Meditate your way through Childbirth

Meditation can help to ease childbirth by creating a peaceful and comfortable experience. Flying Start talks to Barbara Ford-Hammond from The Mind Emporium about the history, the process and the benefits of meditating your way through childbirth.

As more women begin to realise that they can take control of their labour, alternative birthing methods such as meditation are becoming more popular. With the ability to practise during a hospital birth, a home birth, or wherever the baby decides it is time, meditation doesn’t dismiss extra help, it is meant to be entirely complementary. ?

A peaceful atmosphere is known to ensure the birthing process is a calm and comfortable experience for mother and baby. Meditation complements this by calming nerves and reducing stress in preparation for delivery by training the subconscious to create the natural relaxed states that are needed for a positive birth experience. “Hypnotic meditative techniques increase the natural production of beta-endorphins, serotonin and oxytocin. The release of this natural chemical pleasure cocktail reduces stress, lowers blood pressure and reduces discomfort naturally,” says Barbara Ford-Hammond.

Barbara first discovered the benefits of meditation while recovering from major back surgery 20 years ago. “Injury had left me disabled until I had an operation to put rods and screws into my spine. I used hypnotic meditation for pain management, to help sleep and to accelerate the healing process.” Since then, she has been running her own private practice and the Bliss Through Childbirth Meditation CD is the culmination of many years teaching and sharing techniques.

Bliss Through Childbirth Meditation is designed for women who are planning to make a baby, are already pregnant and even those who have babies due next week. Barbara teaches hypnotic meditation and has realised over the years that people can quickly learn how to put themselves in the state so it doesn’t need to be made more difficult than it is. “Once learnt, it is easily replicated. Some people like to take classes but many prefer to use the process in the privacy of their homes where the mother and birthing partner can become ‘experts’ at their own rate. Some birthing partners take on the role of using triggers such as touch or key phrases to remind the mother of the process. The meditation can be started at any time and can help relieve discomforts, nausea and sickness at any stage of pregnancy. The mother learns how to completely relax and recognise that each stage of labour is exciting, as she can feel her baby is getting closer to being born,” says Barbara.

Talking about the history of meditation during childbirth, Barbara tells Flying Start: “I think humans have probably always used it in one form or another. The Lamaze Technique is known for utilising a relaxed, peaceful environment and breathing techniques have been used for longer than most people can remember.”?
Barbara explains that our bodies possess a brainwave patterning that denotes the amount of activity we are experiencing. In the normal thinking, sometimes stressful state, we are in beta. If we relax and meditate, we are in alpha. In this state we are at our creative best and experience calm control. During the state of deep relaxation, we go into theta where we dream and our imaginations can be vivid. Deep sleep shows the pattern as delta where not much happens.

“We mostly go through beta and alpha during the day and down to delta during the night. If we don’t get enough calm or peace through the day by experiencing alpha it becomes hard to rest fully at night. When this happens we wake up feeling un-rested and cluttered with old stress. Stress can sit about in our bodies and mind causing aches, pains and stress related illnesses. Over time, this becomes habitual and damaging to health. If there has been a previous stressful birth there may be left over tensions but these can be reduced by learning to relax fully before labour begins,” explains Barbara.

Using meditative techniques regularly helps to reset a ‘normal’ while boosting our immune system. The more relaxed we are, the more comfortable we are, while having a baby as well as generally. There are also benefits for the baby too, as they react to their environment and the stress of the mother. When relaxation occurs the baby is able to be free from anxiety before and after birth. If the mother is anxious, it causes muscles to tighten that create pain but in a calm state the muscles can do exactly what they are meant to do; contract and relax in an harmonic rhythm to gently, comfortably ease the baby out. ?

Barbara explains that people react differently to meditation and have differing ideas depending on their personal experience and although a personal choice, it can be useful for the birthing partner to be privy to it in case the mother needs guidance or extra support. “If the partner uses the method too it will also reduce any tensions they may have as anxieties might spread to affect the mother,” she says.
Barbara believes that meditation during childbirth will continue to become increasingly popular as more people begin to realise just how simple it is to learn the techniques, which can then be transferred and used in any situation. “It sets off a natural cycle and when babies and children are massaged, spoken to softly or read to they are in a gentle meditation state. Pure bliss!”  ?


The Bliss Through Childbirth Meditation can be listened to as many times as desired through pregnancy: it will create a calm confident approach to enable a positive birth. Barbara says: “Using the colours of the rainbow, we have created a unique method to minimise discomfort and worry. Meditating while using colourful hypnotic techniques empowers the listener to create the desired response in any part of the body whether that is for relaxation, pain relief or simply feelings of wellbeing and pleasure.”
Visit www.themindemporium.com for more details on Bliss Through Childbirth Meditation.