About calmbirth®
The calmbirth® method of childbirth education was created by Peter Jackson in 2005.
As a midwife in a country hospital for 20 years, Peter witnessed mothers whose experience of childbirth was one of fear, pain and trauma. As a result he began to search for ways to help improve the experience of these mothers.
He consequently qualified as a Private Subconscious Mind Therapist and in 1997 and developed the calmbirth® Pre Natal Education programme in 2005.
The calmbirth® technique was developed to reduce pain in labour by eliminating the fear and tension that many women experience during childbirth. calmbirth® draws on Dr Grantly Dick Read’s (1889–1959) theory of fear – tension – pain which revolutionized the way people perceived childbirth in the early half of this century. His model outlining the relationship between fear tension and pain in the body of the labouring woman is based on the way the sympathetic nervous system reacts to signals of distress or potential danger.
In the calmbirth® classes couples are taught skills such as relaxation, visualisation and breathing which help to tap into these resources. This in turn reduces fear and anxiety about birth. In his book “Timeless Healing “Herbert Benson (1996) explains that the bodily calm we call the “relaxation response” has the opposite effect to the well know “fight and flight” response. The relaxation response is a state in which blood pressure is lowered, heart rate, breathing rate metabolic rate brought on by simple “….mental focusing or meditation techniques”. Benson believes that when we encourage patients (mothers) to play an active role in their health care (birth process) we are utilizing a contemporary understanding of mind body medicine. All of the above can have a beneficial effect on a woman’s pregnancy, labour and post partum period as has been proven over and over again by pregnant couples who have used the calmbirth® techniques in childbirth.