The two circles: gas pedal and brake pedal during birth

Your autonomic nervous system keeps body and mind in balance, and roughly speaking it has two settings. The sympathetic part, the accelerator, puts your body into action mode: fight, flight or freeze. The parasympathetic part, the brake, is the resting mode in which your body can recover, grow and feel safe. Both settings are indispensable. Without the accelerator you could never push when it comes to it; without the brake your body would never find the calm to let surges do their work.

During pregnancy and birth you mostly want to stay in brake mode. That is where oxytocin is produced, the hormone that starts and strengthens surges. Fear, bright light, time pressure or the feeling of being watched activate the accelerator, and that can slow the production of oxytocin. This is not a failure of your body, it is exactly how it is meant to work: in unsafe situations your body automatically switches to protection instead of giving birth.

This is the heart of what we call the two circles. The accelerator circle runs from fear to tension to pain, and from there back to fear: every step feeds the next. The brake circle runs from trust to relaxation to comfort, and that circle feeds itself too, in the other direction. Neither circle is right or wrong. The accelerator is an ally when there is real danger, it is simply not the setting you want to spend much of your birth in.

Which circle is active depends largely on what happens inside and around you. Think of a harsh fluorescent light versus dimmed light, a busy shift handover versus calm, familiar voices, the feeling of being rushed versus being given the time you need. Often it is small things that decide which circle you end up in, and that also means there is often something to be done about it.

Think of your own oxytocin bubble: what do you hear, see, smell, feel and taste when you feel safe and relaxed? For one person that is a quiet, dark room, for another familiar music or a scent that reminds them of home. By mapping out that environment in advance, and deliberately seeking it out or creating it wherever you give birth, you give your body the best chance of staying in the brake circle, or of returning there sooner when the accelerator kicks in.

In the course we practise recognising both circles on purpose, in yourself and in your partner, so that you do not have to discover during the birth itself what helps you shift back. That is exactly what hypnobirthing is about: knowing how to find the brake again when you need it.