So how do you do that - also Ensuring that you are able to Push as well?

I have known of mothers-to-be who have practised and used the relaxation process during birthing with so much success that the birthing process has actually taken longer than it needed to.  The reason for this has been that although the baby’s head has been showing, because the mother didn’t push, the baby's head slipped back in because she had not also pushed at the same time as relaxing. The way to overcome this is to practise the active meditation CD before birthing so that you know the words.  You know what to do at the right time during the actual process of birthing, yet are still able to relax and release the hurt (from the pain) and push at the same time.

In another E-Report I wrote about my own personal experience with handling the pain (and healing) of a burn across my wrist. It is worth repeating here to emphasise the point, that only because I was familiar with the meditation – being able to do it very quickly in my own mind, without the CD – was I able to have success I did in dealing with the burn. Quite a while ago I was at a barbeque with my family. During the barbeque I burnt myself on my wrist. My first reaction was to swear. At the same time my kids were yelling to me "Peaceful Place Dad". I immediately went to my Peaceful Place. The burn was on the inside of my wrist and it was hurting like mad. I put a colour on the hurt and I took the colour up my arm into my shoulders, into my neck, up into my head and out through the top of my head. I remember distinctly that the colour was red. I watched this colour going out the top of my head, (and you may know that I only visualise by imagination and talking to myself), and going away from me. Then I imagined a healing colour coming into me. The colour that came to me was purple. I brought this purple colour towards me as the red colour was going away from me. Then the purple colour entered the top of my head and came right down through my body. I let it go all the way through my body and then settled it back to my wrist. Here, I imagined healing going on in my wrist. You know what was absolutely amazing (and it shouldn't be amazing), was that I never had a blister. It was a deep burn, I had scabs of course but had no pain at all and the whole burn healed in an extraordinarily quick time. I guess that the whole visualisation process took about 3 minutes. Since this time I have investigated burns and found that if one immediately takes control of the area of the burn with our mind that it will help enormously with the healing.

This is the Process that I Suggest on the Active Meditation

So that you establish the extension of your comfort zone (your subconscious mind) you imagine the future as though it has already happened – that is, your child is already born and you are then looking back (in your mind) to the great birthing process that you “went” through. You picture or imagine a time when you are celebrating with family your baby’s first birthday. It is a wonderful day with lots of laughter and joy. What is your child wearing? Your toddler is now walking – remember the first step – so joyous. Your child is beautiful and you so much enjoy showing your unconditional love – the kisses and cuddles are wonderful. What presents are there for your one-year-old? …Perhaps there’s a jumpsuit, a jacket, lovely toys. And now to the beautiful birthday cake with one candle. It is such fun blowing out the candle and then tasting the cake … a delicious taste!

Your mind wanders to the time you gave birth to this beautiful child – one year ago now. What a great birth it was … you remember when you got the signal for the imminent birth and how excited you were. You really looked forward to the birth … it happened so easily for you and you remember how you surprised yourself that everything could go as planned … your baby had a smooth and easy passage into the world – you were both relaxed and bonded instantly … just as you had visualised. Oh yes, you prepared yourself well, releasing the hurt, being able to breathe easily and pushing when the time was right to do so.

Visualising your Preparation

You remember the preparation … how you scanned your body with your inner eye. You pictured and imagined your pelvis stretching to allow the baby’s easy passage and your cervix dilating at each contraction and you remind yourself that your baby was on the way, having an easy passage into this world. Every part of your body was preparing itself for this birth. At each contraction you imagine your cervix opening … dilating … preparing the way for your baby to be born. You experience the pain signal … you can easily handle it … you are excited … the baby is on the way. You enjoy picturing and imagining the joy of preparing your body for your baby to be born.

The Process of Handling the Hurt in the Pain

Each contraction is accompanied by a pain signal as your cervix dilates. You focus on replacing the hurt in the pain signal with a colour – whatever colour comes to your mind. Have that colour replace the hurt ... see it, feel it ... know that all the hurt is in this colour; the colour represents, and is, the hurt. You increase the intensity of that colour and just hold it for a few seconds ... you actually increase your hurt ... just a little bit. Now, any hurt that you can increase by increasing the intensity of the colour, you can also decrease. You take the hurt, which is the colour you imagined, and you move the colour up through your body. You take it up your spine, up through your neck ... and as it comes up through your head you release it out through the crown of your head. You imagine and feel the colour coming out through the crown of your head - that's the hurt coming out of your body, going up through your head. You observe and feel the hurt travelling through your body, going out through your head and as it goes out through your head you feel and see the intensity of the colour, the hurt, decreasing and moving away.

In the distance you notice another colour, a beautiful colour. What colour is it? This colour you now bring into your body because it represents healing and upliftment. Your special colour comes towards you, it's getting bigger and bigger and of course the hurt, the colour representing hurt, is moving away from you and that's getting smaller and smaller. Your hurt is decreasing. Your colour representing healing is getting bigger and bigger ... you let that beautiful colour into the top of your head and feel it coming down right through your body, it goes to the area where it's most needed down through your body, permeating and filtering into every cell ... you feel wonderful. This colour replaces the hurt and you feel wonderful throughout your whole body. You hold that feeling of wellness through your whole body. Know it's the way you want it … you’re breathing easily. You can feel your body preparing in every way for this birth. You feel so pleased with yourself … you have prepared the way for your baby. Each time you get the pain signal you can release the hurt in the pain

The Wonderful Birth

You remember someone saying that they can see the top of your baby’s head, and only when you were told to push did you push … and then the whole head of your beautiful baby emerged… and with a final push your baby was born. You remember feeling so pleased that you were able to release the hurt, to breathe easily and finally to push, feeling healthy throughout the process, knowing that you released the hurt in your pain during your baby’s easy and wonderful birth.

Giving birth can be influenced positively by your attitude, conditioning, and expectation – especially when you are well prepared. To achieve this I recommend that you do this active meditation over and over so that during the birth process this meditation comes to mind because you are totally familiar with it. This way you release the hurt in the pain and you are able to push when you have been told that you are fully dilated. So, I ask you and urge you to forward this information to some one who is pregnant or planning to be pregnant - I know it will be useful.

The active meditation CD Peaceful Place #20 - Handling the Labour of Childbirth is available as at my website and can also be purchased as a download for your computer or Ipod from www.calmmeditation.com 

All the best,

Success Stories

Thank you for last night's seminar, I found it interesting to revisit a number of areas, affirming to remind myself how much I have progressed with active meditation from those first halting steps years ago (and far less halting steps 12 months ago at the CHI Seminar), to celebrate the immense downturn in negative self talk, active meditation has brought me to complement the virtual disappearance of negative talk from outside of myself, these two reductions resulting in quite a different and delectable life for me, and to revisit everything as if I were hearing it through my friend's ears. My friend was also at last night's seminar and, of course, has her unique journey although she shares with me having an abusive father (of the discipline minus overt love kind) and an abusive partner (of the just plain needs to be chained to a wall type). So to hear you, Sandy, talking about all of the issues that abuse and grief brings up in such a short session, and in this way to condense what I have been chewing over with my friend in the past 12 months as she makes her journey of healing at her own pace, was really useful to me. I expect it will have been for my friend also, but I've not had my daily missive from her as yet (her turn in the mornings, I get to write to her in the afternoons, bless the email!). L.E. NSW