Mindful Birthing (Video)

Nancy Bardacke, author of Mindful Birthing, talks about the Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting program. 

In this video, from the Mindfulness and Compassion conference back in March, Bardacke talks about adapting Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) into her Mindful Childbirth and Parenting program.

She talks about some of the unexpected stressors on pregnancy and how mindfulness can helpa key part of Mindful‘s feature story on Bardacke’s class in the August 2013 issue of Mindful magazine.

“Why bring mindfulness to expectant families? Well first of all, pregnancy is pretty stressful even if it’s happy. The body is changing, life is changing profoundly […] so that’s just the normal,” says Bardacke. “The newer research is talking now about how stress is impacting the unborn, so that being unborn actually can be pretty stressful given the particular conditions of the mother’s body and then of course being born itself.”

Below, Bardacke talks about what parents can expect from her course at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and current research on mindfulness and childbirth.

[Photo: flickr.com/Sellers Patton]