We want all parents to enjoy the birth of their baby. It should be one of the most satisfying and empowering experiences of their lives.
We'd like to introduce ourselves.
Laura Ross Wood and Shelley Ross Black, sisters and best friends, created Blissborn together; a course that blends the best of hypnosis and childbirth education, firmly anchored in neuroscience, psychology, biology and mind-body wisdom.
Our course teaches couples what really works to make birth quicker, safer and more comfortable. We believe that Blissborn is the best childbirth education course available today.
When we started having babies, the more we learned about natural birth, the more passionate we became about the quality of this incredibly important experience — for our own families and others' as well.
We have both used other programs with all kinds of techniques and philosophies, but felt that there was a place for a childbirth education course for people who want all of this to make sense, and who are looking for well-designed, attractive, and efficient program. We decided create it ourselves.
How it began
We had seen the power of hypnotherapy in friends' lives and our own, and we decided to pursue our training together. (Read more about hypnosis and hypnotherapy here.) When we completed our training in 2007, Laura was eight months pregnant. The plan was to focus our practice locally on pregnancy and birth — a natural fit for our passion and interests.
We knew hypnosis could be powerful, but we had no idea just what was possible until we experienced it ourselves. With Laura's daughter's arrival, we discovered just what was possible in labor and birth using hypnosis, and it rocked our worlds. Even though Laura has a famously low tolerance for pain, the birth was five hours long, and it mostly looked a lot like sleeping. Out of more than 600 births the midwife had attended, she said Laura’s home water birth was the calmest she'd ever seen.
Moments after Quincy was born, we knew we had to get the word out.
The same techniques used and tested in Laura's birth became Blissborn.
We became clinical hypnotherapists because hypnosis works, and it really does make sense (see more about hypnosis and hypnotherapy here). We have done extensive work with birth, goals, chronic and acute pain, anxiety, phobias and fears, trauma, self-esteem, relationships, depression, and more. We believe in the power of language and thought and imagination to create change. We put that understanding into the Blissborn classes and into the skills and knowledge we teach. Beyond just childbirth education (which is also a major part of the course), for Blissborn students, this means an understanding of why and how all of this works for them in their birth -- no matter how or where that birth happens. Parents learn real-life skills and tools, which leads to confidence, connection, and excitement about birth.
We created this course because we want to change the way the world, especially Western society, views and experiences how babies are born. Our mission in life is to help new families get a great start in an atmosphere of peace, confidence and empowerment — an experience which sets the stage for loving and peaceful homes and happy children.
