HypnoBirthing

[Smoke Jaguar]

Hi, I'm jumping in a bit here, but I have some comments. I used HB and found it was fantastic.
FionaJill - the state of relaxation that you get into does not prevent you from having an active birth. I used my visualisations and breathing techniques to get me into a 'zone' and when the surges came on I would rotate my hips (either standing and leaning my hands on a wall, chair or DP, or kneeling on a pillow leaning over the bed or couch), or walk up and down the street (yep, walking and relaxing at the same time!). When it came to the birth part, when I arrived at the birth centre I put myself into a zone again (practising the deep breathing is essential, I think!) so that I could move in the way I needed to without distracting thoughts or unnecessary movement during surges. I had a waterbirth and I was not 'lying still'. I was on my knees, leaning on the edge of the bath and breathing out in a 'hum' the whole time, whilst easily visualising my 'bits' opening and accomodating Oscar's little corkscrewing body the way our bodies do when we trust them. Deep relaxation doesn't mean you have to lie still, it means that you cut out the peripherals and are in the moment of birth and all that you have to do for it. And it's not much - the sooner you realise that your conscious mind is not really part of birthing, the easier it is to tell your conscious mind to let the body and your 'inner intelligence' (the thing that regulates all your bodily processes, i.e. the thing that tells your heart to pump, your diaphragm to let your lungs take in air, your cells to rejuvenate etc) do all the work. Deep relaxation helps you to give in to the fact that your body knows what to do without you having to tell it. HypnoBirthing merely trains us to stop the mind chatter that interferes with our instincts - unfortunately, in today's world, some of us need to pay good money to do a course to teach us to trust our instincts! If the pregnancy is progressing normally then your body will not put you through more than you can physically handle. What you can psychologically handle is another matter and that's what the HB training is for.
CalmBirthing - is the Australian version of HB. Peter Jackson trained in the Mongan Method and in order to be able to publish books for the Australian context/experience, he's had to register it under a different name (otherwise, if he altered the HB for Australians and kept calling it HB'ing, he'd be in breach of copyright, not that the US HB would really take any angry action, but it's a potential minefield). Practitioners qualified in CalmBirthing can then be registered here in Australia and get the benefits of membership that they don't get as registered HB's. This is because HypnoBirthing is registered to the US only and benefits of registration are limited to the US - Australian practitioners of HB are gradually changing over to CalmBirthing to get the flexibility and benefits of having an Australian registration. It's pretty much a cultural and legal difference, but not much else! In Victoria I don't think any of the HB's are yet fully fledged CalmBirthers, but soon there will be. My own instructor was in the process of it (Esther Swoboda) when I did her course, and she also used some of her own techniques to supplement the HB'ing ones, which were an immense help.
Hope I've clarified some of your questions!