You’ve probably read or heard a bit about HypnoBirthing and perhaps have seen the class syllabus, or maybe even looked at the HypnoBirthing official website, but what is it really and what do you get from having taken the class? And why are some HypnoBirthing classes using capitalized letters and others (hypnobirthing) using lowercase?
First, here’s what you’ll learn from HypnoBirthing: (Tip: the GOLD is in the mental prep. We’ll get to that below!)
HypnoBirthing vs. hypnobirthing
Now, I’ll clear up the difference between HypnoBirthing and hypnobirthing so we know what we are talking about. HypnoBirthing with a capital “H” & “B” is the original HypnoBirthing curriculum created by Marie Mongan. Those of us who teach HypnoBirthing were trained by HypnoBirthing International created by Marie Mongan and have to uphold the standards and qualifications of HBI yearly. There are some strict guidelines to ensure the quality of the education and Marie Mongan’s vision. We use all of HBI’s tried and true books and materials in our teaching.
Hypnobirthing is a general term for hypnosis based birth education. There are lots of different practitioners and styles of hypnobirthing. Some of them, like Marie Mongan, where inspired by doctor Grantly Dick-Read’s work Childbirth Without Fear and another was inspired by hypnotherapist Gerald Kein. They all use a form of hypnosis for deep relaxation and give tools for managing discomfort in labor and most will teach physiological birth education so that you have a complete understanding of labor and birth. They each have their own differences that make them a bit unique and reading up on each will allow you to evaluate those differences and pick the one that you are most drawn to.
There are also a lot of people offering low cost live and online recorded classes for hypnobirthing or birth education who do not belong to a larger organization. In this case, there is no organization guaranteeing the quality of the education or continued learning. These instructors could be teaching anything so it’s important to speak with the instructor or with others who have taken the course and have used it to birth to ensure its quality.
Online vs. In Person
Lastly, there are online and in person courses. When possible, I recommend in person classes so that you can have a guide to take you through the material, answer your questions along the way, adjust the learning for your needs, and have a community and a team of support to help you succeed before, during and after birth.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, opt for a live online class so that you get almost all of the benefits of an in person class. The only thing you’re missing is well, actually being in the same room as others.
Having said that, sometimes a recorded class is all that works with your schedule and/or budget and taking a recorded class is still WAY better than nothing. So, do what works best for you and what you know you’ll be able to complete and practice.
Now that we know the difference between live and online classes and HypnoBirthing versus hypnobirthing, as a teacher of live taught HypnoBirthing, I’ll go into more detail about what it really is an what you get from it. Since it’s regulated and it’s what I teach, I can talk about it with confidence.
So, what is HypnoBirthing REALLY about?
Imagine that you are around 40 weeks pregnant, give or take a week or two, your hospital/birth center bag is ready or you’ve got your birthing tub and supplies ready for your home birth and the car seat is installed. Your physical space is ready.
Then you feel your baby move and it sends a wave of love throughout you and you put your hands on your belly and in your mind’s eye, you send a sweet message to baby about how you are ready to meet them, when they are ready to come, and perhaps tell them what you’ve done to prepare for them and what kind of family they are coming into, a family filled with love for them and each other.
Then you take a calm breath in to a count of 4 and exhale to a count of 8 relaxing even more completely into the moment. You are looking forward to birthing and when you think of bringing your baby into this world, you feel excited, at peace, and incredibly strong. You know exactly how to work with your body in labor, how to trust your natural instincts to guide you through it and have a the tools you need to stay present in your body and work with the changing sensations as your birth. You have prepared your mind and practiced daily deep relaxation so that you can birth from your strongest place, fully present and confident in your mind and body and ready to fully experience the journey and embracing the unknown. You have prepared your mind.
Which is more important for how your will experience pregnancy, birth and becoming a parent: What goes into your hospital bag? or What’s in your mind? What are you really carrying into your birth? What “baggage” are you bringing in?
After all, where does the “experience” of your birth come from? Your mind! What goes in your hospital bag is easy, but what’s in your mind takes more effort and, I’d like to offer up, is everything in preparing for birth and your new life + 1.
As I mentioned at the beginning, HypnoBirthing teaches you how to prepare your mind so that your body can birth instinctively by teaching:
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Mind/Body Techniques
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3 Breathing Techniques
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Visualizations
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Physiological Birth Education
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Fear Release
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Affirmations
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Teaching and empowering the birth partner
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Bonding & The Fourth Trimester
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Choosing & Communicating with your care team
How HypnoBirthing helps you prepare your mind – The GOLD
It does this by helping you work with your unconscious mind (see the image above), where all of your habits, beliefs, and fears are stored so that, when it’s time to birth and become a parent, YOU, all of you, are truly ready to embrace the journey ahead from a place of strength, not fear.
Why do you need to work with the unconscious mind?
The unconscious mind is where your your body operates from. You aren’t consciously telling your heart to beat. You aren’t consciously influencing your immune system. You can’t consciously tell your birthing system to birth properly. These systems run unconsciously. These systems, the body, are also influenced by each and every thought you have, whether conscious or unconscious! So, if you aren’t consciously aware of stress, fear or unhelpful beliefs, your body is very aware and is responding to every thought at every moment. So, if you have fears from birth stories you’ve heard or by simply existing in the western culture (where most media images and western medicine give a distorted view of birth) it will absolutely influence how your body births. We can’t escape the influence of our mind over our body. The mind & body are one completely interconnected system. We must learn to work with our mind to create harmony between our mind and body as we prepare for birth.
Are you sure I can’t just use my conscious mind and tell myself to relax?
Nope, the conscious mind is limited (the the iceberg image above). Have you ever tried to tell yourself after eating a whole bag of treats , or after not exercising again “Next time, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to stick to my goals.” How did telling yourself, in this very conscious way to “change now!” work for you? Probably not very well! And it’s not your fault. Habits, your beliefs about your ability to succeed, and your fears aren’t in your conscious mind. They are in your unconscious mind. It’s a whole lot more productive to go there to change them into helpful habits and empowering beliefs that are no longer holding you back. So, the unconscious mind is what we will access to do this work.
So why is this mental prep so often overlooked?
In the modern culture, mental prep is often overlooked because it takes patience and continued practice over time and a teacher who is well trained in changework, such as hypnosis, NLP, HNLP and other modalities. Changing habits is going to take however much time it needs to and it can be hard to let go of knowing exactly when this change will take place and to keep practicing without knowing.
However, this alone is a great lesson. After all, you don’t know how your birth will go. You don’t know who your child will be. You don’t know what tomorrow holds for you. When you can let go of thinking you can actually know, then you can enjoy what is. When you think about what you want from your life, from your birth, from being a parent, I’m guessing enjoying it is a big part of it! You can begin that practice now, as you prepare for birth, by creating a habit of calm and confidence in your intuition, especially when faced with the unknown.
How do you begin?
Enroll in a HypnoBirthing class! However, before you even start class, as a first step, I encourage expectant parents to be curious about what’s happening in their mind and body. What are you saying to yourself throughout the day? Is it empowering or critical? What images pop into your mind as you think about birth? Are they positive or negative? When you feel worried or stressed, how do you know you are worried and stressed? Where do you feel it in your body? When you are at ease how do you know? What in your body and mind tell you you are at ease? Begin to notice what is happening in your mind and body. Once you know what’s happening, you have the power and awareness to change what isn’t helping you meet your goals.
Developing this curiosity mindset will help those, who take the time to develop it, in every single area of their life, allowing a richness of experience, learning and growth to enhance and open up their life to limitless possibility. That sounds worth the 15 min a day of practice, doesn’t it? After all, as Archilochus said, “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”
“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”
Archilochus
How do you want to prepare for birth?
If you’d like to prepare for the experience of birth then you’ll need to prepare your mind to feel at peace with birth and your birthing body, to feel strong beyond measure, to feel completely confident in your and your birth partner’s ability to make sound evidence based decisions. You can’t simply pack your hospital bag and be ready. You need to learn how to use your mind and clean up some “baggage” and make room for what’s to come. This is what HypnoBirthing offers.
Lastly, each HypnoBirthing teacher brings themselves, their education and their experience to their teaching. Find a teacher who can enrich class with what you need to help get you where you need to go. I’ve made it my mission to help parents take this learning and connect it to the rest of their lives so that, instead of preparing for just one day, you are preparing for the rest of your life.
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