THE AYURVEDIC PREGNANCY HANDBOOK

Transcription

1 THE AYURVEDIC PREGNANCY HANDBOOK This Ayurvedic Pregnancy Handbook is designed to help you connect, feel peace & be healthy, no matter what your feeling, to look after you & your baby in the best way possible. This book is not for individual health concerns you may have during your pregnancy. I always recommend you to see your Health Practitioner & an Ayurvedic Practitioner for proper assessment & to work out your individualised health plan. But I hope this book inspires you to live naturally & in peace to allow you & your baby to thrive, establish wonderful foundations during this incredible time of transformation. BODY High prana foods that create peace & nourishment is all your body needs FOODS FOR PRANA, PEACE & NOURISHMENT Pregnancy is not a time for any radical changes in diet or extreme once sided diets. It s a time for just a healthy, very well balanced diet of fresh fruit, vegetables, heathy proteins (e.g. legumes, nuts, beans if you are vegetarian), dairy, seeds, fresh fruit juices, grains & healthy fats (e.g. ghee). Ayurveda is about balance. A beautiful balance of nourishment from all the food groups and avoiding one sided diets, which will create imbalances for you & your baby. BALANCE A variety of all six tastes, sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, astringent is needed, but not to over eat bitters, pungent or astringent foods which are depleting in nature. This is a time to build, so we must include sweet tasting foods. But remember the moto, healthy, very well balanced diet! HYDRATION Keeping nourished & hydrated is also the key. So eating something small & healthy every few hours is very important and keeping hydration levels up through water, ginger tea, boiled milk & small amounts of juice mixed in water is very important to consume regularly. Drinking a boiled cows milk drink before bed with ginger, fennel seed & jaggery is a must for good nutrient levels, hydration and an easier time post delivery. DIGESTION & NOURISHMENT Our digestion is changed during pregnancy. Being nourished by your food is about eating food that is easy to digest, unctuous, warm & full of prana (life force energy). This means eating a large proportion of healthy food that is freshly cooked in ghee & avoiding cold, raw, dry food & old left over food & definitely always avoiding fast food.

2 HIGH FIBRE Fibre is another one of those elements that is particularly important to pregnant women because of the increase in constipation. Include your wholemeal grains, fruits & vegetables, ghee & keeping hydrated will help. But you also may need to take 1tsp of psyllium husk after meals in a glass of warm water too as an extra precaution. If you are still experiencing constipation, please see your Ayurvedic Health Practitioner for safe alternatives during pregnancy to alleviate this. CRAVINGS It is definitely hard not to want exactly what you feel like when you are pregnant. Even if its fast food, heavy foods & you don t even usually eat those foods! If you are lucky, you will crave the healthy food. An Ayurvedic rule is to eat something small & healthy every few hours, to top up your energy stores in a healthy way so you don t get to a stage where you crave the unhealthy foods. You can eat more healthier sweets than usual too, it is said it makes for a sweeter baby. A lot of the time, when we crave the heavy, sticky, fatty, carb foods we are just run down & depleted and pregnancy, particularly early pregnancy can be very hard work! It is in this very moment that we actually need those highly nutritious freshly cooked foods. If you crave healthy foods, go for it!. But be easy on yourself, pregnancy is a time to listen to your body & we are ok to bend the usual Ayurvedic rules here a bit more. The pregnant mum will be forgiven! HYDRATION Keeping nourished & hydrated is also the key. So eating something small & healthy every few hours is very important and keeping hydration levels up through water, ginger tea, boiled milk & small amounts of juice mixed in water is very important to consume regularly. Drinking a boiled cows milk drink before bed with ginger, fennel seed & jaggery is a must for good nutrient levels, hydration and an easier time post delivery. DIGESTION & NOURISHMENT Our digestion is changed during pregnancy. Being nourished by your food is about eating food that is easy to digest, unctuous, warm & full of prana (life force energy). This means eating a large proportion of healthy food that is freshly cooked in ghee & avoiding cold, raw, dry food & old left over food & definitely always avoiding fast food.

3 Your Skin Absorbs Everything! Your skin is the largest organ in the body. Its living and absorbs everything you put onto it into your body. There are certain chemicals & mainstream creams & washes that are not safe during pregnancy. One of the terrible consequences are birth defects! Skin specialists can list all the chemicals found to be dangerous during pregnancy but Ayurveda goes one step beyond this and states anything unnatural is going to have some sort of negative impact. So make sure you use completely natural skin care products you can almost eat! Crucially important during pregnancy for the above reason and offers an even more effective alternative to bringing health & radiance to the skin. Living Ayur s natural beauty skin care range is perfect and meets the criteria above & beyond. Your Body is Working Hard, So Be Easy On Your Self One of the main differences of the Ayurvedic perspective and the mainstream perspective, is that during pregnancy we should in fact take it easier. Both in lifestyle & exercise. So if you follow the Ayurvedic way for pregnancy care, that means no running marathons, no weight lifting at the gym and spin classes at the gym. We don t even support a high intensity level of yoga. Prenatal or very gentle yoga with modifications is very good exercise for pregnancy. Brisk early morning walking out of the hot sun or wind is also recommended to be done daily. Why, you may ask? Pregnancy is a time for building, providing balance, stabilising hormones and bringing in the breath for better vitality in your self & for your baby. Yoga & walking does this perfectly, anything above or below this will make it harder for you after birth, both physically & emotionally, as Ayurveda is about perfect balance. Regular abyanga (oil massage with love) is also a must during pregnancy. Every week in fact and self massage is to be done daily. Make sure its not a hard, unloving massage, it must have that added factor of extra love & nurturing you can feel from the therapist. There are many benefits to this type of massage, one creating balance in the elements of the body making delivery & beyond more natural & easy.

4 Morning SicknessGetting Through It If you suffer with morning sickness or all day sickness or all pregnancy sickness, it can be the hardest times in your life. For the lucky mothers who didn t experience any morning sickness, it can feel like the worst hangover or food poisoning you have had, all day, all night, day after day after day for months! While having to work, care for other children and maintain any sort of relationship with others! In my experience I have never seen a correlation between level of health & morning sickness. Some women who are far from healthy, can experience no morning sickness and some women who are healthy can experience no morning sickness. So don t be hard on your self if you do experience it, seek support from your loved ones where you can and no this time will eventually pass. A positive spin on morning sickness is that there is strong research to support the correlation of morning sickness with higher hormone levels associated with pregnancy and less miscarriages. So rest assure its not all bad. Ayurvedically there are a few things you can do to help morning sickness. I personally was never able to eliminate it through these, but I could certainly reduce it & manage it better. 1) Eating something small & healthy every few hours. If our blood sugar levels are low & we are depleted, we feel worse. 2) Staying hydrated. If we are thirsty & dried out, we feel worse. 3) Creating a perfect balance through enough exercise & rest. Up early to walk or gentle yoga and to bed early for rest. If we do too much or get too lazy we feel worse. 4) Drinking ginger tea regularly, helps with nausea and improving impaired digestion. 5) Partaking in a daily spiritual practice, helps with dealing with the challenge and creating a sense of peace (I found this to be the most effective technique!) 6) Staying clean, wearing very clean light coloured clothes & avoiding dirty, smelly environments. Anything dirty, dull or smelly triggers nausea & vomiting quite often. Get some fresh air and as much as you can get support from others to help with the dirty chores!

5 The Pregnancy Lifestyle to Take Care of You Lifestyle is a huge factor in living a healthy Ayurvedic pregnancy. It creates balance for you & your baby and an inner peace so that your baby creates a foundation of peace too in the womb, bringing it out into the world with him or her. The Ayurvedic lifestyle also creates a balance & greater health for you during pregnancy getting you to your prime for birth & beyond. Here is a basic pregnancy lifestyle regime that you can follow. It may seem like a lot but you can make time for it. Turn off the TV & Face Book or if you have children, involve them in the process too (check out the Peace Mumma Program which gives you tips on how to do this). The more your follow, the better! Wake up before sunrise Do Pranayama (breathing technique) Do Meditation & connect with your heart & baby Do Self Massage & bath Drink Ginger Tea

6 Your body is a magnificent embodiment of the powerful feminine For many women, letting go of their past bodies, gaining weight and sometimes losing the attraction from their partners is just an extra emotional challenge to deal with. You are the same person inside with wants & needs but the natural process of pregnancy can take away from your former you. On top of that people seem to just love to comment on your appearance & not always in a positive way! The best one I received was I love seeing you fat and then continued to laugh! Its really really important to remember when you may feel hurt by any comments from loved ones, that putting on a good amount of weight is healthy. Its perfect & amazing for you & baby at this time. If you focus on a good pregnancy diet & exercise and whatever your weight is from that, that is what you are perfectly meant to be! If you can move away from body image as best as you can and start to see & appreciate the magnificence of your feminine body who has the natural power of creating a whole other being, you can tap into your own powerful feminine and see everything about your body in amazement. Don t be a slave to your sense organs Our sense organs are agents of the mind and our mind is what allows peace to reside or not. When we are pregnant, it is especially important we treat ourselves as if the baby can see through our own eyes. So placing ourselves in good wholesome environments away from violence or negativity, any scary movies or news is important. Also, not to put yourself in any unloving or non nurturing sexual experiences is just as important. Healing within, breaks the shackles of generations of pain With pregnancy can come roaring emotions, either from the hormonal changes or from the inner subconscious rising up to the surface during this amazing potentially transformative time. It also could be because you now have stopped drinking or getting off any mind altering drugs, giving away to the cessation of the usual suppression of negative emotions. You now have to feel again. Not every mother experiences this, but if you are one, don t be fearful of your emotions that can come bubbling up. This is not a bad thing, this is an opportunity to feel them finally and deal with them, making you a much more refreshed & joyful person on the other end. A lot of our emotional pain is in fact from early childhood and has been passed on from your parents & beyond to many generations before them. If we deal with our issues, we stop the cycle & passing it on to our babies. Incredible! I don t advise you to do this alone though, always seek professional help & advice from some-one you trust, and have the courage to speak up with your loved ones to tell them what you are going through. Once you are strong enough on your own, your dependence on professional help will reduce. Healing is often a very very long process, but when you start to feel the benefits & inner peace, its truly worth it. The Ayurvedic lifestyle also supports & assists in this process, through meditation, mindfulness & self care. I encourage you to start your journey to emotional wellness through these ancient practices and feel it for your self.

7 When we love ourselves we can love others Ahhh, self love & being a mother. We have been conditioned to think that good mothers put themselves last. And that loving ourselves & feeling good is obnoxious, especially if you are a mother. The Ayurvedic trick here is to remain balanced between & behind all thoughts. Understand both good thoughts and bad thoughts are just thoughts and to tap into that inner peace & love that resides deep within each and every one of us, so that we don t identify with ANY thoughts we have of ourselves. This should keep us grounded and still have the ability to grow & love further. To love ourselves fully gives us the ability to love others fully. And its important to realise, any external backlash from others who find it hard to see your confidence & self love, is just their own insecurities being projected onto you, that s it. Don t feel you have stay in any negative place, just to keep friends & old connections. For you may not have much in common to talk about anymore So be ok with naturally losing some connections along the way, making room & gaining connections with others in the new uplifted you as you move into self love and being able to love seeing other people shine too instead of putting them down! We have to learn to give ourselves permission to shine and to realise one of the biggest life lessons there is, we are ourselves worthy of love. The only real way to love others is to love ourselves. How we feel about ourselves becomes a reflection and projection you put onto others. Your baby will both learn to love her or himself through watching you and by the level of love you give to your baby. The level of love you give to your baby will be stemming from how much you love yourself. Self love is the quality of energy you are able to give out. Its important to note, just because you weren t truly loved as a child in its full unconditional sense, its still always possible to turn this around. And when you do, quite often healing of whole families takes place without even trying. Going down the path to self love is a big journey! One of spiritual practice & self development that could be the most important thing you will do for your self in pregnancy, motherhood and for your new baby to come and in fact the most important thing you can do.

8 Birth & Beyond Ayurvedic philosophy teaches about karma & re-incarnation. The philosophy of re-incarnation means that you have been a mother before, many many times! If we feel this to be truth, it gives us confidence in ourselves. I ve done this before I can do it again! There s not really anything mystical about karma. Karma is simply the effect or aftermath of an action you do. You plant a neem seed after sourcing good soil, water it, care for it how it needs and you will get a stable big neem tree one day. So what we nurture, care for and action right now is what will determine what comes to fruition in the future. The only mystical part about it, is Ayurveda states karma is over our many re-incarnations, so we don t know what we have done in our past lives that will come into fruition in this life, positive or negative But no matter what it is, it only matters what we do now and we can burn our past negative karma by cultivating good karma right now. Why this is an amazing concept to know during pregnancy, is that if we action care, love, peace & nurturing in pregnancy now this will help with birth & beyond for you & your baby. So don t underestimate the power you have to help shape your life and establish a good environment your baby needs to help flourish. Ayurvedic motherhood is not about fear or control, its simply about knowing how to let life flourish naturally for both you & your baby. Learning & using the way of the Ayurveda mother is truly a transformational one, I really hope this revolutionised the way you see your self as a mother & help you & your baby to thrive.