How many brilliantly skilful sportsmen do we see choking under pressure, essentially sabotaged by their conscious minds? It is not that dissimilar in childbirth.
Negative thoughts and beliefs have a direct effect on our body in childbirth: when we approach birth feeling fearful and expecting it to be painful, our bodies tense up and we experience pain which then re-ignites the fear and so on. This is known as the Fear-Tension-Pain cycle.
So much of the deep-rooted fear that many of us have in relation to birth is based on negative stories in the media (the very unrealistic and dramatic One Born Every Minute for example) or beliefs we have from our own upbringing. All of this gets stored in our subconscious, resurfacing its ugly head in labour and getting in the way of the natural process of hormones and uterus muscles working together in harmony.
Hypnobirthing works on the subconscious mind, to reframe some of these negative ideas that we take as facts, and create new positive beliefs in pregnancy and birth.
“When you change the way you see birth, the way you birth will change.” Marie Mogan
