The Truth About Hypnobirthing (And Why It Might Be Gaslighting You)

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This is a CBC podcast. All right, boys, it's been a while. We're going to do a little host episode. Host episode.

I've done a little. I've done a little. I've done quite a large deep dive into a topic that I think is going to surprise you guys in the in the in the very least because I was shocked.

So strap in because we're venturing into a world that exists somewhere in the hazy overlap between high end wellness retreats in Bali and a scene from like inception. Is this like I haven't watched it, but like white lotus? Um, I haven't watched it either.

So I'm going to say yes. It's exactly like I've watched it. I'm going to say I'm going to say no. I'm going to say yes with less boobs.

OK, so I want to talk to you guys about something that you may or may not have seen kind of scrolling through your feed. It's usually, you know, accompanied by like, like textured beige linens, essential oil,

the musers, a lot of very calm, very calm, very pregnant women. We're gonna be talking today about something called hypno birthing.

You lost me a little bit at the pregnant women thing because like I get the beige calm aesthetic but I'm not currently getting a lot of pregnant women on my Instagram feed.

Yeah, well, Taylor, I'm gonna ask you, do you, since you have too many children, do you know what hypno birthing is? I don't know.

I don't know. I know that I've heard the term and I know that I think I've heard the term circulating in the context of like,

I know some people around Halifax that are very much like in the home, in the home. I'm drawing some connections to like the home birthing sort of crowd. Okay. Perfect. High risk individuals.

As some people say, higher, definitely higher risk. So on the surface, this definitely sounds like like the ultimate, like crunchy granola TikTok trend. You know, like, like, I'm not going to have an epidural.

I'm just going to think about a waterfall and let this kid waterfall gosh out of me. But here's the thing, this isn't just some like niche influencer stuff. This is a massive global industry.

We are talking about multi-million dollar world of hypno birthing practitioners, certified coaches and books that promise that you can basically meditate your way through the most objectively agonizing experience that the human body can endure. Okay, so we're talking like hypno birthing like hypno alluding to the the word hypnotize.

Like it's like a hypnotized birthing experience. Yeah, I mean essentially. Yeah. Yeah.

So so good English good English language ties there, Brian. It wasn't good. I I get a little bit mixed up when I'm trying to what is what is it? Like it's it's the prefixes like implying something.

That's my second round of trying to get it. Brian knows what a prefix is. OK. So so what is it? What is it? What what is the actual proper?

OK, so so what we're what I want to get to today is whether or not the notion of hypnoburthing is all just a load of bullshit because the core philosophy of hypnoburthing is pretty wild. They don't use the word contractions for one. They call them surges or waves. Oh, okay. The idea is that pain in childbirth is actually a fear tension pain cycle.

It's just in your mind. So they claim that if you can use self hypnosis to completely bypass your fear, your muscles won't tense up and the pain just dissipates or at least becomes like very manageable. Okay.

And these are all people who have never been pregnant before who have come up with this. Well, you're about to find out. I am excited to dive into that because having watched somebody give birth three times. Right.

Right. Like we can, we, us three guys, we cannot relate. You've seen it firsthand. I've seen it through a video.

Yeah. I've seen it three times. All three times have been extremely intense. So from the outset, it is difficult from the outset

to wrap my head around the idea that you could, like I can see that you could manage a portion of the experience with strong concentration, but it is so fucking intense that it's hard for me

to imagine that you could like bypass it. And that's the big like WTF here. So are these people actually tapping into a dormant superpower of the human brain

to be able to switch off pain receptors? Or is this just the world's most extreme form of like medical gaslighting where we've convinced ourselves that if it hurts,

It's just because we aren't relaxed enough. So let's look at this specific hypnoburthing thing, where it actually came from, because it's not just some like hippie-dippy fever dream

from the 60s. It was actually branded and turned into a movement in 1989 by a woman named Marie Mungin. Very sweet old lady here.

I mean, if I was to hazard a guess, I would say she definitely has given birth to at least a couple of children. Probably 12.

Perhaps, I mean, you know, she's she looks she looks very mother. Guys, remember this backdrop from your school photos. I know. Yeah. It's not the best, just like this mosaic of a smattering of pastel colors

for the folks just listening. This lady, Miss Mungin, is she looks like your sweet, like librarian who's just like in retirement and she just loves working at the library. Yeah. So she was a hypnotherapist.

and a dean of a college in New Hampshire. And she basically took some older medical theories and gave them a high end 80s self-help makeover. And she called it the Mangan method. OK.

And a high price tag. Well, yeah, yeah, maybe perhaps. I actually don't know about the pricing, but so the who the who behind the who is what I found to be even more interesting than this.