Review: Pregnancy Health Yoga Your Essential Guide for Bump, Birth and Beyond by Tara Lee and Mary Attwood

SUMMARY FROM NETGALLEY.COM:

Authoritative yet thoroughly accessible, this user-friendly book provides yoga techniques for your journey from bump to birth and beyond, helping you to deal with all the physical and emotional changes you experience along the way.
The authors explain the importance of breathwork to relax your body and reduce stress. They also provide guided meditations and visualisations to help you feel calm and positive, as well as fully illustrated step-by-step routines to energise you and relieve muscle tension and pain. There’s a guide to the beneficial postures for a range of common pregnancy-related conditions, including back pain, breathlessness and swollen ankles, and there’s detailed advice on preparing for labour and childbirth. The book concludes with a range of post-natal exercises to get you back in shape and energised as a new mum. Throughout, the emphasis is on how every woman can take charge of her whole self to ensure a happy and healthy pregnancy and birth. The foreword by internationally celebrated Dr Gowri Motha, creator of the Gentle Birth Method, reinforces the message that pregnancy and childbirth is a positive experience to cherish and enjoy. 

MY TAKE:
I've always been curious about yoga but never got around to trying it. I thought this book was interesting, though, so I gave it a try.

In Pregnancy Health Yoga, you get to learn about different yoga positions you can try to increase strength and stamina, relax and restore your body, and relieve various aches and pains. There are also some exercises you can try to prepare yourself for labor.

As a yoga newbie, it was great that the book started off with a breathing and posture guide. There are also pictures illustrating the instructions so you won't have a hard time following them. Each chapter has different affirmations you can use when doing yoga. I'm not sure if I'd actually use any of them, but they all have a positive message, so if that's your thing, you will definitely like this one.

There are a lot of encouraging messages throughout the book which relate yoga and its benefits to your pregnancy. The book does reference medical facts, which is great, since it makes me feel more comfortable that the positions in this book do have some basis in medicine. However, some readers who may still be skeptical about yoga and don't like sentences like "Breathing deeply, I let go of tension with each exhalation", may find some parts of the book distracting. On the whole, though, this book is great for both yoga newbies and yoga experts.

Thanks to NetGalley and Watkins Publishing Limited for the e-ARC. Publication date of Pregnancy Health Yoga is on March 14, 2013.

THE GOOD:

1. It's a good book for newbie and experienced yoga practitioners.
2. The language is easy enough to understand.
3. It also covers yoga exercises you can try after childbirth.

THE BAD:

1. Those who are still iffy about yoga and dislike New Age-y passages may be put off with a few of the passages in the book.

FAVORITE QUOTE/S:

I transfer lightness, peace and joy to my baby.

READ IT IF:

1. You're more than 10 weeks pregnant and want to give pregnancy yoga a try.
2. You're a yoga fan.
3. You know someone who's interested in exercises she can do while pregnant.

RATING:


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