What is Hypnobirthing?
Image credit: Ella’s Wholesome Life
Guest entry by wonderful Indi, who runs Hypnobirthing courses at CAYC.
During your pregnancy you may have heard of the term “hypnobirthing”. Through friends, other mums or mums to be.
Perhaps you’ve been told that it’s a form of pain relief or a way to “breathe your baby out”, but hypnobirthing is SO much more than that, and I am here to bust the myths and explain how exactly this incredible practice works.
Sometimes Hypnobirthing is thought of as a “pain free birth”, that isn’t how Hypnobirthing works though, Instead Hypnobirthing works on the premise that there isn’t any pain there in the first place.
Through education, knowledge, hypnosis, and much more, hypnobirthing embeds a new and powerful belief system into our subconscious mind, rewriting the way we think about birth, showing us that there is nothing to be fearful of, and in turn creating a powerful, positive and beautiful birthing experience.
We are only born with two fears, and that is the fear of falling and fear of loud noises. Everything else we find ourselves fearful of is learnt through things we hear and see, creating our opinions, ways of viewing certain things and our beliefs.
Hypnobirthing helps us to unlearn all of the negative stories and ideas we have around childbirth, which admittedly we see a lot more of than the positive births, because let’s face it, a calm and peaceful birth is never going to make good TV.
Once we start to look into it, there are so many positive birth stories out there and proof that hypnobirthing is extremely powerful.
But even if you’re feeling skeptical about all of this (skepticism is very welcome by the way), or you know you’re having an induction of labour or c-section, hypnobirthing is still hugely beneficial for more than just a natural labour.
It can give you huge amounts of confidence in your body and everything it is capable of, through learning more about it, your mind and your nervous system. You will walk away from a hypnobirthing course feeling empowered, and hugely proud of everything you and your body are doing during this incredible time.
In a cesarean birth, Hypnobirthing can help keep you calm and give you ideas of how you could ask your caregivers to mimic certain aspects of a natural birth, as well as ways of creating a positive and oxytocin filled cesarean experience, providing a beautiful and calm environment for your baby to arrive into.
It is so normal to feel anxious during pregnancy, even if it isn’t about the birth itself, during a hypnobirthing course we run through relaxation techniques and hypnosis scripts, which are amazing ways of managing your nervous system and keeping you calm in the lead up to birth, the different stages of labour and providing you with ways of promoting a natural flow of oxytocin through your body (which is your best friend during pregnancy).
Indi, founder of Yoga, Birth and Beyond will be leading our next Hypnobirthing afternoon:
Saturday 11th January from 12 - 4:30pm.
