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Gyrate Through Your Pregnancy - Try Belly Dancing!
Prenatal belly dancing
strengthens muscles used during birth and celebrates impending motherhood.
By Clare Leschin-Hoar
It's standard advice for women
to keep fit and active during pregnancy, but finding low-impact exercise
pursuits can limit your options. Looking for something fun and exotic? Try
prenatal belly dancing.
"It's a really gentle,
low-impact aerobic and isotonic exercise, so it's really ideal," says Cathy
Moore, a certified nurse midwife and co-owner of The Goddess Dancing, which
offers classes in Cambridge. Women can even modify their technique late in
pregnancy because of a shift in their centers of gravity and strain on the lower
back muscles, she says.
Belly dance movements exercise
all the muscles of the torso, abdomen and pelvic floor, making the motions
appropriate for women throughout a pregnancy and right up until their due date,
Moore says. There's a lot more to belly dancing than swiveling. The Goddess
Dancing creates a unique experience by encouraging moms-to-be to bare their
bellies for class and adorn themselves with bhindis, scarves or hip sashes
decorated with coins or beads -- all to enhance the experience.
Instructors then teach
traditional belly-dancing movements such as hip circles, snake arms and
shimmies, done to a variety of Middle Eastern and world fusion music.
"Belly dancing is amazing for
building self-image and body image. It's one of the most powerful things you can
do -- to view your body as beautiful and perfect the way it is, particularly in
pregnancy, where women are feeling, 'I'm so fat,' or 'I'm not beautiful,' and
'I'm not sexy.' And we're saying, you're beautiful. You've created life. What
could be more beautiful than that?" says Moore.
In fact, many belly-dancing
enthusiasts believe there's an ancient connection between belly dancing and
birth.
Moore argues there is some
evidence that belly dance is very possibly the original childbirth exercise.
Look closely and you'll see a connection between the movements taught in Lamaze
classes and those of belly dance, she says.
"We teach belly dancing as a
prenatal exercise, but we're also teaching it as a tool in labor. In our
classes, we're teaching the hip circle, but we'll talk about how this can be
used in the early stages of labor if you're experiencing a lot of back pain,"
says Moore. "Or that the shimmy movement -- which is the loose vibration of the
hips -- could be useful in the second stage of labor, when pushing begins."
Kim Gallaugher, a veteran
belly dancer and a Newton mother of two, says it was natural to continue when
she became pregnant. "There's that whole spiritual aspect of it that appeals to
women when they're pregnant. You have that connection to your baby and to life,"
she says. "Some people just use it as exercise, but belly dance has this
wonderful history of being a dance for women, by women, to celebrate new life
and the mother, and I love that whole aspect to it as well."
Clare Leschin-Hoar is a
freelance writer and mother from Mansfield, MA.
This article first appeared
in B.A.B.Y., Spring 2006, a publication of The
BostonParentsPaper and is used with
permission.
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