Abstract
This paper presents an illustrative analysis of amateur You Tube videos portraying a specific style of natural births called hypno-births, which make use of relaxation and hypnosis techniques during labour and birthing, and offer an alternative to birthing in interventionist, obstetrics-led settings. Moving forward from the visible advantages of relaxation and hypnosis related birthing support, within the context of the natural birthing movement , to restore women's agency in birthing, resisting and rejecting hyper-medicalized technocratic cultures of births, this paper suggests that these homemade, amateur hypnobirthing videos need to be viewed against the feminist critique of the intensive motherhood discourse, which sees the videos producing the birthing mother as an individualized, self-regulating and highly invested, neo-liberal subject, transcending pain in a mythic journey of blissful birthing.