Online Certification Training Programs in Childbirth Hypnosis and Counseling in the Peterson Method

From the desk of Dr. Gayle Peterson:

Thank you for your interest in the Training Programs in the Peterson Method. The goal of this work is the enhancement of a woman's self-esteem and good feelings about herself as a person and a mother at this very critical period in the life cycle. This kind of work does facilitate normal birth and increases possibilities for a healthy outcome; however, this is a by-product and not the main thrust of attending to the emotional needs of mothers giving birth. The approach is therefore, a compassionate and not cause and effect or blame-inducing one. This work enhances your ability to help women through this transition in the family and helps you to support women giving birth in any way they choose.

Following my daughter's birth, I wanted to share the richness of my own experience with other women. I immersed myself in research on the safety of home delivery to see if this choice could truly be a viable one for women throughout the country. Donald Creevy, M.D., Lewis Mehl, M.D., Nancy Shaw, PhD and myself studied the outcomes of the Santa Cruz midwives in the early 70's. This initial research pointed us in the direction of studying prenatal care practices. This led me to study the contribution of emotional and psychological factors to a normal and healthy labor in any setting, whether it is home or hospital. After physical health and nutrition, emotional factors showed themselves to be important to a normal labor and delivery.

During the past decades, an increasing number of medical researchers have documented the fact that a woman's emotional state affects her physiology. In 1979 Levenson and Shnider published their findings which linked maternal fear to dysfunctional labor patterns. One year later, Roberto Sosa and his associates published research in The New England Journal of Medicine which suggested that having a person present to emotionally support the mother during labor decreased length of labor and increased mother-infant bonding immediately after birth. Research that supported emotional factors as significant to childbirth outcome helped to humanize standard hospital policy to better meet the emotional needs of the laboring mother.

Medical research has shown that fear can affect labor by decreasing the hormone oxytocin, which causes contractions. I have found in my clinical practice and research conducted by myself and colleagues, that a realistic preparation allows women the opportunity to integrate the intensity of labor before it occurs. Body-centered preparation means that a woman can experience, as much as possible, her own physical and emotional response to labor. This allows a woman time to master her fear before labor, creating a greater potential for a smooth and uncomplicated childbirth. This capacity to help women master their fears before childbirth is the essence of what these Training Programs in Childbirth Hypnosis and Counseling offer. Over the past thirty-five years I have developed a method of childbirth preparation which synthesizes the research on the effects of emotions on labor with the practical experience I have gained from working with pregnant women and their families. The course syllabus details the content of the training certification program. The Training Programs can be taken for certification or non-certification.

Included in the training cost are materials other than the books, An Easier Childbirth, Making Healthy Families and Birthing Normally. A training manual pdf, and training video files of the lectures are included in the trainings. Access to the library video files of individual cases is also included, while enrolled in the program.