Prenatal yoga is an ideal low-impact fitness routine to start when you’re expecting, even if you’re not used to regularly working out  and it boasts plenty of benefits for you and your baby. It can help:

Lower your blood pressure. Studies have shown that a pregnant woman’s heart rate and blood pressure lowers after doing prenatal yoga  even more so than after doing other low-impact exercises like walking.

Cut your risk of preterm labor and other complications. High stress levels have been shown to increase miscarriage and preterm birth rates, and yoga is a great stress-reducer. Women who do yoga  including breathing exercises, posture positions and meditation for one hour a day have been shown to have a lower preterm labor rate, as well as lower risk of pregnancy-reduced hypertension, compared with women who spent the same amount of time walking.

Stabilize your moods. Another study showed that integrated yoga that is, exercise-based yoga combined with meditation, deep relaxation and breathing exercises  significantly decreased levels of depression in moms-to-be.

Improve your delivery experience. The breathing exercises you’ll practice in yoga can be calming when it comes time to push baby out. Plus, the many stretching and strengthening moves can improve your delivery experience and your recovery (from either a vaginal birth or C-section), since your core and other important muscles will be stronger and more toned. In fact, one small study found that women who participated in a yoga routine involving just six sessions before birth spent less time overall in labor than those who did not. They also reported they felt less pain and more comfortable during and immediately after labor.