The Effects of 8-Week Prenatal Yoga on Physical, Psychological Factors and Pregnancy Outcome in Pregnant Women in Third Trimester

The purpose of this study is to identify the effects of 8-week prenatal yoga on physical, psychological factors and pregnancy outcome in pregnant women in third trimester. 21 primigravidas at 28 weeks of gestation participated in 8 weeks of prenatal yoga programme. Physical factors such as BMI, BAI (body adiposity index), abdominal circumstance (AC), hip circumstance (HC), back flexors endurance test (BFE), sit-and-reach test(SR), anterior and posterior pelvic tilt angles (ATA, PTA), difference of bilateral pelvic inclination angle (DPI) and lumbopelvic pain (LPP), and psychological factors, pregnancy stress (PS) and anxiety (STAI) were measured in the pre and post yoga programme. Also pregnancy outcome, method of delivery (MD), gestational age at birth (GA), gestational weight gain (GWG) and neonatal weight (NW), was recorded. T-test was performed for comparison of the variables before and after prenatal yoga, and Pearson’s correlation analysis was performed for effects of each factors after prenatal yoga and pregnancy outcome. The results were as follows. BMI, BAI, AC, and HC were significantly increased, where as BFE, PTI, DPI and LPP considerably decreased. PS and STAI, were significantly reduced. As a result of correlation between factors, BMI correlated with BAI sufficiently. BAI correlated with GWG, GWG correlated with WG, WGc correlated with PS, PS correlated with LPP, and STAI correlated with NW approximately. Also all participants delivered safely in 37~40 weeks. There were no macrosomia or growth-restricted infants. All of them kept moderate weight thru the pregnancy period . Findings suggest that the prenatal yoga positively affects psychological factors, imbalanced bilateral pelvic inclination angle, and lumbopelvic pain. Therefore the prenatal yoga is an effective and safe way to keep physical and psychological health of pregnant women.