As a hypnotherapist I often get asked can hypnosis really help with pain control. This question is usually asked by a pregnant mum to be. More and more women these days are choosing to have their children by caesarian and so avoid the pain of natural labor. I find myself wondering if all these women would still do so if they knew how helpful hypnosis can be in relation to pain control and also how easy it is to learn.
Clinical studies have shown that women in both first and second stages of labor who use hypnosis in preparation for the birth have an easier time than those in a control group. For example in one published study the hypnosis group spent an average time of 6.4 hours in the first stage as opposed to 9.3 hours in the control group, whilst they spent 37 minutes in the second stage as opposed to 50 minutes. In addition to this, the use of analgesic agents was significantly reduced in the hypnotized groups as opposed to the control groups.


