What is HypnoBirthing®?

This is the question I get asked most about what I do.

Some people have some weird ideas about what HypnoBithing® is. So I'm going to start by explaining what it isn't. It isn't me teaching your partner how to brain train you into clucking like a chicken throughout your labour. It isn't some weird hippie thing that will promises an orgasmic birthing experience (it's a thing - google it, but probably not at work). It is not solely for women who want a drug free natural birth. 

It is a bunch of relaxation and breathing techniques that help you relieve some of the discomfort you may feel during labour. 

Yep that is really all it is. 

The techniques you learn help you go into a deep state of relaxation activating your subconscious. During your practice you imprint beautiful ideas and thoughts around your birthing experience. You then use the relaxation techniques during labour to bring forth all the positive beliefs you have around birth to help you receive your baby in the most positive and gentle way possible. 

But can that really help with pain? Yes and no. We, HypnoBirthers, very rarely talk about pain during childbirth as it is both a cultural and relatively modern concept. In some cultures it is not considered to be painful at all. So in that respect it cannot help with 'pain' during childbirth. It does allow a woman to go deeply into her birthing body and work with the physiological aspects of labour to assist her to birth in the way her body is meant to birth. 

OKay that last bit sounds a bit weird - you have probably heard that labour IS painful. VERY PAINFUL! For some women without the appropriate knowledge then it is going to be painful because they have an expectation it will be painful and no techniques to help deal with that pain and the end up in a Fear -> Tension -> Pain cycle.


As birth has become radically medicalised over the last eighty years this pain is the norm. This natural event has been taken behind closed doors and women are holding onto it like it is a dirty secret instead of embracing the experience, sharing it - rejoicing in it. Consequently many women are going into birth with nothing but bad birth stories or even worse - no idea at all. HypnoBirthing® is just about educating expecting Mama's and their birth partners on the physiological process of birth, how to get your ideal labour from care providers and some techniques for you to manage labour with as little discomfort as possible. 

So how can it be for all women - it seems like I am advocating for a drug free vaginal birth? I kind of am - kind of. HypnoBirthing® works on the belief that without special circumstances all women are able to birth without drugs and naturally (I personally hate using that word as i feel it is judgmental but natural and vaginal births are considered the same). However there are sometimes special circumstances that will require medical intervention. If those are applicable to you then HypnoBirthing® helps with that to. As well as the techniques you learn for your birth we teach you and your partner to know what to ask care providers throughout your pregnancy, birth and beyond to make fully informed decisions. We also have a special program just for Mama's to be who know they will be having a a Cesarean birth. Because above all we believe that being in charge of your care will give you a beautiful birth experience.