that my normal alarm triggers will be turned off. I think I will make it a goal in prenatal yoga to try to practice holding onto my breathing and body awareness when under attack by the instructor, though. I guess if I'm going to be able to breathe and not panic through contractions I need to be able to breathe and not panic through fight or flight responses?
