PREGNANT women come in two kinds. The ones who enjoy compliments like "my dear, you look blooming" and those who look weighed down in body and spirit. Yoga made easy: Roz Widdowson.

According to North Worcestershire's celebrated yoga teacher and author Rosalind Widdowson there can be no better way to ensure a "blooming" pregnancy than by taking up yoga.

Roz, as everyone knows her, runs thriving Hi-Ki Yoga classes at the Gainsborough Hotel, Kidderminster, and in March plans to start a new class in Bewdley at the George Hotel.

Her classes are mixed and much sought after by people from all walks of life who respond "to the promise of a fitter, more supple and beautiful body from this ancient yet ever-fresh science of Yoga".

Among them are a few mums-to-be who have got the message that yoga offers them special benefits.

They could not be in a better place to find instruction. Fifty-three-year-old Roz, whose book Yoga Made Easy was a best-seller in 1983, has just published through Hamlyn another major work Yoga For Pregnancy.

In her introduction she assures that "even a modest amount of practice can bring renewed vitality, a notable poise and grace, confidence, improved concentration and focus, peace of mind and a sense of harmony and balance".

She adds with feeling as a mother of two herself: "This might seem impossible at a time when a woman can feel at her least attractive, at the mercy of processes beyond her control, and fatigued and burdened by her condition."

But she maintains this can be completely transformed into a vibrantly happy state if the period is seen as a chance for broader personal development.

Yoga in pregnancy is not of the "standing-on-your-head" variety, although for people like Roz who has been practising the art since the age of five, even that is possible.

Certain kinds of exercises that would be uncomfortable are excluded but she points out there are some aspects of her teaching that are specially beneficial such as meditation and deep relaxation techniques.

She often uses music and says many yoga movements help mums-to-be to link more closely with their unborn babies.

Roz owes her earliest skills to her Afro-Indian nanny when she was a child in South Africa.

She went on throughout her life to develop and broaden the art and says she gets much inspiration from the people who come to her classes and those she teaches on a one-to-one basis.

Her influence continues to spread and will go world-wide soon with her contribution to a "Home Health Show" TV programme this month on the Discovery Health Channel.

Anyone who would like to know more about Roz's work and her teaching in Wyre Forest should ring 01384 877612.