The power of practice
We talk a lot during our Wise Hippo classes about the importance of practising the techniques you learn. It usually becomes a bit of a running joke during my weekly classes, when I waggle my finger and utter 'practice, practice, practice...'. But as amusing as I make that point (again and again throughout), it is actually really key to how we learn.
Our brains as adults, as do those as children, learn through repetition and reaffirmation of those things we're trying to learn. Think about how you would learn a musical instrument, for example. You wouldn't expect to sit at a piano, untrained, and play a concerto to a packed theatre. You would expect to have to go to lessons, learn to read music, learn which keys play which notes and to move your fingers in the right order (along with many, many other things...as a pianist myself, believe me, I know!). And you'd practice. Regularly. To be really good; you'd practice daily. Eventually, you'd be able to sit in front of that audience and play beautifully.
Birth, is no different.
Like anything, birth is something we have to learn. Or more accurately in a lot of cases, we have to UNlearn birth. Unlearn the fear we've learned over years of TV, film, friends and family (and even strangers!) negative stories. We need to LEARN that birth is normal. Birth is natural. We can totally do birth! But we have to practice.
And of course, we can't practice the actual birth, but we CAN practice the techniques that we know, that are proven, to work to support a calm, comfortable, birth.
Practice often (daily!). And it's also useful to 'set the scene'; it helps us to create it in our minds to create it in reality and practice. We can help ourselves to tie ourselves into the moment more too; using our sense memory.
We also teach 'anchoring' in our classes. It's where you use the senses to support our practice of calm, relaxation techniques. The more you practice your techniques, while supporting that practice with anchors, the easier and more simple it is to get into the calm and relaxed zone on the day. My favourite anchor was the use of smell. I used lavender essential oil during my pregnancy practice, labour and birth. I used a simple oil burner, but these days I'd use my Neal's Yard essential oil diffuser, which I do also use daily these days, but using a variety of different scents for the difference moods I wish to 'learn'.
Ultimately, you will find that y
ou don't know how you know it, you just know it, and it just seems easy. We reach, through a combination of practice and setting the scene effectively during that time, a place of unconscious competence. In birth, that is a calm, confident, comfortable experience that we've visualised for a very long time.
