After doing my 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training at Rama Lotus in Ottawa in 2004, I decided to add a weekend training on pre-natal yoga at Esther Myers in Toronto a few years later. Although my 200-hour training included a basic pre-natal education, I still did not feel confident in that aspect of teaching.
The training was fascinating because there really is so much yoga you can do during pregnancy, especially if you had been practicing before pregnancy, but what surprised me was how different it was from my personal style of “gentle” sequencing.
Since that training I have offered pre-natal classes, and on occasion have had students join regular classes during their pregnancies, but what I have come to realize is my gentle yoga is not pre-natal yoga. A lot of modifying is needed to make my classes work for pregnancy. We spend too much time laying down, we work on a variety of “twists” that may be considered unsafe, and the restorative work we do can risk “over stretching” due the hormone “relaxin” that allows the muscles and ligaments to become loser than usual to prepare the body for pregnancy growth and birth. So if you are looking for a pre-natal yoga class in the Port Hope or Cobourg area, I have a few recommendations:
- Resilient Seed Wellness for a private lesson or group
- East Studio in Cobourg for pre-natal or mom and baby classes
- Or online Bettina Rae specializes in yoga for fertility and pre-natal classes
During 2026 I will also be doing a series of pre-recorded classes that will be available online. I plan to include some pre-natal classes in those series, so stay tuned! You can sign up for my yoga newsletter for more regular updates: The Gentle Way of Hatha.
All the best to those of you on your pre-natal journey!
The Gentle Way of Hatha 