Month seven Q&A

Q: Please explain what hypnobirthing is? A: Karin answers: Hypnobirthing is a childbirth education programme that promotes a natural approach to a safe and more comfortable birth. The mother and father are empowered with the skills and confidence to create a gentle birth experience. Parents learn how to develope self-hypnosis tools to relax the body, eliminate fears, replace negative beliefs with accurate information, create a positive future focus, facilitate the parent-child bond, and manage pain. Hypnosis accesses the subconscious mind, which controls about 80 percent of who we are and why we do/feel what we do/feel. The subconscious mind is responsible for managing all the automatic processes in the body, such as birthing, that we can’t control with our conscious minds. The subconscious also functions as our collective memory. This is where we keep the fears, beliefs and defences that we aren’t even conscious of. We can’t birth with our conscious minds. Birth is an instinctive and automatic process that is managed by the wisdom of the body. The key to our birthing confidence lies here. The woman’s body is genetically programmed to birth, but the way in which we use our minds can interfere with this natural process. People are generally so stressed that they find it difficult to unwind and the stressor hormones are a major contributing factor to prolonged and painful birth. Our negative thoughts, worries, fears and perceptions create stress that in turn creates tension in all the muscles of the body, including the uterus, which is supposed to relax and open during birthing. Through intentional focus, we can relax the body and mind to surrender to our birthing instincts. Hypnobirthing offers much more than just birth preparation. Because the father or partner is trained as the birth companion, this allows them to feel like they’re a useful part of the birthing process. Mindfulness and bonding in pregnancy and birthing can help create the best start to life for baby, allowing the baby to feel welcomed into this world. It will also help create a positive, transformative experience for the parents.