As if Valentine’s Day weren’t enough to get you and your honey bound up together in some sort of twisted lotus posture, it’s being reported that yoga can actually aid in your fertility. Score!
Well, we already know it helps the sex drive. Really though, infertility can actually be a very serious matter to a couple trying hard to conceive. Yay for yoga, a recent New York Times article highlights the benefits of the practice aiding in fertility. No, there’s no proof yet that engaging mulabandha in ardha matsyendrasana will increase your chances of babyness, but many women, and doctors, are finding that the support system a yoga class offers is vital to a potential mommy’s health.
Besides taxing the mind, body and wallet, infertility can be lonely. Support groups have long existed for infertile couples, but in recent years, “yoga for fertility” classes have become increasingly popular. They are the latest in a succession of holistic approaches to fertility treatment that have included acupuncture and mind-body programs (whose effectiveness for infertility patients is backed by research); massage (which doesn’t have specific data to support it); and Chinese herbs (which some say may be detrimental).
No study has proved that yoga has increased pregnancy rates in infertility patients. But students of yoga-for-fertility classes say that the coping skills they learn help reduce stress on and off the mat. For many, it’s a support group in motion (or lotus).
Sweet.
image cred cafepress
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Earlier…
I just recently read an article by the Harvard Medical School that found that ‘women who practiced yoga were twice as likely to get pregnant than their female counterparts who did not practice yoga’.
Hmmm… interesting.
This is such an interesting article. I wonder how fertility doctors will feel if it proven that yoga can improve a woman’s chances to get pregnant.