Physiological and Psychological Effects of Pregnancy Yoga: A Systematic Review

The aim of this systematic review is to systematically examine the effects of prenatal pregnancy yoga on physiological and psychological disorders during pregnancy. Between January 2014 and December 2018 (last five years), Google Scholar, MEDLINE, Scopus, and CINAHL generated 945 articles from EBSCO sources. In order to search the articles, ”prenatal yoga“, “pregnancy yoga”, “yoga”, “yoga for pregnancy” and “antenatal yoga” were used. The study included articles from healthy pregnant women, published in the last five years, which were experimental and control groups, whose full text was available, and the publication language was either in Turkish or English. A total of 13 studies, which met the inclusion criteria of the articles, formed the sample of the systematic review. The findings of the articles were evaluated under two groups as their physiological effects and psychological effects. Two groups of pre-test, perspective, longitidunal and randomized controlled studies were included in the study. In the studies, it is determined that as physiological effects of yoga, salivary cortisol level, fetal heart rate, maternal heart rate, maternal blood pressure, uterine artery pressure, low back pain, low back pain related disability, immune globulin A levels, oxygen saturation, sleep, salivary amylase level dependent variables were evaluated. As psychological effects of yoga, it is determined that anxiety, depression, stress, psychosocial health, prenatal attachment variables were evaluated. Pregnancy yoga was found to affect all variables positively. It can be said that yoga during pregnancy can be used as an effective method to improve physiological and psychosocial health levels of pregnant women