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The Aspiring Hypnobirthing Instructor Podcast

What makes The Calm Birth School different?

Welcome to the Aspiring Hypnobirthing Instructor podcast. I’m your host, Liz Stanford, Hypnobirthing instructor, Hypnobirthing trainer, hypnotherapist mindset coach, author and owner of The Calm Birth School. In this podcast, we get to explore all the reasons why you should train to teach hypnobirthing. You’ll understand more about what the training actually involves, what it’s like to teach hypnobirthing, and also what it’s like to run a business in the birth world. I can’t wait to take you on this journey and give you all the information you need.

Today’s topic for discussion in the podcast is what makes the calm birth school different? Something I’m hearing more and more of when I’m having regular conversations with people who are interested in training to teach Hypnobirthing, or they might be DMing me on Instagram or attending my masterclass or getting in contact in, in some way, is that there are lots of options out there when it comes to choosing your Hypnobirthing training, and it’s incredibly difficult to decide which one is right for you and to decipher the difference between all of the options that are available out there. Up until a few years ago, there were only two, really two options for training to teach Hypnobirthing. That was certainly the case when I did my training back in 11 years ago. And since then, slowly over a 10 year period, a few more brands began to emerge, which was actually a really good thing because the two options that were available weren’t suitable for everybody.

It didn’t match everybody’s values and beliefs and wasn’t, you know, always what, what someone might be looking for when it comes to Hypnobirthing. So it’s really great that more brands started to emerge, and the Calm Birth School was one of those brands. We originally started out as an online Hypnobirthing program, which could, could be purchased as birth preparation, and that was created and developed by the Calm Birth school’s founder Susie Ashworth. And then I became involved with the calm birth school and wrote the training program and started training people. So that was how the calm birth school got into the sort of training side of Hypnobirthing. But then more recently, over the last perhaps three years or so, I would say there’s been, I don’t know, I don’t know if explosion is the right word, but there’s definitely been a number of other Hypnobirthing brands emerging and offering training.

So of course this means that Hypnobirthing becomes more accessible for more people. It also means it becomes more confusing when people are trying to decide what option they need to take or they want to take. So I created a checklist, which comes with an audio as well, which has got some questions that you can use when you’re talking to different Hypnobirthing brands when you’re trying to decide which one is right for you. So I do believe that I attract a certain type of person to train with the calm birth school. And obviously I, I only want people who are aligned with my values and beliefs and, you know, want and need the kind of support that I have. And so it is important that you do look around and you do find the right brand for you.

So my checklist and audio might be really helpful if you’re still in that phase of trying to negotiate and navigate the hypnobirthing training world. So I’ll pop a link in the show notes and you can download that and take a look at it and see if it helps you to navigate the training and helps you to kind of make a decision about which option is best for you. But I thought it might be useful in this episode, right? I don’t go into this in the checklist or the audio, but I thought it might be useful for me to tell you why or how the calm birth school is different to other brands that are out there. And this is not to say that the calm birth school is the best brand out there or the only brand that you should consider training with, et cetera.

It’s just so you’ve got an idea of maybe our point of difference and also, yeah, whether that kind of aligns with you or inspires you to, to choose us to train with. So one thing that I am super passionate about is the way that we deliver the training. So when I first did my training years ago it was probably not suited to how I learn and it probably wasn’t suited to my personality. So I would kind of class myself as an introverted extrovert, I guess. I’m very comfortable leading groups and talking to people, making friends, but I’m definitely a backseat learner. I need to be encouraged and pushed out of my comfort zone. So I guess when I was developing my training course, I kind of had to, hmm, what, what would’ve helped me all those years ago when I trained to teach hyp number birthing what would’ve sort of fast tracked my confidence and helped me to absorb the information quicker.

And so I kind of poured that into my training course. Also, kind of, you know, not just basing it around me, but also thinking about what other people will need. So my training is a hybrid course for those that are in the uk. It is delivered online and then a two-day face-to-face in Solihull in the West Midlands. The online part of the training is completely flexible and built around your own time, so you don’t have to turn up for any Zoom calls. You know, you don’t have to put anything in your diary for the first two months of the training because the two days come in the third month, the two day face-to-face is in the third month. So there’s lots of time to put that in your calendar and get things in place, you know, should you need childcare or organising partners to be available that weekend, et cetera.

There’s lots of opportunity to sort that out. And also the hybrid, the hybrid experience is really helpful because it helps you to absorb all the theory online at your own pace. And the way that we’ve kind of built in the support means that you are, you’re not just given a login and you’re just on your own. You’re actually working through the course and you are doing activities, you’re doing quizzes, you’re doing written assessments, and we are marking or feeding back on those various different elements to help you to improve or to learn more or help you with your understanding. And so the beauty of that is that you are embedding the information that you are learning in lots of different ways. So it’s, it’s easier for it to stick in your brain for a start off, but you are also, you are also talking about the things that you are learning.

So the activities are always delivered via a live video. Doesn’t mean that anyone’s necessarily gonna be there watching it live at the time. We were, we usually sort of batch watch and feed back on, you know, a number of videos at any one time. So you haven’t got the pressure of a facilitator watching you live. You can ask questions in that live video and we can ask you questions when we’re feeding back as well. So there’s loads of touch points with myself and my facilitators who are, you know, equally passionate and there to support you all the way through the training. So that is something that I feel we are different in the way that we structure our training. We try to make it as accessible and as accessible to different learners, but accessible to people’s different lifestyles so that it can be easily fitted into what your existing life, you know, looks like.

And we’re also really passionate about you just having a really great experience. Like it is an immersive experience, but you can fit it into your life. And I do find that it is very, people really enjoy it. The feedback is always so positive. So do head over to our Trustpilot account. I’ll leave a link so you can look at some of the reviews of the training just to get a feel for how you know what people think about completing their training with the Combat School. So another thing that I think the Combat School does really well or does differently is the support that we give in terms of business and personal development as well. So I’m not, I’m not saying we’re the only training company that offers business support, but I think the way that we do it is quite different.

So with your training package, you also get a marketing and mindset course, which helps you to create the right kind of mindset that you need for working in this type of business. And also it helps you to understand some of the different elements that you, of marketing that you will, you know, that, that you might want to try or explore to help you to build up an audience and network and, and help you to start getting clients. So that’s one thing that we do when it comes to business or marketing. We also have a back catalogue of free workshops that you can access as a trained instructor. Things that will help you with not only marketing, but will help you with things like exploring what other services you might want to offer as a birth worker, but also things like personal development and your own taking care of yourself as well.

So we have things like, you know, how to create Google ads. We have a masterclass about selling, we have a class about pr. We have classes about how to create and promote a Hypnobirthing taste session, create affirmation cards, create relaxation sessions, and so many different things that you can access related to your business. And then we have experts from other businesses come in and tell us, this is all online on Zoom, come and tell us what they offer to their clients. That might be something that you are interested in as well. And quite often the calm birth school gets access to exclusive discounts if you want to do further training with some of our collaborators. And then of course, you must look after yourself in this kind of business. So we do offer personal growth as well when it comes to workshops.

So we’ve done one recently about resilience and understanding resilience and understanding how, how and why our energy gets depleted and how to support ourselves. So a lovely coach called Charlene Kidd did that for us recently. We’ve done more and about how to be brave in business, which was really, really helpful as well, helping people to really embrace themselves and kind of step out of their comfort zone. So Caroline Thompson did that for us. A while back we’ve also had a session, a breathwork session with Hannah Rose Robson who runs her own breathwork training business. But that session was really, it was for our school instructors personally as a personal experience for them. But it also helped to really hammer home the importance of breath work when it comes to our clients as well. So there’s lots of different things that you can access and experience once you are a trained hypnobirthing instructor that just helps to continually develop you.

We also run a regular book club, and that helps with your continued professional development and do things like visibility challenges. I’ve got one coming up this month actually where I’m gonna set a series of challenges over a week, and the instructors are going to carry out those, carry out those visibility challenges, which again, will push them outside of their comfort zone perhaps. So it is really good for people who may be feeling a little worried about getting out there on social media or they’ve lost their social media mojo. And that’s all, it’s great to feel that everyone is, you know, doing it at the same time as you. And of course we come up with lots of ideas for them as well. So there’s lots of things to access and work through. Definitely not access them all at the same time because that could be quite overwhelming.

And my instructors know that everything is optional and they can dip in and out, take what they need and also, you know, just do things in their own way as well is really super important. The other thing I think is really important is that I feel that the calm birth school does differently. I’m very passionate about looking at society and also looking at maternity services and seeing what the different issues are that we need to consider that our clients might face or that they might experience. So for example, we know that trauma, birth trauma is on the increase. This may be a hangover from the pandemic, but also from maternity services that are struggling. So it’s not just in the UK in other areas of the world. I know the US as well, you know, struggling in terms of maternity services but other parts of the world as well.

So because of that, we are more likely to be coming across clients who’ve experienced birth trauma in the past and are looking for a way to approach birth differently and to experience something differently. So because of that, as part of our training package, you also get a birth trauma competency training, which is just included, and that is something you can work through in your own time. It’s not part of the actual Hypnobirthing goal. So you don’t need to have completed that to get your level three diploma certificate, but it is something that is accessible to you as soon as you complete the course. And if you were going to be working with somebody who experienced trauma, then I would really recommend that you work through that course prior to that. So it’ll help you to be able to approach the Hypnobirthing course with those people from a sort of trauma aware trauma informed place.

The course or the workshop would also give you an insight into supporting people with certain mental health issues. And really importantly, that workshop will give you the confidence to know, when should I sign and post this person somewhere else? Like when is there a point when, okay, I I, I don’t think I can help this person because they need some additional support, or they need some support outside of Hypnobirthing, whether that be with maternal mental health services, or maybe they need a clinical psychologist or maybe they need a hypnotherapist. But yes, it will help you to, to not be afraid to make that judgement and to make that call and to have that discussion with those clients. Another thing that I’m really passionate about at the K school is anti-racism as well. I think as birth workers, we should all be taking steps to becoming anti-racist.

And, and of course this, this stems from the fact that there are, there is a very clear divide between the maternal mortality rates for white women and the maternal mortality rates for Black women. So there’s a very big difference there. It wasn’t so long ago that Black women were five times more likely to die in childbirth as opposed to white women. And now that statistic is closer to four times, which has reduced because of some great bodies, charities, grassroots organisations that have really championed making a difference. So for example, a grassroots organisation called Five, five Times More has been really instrumental in raising awareness and holding the NHS to account and encouraging that change. Now, of course, four times is still not acceptable. So there, there is a lot of work to do and those women who are facing the that statistic are potentially more likely to have a lot more fear than than someone who, you know, who isn’t included in that statistic.

And so being aware of that at the Combat School, we created some hypnosis tracks and some affirmations specifically for Black and brown women. So that was created by Sabrina, who is my resident hypnotherapist. So she wrote those tracks because she is a Black woman and she obviously has lived experience of such and has given birth to three children, and she’s also a hypnotherapist as well, and works with me very closely at the K school with our trainees. So she was the perfect person to write those tracks and now we have them available for our Black and brown clients, should they, should they want them and should they need them. We also, at the Calm birth school, are passionate about being inclusive with our birth preparation for the LGBTQ community. We know that the LGBTQ community is growing and that they are accessing maternity services.

So just like anybody else, they should be seen and valued. And quite often my understanding is that LGBTQ parents can feel that, you know, they’re not valued or seen by the NHS or maternity services. So that’s something that is important to me, that we are able to serve those people should they want to access Hypnobirthing. So we have tracks that, for example, somebody who doesn’t identify as a woman but is pregnant could access our hypnosis tracks and affirmations tracks. And we use language that hopefully feels more accessible to those individuals. And of course we have tracks for people who do identify as being a woman and mother, et cetera. So we’re really trying to personalise the experience as much as we can at the calm birth school so that everybody feels seen and valued and heard no matter what their kind of background is or what their experiences are.

And obviously that’s a work in progress. And definitely not saying that we have got it nailed or that we are perfect, but it is something that we are working towards being allies and trying to be inclusive. So those are some of the things that I feel like we are different at that makes us different at the calm birth school. There’s probably loads of other things as well, but I’m not gonna go on for, for too much longer. So I just wanted to share those things with you today so that you could get an understanding of maybe what a couple of our points of differences are. If you head over to the show notes, like I said, you can get our checklist. You can also check out some of the things that I’ve mentioned in this podcast that might help you have a little bit more of an understanding about our point of difference. And yeah, have a lovely weekend.

And so all that’s left for me to say is thanks for listening to the episode this week. I will be back next week with another little tidbit for you to absorb to help you understand more about training to teach Hypnobirthing and understanding more about what it is like. So if you have any comments or thoughts about my podcast, then feel free to head over to Instagram. I’m at the calm birth school, send me a dm. I’d love to connect with you or if you would like to learn more about my training course, I will put a link in the show notes so that you can check it out. And from that page you’ll be able to apply for the course or book a call with me too. It would be great to be able to speak to you soon. Have a great week.

 

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