"We believe that every woman has within her the power to call upon her natural instincts to bring about the best possible birthing for her baby and herself"

-Marie F. Mongan, founder of the HypnoBirthing® Institute

Taking the Birthing World by Calm

HypnoBirthing is a tried and proven method that guides and prepares a woman in giving birth in a peaceful and extraordinarily beautiful manner.  It is a program a that considers the psychological, as  well as the physical, well-being of the mother, her birth partner, and the newborn, independent of context, whether that be in the quiet of a home, a hospital, or a birth center.

The HypnoBirthing program is built around an educational process that includes special breathing, relaxation, visualization, meditative practice, attention to nutrition and positive body toning. Most importantly it fosters an air of mutual respect for the birthing family, as well as the health-care provider in a traditional health-care system or an alternative setting.


HypnoBirthing® - The Mongan Method is as much a philosophy as it is a technique. The concept of HypnoBirthing® is not new, but rather a "rebirth" of the philosophy of birthing as it existed thousands of years ago and as it was recaptured in the work of Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, an English obstetrician, who, in the 1920s, was one of the first to forward the concept of natural birthing. The method teaches you that, in the absence of fear and tension, or special medical circumstances, severe pain does not have to be an accompaniment of labor.

You will gain an understanding of how the birthing muscles work in perfect harmony--as they were designed to--when your body is sufficiently relaxed and you trust birth. You will learn how to achieve this kind of relaxation, free of the resistance that fear creates, and you will learn to use your natural birthing instincts for a calm, serene and comfortable birth.

When you have your baby with HypnoBirthing®, you will not be in a trance or a sleep. What you will experience is similar to the daydreaming, or focusing, that occurs when you are engrossed in a book or a movie or staring into a fire.

You will be conversant and in good spirits--totally relaxed, but fully in control. Awake throughout, you will be aware of your body's surges and your baby's progress; but because you will have trained yourself to reach complete relaxation, you will be able to determine the degree and the manner in which you will feel the surges. You will experience birthing in an atmosphere of calm relaxation, free of the fear that prevents the muscles of your body from functioning as nature intended them to. In this calm state, your body's natural relaxant, endorphins, replaces the stress hormones that constrict and cause pain.

Why Choose HypnoBirthing?  

Contemporary women in our culture hold an unprecedented fear of giving birth, too often associating it with excruciating pain, thereby causing their bodies to become unable to perform what should be a normal physiological function. HypnoBirthing® is a unique method of relaxed, natural childbirth education enhanced by self‑hypnosis and guided imagery techniques that allow women to use their natural abilities to bring about safer, easier, and more comfortable birthing.

HypnoBirthing® teaches a woman how to release all prior programming about birth to free herself of limiting thoughts and emotions that lead to pain-causing fear and resistant muscles. When giving birth with HypnoBirthing®, a mother is not in a trance or asleep but instead in a state of deep relaxation—awake, aware, and fully in control.

In a series of five confidence- building classes, they learn what makes labor hurt; but more importantly, they learn the logic behind why labor doesn’t have to hurt and what they can do about it. Moms and their birth companions study the physical and chemical changes that occur over a period of time when fear and anxiety are allowed to accumulate. This awareness of the fight, flight, or freeze response helps them to choose calm. They practice exercises in class, designed to help them see the relationship between fear and the possibility of pain.   These exercises become life skills that also shore up their parenting skills. Armed with this knowledge, the pattern of calming techniques and steps that they learn helps them to create endorphins and avoid the effect of the negative hormones that cause their bodies to constrict, rather than open.

The overall effect is that birthing parents are better able to appreciate the benefits of calm, gentle birthing, making the experience a joyful one for mother, baby, and birth companion—benefits that can last a life time.

Want to read more? 
Check out The HypnoBirthing Institute You can learn about our founder, Marie Mongan, more about the HypnoBirthing textbook and the history of our organization- the original hypnosis-for-birth method. In my opinion, not just a method but truly a restoration of what birth was intended to be all along!