Navigating Pregnancy and Postpartum Through the Eight Limbs of Yoga

Yoga has always had language for this. My realization in this season of my life seems worth sharing. Yoga was never just the breathing, or just the movement, but it holds the fear, the surrender, the identity shift, the days when your body feels completely foreign, and provides moments of unexpected grace. Most of us were never taught these parts in yoga class. We were handed a mat and shown a pose, and somewhere along the way the other seven limbs of yoga got left behind.

It took me two pregnancies to understand what yoga was actually offering me. Not as a fitness practice, not as a way to stay flexible through a changing body, but as a complete framework for one of the most transformative and demanding seasons of a human life.

When I stopped treating yoga as something I did on a mat and started seeing it as a lens for everything: the anxiety, the overwhelm, the grief, the love, the total loss of self and the slow finding of something (someone) new, everything shifted. These teachings didn't fix anything. But they gave me language to help me process, and sometimes that's everything.

This seems like what the eight limbs of yoga were always for.

What Are the Eight Limbs?

The eight limbs come from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, written over 2,000 years ago as a guide to living, not just moving. Think of them less as steps on a ladder and more as dimensions of practice, each one offering a different way to come back to yourself.

They are: the Yamas (how we relate to the world around us), the Niyamas (how we relate to ourselves), Asana (physical practice), Pranayama (breathwork), Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), Dharana (concentration), Dhyana (meditation), and Samadhi (integration, wholeness).

You may already be living by some of these principles without having heard this name for them.

The Limbs through Pregnancy and Postpartum

These seasons of life ask everything of you. Your body changes in ways you didn't anticipate. Your identity shifts whether you're ready or not. You're asked to surrender control at the exact moment you most want it. You're expected to be grateful and glowing at the exact moment you're exhausted and barely holding on. And everyone else is just moving along in their same timeline and life while yours seems to have been pulled away from you.

The realization I kept coming back to: Yoga has always had language for my tension, my confusion. And when you know where to look, each limb speaks directly to something you're already moving through: the self-criticism, the breathlessness, the sensory overwhelm of new motherhood, the slow rebuilding of a relationship with your own body.

Nothing I did included doing yoga perfectly through pregnancy. Instead I uncovered a framework that met me where I actually was. Pregnancy and postpartum are distinct experiences (emotionally, physically, and psychologically) so each season had its own dedicated reflections that I’m compiling here.

I have written posts and created guides in both pre save post natal reflections that include a short explanation of the limb in plain language, why it's particularly relevant to the specific season, and a tailored practice you can try too. Not every practice is a meditation. Some are breathwork, some are movement, some are journaling or contemplative reflection. The format follows what the limb actually calls for.

The Prenatal Series moves through each limb as a guide for pregnancy - the anticipation, the uncertainty, the physical and emotional expansion, and the preparation for a transformation you can't fully prepare for.

The Postnatal Series moves through each limb as a guide for the postpartum window -rebuilding, recovering, navigating a body and identity that are both deeply familiar and completely new.

Both series can read in order or dipped into by limb, depending on what you need right now.

Who These Guides Are For

I wrote this series for anyone who is pregnant or postpartum and has ever felt like existing wellness content doesn't quite reach them. For yoga practitioners who want to go deeper than the mat. For people who have never considered yoga as anything more than a physical practice. For doulas, midwives, and perinatal professionals looking for a grounded framework to share with clients.

You don't need a yoga background. You don't need Sanskrit. You just need to be in this season and willing to look at it differently.

Yoga has always had language for what you're going through. These guides are here to give it to you.

[Explore the Prenatal Series →]

[Explore the Postnatal Series →]

[Get Both Series Together →]