Comments (0) Best Prenatal Yoga - 2003

Yoga Tree

For reasons that will go unmentioned, performing yoga moves while pregnant can be problematic. But according to yoga's more earnest practitioners, the extra effort produces bountiful results. Prenatal yoga, they say, creates felicitous creatures called "yoga babies," who supposedly enter the world more at peace, and more physically attractive, than other newborns. Yoga Tree, which has several locations in San Francisco, is a good place for experimenting with this premise. Though one might think an activity aimed at producing highly competitive babies would itself be very competition-oriented, at Yoga Tree the opposite is true. Yoga Tree's regular, non-pregnant classes tend to involve a lot of naked, sweaty people with plenty of attitude. But the prenatal ones are nurturing and cooperative, our source says. "People aren't there, obviously, to show off their bodies," our source says. "The teachers, they devote a lot more care because you're pregnant; you get an incredible amount of individualized attention, which you don't get in their regular classes." Yoga Tree's regular classes are grueling, and the air is filled with body odor. The prenatal classes don't smell bad at all, and for the first 10 minutes participants go around the room taking turns talking about themselves. The rest of the participants coo with approval. "Everyone cheers if you're doing yoga on your due date," our source says. "It's very calm and doesn't stink as much as other yoga." Might non-pregnant people wishing to benefit from this experience enroll? "They don't have rules that you can't dress in a pregnancy suit," our source says. "So I don't see why not."