Re-centering Hypnosis in Hypnobirthing

Hypnobirthing is hugely popular, it can be estimated that around 10% of people who are pregnant do hypnobirthing in some form. It’s often the first time people access hypnosis and many people who may never have considered hypnosis will try hypnobirthing. It’s often a gateway to hypnosis for both the mother and her partner. But it’s not perinatal hypnosis – meaning it’s not always applicable to other aspects of pregnancy, birth and beyond.

The popularity of hypnobirthing has opened the floodgates for people teaching who have no formal hypnotherapy training, remarkably some haven’t even been trained to teach hypnobirthing by a hypnotherapist. The word hypnobirthing has also wrongly been seen as something for a natural birth, and many of those teaching it don’t have the skills or training to apply hypnosis beyond a normal birth.

The reductive nature of hypnobirthing means we are missing out on powerful applications of hypnosis for perinatal care. Considered and appropriate hypnotic tools can make a huge impact on improving the perinatal experience and shouldn’t be reduced to pain-free birth or breathing your baby out.

In this session, I’ll explore the breadth of perinatal hypnosis, attitudes to hypnosis in the NHS maternity system, contraindications, and understanding the more complex nature of pain along with the most effective tools and techniques to use with your clients.  I’ll share with you some stories of more complicated aspects of working with those who have previously experienced trauma, psychological aspects of choice and control, working with loss, post-natal anxiety, breastfeeding, and more.

Sophie Fletcher is the best selling author of Mindful Hypnobirthing, Mindful Mamma and Mindful Menopause. Her books have sold over 70,000 copies and she’s regularly in the best seller lists in the UK, Australia and the US. She’s been a practising hypnotherapist for over 15 years, and runs training in the NHS and privately for hypnobirthing and menopause. When she’s not writing she’s, reading, playing tennis or swimming.