The breathing and relaxation exercises in the previous chapters are fundamental elements of HypnoBirthing and should be practiced daily. The visualization exercises are merely tools to help you during labor. You may find one or all of them useful to calm your mind and relax your body. Therefore, you should experiment to find the ones you like. These visualization exercises, while helpful, do not need to be part of your daily routine. The exception is Rainbow Relaxation.
Rainbow Relaxation
Rainbow Relaxation is the basic visualization technique of HypnoBirthing. Mom should practice the entire Rainbow every day by mentally following the outline that follows or with the Rainbow Relaxation CD (available through the HypnoBirthing Institute). If you are in a HypnoBirthing class, your practitioner will provide you with the CD.
The background music, “The Comfort Zone,” is a composition by Steven Halpern, a world-renowned author, composer and recording artist whose sounds are designed to bring your thoughts into harmony with the natural flow of energy within your body. We have been using this piece, except for a very brief period of time, since the inception of HypnoBirthing. When we compared the results of the period when we weren’t using this tape with the results that we had before and after, we found that there is, indeed, a difference in the ease with which our mothers give birth when using this particular music tape or CD. We enthusiastically suggest that this music is conducive to bringing a laboring mother into a beautifully relaxed and comfortable state, creating a calm and peaceful birthing environment.
You should listen to the entire HypnoBirthing Rainbow Relaxation CD or mentally follow the outline for your own individual practice daily. If there are any words or images on the tape that you don’t feel comfortable with, just mentally substitute a word or a phrase that you feel better suits you and let that substitution bring you even deeper into relaxation. All hypnosis is self-hypnosis, and it’s important to know that no one else brings you into this state except yourself. Hypnosis is a therapy of consent. If you are finding that you need help in reaching a deep level of relaxation, speak to your practitioner so that together you can get to the root of why this is happening.
Often moms will question if the time they are spending in practice is working for them. They find that after one or two practice sessions, they no longer are able to stay with the material because they drift off into their own thoughts or they fall into a deep sleep. Actually, nothing could be better. If this should happen to you, be aware that you are not actually asleep. You have successfully conditioned your mind to respond immediately by bringing yourself into a state that seems like sleep. If this happens regularly, just know that your subconscious is tuned in to your practice sessions and is processing them for you. That is part of the conditioning effect.
For the purpose of conditioning your mind to relax, Rainbow Relaxation does not have a sequence or “story” to it. The repetition of the wording is especially designed to help you tune out your surroundings and bring you to the level of relaxation that you want to reach quickly. As pleasant as it may be, visualizing scenes in nature or spending an inordinate amount of time in progressive relaxation during your practice sessions is not necessary. Whether you mentally visualize the process, your birthing companion walks you through it or you listen to the CD, you will easily master the art after the first week if you allow yourself to just go with it. If you are enjoying the process, you may obtain other discs from the Institute, but the Rainbow exercise will do the trick for you if you are conditioning your mind and body to respond with deep relaxation.
The birth companion is an active participant throughout the birthing experience. Rather than an onlooker who vacillates between feeling helpless and unknowledgeable, in HypnoBirthing the birth companion is actually the trained facilitator and primary support person for the birthing mother. The perinatal bonding that takes place among mother, baby and the birthing companion during this wonderful interlude, combined with the mother’s conditioned relaxation, is the whole key to achieving a satisfying birth for all of you.
As often as possible, the birthing companion should practice the Rainbow Relaxation with you, following the outline below. This practice is important so that you will be able to drift into a deep level of relaxation on hearing your birth companion’s voice. When you practice with your birth companion, it is better to keep your sessions shorter, but more frequent. This will prevent your time together from becoming a lengthy chore that can be put off until you “can find more time.”
While reciting the sequence of colors, the birth companion should stroke your hand and arm in a soft upward motion, simulating the flow of natural relaxation that will drift throughout your body while you are in the thinning and opening phase of labor.
The Birth Companion’s Reading (page 142) provides a visualization of moving through labor that can help you to envision a smooth, calm birth. This can be practiced alternately with the Rainbow Relaxation. When you choose to use the Birth Companion’s Reading, have the mom picture herself stepping into the happy scene of both of you holding and bonding with your baby seconds after birth. This is an important visualization for creating an imprint of a positive, happy outcome.
The practice that you do together is intended to strengthen the conditioning that comes from your learning to respond to your birth companion’s voice and touch. It will also strengthen the bond between you as you anticipate your upcoming birthing.
Technique
• Find a place where you both can be comfortable and where the lighting is soft. Mom should be sitting in a chair with her head resting on the back of the chair or on a sofa with pillows beneath her head and shoulders so that the top of her body is elevated slightly.
• Mom, gently bring yourself into a deep state of relaxation—the kind you have been teaching yourself. Breathe in relaxation and breathe down relaxation throughout your body, using the Sleep Breathing technique.
• Once you have brought yourself into this calm state of relaxation, picture yourself gently resting on a bed of strawberry-colored mist that is about a foot and a half high. Picture the soft red mist as a mist of natural relaxation flowing through and around your body. Continue to relax until it seems that your body is almost weightless and seems to meld into the mist. Feel the colored mist caressing your shoulders, midriff, buttocks and legs. Allow yourself to “let go” and feel as though you are floating on the strawberry-colored mist. Feel the gentle sway. See this soft mist saturating your body as you go deeper into relaxation. Feel your body growing numb, almost as though it were a piece of soft, strawberry-colored cloth. Allow yourself to feel the mist of deep relaxation permeating your mind and body from the top of your head to your toes. Feel the tingling of relaxation on the soles of your feet. Imagine your own natural mist of relaxation swirling over and around your body—mind and body at peace and tranquil.
• Now picture yourself resting on a bed of pale, orange-colored mist, while your body becomes even more comfortable. Follow the same visualization as you did for the soft strawberry color. Imagine the colored mist sweeping across your body, starting at the top of your head, caressing your shoulders, chest, arms and legs, and slowly drifting all the way down to your feet. Again, feel the tingling of relaxation on the soles of your feet and know that you are going deeper in relaxation.
• Next picture yourself on a mist of soft yellow, with the colored mist surrounding your body, starting at the very top of your head and drifting down across your cheeks, jaws and mouth. Now the same quality of relaxation slips down across your shoulders, upper arms, elbows and hands, and wanders down through your abdomen, legs and to the very bottom of the soles of your feet.
• Continue the visualization until all the remaining colors of the rainbow have been envisioned—green, blue, indigo, then white for clarity.
• Now slowly bring yourself back to the room, feeling alert and energized.
Each visualization will cause you to become more profoundly relaxed. You may even experience a swaying sensation. This technique and imagery is important as it will be used by the birth companion along with the Glove Relaxation technique (page 149) during your birthing. These are the kinds of suggestions that will facilitate the flow of natural relaxation throughout your body while you are in the thinning and opening phase of labor.
The Birth Companion’s Reading
This reading is adapted from one originally composed by Henry Leo Bolduc for his wife, Joan, when they were preparing for the birth of their baby. The script appears in Henry’s book, Self-Hypnosis: Creating Your Own Destiny.
When I first read Henry’s script, I was touched by the beauty of his words. It is an outpouring of the awe with which a father views this wonderful miracle. Henry expresses a sensitivity to perinatal bonding when he points out that the attitude and philosophy of the mother and the birth companion are as much a gentle suggestion for the child during birthing as it is reassurance for the mother. Thanks to Henry for allowing me to incorporate a few HypnoBirthing images into his script.
New life is forming, growing and moving within you. You are part of the promise and the destiny of life itself. A very important event is taking place in your life . . . a wonderfully normal, natural, biological and spiritual event. You’re going to have a baby. What is happening now is the process of birthing and freeing the kicking, moving little being who’s been a part of your body for so long.
Soon it will be time for the baby to become its own separate person. One cycle is ending and, immediately, another is beginning. What has been called “labor” is that in-between experience . . . the fulcrum . . . that small, short period of time and space between the baby’s two worlds.
Change from one stage to another brings pressure, and then release. You will soon experience this as the change is completed and fulfilled. You can feel this and embrace it and welcome it as refreshing and totally natural.
With mind, you build a healthy attitude and happy expectation. Happy childbirth has much to do with a healthy, joyous, loving anticipation. It is something remarkably beautiful. Being a channel of new life is said to be a spiritual experience. With this understanding, total relaxation and serene breathing, all discomfort is lessened and often entirely absent.
As you begin labor, meditate on the tremendous universal force . . . the life force of nature with which you are in complete harmony during this experience.
Whenever you feel your body begin to surge, actively think “release” and “let go” of tension. There is a time for experiencing that uterine wave, flowing with it, and ultimately releasing and letting go.
You are learning to relax, to flow and melt with the very rhythm of life itself. With relaxation and positive expectation, you have come to know that all things are possible.
In your mind’s eye, picture the shore of a lake or an ocean. Watch the endless waves softly brushing to the shore . . . the ebb and flow of the water. Observe it advancing and withdrawing over the sand. Become a part of it, flowing into it. Become a part of the rhythm of the waves within your own body . . . the surge and release.
Breathe in the natural relaxants of your own body . . . endorphins, many times more effective than the strongest drugs known to man . . . create your own serenity and release it throughout your body . . . breathing in and breathing through . . . giving birth to your baby.
With proper physical, spiritual and mental exercise, you are preparing yourself for this wonderful celebration of life. As you get into the rhythm and work with your mind and body, the easier and smoother it becomes. Each time you hear your birth companion’s voice and feel the gentle touch, the more easily your relaxation deepens.
Breathe . . . slowly, confidently, gently. Each time you breathe in, breathe in relaxation and peace. Each time you breathe out, breathe out stress, as the body’s natural endorphins willfully breathe out tension and stress.
Feel only the sway of the wave that is bringing your baby closer and closer to birth. Relax and flow with your body’s natural rhythm, confident in the fact that your body knows what to do. Give your birthing over to your body. Trust it. Relax and let it do its job.
With your mind’s eye and your inner senses, mentally and emotionally feel yourself joyfully, totally aware and participating. See it as already accomplished. Listen with your mind’s ear to that first sound of new life.
Create a vivid visualization of the exhilaration you feel as you see your baby at the moment of birth. See the three of you bonding for the first time in this life. Now mentally see yourself stepping into this joyful scene. Become a part of this birthing . . . fulfilled. Feel it . . . sense it. This is your body, here, now. In your mind’s eye, see and feel yourself totally enveloping that body . . . holding the baby on your breast. These are your arms enfolding your baby; these are your hands embracing this new little being.
You knew you could do it, and you did. You did well, and the feeling of ecstasy is one that will never be surpassed.
Join in with joy and amazement, and watch the continuing mystery of creation unfold. The life force of nature is working in harmony with you. Now more than at any moment in your life, it is within you and with you. You are an integral part of nature, and nature is an integral part of your being. You are a part of the greatest celebration of life.
You are a part of the promise and the destiny of life itself.
The Opening Blossom
One of the most simple and effective visualizations is that of an opening rose. Use your breathing techniques to bring yourself into relaxation, then close your eyes and envision your baby moving gently down to the vaginal outlet. Imagine the gradual opening of the perineum to be like the gentle unfolding of the petals of the rose. This visualization is recommended during the final days of your pregnancy to achieve the onset of labor, and during the opening and birthing phases of labor.
Blue Satin Ribbons
Remember the lower circular muscle fibers that draw up and back to effect the thinning and opening of your cervix? Close your eyes and imagine the muscles, not as fibers, but as soft, blue satin ribbons that gently and easily yield to the rhythmic draw of the vertical muscles, swirling up and back. You can practice this visualization toward the end of your pregnancy so that it will be there for you during the surges of the thinning and opening phase of your labor.
The Arm-Wrist Relaxation Test
Because you don’t really experience a particular sensation when you are in self-hypnosis, you will be amused and amazed at the Arm-Wrist Relaxation Test. It is very simple and, at the same time, very convincing. The technique is meant to assure both the birth companion and the mom that all the practice that you’ve been doing is working.
Technique
Lie on your back, with your arms at your side, your fingers gently cupped on the surface of the bed or sofa. Do not lie flat on your back for long periods of time or when you are in the late stages of pregnancy or in labor.
Once you are in a state of relaxation, picture that your birth companion has tied a giant, helium-filled red balloon to your right wrist. Almost immediately you will feel a tug on your wrist as the balloon pulls upward. Now another helium-filled balloon—this one orange—is added. The two balloons are tugging even harder on your wrist. Your arm is beginning to rise upward. You sense that your elbow is making a dent in the cushion or surface of your bed. The deeper the dent, the more your wrist moves upward. With each tug, your arm is being pulled higher. Still another balloon—a yellow one—is being added. Each time a balloon is added, your arm begins to feel lighter and lighter. The more you try to hold your wrist down, the more the helium is pulling your arm upward. Your arm cannot resist the pull of the balloons. Try as you may to hold it down, your wrist is being yanked upward. Continue to picture more balloons being added with all of the colors of the rainbow.
When your arm rises approximately six to ten inches off the bed, place it back at your side. Each time you practice this exercise, fewer balloons will be required to make your arm and wrist tilt upward. At the end of each relaxation period, tell yourself that each time you practice, relaxation will take over your body sooner than ever before. Your goal should be to assume a deep level of relaxation within a very short period of time.