The first 7 Secrets of Birth Training with Janet Balaskas

Dominique Sakoilsky co-founder of 'Relaxed Birth and Parenting' tells us about the first '7  Secrets of Birth' Training she ran recently. This is a training for people wanting to work with women during pregnancy and postnatally and uses the '7 Words' personal development methodology applied to pregnancy and birth.





The first 7 Secrets of Birth Training took place in March 2012 at the Active Birth Centre in London. It was a new collaboration between Active Birth Founder, Janet Balaskas and myself Dominique Sakoilsky.

Attending were midwives, yoga teachers and Pilates teachers, all from different parts of the UK, as well as from Ireland and even Lithuania. What did we learn? The 7 Secrets will be revealed (book coming out May 2012) but we really explored pregnancy and birth physiology as a context for understanding about the needs of individual women for birth. We are all different. Every birth with every woman is different again. What do we know..that hormones are the delicate messengers that journey us into the very unique and open state that is necessary for birth. The “shy” hormone oxytocin responds to relaxation and feelings of safety. For some women accepting high levels of oxytocin and relaxin into her body will be a graceful drop into a profound state of being. For another woman it may ask her to trust in a way that feels both unfamiliar and scary.

Using the 7 Secrets as a tool of exploration we began to “uncoat” ourselves and see what we as practitioners bring to the arena of birth. In understanding something of our own personal make up and history we could see what gets in the way of our own relaxation and being. We journeyed form NO to YES, uncovering the states of HELLO, THANK YOU, GOODBYE, PLEASE and SORRY along the way. We looked at boundaries and truth, communication and connection, fear and denial, courage and the heart, vision and intention, responsibility and forgiveness and many nuances in between.

The general experience seemed to be one of deepening profoundly into birth and all she touches. Bones are a starting point, hormones give the bones and what has to happen some meaning, emotional awareness opened up the whole space. Birth isn’t just a physical event, it touches the feeling and even spiritual realms, and welcoming these aspects into our understanding brings a deepening of context.  Seeing these women go through a transition this weekend was wondrous.  As one antenatal yoga teacher said “I now feel shiny clean, lighter and more clear as to my path.  If you want to find out something important about yourself and why you work in the arena of birth come in September and find out!

For information on this training and the regular weekly ante-natal classes that take place in Bristol and Portishead as well as 1 day couples workshops that use the 7 words methodology see the Relaxed Birth and Parenting website.