Pregnancy Yoga With Dumbbells For A Strong & Healthy Pregnancy!

Today we're doing a pregnancy yoga class to keep your body feeling strong and good during pregnancy. While stretching does feel amazing and often gives immediate relief, it's important to keep your muscles and body strong to help prevent aches and pains, especially back pain and stabilizing around the pelvis. I will give the option to use light dumbbells. I will use five pound dumbbells, however if you don't have dumbbells you could also use filled up bottles of water, cans of beans, or just do the yoga pose without any weight at all. To protect your core from diastasis recti, you'll want to exhale and pull your baby in, shrinking your belly just like Liv is doing here as you lift any weight or move into the difficult part of any pose. Today is day four if you're following along with the pregnancy glow up yoga challenge, but of course you can do this video as a standalone video as well. Like every day in this challenge, if you're watching it when I launch the video, I'm live in the chat and I'll hang around in the comments after if you want to say hi or ask any questions. Let's find your way up to a standing position, feet hip-width distance apart, micro bend in the knee, big inhale up, exhale, namaste. Inhale up, looking up at your thumbs, exhale, hands to head center. One more time, take one more breath here. Let's take our left foot behind, we can stretch over to the right, exhale, coming up, switching to the other side, back and forth. Good, let's bring our feet wide apart, hands can come up, we'll bend for goddess, chest pose, lengthening up. Last one, release. We can turn to our right hand side, moving into warrior one, let's take a breath here, on your next exhale, let's swing our left leg through, come here for a breath, back to warrior one. Again, exhale, bring your knee up, finding your balance, returning to warrior one. We'll do that one last time on this side, exhale, pull your baby in, standing tall, warrior one. Let's turn to the front, we can turn both legs slightly in, we're going to fold halfway, keeping the length in our spine, shooting your hips back, exhale, releasing up. Legs are strong, activated, activate your adductors as if your legs are trying to drag towards each other. Good, one more. Let's take warrior one on the left now, using your lats to pull your shoulders down your back, exhale, bringing your knee up. Back to warrior one, exhale, knee swings through, warrior one. Let's do that one last time, pulling your baby in, core strong, returning to warrior one. Good, and step to the top of the mat, and if you're going to grab your dumbbells or water bottles, you can now. Let's turn our right foot facing the right side of the room, back foot is perpendicular, let's move into warrior two legs, and then let's lift, to the side, lowering down. If you don't have your weight, you can hold in warrior two. On this next one, hold here. Good, we can release our forearm to our front leg, and extend up. You can stay here in a side angle if you're not using weight, or you can press your top arm up. Good, hold in here. Up, bringing our feet back in our goddess pose, we can bring our hands up in front, palms forward, and as we come down, rotate out, cactus arms coming up, palms come in. One more. Good, releasing down. Let's move into warrior two, towards the left side. Holding your arms up, or lifting. Hold on this last one. Good, taking a modified side angle. Good, holding here. Releasing down, straightening your front leg. Let's turn it to the right side again, taking a high lunge. We're going to bend your front leg, hinge slightly here, and row. If you don't have weight, you can do the same movement. On this next one, hold it in, tricep kickback. You can pulse here if you don't have dumbbells. Good, let's shift our weight slightly forward. Get ready to come to a knee up position again. Exhale, swinging your knee up. We're going to take wide bicep curls while we balance here. You can place your toe down if you need to. Good, keeping your arms at 90 degrees. Let's open up our knee, keeping your hips facing towards the side of the room, and you can move into hammer curls. Last one. Good, releasing down. Shake it out. We can move to our high lunge towards the left, hinging slightly at the hips, taking your rows. On your next one, tricep extension or pulses. Last one here. Good, let's shift our weight slightly forward, getting ready to swing our knee up. On an exhale, swinging up, palms rotate out, wide bicep curls. Upper arm very steady. Last one here. Good, hands at 90 degrees. Let's open up through our hip, hammer curls. Two more. Good, let's release both feet down, hip-width distance apart, and we can come back, sitting into chair legs. We'll leave our arms down. Unless you don't have your weights, you can bring your arms up. And straightening up on an exhale, inhale down. Hold, lengthen your spine, exhale up, inhale down, moving through breath. So holding here on our last one. Amazing, release out. Let's grab a sip of water. Let's find our way to all fours. We can keep our weight fairly close by. Again, if your wrists are bothering you, you can put a little blanket underneath your wrist. Let's round out into cat on an exhale, pressing the ground away from you. Inhale, look up. Exhale, round out. Moving with your breath. Let's come back to a neutral spine. You can take some hip circles. So going the other way. Good, let's come up to kneeling. You can grab your dumbbells or your water bottles. Let's take one foot forward and shift our weight slightly forward, pressing your front foot into the ground and drawing your back knee forward. Finding length in your spine, we're going to lift to the side, hammer curl up, or you can hold in crescent lunge if you don't have a weight. Keeping your baby pulled in. Good. So you can either place your hands on top of your leg, or if you have dumbbells or blocks, you can fold forward, bringing your front foot out to the edge of your mat, releasing into the stretch, but still dragging that back knee forward so we're not stretching too deeply. If it feels good, you can take your front leg and rotate out onto your pinky edge of your foot into a modified lizard pose. Your front leg is turned out, let's bring it back in, come back up. Shifting our weight back, let's flex our front foot, hinging slightly and tapping your toes. Good. You can take the other foot out in front for kneeling lunge. Feeling strong through your legs, lifted through your spine, lifting to the side, hammer curl. Good. Last one. Good. Placing your hands on your upper thigh, or option to tilt forward, bringing your front leg out to the edge of your mat, releasing here, and option for external rotation of your front leg. Flexing your front leg, point and flex a few times. Good. Coming back up, we can place our weight to the side. Come back through all fours. Let's do a micro tilt to make sure we're not dipping through our lower spine at all. On your exhale, pull your baby in, coming into bird dog, switching sides. Exhale up, inhaling down. Good. On our next one, let's hold here, strong through your back, option to bend your back leg and reach for a nice quad stretch. Knee reaches behind you, another option is now to press your ankle into your hand and keeping length in your spine so you're not dumping in your back. You can lift your foot up. Flexibility is coming from your shoulder and your hip here. Trying almost to keep a neutral spine. Releasing down, switching to the other side on exhale. You can either hold here or reach back for your quad stretch. An option to reach for your ankle, lifting up. Releasing out when you're ready. We're going to kickstand our back foot behind us, coming into a modified side plank. Let's flex our top foot, toes and knees, pointed to the front of the room. Pulling your baby in, finding neutral spine. Let's place that foot down and we can stretch over. Exhale, back to our modified side plank. Moving back and forth, let's hold here, lifting your leg, good. Releasing down, let's switch to the other side. Flexing your extended foot, energy shoots out that heel. Foot comes down, stretching the other way. One last stretch over. Holding here. Beautiful. Release down, let's come through all fours. Tuck our toes, pressing into a downward dog. Let's keep a deep bend in our knees as we shift our weight back. Upper body comes between your arms, you can look up at your baby. An option to slowly straighten and reach your heels down to the ground. Feel free to keep a bend in your knees, shift our weight, our hips back and forth. Walk your heels out. Let's center one foot behind us and then without opening our hips, we're going to lift the other foot off. Holding here, steady breaths. Good. Releasing that foot down, switching to the other side, keeping length in your top leg, lift. Good. Releasing down, let's bring our knees back down to the mat. We can move into our figure four stretch now by coming onto our glutes. Let's cross one ankle over top, we can walk our bottom leg in, finding length in our spine. Knee presses away, top foot is flexed. Good. Slowly releasing out, let's take that foot down. That's a windshield before we move to the other side. Good. Crossing the other ankle over. Gently release. Let's bring our legs out wide, just as far as it's comfortable. Again, you can sit on a block or a blanket. Let's stretch to one side, rounding out through your side body, making room under your ribs. Exhale, pull your baby in, other side. Good. Exhale, coming up. We can move into our final resting pose, or Shavasana now, if you wanted to grab a bolster or pillows or a blanket. Finding a comfortable position to lay in. Let's take a big inhale in through our nose and release all our tension. Big inhale in, sigh out. Relaxing the muscles of your face and jaw. Teeth are separated. Relaxing your shoulders, your belly, your pelvic floor. Relaxing your arms and hands. Relaxing your hips and thighs and calves. Feet, toes. Getting your whole body relaxing where you feel tension. So you can continue to rest here or circle your wrists and ankles, stretching. On your way to a seated position. Thank you so much for joining me today. Namaste to you. Namaste to the baby. I hope your body is feeling good and you're feeling strong after that yoga strength class. Let me know if you enjoyed using the dumbbells in the comments below. Also, if you're watching this video as it was published, I'm going to hang out in the comments for a little while to answer any questions if you have any. If you haven't seen it yet, I'm going to link to my video on 15 steps to prepare for your easiest delivery possible. And I also have my complete guide on how to reduce and cope with pain during labor that I'll link to in the description box. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.