Hospitals are reporting a sharp rise in the number of women wanting to attend hypnobirthing classes.

The technique, which focuses on relaxation and self-hypnosis during the birth process, has been found to help some women control labour pains. 

Nearly a quarter of women who give birth at the hospital and birthing units in the Colchester Hospital University Trust in Essex took a course in hypnobirthing before giving birth.

Its popularity has led to almost one in six of the trust’s midwives being trained in the practice, the Guardian reports. 

The trust now runs 10 hypnobirthing courses a month and predict it will instruct between 720 and 960 women in hypnobirthing in 2015.

Hospitals now offering the service include the University College London, Royal Oldham, Countess of Chester and Macclesfield.

Katharine Graves, the founder of KG Hypnobirthing and author of The Hypnobirthing Book, told MailOnline the rise was largely down to 'word of mouth.'

She has trained dozens of NHS midwives and said more and more women were experiencing the benefits of it.  

'When I started to teach hypnobirthing over 12 years ago it was virtually unknown. 

'A few brave women did this course with this suspicious name, on the grounds that anything was worth a try, and probably to their surprise found that it made a tremendous difference.

'So they told their friends, and they found it worked too, so they told their friends, and that’s how it started.

‘It really is a grass roots revolution, caused by women. Then midwives saw the difference that it made and the whole ethos of their work is to do their best for the women in their care, so they told other women, and so it grew even quicker.'  

Women will be taught deep relaxation techniques which are said to induce an almost trance-like state, making women calmer and more able to block out pain.

Scientific evidence is inconclusive its impact with some NHS trusts now starting to collect data from mothers who opt for the technique.

Wolverhampton Trust has reported that 80 per cent of hypnobirthing mothers have normal births compared with 60 per cent of the general population.

A normal delivery is one without induction, without the use of instruments, not by Caesarean section and without general, spinal or epidural anaesthetic before or during delivery. 

But Gail Johnson, education adviser at the Royal College of Midwives, said it was not ticket to a pain-free delivery.

'It’s not "one, two, three, go into a trance and wake up with a baby"’. 

'The hypnobirthing process is not necessarily about hypnosis, it’s often about focusing on something other than the pain of labour and that’s not something that’s particularly new,' she said.

Written By Kate Pickles

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