Nine months isn’t nearly enough time to prepare for the motherhood journey. Not even a small eternity can prepare you for what lies ahead. While you wouldn’t trade it for the world, you might wish it were less stressful.
Enter: meditation. As a practice everyone swears by, it seems to be one of those rare things that are good, even in excess. Many mothers start meditating during pregnancy, whether or not they know beforehand how much of a positive impact it has on their infants.
Be that as it may, it’s never too late to start meditating because it offers the next best thing to our affordable fitness classes in NYC. Since you may not have time for the latter, you can meditate instead to reap the following benefits.
The Potential for You-Time
Let’s start with the most obvious yet ignored benefit of meditation, which involves forgetting everything and everyone that doesn’t matter and focusing on yourself. One of the biggest drawbacks of motherhood is the loss of me-time, which might eventually result in a loss of identity.
New moms who make time for yoga classes in New York City have more time to themselves than new moms who don’t. They also have more self-awareness than other moms due to having an uninterrupted space to focus on their positive attributes.
The Resulting Stress Relief
Stress is a feature that applies to nearly all new moms. It feeds itself, increasing cortisol levels and leading to several physical and mental postpartum issues.
According to a meta-analysis of 200 studies, mindfulness meditation suppresses your stress hormone, which, in turn, calms you down and allows you to concentrate on one thought at a time.
Your mind can go a mile a minute, but meditation puts everything in perspective. It helps reduce the usual postpartum suspects, including burnout and depression, to nothing.
Reduces Postpartum Depression
Postpartum depression affects 1 in 8 new mothers in the US. It might be a trickle-down effect of anxiety and overthinking. Meditation, on the other hand, can reduce depression and anxiety by reducing their common symptoms, including:
- Loss of appetite
- Lack of sleep
- Mood swings
Handle it like a pro the next time your older kid throws a tantrum while your newborn exercises their tiny lungs. If restorative meditation doesn’t work on your troubled mind, you can join the FitEngine for workout yoga classes or Dance Away Your Troubles with Musical Workouts.
Enhances Self-Love and Compassion
An eight-week study in 2012 found that meditation increase altruistic behavior. The more the participants meditated, the less stressed out they were. Not only that, but meditation also enhanced self-compassion and mindfulness for the intervention group.
Postpartum hormonal imbalance and external factors like sleep deprivation and the time and monetary investment involved in raising a child may raise negative emotions towards yourself and others.
With meditation, you can tamp down such emotions and find it in yourself to love others and yourself. Something as simple as imagining a loved one while meditating can make you perceive others and yourself with love and compassion.
For the Love of Peace!
Having peace of mind is a dream for new moms because it is just that far-fetched. Or is it? By meditating, you can be calm in the eye of the storm, aka a home that has just taken in a newborn member.
When you meditate, you filter out all the useless thoughts living rent-free in your head throughout the day. While you can’t do anything about the chaos inside your home, you can meditate away the chaos taking home inside your brain.
There’s less noise in your head when you’re only concerned about things that matter in your immediate future. Start setting reminders if you’re scared that you’ll be so at peace that you’ll forget to change or feed the little one. Don’t deprive yourself of workout or stretching yoga because you’re too anxious about what happens next.
Indulge in a Pilates Yoga Crossover in New York City at FitEngine
New moms can now find healthy ways to lose weight fast with exercise, discover flexibility and mobility workouts, and attend stretching classes in NYC to be fitter in body and mind. Please make your way to our New York Pilates academy to engage in postpartum TLC right after giving birth.
Contact us to know all about beginner yoga classes and how to gradually increase your tolerance for a high-intensity insanity workout in Midtown Manhattan.