Tonight...

Tonight is our 4th of 5 birthing classes. Christine's is going to try to use hypnosis to try to achieve a relatively pain-free and natural child birth experience. When she first mentioned "hypnosis" I had images of "mesmerism" and this guy:





and thought, "there ain't no way that can work." Then I thought about it a bit.

I occasionally do endurance sports and activities such as long mountain bike rides or backpacking trips with long 10 to 20 mile days. Usually there is some element of pain involved. On a long day of hiking, my legs, shoulders, and feet are usually killing me, yet I persevere. How do I do that? Usually I pick up one foot after the other and plod along. Sometimes I will focus on a distant point, an interesting rock, or a knotted old tree along the trail and aim for it, making my only goal to make it to that point. Sometimes I'll even hum a tune. "Nobody's going to break my stride" is always a favorite. And I realized that I am lulling myself into a traced state simply by providing mental imagery that distracts me from my bodily pain or present location. I'm using hiking as an example. We've all done it. Think about the last time you took a long drive on the interstate. You start day dreaming and next thing you know you're thinking "what exit did I just pass and where the hell am I?"

So anyway, that's basically the gist of the Hypnobabies thing. We are basically learning techniques to deeply relax the mind (which of course - relaxes the body as well) Theory being that the majority of pain from labor occurs from being tense and clenching up your muscles and not letting things flow naturally. Pretty cool and not too far fetched. Even for an engineer such as myself!