I’ve been talking about the power of the mind-body connection with clients today and I wanted to share some things with you. I’ve been focusing on visualisation and affirmations as part of birth preparation, and these are tools which can be really useful for many people.

I use the example of thinking about somebody close to you having nits, or a loved pet having fleas, and the response that’s often felt in our bodies when we think about these things. Or what happens to us when watching a scary movie – does your body respond to the anticipatory fear (how many of us have that friend or partner who like to make you ‘jump’ at that moment?!)?

Even though these aren’t real things happening to us in this moment, they are in our minds and our minds can’t always tell the difference, especially when it’s in vivid detail.

This is why there are so many examples out there of people using visualisations when they are preparing for something important, particularly athletes working to a high level like footballers or Olympians, or celebrities using visualisations as a tool to achieve their goals. It’s widely known that preparing your mind as well as your body increases your chances of having a positive experience and you can add this tool to your labour and birth toolkit too.

Michael Phelps (who’s one of the greatest swimmers of all time according to Wikipedia!) won a gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the 200m Butterfly BUT during the race his goggles filled with water and he couldn’t see anything. He still won Gold. His coach encouraged him to use visualisations in preparing for events and so his mind could see even if his eyes couldn’t! He showed that mentally preparing calm responses primed his nervous system so that when something that I imagine was particularly stressful happened, he didn’t panic, his mind and body knew what to do.

Jessica Ennis-Hill talked about using visualisation in preparing for the heptathlon.

Tiger Woods visualised every shot.

And it’s not just athletes, Oprah Winfrey speaks about visualising the life she wanted before she had the evidence to show it was possible. Jim Carrey used visualisation to give him from a broke, out of work actor, to one of the most well known, and in my opinion, funniest actors out there!

Do you use visualisation or affirmations already as part of your birth prep? I’d love to hear what’s working for you or perhaps take this as a cue to try out visualisation, and let me know how you get on!