The Impact of Prenatal Yoga on Hip Mobility and Delivery Outcomes

The purpose of this study was to test the effect of prenatal yoga on hip mobility. The secondary aim was to determine the relationship between hip mobility and additional pregnancy outcomes. Hip mobility (hip internal and external range of motion and hip flexor muscle length), pregnancy symptoms, anxiety (State Trait Anxiety Inventory Survey), and depression (and Perinatal/Postnatal Depression Scale Survey), were measured in pregnant women at baseline. All participants (N=20) were then randomly assigned to an experimental or control group. The intervention was a 6-week prenatal yoga program. At the end of six weeks, all baseline assessments were repeated. After delivery, the participants completed a survey on their birth outcomes. The prenatal yoga intervention did not have an impact on hip mobility, even when controlling for maternal parity. There was a trending negative correlation between hip mobility and gestation age at delivery (r=-0.385, p=0.085). After six weeks of yoga, the intervention group showed an improvement in anxiety (although not statistically significant) with a mean anxiety score of 36.8 (SD = 7.00). In contrast, the control group's score increased slightly to 37.9 (SD = 11.49, [t(15.3) = 1.71, p-value = 0.107]. After six weeks of yoga, the intervention group's depression score decreased to 6.1 (SD = 5.74) whereas the control group's score rose to 6.9 (SD = 3.70), [t(16.8) = 1.26, p-value = 0.226]; however, these data also did not achieve statistical significance as this pilot study was underpowered to detect differences in outcomes of interest. This study suggests that a larger sample size is needed, and the positive impact of prenatal yoga is worthy of future studies.