Hypnosisis a natural state. Although its name stems from the Greek word for sleep, it's not quite the same thing. In hypnosis, your conscious attention is diverted or relaxed. It's more like the twilight before and after sleep -- you're aware of everything going on around you, you are just more focused on the inner world than the outer one.
A good example is when you are so completely engrossed in a movie that at the end you’re surprised to look up and find yourself in the theater.
Most people have experienced “highway hypnosis,” which is when you get in the car, you're driving along, you start thinking about something and then suddenly you're at work or home! You may have no recollection of the last few minutes. You know you must have been conscious on some level – you didn’t crash – but your attention was diverted. If there had been an emergency, like a siren sounding or a car cutting in front of you, you would have snapped back to the present.
With self-hypnosis, you're simply learning to put yourself in that deep state where your conscious mind is napping. That allows access to the subconscious mind -- the part of you that holds the key to the mind-body connection. Your subconscious mind is the seat of your imagination, your memory and of your Autonomic Nervous System -- in other words, it controls the thousands of things your body does every second just to keep going: your breathing, your heart rate, your digestion, your eye blinking. It even controls the nerve messages that your body sends to your brain from all your senses. When you touch something hot a message gets sent to your brain -- 'ooh, hot, hot, hot!' Your brain can then send a message back, 'Well then, move your hand.' Problem solved.
To experience pain you need both elements -- the sensory input and its interpretation by the mind. You can think of plenty of examples of experiences that can be interpreted in more than one way. The physical experiences of excitement and terror are pretty close, aren't they? The hair on the back of your neck stands up. Your heart pounds. You're screaming. But there's a difference between being threatened in a fight and riding a roller-coaster! And we all know we can lessen physical pain simply by diverting attention -- a child who is smarting from a shot at the doctor's office forgets the sting when a lollypop appears. And what about athletes? A runner can be so focused on finishing the race she doesn't even notice the blister -- but when she stops, it begins to throb.
Now, pain that serves a purpose should be listened to. If that runner had broken her ankle, she might be damaged by ignoring the pain and running another 2 miles. To be safe, we must respect pain's role as a signal. But when pain is unnecessary, we can safely turn off the switch that allows the nerves to relay their messages. We'll feel movement, but the pain receptor is switched off.
A normal, healthy childbirth is one of those occasions when pain serves no purpose. A great deal of the pain modern women experience comes from our expectation of pain. Another factor is something called the Fear, Tension, Pain sequence. This is common sense. Take that injection at the doctor's office, for example -- if you're afraid of needles, you tense your arm, the muscles and skin tighten and the needle needs more force to pierce the skin. An even lovelier example is hemorrhoids. If you squeeze that sphincter tight and push against it at the same time, well, something's got to give -- ouch. But relax, stretch, slow down and let the peristaltic waves carry the waste forth in their gentle rhythm and everything moves along swimmingly.
In most births, the movements of the uturus as it prepares to push the baby down and out the birth canal have a grace and an ease and a rhythm all their own. That's why Hypnobabies refers to them as birthing waves and never "contractions." When you're relaxed, prepared and ready to float along these waves, you shut off just the messages that might be interpreted as pain. At the same time, you are open and receptive to all of the adjustments in position and breathing that help baby get what he needs. The whole process is easy, calm and gentle. Our moms learn to "breathe the baby out."
Most Hypnobabies moms report their hypnosis gave them less pain, fewer drugs, more natural birth, faster recovery, easier breast-feeding and more alert babies. Imagine looking into your newborn's eyes -- both of you awake, joyful and calm! Read the stories of families who have experienced Hypnobabies births at the network's central website, here.
For more information, feel free to contact me at stephanie@VossHypnotics.com
or by phone at (323) 478-1920 or (310) 994-6028
