The Bhava Birth approach?
Fear + Pain Psychology
Bhava Birth teaches you how to give birth with fear—embracing the truth that fear is a neutral messenger that deserves to be invited into the birth space. However, fear left unchecked can take over and hijack birth. With practice, you can learn the compassionate skill of meeting your fear face to face, starting a conversation, and using its message to take action. Fear can become a powerful ally! Once you learn how to integreate fear it then has the power to shift your perception and experience of pain, leading to better emotional outcomes and better coping skills.
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Embodiment
"Learning stuff" constitutes about 25% of the Bhava Birth curriculum, including stages of labor, anatomy, and what to expect. What, then, is the other 75%? As Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it—rebodying, or returning to ourselves and inhabiting our own physicality. Because our brains also play a huge role in effective birth, embodiment allows mind and body to work together, igniting our instinctive, primal, intuitive nature while pacifying our analytical brain. We cannot "think our way" through birth. Instead, we can learn to get out of our heads and into our bodies in order for birth to flow uninhibited.
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Mindfulness
Mindfulness enables us to more fully experience birth (and life) without judgement, failed expectations, or suffering. It teaches us to be curious, open-minded, and prepared for the unexpected. It fosters resilience, fortitude, and emotional stamina. It doesn't necessarily make birth easy or guarantee specific birth outcomes but it can shift our interpretations and perceptions allowing us to cope rather than suffer. It is a learnable tool or skillset that can bring peace and contentment on your birth journey because the only thing you can control is your response to what is.
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Meditation
Meditation is powerful complementary medicine for effective coping and processing, and equally effective when used AS medicine when no other form of pain control is used. More specifically, meditation:
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- floods your body with helpful hormones and endorphins
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- soothes the brain patterns underlying pain allowing you to no longer feel the pain of childbirth with the same intensity
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- takes you into a place ABOVE your thoughts (different from hypnosis, which drops you below conscious thought)
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What' You Get?
2 Day Couples Retreat
Highly interactive, delicious meals, and everything you need to feel inspired.
Mindful Mondays
The learning continues long after the retreat in order to integrate all of your curriculum.
Online Course Option
For those far away or looking for a home-based option, consider the online course!
300+ Page Manual
We cover all the childbirth basics PLUS all the things you didn't know you didn't know
Laminated Labor Guides
A visual guide for laboring positions and hands-on support that fits into any birth bag!
Client Portal Access
Stream yoga classes, guided meditations, breath practices, yoga chants, and birth provider interviews!
What we will learn and practice together?
- The Psychology of pain + fear | Coping techniques
- How to give birth with fear and why that matters
- Hands-on partner-supported comfort measures
- Emotional processing | Navigating past trauma
- Birth stories | Cultural and familial influences
- Mindset + Non-Attachment
- Guided meditations | Mindfulness practices
- Yoga chants and lullabies
- Breath awareness
- Rituals v. Goals | Birth altars
- Kundalini awakening | Perinatal mood disorders
- Yoga asana, living movement, rebodying
- Templates for birth and postpartum planning
- Stages of birth and what to expect
- Mandala + Labyrinth meditation art projects
- Community support
- Birth as a path of self-development | Rebirth