Valerie May Yoga

If you know, you know. If you don’t, you need to.

Your jaw holds the potential for a more relaxed and comfortable birth experience.

The jaw and pelvis are intricately linked. There is a continuous line of connective tissue linking the fascia of your jaw, throat, and diaphragm straight down to your pelvic floor, pelvis and hips.

If you clench your jaw this can trigger a stress response telling your pelvic floor to contract, grip and guard. Conversely when your jaw is relaxed, it sends signals to your entire body to release tension.

It's like a secret gateway to a smoother birthing process.

There’s an idea called “sphincter law” coined by Ina May Gaskin, natural childbirth expert, that explains that if your jaw and throat are relaxed then your buttocks and pelvis will be too.

The more room your pelvis has to expand as baby travels down the birth canal, the easier your delivery will be. A tight, closed pelvis will result in muscles that are fighting against your delivery, not for it. The more relaxed your downstairs muscles are, the easier it will be when it comes time to deliver.

A relaxed jaw also helps lower stress hormones, creating a calmer birthing experience. Plus keeping your face and jaw soft encourages the release of oxytocin, the vital hormone that drives efficient contractions.

Unclenching your jaw also allows for slower and deeper breaths, which are the key to staying calm and focussed, and to manage discomfort during labour.

Through specialised breathing, vocalisation, and physical poses, my pregnancy yoga classes train your nervous system to be calm and body to stay loose under the intensity of contractions.

I will teach you some really important jaw releasing strategies for you to take action in helping you to prepare your pelvis for birth.

There are many specific yoga poses that integrate both the jaw and pelvis including squatting poses, cat cow pose & any poses that stretch the neck.

You will learn targeted breathing techniques, with slow controlled exhales to open your throat and release your jaw.

Class runs every Saturday morning so come along to try these techniques out for yourself.

Your husband gets home and asks what you’ve been up to all day. You tell him you have been to a cafe with other mums. From the look on his face you can tell he thinks you’ve had an easy day compared to him.

What you can’t explain is that you haven’t had an easy day. When you go out, it’s nice to talk to friends. However the bottom line is that its hard for you to relax and concentrate properly as you were looking after your babies.

You could say that you changed baby’s nappy 3 times, you gave her a bottle of expressed milk for first time and she stopped crying after half an hour - but what’s so important about that?

So instead you find yourself saying stuff like “I am only looking after my baby these days” or “I haven’t been able to do any real work lately.”

Motherly achievements go unseen and there aren’t words to describe them. How can you explain that journey to get to mummy and baby yoga involved so much thought and prep. You need to plan, cover and solve a multitude of things that could go wrong.

When you can’t explain what your day has entailed you might assume this is because there is very little worth telling. You get troubled by what you are not achieving, like the basics of showering, eating lunch and not doing 1 thing on the long list of chores.

When you “tidy up” you have words to describe it and the tidied up area to show for it. However with mothering, there are no obvious visible words to describe the mode of attention that you are constantly providing for your baby.

You have been present for your baby and given up your time and energy for her. You have given up that nice warm shower, your tasty lunch and sitting in a house that looks like a rubbish dump.

Being a mother is more than a role or a job description or a list of things to achieve. And unlike everything else we do being a mother involves no training, qualification or supervision!

Just as yoga teaches us, know that you are doing ENOUGH. You are ensuring the continuity of civilised life from one generation to the next, goodness that’s a pretty big responsibility.

So be kind to yourself and know your influence as a mother is deeply felt and will last for a lifetime.

You were in the dark about what the fishing net next to the birthing pool was for. Only to learn it was a real life labour pooper scooper.

You are now terrified of doing a No.2 in front of your husband and a room of strangers,

So is birth really like doing a giant poo?

Yes. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news you didn’t want to hear. I get that the thought of doing a poo during birth makes you feel a little embarrassed and goes against the grain of your natural instinct for privacy!

However its completely normal and even expected. Your midwife will be happy to see some poo as it means things are progressing nicely.

You can expect loose bowel movements as early signs of labour. Release of prostaglandins help to loosen your cervix, uterus and re**um.

Plus baby puts pressure on the colon and sacral nerve. This causes the sensation of needing to poo especially if baby is low in the pelvis.

So it makes sense that when you are pushing baby out, your may push a bit of poo out too, as you are engaging the same muscles when pushing.

But please don’t resist pushing properly during birth. Holding back or gripping tenses your pelvic floor and makes pushing harder.

Prenatal yoga teaches you to relax these muscles, let go of tension, and trust your body’s natural reflexes.

In class we practice poses like squats and child’s pose which stretch and release the pelvic floor.

I talk about the anatomical link between your throat, jaw, and pelvic floor. Yoga emphasises "soft jaw" breathing, which prevents your pelvic muscles from clenching when you are stressed.

I will teach you breathing and sounds to keep the pelvic floor soft, allowing the baby to move easily without straining.

Tight thighs, glutes, or calves cause your pelvic floor to automatically tighten. So stretching keeps these surrounding muscle groups supple so they do not restrict the birth canal

If you do do the do during birthing try not to worry. Think about meeting your baby instead and remember the midwives have seen it all before.

So, it’s not a joke and it’s not gross, birth is like pooing! However the end result is much more beautiful newborn baby.

If the totally unrealistic biohacker's morning routine on the Gram makes you want to lie down for a rest…Read this…

You’re 45 and a few years ago your morning routine consisted a quick wee, shower, brush your teeth, moisturiser (sometimes), glass of water and flick on the kettle for a hot cuppa before the kids got up - you thought were winning at life.

Now thanks to social media you are brain washed into getting up at 5.30am to start a complicated morning routine. Your supplement stack costs £300 per month. The red light panel and lymphatic vibration plate are a few of the expensive gadgets you've invested in.

But lately you’ve been thinking you just don't have the energy to keep this up. You are only human and it's exhausting but the influencers say it's necessary to support midlife changes and prevent disease.

Also you feel a bit sickened by how much consumption has become part of your daily life. Every habit seems to come with multiple supplements devices and upgrades.

The supplement and wellness industry seems to have shifted, It is no longer just about supporting people but about convincing healthy people that they need more and more products to avoid becoming sick. Pills and powders marketed as essentials rather than optional.

After years exploring this and falling into the same expensive holes myself here’s what I have finally learned at age 51 that simplifying is what is needed.

The boring, repetitive stuff is our key to health. Sleep, Nutrition, Stress Management, Gentle Movement like Yoga, Being Outside (in sunshine and nature) & Social Connection. Lock these in first and then see if you actually need the extras.

A core principle of yoga is moderation. Unlike a lot of philosophies, yoga doesn’t push extremes. Whether it’s about food, or habits, going to the extreme only creates more attachment. Yoga, at its heart, offers a reminder to slow down and return to the fundamentals.

So whether it’s reducing screen time, prioritising meaningful relationships, or focusing on self-care through your yoga practice, getting back to basics can be liberating.

Wellness isn’t a performance, it’s about trusting your body and having fewer steps not more.

When labour intensifies many women hold their breath and tense up. They may even resort to screaming and shouting, which is a complete energy drain consuming vital oxygen and physical stamina that your uterine muscles need to contract efficiently.

Screaming is an involuntary reaction to fear and panic, which triggers adrenaline and stalls the release of birth progressing hormones oxytocin and endorphins.

Did you know that sound can be a very powerful tool for birth?

Unlike high-pitched screaming, which tenses the body and narrows the pelvic canal, making low, deep, rhythmic sounds like humming, moaning or hissing helps labour progress by keeping your jaw, throat, and pelvic floor relaxed. So toning manages intense surges and conserves energy.

As I said above, there is a direct biomechanical link between the muscles of the throat and the muscles of the pelvic floor. When you scream or tense your throat, your pelvic floor reflexively tightens, making it harder for your baby to descend.

The golden rule in active birth is that an open mouth leads to an open body. Keeping your mouth relaxed encourages your cervix to soften and open more easily.

Opposite to screaming, tonal sounds stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, suppressing cortisol and adrenaline, triggering the release of endorphins and oxytocin. Oxytocin directly aids labor progression, while endorphins provide natural pain relief.

In my Pregnancy Yoga classes, we learn how to use deep open tonal sounds like, aaah, ssssss, oooh or mmmm. We practice noticing where the sound goes in the body, sending the sound and vibrations to the lower back.

We experiment with different sounds that feel good for you. At home you can practice whilst on the toilet or even while exhaling after a long day. you will notice which tones help your body feel more relaxed and open.

If the only version of birth you've ever seen involves screaming and sweating in agony, come and learn instead how to be in control of your body so that your birth be empowered, focussed and connected.

After being bombarded with diet and exercise messages for decades, it's no surprise that Gen X women have terrible relationships with their body.

Growing up when he**in chic was trendy, we were subject to some seriously toxic inputs re body image and beauty standards, influencing how we feel about ourselves in ways that are hard to shake.

I meet women every day who speak harshly and negatively about their bodies. Going back to our childhood and teenage years…. remember mum doing the Grapefruit or the Cabbage Soup Diet?

You were told that a shrinking body equates to happiness and worth. This has resulted in a lifetime of weight watching, extreme dieting and guilt if the scales increased.

With a resurgence of aesthetic pressures online and highly accessible medical weight-loss trends. Here we are again being pulled back into the exhausting cycle of restriction and self-doubt.

As this mindset resurfaces, yoga provides a powerful antidote to shift our focus from punishing the body to accepting it through mindful movement and self-compassion.

My yoga practice has helped me to dismantle this decades old "skinny feels" mentality and I've found more peace with my ever changing body.

It has helped me makes the shift from "How do I look?" to “What can my body do?” Allowing me to view my body as home and not an ornament that has gone a bit wrong.

When you show up, connect to breath and movement, there is less need to be performing and calorie burning to earn food. You start to observe that negative internal chat without being taken over by it.

When you meet yourself where you are, you realise that bodies change through different seasons, pregnancies, and age.

And that human body is a changing body. It is natural, expected and perfectly normal for a body to change as we move through life. Due to age, hormones, and experiences, and just LIFE.

What is not natural is to expect your body or face to stay the same your whole life.

Trying to achieve that is an exhausting and ultimately pointless goal. How about instead we try to accept change in all its forms, however hard that may be.

You are 6 months postpartum and every time you cough, laugh too hard, jog across the street, you leak. just a little. You have realised your trampolining career is over as jumping up and down is the absolute worst for this. It’s just enough to be annoying that its messing with your confidence.

You have googled the usual stuff and it says “just do kegels” but no one explains how, or checks if you’re even doing them right. and honestly you don’t have time or forget. there’s just so much else going on with a new baby.

You are wondering if anyone else has gone through this or found something that actually worked long-term?. You are starting to feel like your are the only one peeing herself at age 32, its so depressing!

This shocker can feel like the best kept secret, but its scary to learn that around 1 in 3 women experience urinary incontinence after having a baby. You might leak urine when you laugh, cough, sneeze, lift something or exercise. Pregnancy hormones, the weight of your uterus and having a vaginal birth can all stretch the pelvic floor muscles that support your bladder.

Did you know that Yoga can be a lifesaver, as deep breathing, one of yoga's key principles, connects you directly to your pelvic floor muscles. As does abdominal stabilisation and inner thigh control.

So in my postnatal class I will teach you proper diaphragmatic breathing along with movement to strengthen, heal and retrain your pelvic floor, which will help your incontinence. The great news will be that you don't have to remember to do kegels every 5 minutes. HOORAY!

The targeted yoga poses that I use in class that engage inner thighs (adductors), core and glutes to help stabilise your pelvis, relieving unnecessary pressure on the bladder. Restoring your bladder control and your confidence.

These may seem like small things, just learning to breathe and making simple movements but believe me they can be absolutely huge in helping you feel less stressed and embarrassed about this taboo subject.

Booking for June sessions is now open.

You woke up exhausted this morning. But instead of trusting that feeling you checked your sleep score first and ignored how you felt because your Oura ring said you slept fine.

You are addicted to attributing your health to your performance data and no longer trust your body. So it's difficult to tune into your body’s wise intuition.

For example your rely on your data rather than noticing that:

The crap take out food and booze you've consumed all week has affected your energy;

A long week at work has left you emotionally stressed;

Heavy gym sessions have hurt your shoulder.

Ask yourself do you feel connected to your body by looking at this info or does it make you feel even more pressurised?

Firstly note that I am not totally dissing wearables they can be very useful BUT relying entirely on these rather than checking in with your body can lead to a phenomenon known as interoceptive disconnect.

Instead of intuitively feeling your energy, stress, emotions, fatigue, you outsource those feelings to a gadget. This can cause data anxiety and making you ignore your body's natural signals.

If you would like to reduce your reliance on these here is how yoga helps you get out of the tech habit:

Yoga actively trains interoception, your brain's ability to perceive internal physical sensations like heartbeat, breath, muscle tension or stretch.

Instead of looking at a screen, you learn to feel how your own body responds to movement and stillness.

As mentioned wearables can turn physical activity into a performance metric, which sometimes causes toxic tracking or anxiety.

Yoga teaches you to observe stiffness, discomfort, or fatigue without judgment, simply honouring where your body is at right now.

Yoga focuses synchronising your movement with the flow of your breath. This grounds you in the present moment and calming a nervous system that is overly stimulated by notifications.

Instead of endless data use yoga to rest, slow dow, find more presence and attunement to your body, mind and emotions.

Your body is and amazing system that always communicating and speaking to you in order to find balance.

Are you listening to it or ignoring it?