It's All In The Language

It's all in the language. Whatever you want happen, you name it, and that's what goes on.

A recent mom from my Hypnobirthing class followed my exercise to create her Ideal Birth. It's about when the labor starts, how it goes and how she behaves in it, in the narrative form.

Her birth was going to start on Saturday. That's what her story told. She was going to visit with her parents in their country house in New Jersey, for a day, to spend some nice time at the beach, (it was a summer day,) and after that she would return to labor at home with her husband Jeff. On Sunday, in the morning, she would be dilated 8 cm, and with her doula, she would go to the hospital. At 3pm, she notes, "My boy comes out happy and calm. We are all elated and celebrate by smiling and hugging."

Loui came out at 3:15pm that Sunday.

Maria was indeed elated and very serene throughout the whole scene.

When Jeff, her husband, called me to share the news with me, and she got on the phone, still excited and elated, I asked her admiringly: "How were you able to pull that off?" She said simply, "You taught that it is all in the language, didn't you? I took it to heart and... to ear and practiced with my baby."

Turns out she created that story Ideal Birth with incredible detail, as required by exercise. Each night she asked her husband to recite it to her, and she relived each detail, each motion, each movement, each emotion, each word of it with heart. She cried each time her baby was born, each night, with happiness. She revivified how simple it was for her to keep calm, because she breathed deeply, and relaxed seriously. Her body learned to relax so deeply, her mind let go so completely, that each night her husband Jeff told her the story she lived the story of her birth, with surges, with changing positions, with arms around his neck in virtual dance, with baby quietly listening to the story over and over.

It is no wonder when labor started the only option her body new was to move through the motions of the exercise. In her pre-conditioned over a period of weeks body, and mind, the only option to her behavior was what was described in the story: Calm, peaceful, focused labor deep breathing through surges, concentrated determined relaxation.

But I am still at awe, what our mind can do. I have been teaching hypnosis for over a decade. I have taught this exercise to hundreds of coupes. More than 90 per cent of my couples had a great birth because of this exercise. Yet, I am still in fascination about the power of our mind.

Dr. Imoto, a Japanese doctor, did an experiment. In one petri dish the monks poured water and whispered to it loving words, angelic wisdoms, and then froze the water. Perfect crystalline structures were the consequence of that experiment. In another petri dish they poured water and whispered ugly, hating words to it, and after freezing that water, the broken structures without rule came out.

Positive words have power beyond all limitations, influencing human behavior beyond belief.

Negative words have power as well, and they influence human behavior too. Only which ones are more useful to the outcome we want?

Would you rather have anger or calmness?

Pain or pleasure?

If your answer is calmness, or pleasure, what are you willing to give up in order to have that? Would you give up bad habits, indecision, and doubt in favor of enthusiasm for practice conditioning your body and mind once or twice a day with a set of positive action suggestions?

In my HypnoBirthing class, I often suggest, that in order to have what you want, you must decide to have it. Many say, in labor, I want to have as little pain as possible. And look, our brain works this way: as soon as you say the word pain, your attention is on pain, searching for it all over your body, and.... finding it! Thinking about it multiplies the sensations.

Instead choose to use your imagination and create the scenes of your favorite places. Like one mom-to-be knew she can't have the conditions for her labor in the way she wants, and she learns to use her imagination, with visualizations of the beach, warm sunshine and ocean caressing her belly, conditioning her brain with neurologically useful exercises for increased production of oxytocin. 

Listen to what Amber, the birthing mom from documentary Orgasmic Birth, had to say: "I knew I had to choose between pain and pleasure, and I kept choosing the pleasure, and thinking about it, made me feel pleasure deeper and deeper. And then, Nassim [husband] and I had out most mushy kiss, and I became so soft, and the waves of softness just kept coming through me, with pleasure, almost orgasmic kind of pleasure, until I could not contain it anymore and I just let it out, and that's when the baby moved all the way down."

The other day I heard from a couple who didn't want to practice. In the class they said, neah, we both are so busy, have no time, this class is just for the information. Mom-to-be is a very busy corporate person, and dad-to-be is away on tours much of the time. Their consensus was that it is enough to read the book. At week 35 of her pregnancy mom went on a business trip to LA. Well, the baby didn't like such attitude and turned breach but instead of relaxing and taking care of the baby's position using hypnosis, the c-section was scheduled. To avoid difficulties, allow yourself to relax more often and learn to follow the flow.

We use language in a habituated way, often without noticing what is being communicated. Start paying attention to what you say to yourself and others, as a simple way of controlling your own hypnotic suggestions. 

I am here to educate you about your opportunities and choices, and to inspire you to take steps to have what you want, so your baby has the experience the baby deserves. It is important to begin exercising your parenting skills way before the baby arrives. Then the whole new generation of well adjusted, easy learning, caring and compassionate leaders emerges from the peaceful and calm birthing experience you have.

-- Morrin Bass, PhD 

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New York Awareness Center

Orgasmic Birthing

Not pushing in labor is something unheard of, particularly if you choose to birth in a hospital. Despite the orientation of your provider, and they might be very pro-natural birth, pushing is something that is "naturally" associated with birthing. Or is it?

What if you make other choices? Let's look at the most pleasant birthing selecting "Orgasmic" birth concept from the same title documentary.

What the orgasmic mother Amber tells us is that at the time of "Uterine activity" she made choices every moment to feel the pleasure of the baby's movement down her birth path, and at the height of this experience, and with the kiss of her husband, the baby just slipped out within that orgasmic release.

Natural Oxytocins - hormones of pleasure, released into the mother's system at the time of labor and birth, so flood the blood flow, that birth becomes the most pleasurable moment of your life.

By choice. So this means you have to make this choice.

Find out how you can have a pleasurable birthing in your HypnoBirthing class.


Click on this link for HypnoBirthing classes now open for enrollment. 
Contact Morrin Bass for more information.

Why Pushing Is Not Necessary…..

Why Pushing Is Not Necessary…..

Most experienced midwives know and wholeheartedly agree with Marie Mongan’s concept of HypnoBirthing and what Mongan is saying about pushing.

Pushing, not even excessive pushing, but just pushing, can be detrimental in labor, particularly in final stages of labor.

When a woman is taught to push, she is pushing the baby’s body against the opening that is not open yet enough to let the baby through. She is pushing, urging the baby to come out, and the baby’s body and the mother’s body are not yet synchronized in their readiness. While pushing the baby he mother  misunderstands the references she is working with.

What is implied in the HypnoBirthing philosophy is that a woman should listen to her body and wait for signals. For this ability to listen to her body and to “hear” what her body tells her is happening, a woman needs to prepare herself ahead of labor with exercises in relaxation so she can be attuned to her body. In the last stages of labor there will appear the “urge” to push.

In her book HypnoBirthing Marie Mongan suggests that the urge to push is a conditioned response, and midwives know this as reference to the rectal pressure that all women feel, and that many women translate as "an urge to push". They say they feel the pressure and then have an urge to push and then they DECIDE to push with that pressure.

On the contrary, rectal pressure is ONLY RECTAL PRESSURE and should not be interpreted as pushing urges.

We are so conditioned that when we feel pressure on our rectums we must sit down on the toilet. Pushing out the poop is a normal sequence to feeling that rectal pressure.

If you don’t sit on the toilet and push the poop back in, what happens?

Your poop would eventually COME OUT BY ITSELF!!

There is also an element of pleasure associated with doing your number 2. Freud referred to it since very early childhood experiences, when at the age of 3 all children experiment with holding their poop and then letting it out, experiencing a suggested secondary sexual pleasure.

Back to birth....so when a baby has moved very low into the moms pelvis she will feel rectal pressure from the baby’s head. First she begins to experience this pressure feeling it at the peak of every surge. Then she begins to feel it during the whole surge, intensifying at the peak. Eventually, the rectal pressure is constant, peaking higher with each surge and her muscles begin to propel the baby downward. It is a REFLEXIVE action. She cannot DECIDE to do it or not. Her body does it, and beautifully. THIS IS WHAT WE ARE WAITING FOR!!!

The trick to pleasure is while she is having those rectal pressure urges, she MUST BE BREATHING, utilizing the HypnoBirthing Birth Breathing.

During the final stage of labor, when experiencing the Urge Surge, mom’s job is to breathe!

Dads! READ THIS: Keep her focused on her breathing, otherwise she may shift her attention to her sensations and then her pleasure will escape.

The intensity of her muscles working may make her breath catch for a moment...this is ok...she should continue to listen to her body and breathe her baby DOWN. Some moms feel that bearing down during the peak of this surge is helpful and feels good (even orgasmic). Other moms feel better if they only allow their uterus to work and they breathe. The important thing is for her to listen to HER WISE BODY and to be given the space and respect to do so. AND BREATHE!

Happy Birthing!