Childbirth Relaxation Techniques For Body and Mind

Childbirth relaxation techniques are a way of training your body and mind to work together. As you practice each technique you will become more familiar with your body. Your goal is to understand how to recognize tension in your muscles and how to release it. The ability to relax your entire body during childbirth is the key to a less painful, less stressful, and easier labor. During labor your uterus is going to be hard at work and will need all of the oxygen, blood flow, and energy you can give it. A tense muscle deprives the uterus of what it needs and makes its job harder. Learning these childbirth relaxation techniques will help you to allow your body to function at its best. But it takes practice, so let’s get started.

Progressive Relaxation

First you are simply going to teach your body to know the difference between being tense and being relaxed and you will teach your mind to control it.

• To do this make sure you are in a comfortable, completely relaxed position. Lying on your bed is good.

• Close your eyes.

• Begin by tensing a large muscle group (a leg, an arm). Notice how it feels when it is tense.

• Breathe in and out slowly a few times while keeping it tense.

• Now breathe out while releasing the tension. Notice how it feels when it is relaxed.

• Choose another muscle group and try it again.

• Continue this for different muscle groups all through your body until you are completely relaxed.

You can do this alone or you can use your labor partner.

• To use your labor partner, get into your relaxed position with your labor partner nearby.

• Have your labor partner tell you a muscle group to tense.

• Tense it for a few seconds

• Have your labor partner softly touch or tap that muscle group.

• This becomes a signal to your body to immediately release tension where it has been touched.

This can be very useful during labor. At times you may be tensing your body and you don’t even realize it. If you and your labor partner have practiced this exercise, your partner will be trained to look for tension and when he or she touches you, you will already be preconditioned to immediately release it.

After you get good at progressive relaxation you can move on to the next step.

Neuromuscular Disassociation

This is the next step to further train your body and mind.

• Begin by tensing one large muscle group on your body. (You should be good at this now.)

• Now, instead of relaxing it, this time you are going to “add on.”

• Keeping that muscle group tense, select another muscle group on the same side of your body and tense it as well.

• Keep adding on, or tensing muscle groups, till you have one entire side of your body tense while your other side remains relaxed.

• When you can do this on one side of your body, try it on the other side.

When you have mastered both sides of your body, take the next step and try tensing groups of muscles that are not right next to each other. Keep in mind that you won’t be doing this during labor. Rather you will be applying what you have learned about your body and how to control it. During labor the tensed muscle will be the uterus. During each contraction you will need the rest of your body to be as relaxed as possible. As labor intensifies it will become more difficult to stay relaxed; but if you have practiced this childbirth relaxation technique, you will be more relaxed and ready to stay in control.

Now it’s time to learn some childbirth relaxation techniques designed to help you train just your mind. Continue on with Attention Focusing.

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