So what is HypnoBirthing and how can it help you?
What is HypnoBirthingâ„¢ you ask? HypnoBirthingâ„¢ is a tried and proven method that guides and prepares a woman in giving birth in a peaceful and extraordinarily beautiful manner. It is a program a that considers the psychological, as well as the physical, well-being of the mother, her birth partner, and the newborn, independent of context, whether that be in the quiet of a home, a hospital, or a birth center.
The HypnoBirthingâ„¢ program is built around an educational process that includes special breathing, relaxation, visualization, meditative practice, attention to nutrition and positive body toning. Most importantly it fosters an air of mutual respect for the birthing family, as well as the health-care provider in a traditional health-care system or an alternative setting.
We know you have many choices and many decisions to make for your birthing experience. You have choices in selecting your care provider; you have choices in selecting the environment in which you will bring your baby into the world. Another important choice is that of the childbirth education classes you will choose to prepare for the birth of your baby. We know you will be happy with your choice of HypnoBirthingâ„¢.
The overall effect of practicing HypnoBirthing™ techniques is that birthing parents are better able to appreciate the benefits of calm, gentle birthing, making the experience a joyful one for mother, baby, and birth companion—benefits that can last a life time.
Contemporary women in our culture hold an unprecedented fear of giving birth, too often associating it with excruciating pain, thereby causing their bodies to become unable to perform what should be a normal physiological function. HypnoBirthing™ is a unique method of relaxed, natural childbirth education enhanced by self‑hypnosis and guided imagery techniques that allow women to use their natural abilities to bring about safer, easier, and more comfortable birthing.
HypnoBirthing™ techniques teach woman how to release all prior programming about birth to free herself of limiting thoughts and emotions that lead to pain-causing fear and resistant muscles. When giving birth with HypnoBirthing™, a mother is not in a trance or asleep but instead in a state of deep relaxation—awake, aware, and fully in control.
In a series of five confidence-building classes, they learn what makes labour hurt; but more importantly, they learn the logic behind why labour doesn’t have to hurt and what they can do about it. Moms and their birth companions study the physical and chemical changes that occur over a period of time when fear and anxiety are allowed to accumulate. This awareness of the fight, flight, or freeze response helps them to choose calm. They practice HypnoBirthing™ techniques in class, designed to help them see the relationship between fear and the possibility of pain. These exercises become life skills that also shore up their parenting skills. Armed with this knowledge, the pattern of calming techniques and steps that they learn helps them to create endorphins and avoid the effect of the negative hormones that cause their bodies to constrict, rather than open.
The five-week series includes a HypnoBirthingâ„¢ techniques textbook, relaxation CD, and everything you need to know to reconnect with your birthing instincts and create an amazing birthing experience.
The HypnoBirthingâ„¢ Premise
For most of their lives, women have been inundated with the negative stories of other women’s birth experiences. Everyone, from their mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, friends, and even strangers, wants to tell them the horrors of giving birth. They have been conditioned to believe that excruciating pain is associated with labour; and because of this, women today hold an unprecedented fear of giving birth. This extreme fear causes their bodies to become tense, and that tension prohibits their bodies from easily performing a normal physiological function. The result is exactly what they feared most–long, painful birthing or unnecessary intervention.
People who are drawn to HypnoBirthingâ„¢ have long been searching for a way to give birth confidently and as calmly, safely, and gently as possible, whether they have chosen to birth in a hospital, a birthing center, or at home. Until HypnoBirthingâ„¢, this kind of birthing almost seemed unattainable for the general population.
Through a very simple program of self-hypnosis and education, healthy, low-risk women, as well as women who need medical assistance because of special circumstances, learn to dismiss fear-based stories, misinformation, and birthing myths; and they are helped to see birth as normal. They learn to trust that their bodies know how to bring their babies into the world in the calm and gentle way that Nature intended.