Hi everyone in today's podcast we're going to talk about the evidence on using relaxation

for pain relief during labor.

Welcome to the Evidence Face Birth Podcast. My name is Rebecca Decker and I'm a nurse with my PhD and the founder of Evidence Space Birth. Join me each week as we work together to get evidence-based information

into the hands of families and professionals

across the world.

As a reminder, this information is not medical advice.

See Eviebirth.com. Disclaimer for more details.

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Evidence-based Birth

Podcast.

In today's podcast episode, we're going to continue our pain management series by talking

about the effects of relaxation techniques on pain management during labor.

The goal of using relaxation is to elicit the body's natural relaxation response, which consists of slower

breathing, lower blood pressure, and a general sense of well-being and calm.

The relaxation response was actually popularized by a book written by that

name and published in 1975 by Herbert Benson, a Harvard physician and Miriam

Clipper. The book was a simple secularized version of transcendental meditation

techniques which come from India. It was written for people in the Western world so that they could

learn how to activate their

parasympathetic nervous system.

The parasympathetic nervous system is the part of your peripheral nervous system that causes

humans to relax. It counters the fight or flight or adrenaline part of the peripheral nervous system.

And that counterpart is the sympathetic nervous system.

...