How Yoga Helped Me Feel Like Myself While Pregnant

I was pregnant and uncomfortable, but yoga helped me get through

I took my first yoga class when I was 13 and it was not love at first sight. I spent most of the YMCA class sighing about how slow the class moved, how annoying the teacher’s voice was, and how bored I felt as I stayed in downward facing dog for “just one more breath.”

It would take me another 10 years to fall in love with yoga, this time at a studio in Boston where the walls dripped with moisture and the speakers vibrated with hip hop music. I suddenly understood that the practice was both physical and mental, that slowing down could actually feel nice, and that my anxious brain settled inside the methodical, dance-like practice.

In Boston, I started to practice yoga several times per week, then every day. When I moved to Seattle, I enrolled in a yoga teacher training program as a way to make friends in my new city and learn more about the practice. For a year, I taught classes around the city of Seattle, made many new yogi friends, and felt like I was in the best shape of my life.

Then I got pregnant.

My first months of pregnancy were tremendously difficult. I threw up daily, sometimes hourly, and found it hard to get out of bed at all. I slogged…