I first came across HypnoBirthing® many years ago while researching hypnosis and birth.
At the time, I had already been working as a doula for many years and had also recently qualified as a Hypnotherapist. I remember thinking that perhaps I could create something that combined the two. Then I discovered HypnoBirthing®
Almost immediately afterwards, I found out that Jessica Porter was coming to South Africa to teach HypnoBirthing®. The training was scheduled to take place in Cape Town. As a busy birth doula (at the time), taking several days away from my clients wasn’t easy, so I contacted Jessica and asked if she would consider stopping in Johannesburg.
I told her that if she came, I would see if I could gather enough women to make it worthwhile. Thankfully, I did. And Cape Town didn’t come together.
Eight women signed up for that very first training. They were pioneers in many ways. One of those women was Tina Otte, who has since become very well known in the birth world. Together we learned HypnoBirthing®, and I was inspired.
I took it and ran with it.For the next 17 years, I taught HypnoBirthing® to many couples in South Africa and overseas online. Over those years, I witnessed hundreds and hundreds of births. I saw what worked beautifully and what didn’t always translate into real-life birth experiences.
There were aspects of HypnoBirthing® that I absolutely loved. The focus on mindset, relaxation, reducing fear, and creating confidence around birth remains incredibly valuable. Those principles have stood the test of time.
But there were other parts that I began to question.
As the first pregnancy yoga teacher in Johannesburg, of more than two decades and a birth doula for over 30 years, I had the privilege of being present with many women during labour. What I noticed was that birth didn’t always look the way the videos suggested it should.
Many of the women in the videos appeared incredibly calm. They hardly made a sound. Some looked almost detached from what was happening. Then I would attend births where women moaned, vocalised, roared, cried, swayed, moved, and expressed themselves fully.
I started wondering:
Were these women doing it wrong?
Was I teaching it wrong?
Or perhaps the expectation itself was the problem.
I realised that many women were entering birth with an image of what a “successful” HypnoBirth® should look like. When their experience looked different, they questioned themselves.
Am I doing it wrong?
Should I be quieter?
Why am I making noise?
Why isn’t my birth looking like the video?
These questions troubled me because birth is not a performance.
Birth is an experience, and every experience is different. This realisation eventually led me to create Conscious Birth.
Conscious Birth incorporates the parts of HypnoBirthing® that genuinely support women while also embracing the reality that birth is unpredictable, individual, and deeply embodied.
One of the things I changed was the way we work with language. For example, many traditional affirmations sound something like: “My birth will be easy.”
While positive, the brain doesn’t always accept statements that feel uncertain or beyond our control.
Instead, I prefer what I call positive statements: “The more I relax, the easier my birth will be.”
Can you feel the difference?
The brain often responds with, “Yes, I can do that.” It feels achievable. It feels believable.
It gives us something we can actively participate in rather than something we simply hope will happen. Conscious Birth is not about controlling birth.
- It’s about preparing for birth.
- It’s about understanding your fears and learning how to work with them.
- It’s about creating a support team that helps you feel safe, cared for, and respected.
- It’s about learning practical tools for labour.
- And then, perhaps most importantly, it’s about letting go. Trusting. Surrendering.Allowing birth to unfold in the way that you and your baby need.
Some women are quiet in labour.
Some women are vocal.
Some women hum, moan, sigh, roar or make sounds they have never made before.
There is no right or wrong.
When we think about sex, we can see this clearly. Some women are naturally quiet. Others are expressive and vocal. We are using many of the same hormones, the same parts of the body, and both experiences ask us to surrender to something powerful and intense.
Yet we don’t expect every woman to respond to intimacy in exactly the same way.
Birth is no different.
Labour is an intense, physical, emotional and hormonal experience. The sounds that emerge are often the body’s way of helping us move through it. For some women that looks like silence. For others it looks like deep moaning, swaying, movement and sound.
The invitation is not to perform birth in a particular way. The invitation is to listen to your body and trust what it is asking of you. Birth is an embodied experience. It asks us to come deeply into our bodies, to listen, to trust, and to respond to what is happening moment by moment.
Every woman is unique.
Every body is unique.
Every baby is unique.
And every birth is unique.
After attending hundreds and hundreds of births, I can honestly say that no two births have ever been the same. Not one. So if your birth doesn’t look like someone else’s, it doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong.
It simply means that your birth is your birth, and perhaps that is one of the greatest lessons birth offers us.
To stop comparing.
To trust ourselves.
To trust our babies.
And to remember that there is more than one way to birth well.
Theoni
P.S. The Conscious Birth book is for sale as a gift and the course happens every 2 months in Linden, Jhb.