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rx
imagery
birth: introductory visualization
psychospiritual approaches
definition/B>
<sequence of presentation:
introductory visualization
exploratory visualization
birth visualization
Birth imagery: Introductory Visualization
Comments:
(This visualization represents a birth visualization of the type that can be used in classes.)
Celine is expecting her first baby and is eight months pregnant at the time of this visualization. She will playback an audiotape of the visualization when labor begins.
Initially, the relaxation process is begun, utilizing many truisms to gain the participation (and trust), so Celine is free to experience the suggestions to relax and participate in them through linkages to her breathing. The relaxation induction is a most important part of the visualization as the entire birth visualization will draw on the suggestions that will be experienced in the relaxation induction.
So just now, I'd like you to give yourself the right to just listen to your breathing, now, for a moment, so that you can just take that a little bit deeper by breathing right down...your body deeper and deeper down into the diaphragm...and any sounds that you hear, you can just let them take you deeper...into the relaxation...gradually, taking your own time...so that with your next breath...you can just begin to imagine breathing any tension out from your shoulders...right down through your arms to your elbows...and even deeper down to your arms, your wrists, and hands...and even right out your finger tips....You just don't need any tension there right now...you can just begin...to relax, to let go...so your arms don't have to do anything right now, they can just be...supported...by the floor...so that now, just beginning to breathe out any tension from the hips, have actually moved outwards, actually moved outwards in space, actually created a cradling space for the baby...created that cradle, from which you can actually...take the baby out of...as its nearly grown now ... and as you go into labor, there's a hormone that relaxes the cartilage, a hormone called relaxin,...relaxes the cartilage, and even the bones, the bones connect so that it can OPEN....So that with your next breath you can go even deeper down into your thighs, and you might even give yourself the right to just BECOME AWARE ...to become aware of, what the thighs might look like on the inside, the nerve network, the blood vessels, and each nerve connects...at exactly the right place and at exactly the right time in the thigh without you even needing to think about it...and the hormones that flow from the pituitary right down through the blood...are also another thing that you don't even need to think about. It's much like the pituitary gland of the baby that releases the hormone, that releases the oxytocin from your pituitary gland to start labor...and each nerve connects to exactly the right part of you, without you even needing to think about it.
Comments:
Further suggestions are made now, to strengthen the suggestion that labor will start spontaneously. Trust in the body process being experienced as Celine experiences truisms about her body, which are linked to the labor process. Continued suggestion to experience the automatic processes of the body are given to build trust and belief in the body's abilities in labor.
It can happen incredibly fast...an impulse from your brain, can reach your toe in less than three hundredths of a second. It's an incredibly fast process... So that with your next breath, you can just begin...to continue breathing right down your knees, so that any sensation, or certain sensations that you might feel in your knees right now can just begin to build...and...Build...And...BUILD, until finally it's just breaking free, right down your legs, just washing right down through your ankles and feet, right out your toes, just like a dam breaking, and just washing down, into its natural places where it wants to go...in the mountains and streams, coming very, very peaceful...as the water's not dammed up anymore, it flows...right down...making it's way down to the source where the water might come from, down into the ocean,...even...so that just now, your legs, too, can just begin ...to relax...can begin ...to let go...They don't need to walk anywhere, to hold up your body or anything....They can just begin... to let go...supported by the pillows...so you can then feel free...to focus on your throat now...and the throat is a very important part of the body...and has a connection to the vagina in childbirth...so that you can just give yourself the right...now ... to become aware of the fact that you're taking in the air that you need for yourself, for every cell in your body, your baby, for labor, for birth, and as you breathe out... just letting the throat open, a little more, and a little more, with each breath down...so it's almost as if the throat very gently responds to the air coming into the throat....You might even imagine what that might actually look like on the inside ... the actual cells of the throat ...loosening...a little more, and a little more, and a little more with each breath down...and out...down...and out...so that as you're breathing, each cell is getting all the oxygen it needs, which makes it...incredibly resilient and stretchy.. you might have noticed that in the skin, that when your skin has the oxygen it needs, even from vitamin E, which increase oxygen absorption, that your skin is much more flexible, resilient...stretchy...so that you can take yourself even deeper down now, into your chest...following yourself deeper and deeper down into your body, without even needing to think about it...the air travels to places, to all places, in your body that need that oxygen, even in this moment...all movements just releasing...letting go, yielding...a little more, and a little more, with each breath down...and out...down...and out...as you can just become aware that as you breathe in you're ...actually creating more space in your body as you Breathe in, your chest, your stomach rises, and falls...rises and falls again...so that as you breathe in, you actually create more space on the inside of your body, more space for your heart, your lungs, for every internal organ in the body to find its natural, healthy position on the inside, always adjusting to find the healthiest place in the body at any given moment in time...so as you go deeper down into the stomach, you're very aware of the stomach having down that throughout pregnancy...of having moved up and out of the way of the baby as it grows...of having adjusted to a higher space in the body for the baby to be made before it's pushed out...and before it dives out... the stomach is an incredibly flexible organ on the inside... incredibly flexible...always adjusting...each part of it, finding exactly the right place that it needs to be...without your even needing to think about it... it's automatic...the same process takes place...the same for you that adjusts the stomach without you even needing to think about it...is the same part of you that adjusts the hormones...in the body in the labor process, pushing, as the baby dives out...so that with your next breath, you can just begin to take yourself down to your stomach now, just beginning to...BREATHE OUT any tension from the stomach, you just don't need it there anymore...so that you can just begin to...FEEL the stomach, kind of smoother...and smoother...and SEE it...much like a very calm, peaceful, lake...in which you might...skip a stone...and that stone might make circles outwards and outwards and OUTWARDS...creating more and more calm and inner peace, a kind of calmness you could almost HEAR...you could almost hear that calm...just letting yourself go, just as you did there (as she sighs) go with your body, it's so easy...It's almost as if you can't even resist it at all....When those twinges come up, they happen, they're discharged (referring to slight bodily twitches) it's an adjustment on the inside, very much a deep, Deep adjustment...organizing and reorganizing the resources, organizing in new ways and better ways, that's what the organs do....So that with your next breath you can take yourself even deeper down, right through the pelvis, and even deeper down through to the vagina, just beginning to BREATHE OUT any tension from the vagina, so that...it's as if you were breathing in through your throat (as she inhales)... and right OUT your vagina (as she exhales)...a very, clear OPEN passageway...for learning,...for birth...and you might even begin, mow to imagine, what your actual vagina does look like on the inside ... the pink resilient cells, full of oxygen, very,very stretchable now with the relaxin coming through...Very stretchable...just OOOpening, a little more, and a little more...with each breath OUTT, each breath OUTT and down..OOpening (soft voice now) from the inside OUTT (soft and breathy)...so that as you breathe, the oxygen goes to the Deepest, Deepest tissues first...and then SSPREADS out ...like a ripple, in that water in the lake...spreading out, SMOOOTHHING out, OOPening (very soft voice)... and your body always giving you what you need (referring to her movements, jerks) to adjust, on the inside...adapting, always adapting. Your skin does that automatically, without you even needing to think about it (said very quickly, lightly) If it gets too hot, the pores open, and you begin to sweat...so that it keeps internal adjustment...perfect (pronounced with perfection, emphasizing consonants) or when it's cold out, the pore then tighten, so that...internal process is maintained perfectly (consonant emphasis again)...always adjusting on the inside...for the natural outcome, that the body wants...to maintain that temperature, inside of the body...
Synesthesia through voice texture and tonality now increases in variety as the relaxation induction is nearly complete. Now in a deeper state of relaxation and participation in the visualization, Celine is free to experience resources within her body that are presently occurring (skin adaptation, etc.). These suggestions continue to reinforce confidence in the automatic workings of the body. I can now already begin to refer to past experience within the visualization itself, such as the "lake." The relaxation process continues to build on itself in this manner.
The "natural outcome that the body wants" is again referred to here, sandwiched between truisms. This suggestion calls on the part of herself that is motivated (desires) a natural, normal delivery.
NOW (little louder) I'd like you just to go to a point on the back of your neck, and this time...just breathing right DOWN (louder and deeper tonality) your back...just SSLLIPPING and SSLIDING right down each vertebra, and you...don't even need to think about it, as you go from the FIRRST (long and drawn out, sounds like the voice is sliding, as tone lowers, slows, on particular words) to the SSECOND (tone is deeper, low, even sleepy) one, even deeper down to the THIRRD one, there's more and more SSPACE (soft and breathy) on the inside...So that as you relax in this way, Celine,...you release to yourself...an INCREDIBBLE amount of RESOURCES (sounds incredible in tonality)...an inCREDIBLE (softer) amount...for the body...to find it's own natural, healthy position on the inside. Each vertebra is always adjusting like that, just as you are now (rolling over on to her side) ...each vertebra is always finding the perfect positioning....perfect positioning. Sometimes MOVING itself can be very, very relaxing (referring to her change in position)...much like when...you roll over in your sleep, without even thinking about it, and the minute you do, you roll over, you move around (said very quickly, lightly)...you fall into a DEEEEPER sleep.
Your body knows how to do those things without you even needing to think about it, just trusting it, as it does now...so that your breath just continues RIGHT down your back, slipping and sliding right down towards the middle of your back, even deeper Down through to the lower back, as you breathe, you might even remember...what it's like to slide down...a slide...when you were very young perhaps even ...coming to ...a slide for the very first time you might imagine how you (said very quickly, wit speed, light, and high tonality) walked up the ladder and how it's pretty scary 'cause you'd never done that before, you'd never slid Down a slide before, you might have seen or heard other people sliding Down it, but you'd never done it yourself (refers to the words she used in describing the fact that she'd never given birth before) and when you got to the top, it was so high up (tonality very high) and you were so small, so high up there, and so scary, that you thought you might even fall, but you sat down (tonality drops and deepens) and you were gripping very tightly to the bars at the top, but you just went ahead and you LET GO (louder, with much breath and excitement, releasing the sound) and right Down you slid, right Down to the bottom....And it was SOO much Funn, so much fun, that you went back around again, and again, always learning how to let go...at just the right time....So that now with your next breath, you can come all the way DOWN through to your tail bone.
The slide metaphor creates the experience that Celine described about birth - that she's never done it before, through experiences. I take her through her fear to the learning adjustment of another new experience she has mastered in her life, for birth, at just the right time, reminding her of her own ability to learn and adjust, linking it to birth in the fact that it appears in this visualization. Note the changes in the nature of the truisms as the sessions progresses. Initially, truisms are very practical and realistically oriented, to gain the trust of the left hemisphere. As truisms can become freer in form, since the left hemisphere will continue to believe in the factual quality, if the pacing has been accurate. The deeper into the process the client lets herself go, the more freedom the practitioner has to formulate suggestions that will be helpful to her. Trust, in any context constitutes a form of truism, as for whatever reasons, the clients trusts (believes), she is more capable of experiencing and using suggestions given in simple conversation.
I'd like you to just...become aware now...of a muscle ...that wraps around your pelvis, the back of your uterus, which is called the psoas muscle. It's an inCREDIBLY STRONG muscle...because it's the DEEPEST, DEEPEST muscle in the body... and it's like a fan, it fans out along you lower back and across from left to right, in the very center...of your body (changes in grammatical articles from neutral "the" to possessive "your" are intentional) and it's very subtly activated by breathing, you can just SENSE IT now, very subtly activated, and more so...by making love, and by pushing a baby out, and because it's the DEEpest, DEEpest muscle in your body, it spans the whole lower back, wraps (said so that it sounds like its wrapping) itself around the uterus in the back...it's an incredible...STRENGTH in the center of your body...an incredibly strong muscle in that way...so that, just now with your next breath, you can just take yourself back to that point on your neck...just beginning to let the relaxation...SPREEADD...all by itself...just up your scalp, so that any remaining tension can just begin to fall away from you on the lines of your hair, right Down to the floor...right Down you forehead, so that your eyebrows...can just begin to drift...further...further apart, right down through your nose and cheeks, jaws and ears...right Down through to your throat again...so that Now as you're breathing...you can just become aware...of the fact that your baby is getting oxygen without you even needing to think about it. It's taking in the oxygen without you feeling the movements now as you move, as you rock...senses that on the inside fully equipped with sensory mechanisms (small chuckle) just like we are now. You can giver yourself the right to imagine, what it might look like on the inside because you were once on the inside too so you have been there in a way,... to just feel what it might feel like on the inside of the uterus, now....And even to hear the sounds that are happening, Right Now, on the inside, beating of your hear...the baby can HEAR that...The sound of the blood coming very, very effectively through the placenta, and into the baby...the baby can...hear that sound...the rumbling of your stomach, the baby can...hear that sound. So that just now (very softly, slowly spoken) I'd like you to go ahead, and if you want to...describe to me what it looks like on the inside right now...only if you want to...
(Peterson and Mehl, p. 226-234)
next see:
imagery: birth: exploratory visualization
see also:
imagery: Taueret journey
hypnotherapy: techniques of trance
imagery: birth: exploratory visualization
imagery: birth: birth visualization
imagery: birth: exploring phobias
imagery: birth: complication - breech
imagery: birth: complication - past complications
imagery: birth: complication - fibroids
footnotes