Your Yoga Birthguide: The Essential Reference for Yoga Teachers, Midwives and Mothers' -to-Be

Yoga is a popular way of enhancing the experience of pregnancy and childbirth. It can help you enjoy and understand your pregnancy and is highly recommended by an increasing number of health professionals.
SALLY TOWNSEND AND JENNY BEEKEN are a midwife and an experienced yoga teacher. Both are mothers too, and they guide you through conception, all three stages of pregnancy and the birth itself. YOUR YOGA BIRTHGUIDE is thus unique in offering a professional perspective, and able to make much better recommendations about postures than other 'yoga baby' books. The asanas are adapted separately for each trimester, alongside relaxation andbreathing techniques, and Jenny and Sally show mothers-to-be how to adjust to the physical demands of labour and give birth with minimum strain.
Practising yoga improves strength, body and breath awareness, is good for keeping the body supple, fit and relaxed without straining, and can be used to relieve pain in labour and ease childbirth. Mothers say that it also makes them feel more in control to know that they are making preparations of their own for the big event.

The book also offers wisdom about miscarriage, termination and IVF. Dads are not forgotten. There is special advice for yoga teachers, and for health professionals.

YOUR YOGA BIRTHGUIDE is a trusted reference of essential professional advice for yoga teachers, midwives and all mothers-to-be.

Jenny has been teaching yoga to pregnant women for nearly thirty years and seen them flourish and bloom through their practice. With her colleague Pauline Sawyer she has established the Inner Yoga Trust and Inner Yoga School to train teachers in yoga awareness.
Jenny met Sally Townsend shortly before becoming pregnant with her daughter, Beth, who was born in 1989. Sally was practising as an independent midwife and Jenny asked Sally to attend her through her pregnancy. Sally was herself pregnant with her own daughter Alice and the two women helped each other through the postnatal period and wi

Sally Townsend was a Registered Midwife for over twenty years before her death in May 2008, and during this time personally delivered over a hundred and seventy babies. This book demonstrates her wonderful skills as a midwife, a teacher and a dear friend who is missed every day, especially in the completion of this book.
Sally developed and ran the first pregnancy module for the Inner Yoga School alongside Jenny in 2006/7. She brought to the Inner Yoga Trust's courses an in-depth experience and comprehensive knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the mother and baby during pregnancy.