Yoga reduces perceived stress and improves adaptive autonomic response to stress in healthy pregnant women.

No abstract

The integrated yoga is an efficacious means of improving the quality of life of pregnant women and enhancing certain aspects of their interpersonal relationships.

The effects of three yoga breathing practices were evaluated on performance on a letter-cancellation task which is a left-hemisphere dominant task. The three yoga breathing practices (right, left, and alternate nostril breathing) were selected because unilateral forced nostril breathing stimulates the contralateral hemisphere. There were 20 male volunteers whose ages ranged from 20 to 45 years (M age=28.4 yr., SD=5.7). All subjects were assessed before and after four sessions, i.e., right nostril yoga breathing, left nostril yoga breathing, alternate nostril yoga breathing, and breath awareness as a control. The letter-cancellation task scores were significantly improved, i.e., there were fewer errors following right and alternate nostril yoga breathing (Wilcoxon paired signed-ranks test). The improved performance may be related to the enhancement of contralateral hemisphere function found with selective nostril breathing.

BACKGROUND:Antenatal yoga has been found to be useful and reported to have many beneficial effects. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of yoga on labor outcome.METHODS:This randomized two-armed active control study recruited 96 women with normal pregnancy. The experimental group practiced integrated yoga and the control group practiced standard antenatal exercises (1 hr/day), from 18 to 20 weeks of gestation until term.RESULTS:The first stage of labor was 4.71 ± 0.59 and 6.19 ± 0.79 hr in yoga and control groups, respectively (p< .001, independent samplesttest); the second stage was 23.41 ± 7.68 min in yoga and 55.19 ± 10.87 min in control group (p< .001); the third stage took 9.07 ± 2.35 min in yoga and 12.96 ± 2.86 min in control group (p< .001). Fewer number of women in yoga group required epidural analgesia (p< .001). The cesarean sections (7/51 in yoga and 18/45 in control;p= .004) and complications of pregnancy (intrauterine growth restriction [IUGR], pregnancy-induced hypertension [PIH], and preterm labor) were fewer (p= .010) in yoga than in control group. Birth weight of babies (p< .001) was higher and Apgar scores (p< .001) were better in yoga as compared to the control group.CONCLUSION:Yoga during pregnancy decreases the duration of all stages of labor, complications of pregnancy, need for epidural analgesia, and cesarean sections; it also improves birth weight and Apgar scores of the infant.