Labor Pain Relief: Calming Meditation

Video Transcript

"Another pain technique coping mechanism is meditation and this is more of one that's a calming meditation. For this one you're going to start out the same as the other one. You're going to get yourself in a comfortable position, any position is fine, whatever works for you. You're going to do deep abdominal breathing for two minutes. So, you're going to breathe in deeply and breathe out deeply. If you find yourself getting distracted, just focus on your breathing, don't get angry or get mad at yourself that you can't clear your mind, just go back and focus on the breathing. After you've done that for about two minutes, I want you to focus on your heartbeat. It's ok if you don't really hear your heartbeat but the intention is your heartbeat so you're directing your energy to right here. If you need to put your hand there, that's fine, whatever is comfortable for you. I want you to close your eyes and continue doing your deep breathing and focus on your heartbeat. I want you to tell your heartbeat to slow down, this is going to actually, probably, slow down your heartbeat a tiny bit. It's going to soothe you, it's going to calm you down and it's going to promote relaxation. After you've done that for a couple of minutes, then I want you to visualize your baby in your stomach, then I want you to visualize your baby's heartbeat. Obviously, you can't feel your baby's heartbeat but I want you to imagine what it looks like. Take a few more deep breaths and you're thinking about your baby's heartbeat. I want you to do the same thing you did to your own heartbeat, you want to slow that heartbeat down. You can either, in your mind, think slow or you can say it out loud, you can say "slow, slow." I want you to do that for a couple of minutes. That's going to calm you down even more and hopefully calm your baby down too, especially, if you're feeling very tense or stressed because of pain. After you've done that for a few minutes, I want you to imagine well-beingness, all around you, whatever that is. I don't want to tell you a color or a shape or anything, I want you to interpret it yourself. So, imagine all around you is well-beingness. Imagine that it penetrates through all your pores and it's inside you and inside your baby. For about five minutes just breathe and focus on well-beingness and when you're ready, you can go ahead and stop the exercise. This pain technique of coping with meditation, is going to be nice and calming and it's definitely going to help you if you're feeling stressed, if you're feeling nervous and it will also help relax your body and deal with pain better."