The New York Times highlights a new study by UCSF Osher Center members published in the journal BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth. The research findings suggest that including mindfulness skills in childbirth education can help first-time mothers cope with their fears about the physical pain that accompanies labor and childbirth, and also indicates that mindfulness may help decrease women’s symptoms of prenatal and postpartum depression.

During the course, women are taught how to apply the language of mindfulness to the childbirth process, including how to use mindfulness to cope with pain and fear during labor. Birth partners also learn how to give comfort and support using mindfulness techniques. “I teach women, and of course their partners, that the painful contractions of labor come and go, moment by moment, and that between the contractions are moments of calm and ease,” Ms. Bardacke, a certified nurse-midwife and mindfulness teacher at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said. She says that the key to managing one’s fears is learning how to stay anchored in the present moment without worrying about the past or the future.

“Mindfulness practice provides an opportunity for the discovery of previously unrecognized inner resources of strength and resilience,” Ms. Bardacke says. “By the time the workshop is over, women’s confidence levels increase and their fears begin to dissipate. They realize that even if giving birth is hard, it’s something that they can manage, moment by moment.”

Click here to read the published study.