We’ve seen all sorts of births in movies. My favorite is Emily Blunt playing the pregnant mother Evelyn in the movie “A Quiet Place.” She delivers her baby in a tub while being absolutely silent (no noise whatsoever), or else the monster will kill her. After conducting this interview, I imagined how Evelyn would have benefitted from a few hypnobirthing classes... Ha!

We now know with the growing amount of literature how powerful the mind is and how useful it is to harness your mental state to produce favorable outcomes. Meditation and mindfulness, concepts utilized most prominently by ancient South Asian and East Asian cultures centuries ago, are barely considered “hocus pocus” to the general American public anymore. We see so many apps and classes making deep breathing, deep relaxation, and meditation accessible to more people. But how about if we used those concepts during birth?

Maeva Althaus joins us today to dive deep into the core concepts of Hypnobirthing. She is a certified Hypnotist, hypnobirthing instructor, doula, and Spinning Babies practitioner. She discusses how the more relaxed you are and the more you let go during the birthing process, the more the right hormones kick in. She says she doesn’t discount the intensity of birth, but that being calm can make you less tired and less stressed. What a great course for Evelyn to have taken before giving birth in front of a monster!

Maeva goes over her own birth experience using hypnobirthing techniques and what that looked like for her, despite her birth not going the way that she imagined it. She recorded this episode for us when she was just a few weeks postpartum, and now she would be a few months postpartum. We’re glad we were able to do this interview soon after the birth of her baby - we are privileged to hear a deep, raw version of her feelings and experiences during her own birth process. Not to be missed!

Connect with Maeva at www.hypnobirthingny.com