Even though women are often advised to steer clear of certain yoga poses late in pregnancy, many of these moves might not be a problem for women or their babies, a small U.S. study suggests.
Yoga can have many benefits during pregnancy, including helping women maintain flexibility and muscle tone and develop breathing techniques that may be useful during labor. But late in pregnancy women are often warned against poses that require them to lie on their backs, such as “happy baby pose” or “corpse pose,” and inversions such as “downward facing dog” that might reduce circulation to the fetus and contribute to a spike in fetal heart rate.