Pregnancy / 25 August, 2026 / Tara Lee
Consistency is the most important thing. In pregnancy, daily movement isn’t just nice-to-have; it’s essential. The extra fluid your body holds onto through pregnancy contributes to swelling, and that swelling can bring on aches and pains, particularly through the hips. That’s why five minutes a day can make all the difference in preventing hip pain or achy hips, one of the most common symptoms from the second trimester onwards.
It’s not that five minutes today changes anything dramatically. It’s that five minutes, every day, for the rest of your pregnancy, changes how you feel by week 30. That’s the transformation. The difference between a stiff, achy afternoon and an easier one, repeated often enough that it becomes how your body copes with the whole second half of pregnancy.
There’s a second, longer-term benefit too. Hip mobility work moves, like the all-fours hip circles in this sequence, also doubles up as birth preparation. These same movements are used during labour to help ease discomfort and encourage the baby into position, so practising them now helps them feel instinctive when it comes to labour. The breathwork carries the same dual benefit: practised consistently, it calms the nervous system and changes the shape of your day, but it’s also a tool you’ll carry into birth itself, whether that’s a caesarean birth or a physiological one.
Hip and pelvic discomfort is one of the most common complaints women raise in the second trimester. As the bump grows and your centre of gravity shifts, the hips absorb a lot of that change. You don’t need a new routine each week to manage it, you need one small, repeatable ritual that keeps things moving before tension has a chance to accumulate.
This sequence is adapted directly from the “Hips Focus Flow” in My Pregnancy Yoga Journal (Week 26, Second Trimester). It is a flow designed specifically to support hip mobility and circulation through the pelvic area. It stays low to the ground throughout, which can feel more comfortable as your pregnancy progresses and your bump grows.
Sit tall, cross-legged or kneeling on a cushion. Rest your hands on your belly and notice your breath – the rise on the inhale, the softening on the exhale. This is the anchor for everything that follows.
Still seated, hands resting on the knees, begin to circle the torso, leaning toward one knee, rounding forward, leaning to the other, rounding back to centre. Let the circles be as big or as small as feels good today.
Come onto all fours. Lift one knee slightly and trace small circles in the air, five in each direction, keeping the rest of the body stable. Repeat with the other knee. If you have PGP or this feels uncomfortable for any reason, either keep the circles very small or miss this movement out.
Still on all fours, knees slightly wider than the hips, begin gentle circles through the hips. If it feels good, let the circles grow larger. Continue for about a minute, then reverse direction.
Return to sitting, hand back on the belly. A brief pause to notice how the hips and lower back feel now, compared to when you started.
This flow stands on its own, but it’s really a doorway. It’s one sequence, from one week, out of a full journal that carries a matching practice and a place to reflect for every stage of pregnancy, trimester by trimester.
If you want to build this into a daily habit with proper guidance, the same sequence (and many more) is available to follow along with in my Online Studio, alongside classes for every stage of pregnancy and beyond.
Article by Tara Lee, author of My Pregnancy Yoga Journal.
Try this five-minute daily practice in the Online Studio or try another free pregnancy yoga class with Tara.
Tara Lee is a leading pregnancy yoga teacher with over 25 years of experience supporting women through pregnancy, birth and early motherhood. She is a senior yoga teacher, nutritional therapist and author of My Pregnancy Yoga Journal. Tara has taught thousands of women and trained yoga teachers internationally, combining yoga, breathwork and evidence-informed wellbeing practices to help women feel more confident, calm and prepared for birth and beyond.
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