Healing Birth Trauma: A Blueprint for Re-Birth

 

By Flavia Potenza, Former radio journalist at KPFK, Editor of the Topanga Messenger 

Most of us don’t remember our birth. Family stories sometimes give us clues about it: Was it normal? Was anesthesia used, a C-section performed or was there undue stress during labor? A normal birth in itself is difficult, but if something goes wrong, it can be traumatic. The conditions we experience at the moment of our birth are imprinted within our very cells and as newborns, or even prenatally, we make decisions about the world we are born into. Can those early impressions influence us for the rest of our lives? What were the circumstances and surroundings when we made our entrance?

These were some of the questions Susan Lange, O.M.D, L.Ac., asked over years of creating and conducting a variety of healing workshops and training seminars. “I couldn’t figure out why people were still holding on to old traumas that seemed buried so deep within their bones, organs, muscles and cells,” Lange recalls. “As I wrestled with the mystery, I kept coming back to the pre-conception-to-post-birth period. At conception what were the conditions in the family … or in the world, for that matter? What happens when a baby is pushed and pulled through the birth canal or cut out of the uterus through C-section and thus born according to someone else’s schedule and not hers? What if a baby is premature or ill and needs to be whisked away for life-saving measures and misses those moments of connection and comfort with her parents?”

The resulting answer was a workshop, Blueprint for Re-Birth – doing it your way, designed to release the trauma of our first birth, reclaim a healthier experience and reconnect with the happy, healthy baby blueprint. With her husband, Julian Lange, O.M.D., L.Ac, they teach a three-day birth workshop that “integrates the soul, the brain and the body and helps the development of strong roots grounded deeply from spirit through the body into the earth.”. They use processes that integrate Oriental Medicine, Core Energetics, Bio-dynamic cranio-sacral therapy and Ray Castellino’s method of prenatal and birth therapy to create a safe and sacred space for the deepest level of  healing and joy imaginable.

“We work at the level of the neural pathways,” Lange explains. “By using visual, auditory and strong kinesthetic techniques we are able to follow each person and their different rhythms on many different levels. Separate traumatic events often compress and feel like one insurmountable obstacle that leads to an overwhelming sense of helplessness. If, in the past, a baby had to deal not only with the birth process, but also the absence of her parents, carrying the negative world situation or other ‘invisible’ traumas, she very probably went  into overwhelm. If that happens in the present, we ask her to look to the people in the group she has selected for support. Then we slowly back everything out from each of the different trauma levels until she feels comfortable again. Tracking what’s happening in the physical body is one of the most important aspects. When shifts start to happen, the muscles relax almost imperceptibly and the whole room relaxes; it’s far deeper than  thinking or words.”

 “As far as I know, mine was your standard Baby Boomer birth.” Workshop participant Karol Avalon only had that tidbit to go on to recreate her birth experience. “My mother was asleep, knocked out, not there. It was 1946 and my dad had just gotten back from the war. Not there. I was probably yanked out, drops in my eyes and all that. I was not breast fed.”

Although this doesn’t seem particularly traumatic, Dr. Lange identifies the different possible traumas in it. “First of all,” she says, “the world was recovering from war when Karol was born so there was a lot of death energy around. There was probably a lot of fear both worldwide and for Karol’s mother. If her mother was anesthetized, then she couldn’t push the baby out so Karol might well have been delivered with forceps or, as Karol says, ‘yanked out.’ And neither of her parents was there to welcome her.

“Our job as the facilitators,” Lange continues, “is to hold the perfect healthy baby blueprint that Karol was never given and then simply get out of the way. We slow down the pace and create a solid container of support with the other participants called by Castellino, the ‘womb surround.’  We slow the pace to claim more space. This means that each person is free to explore and reclaim his or her healthy baby birth experience in his or her own time with no pressure to rush through the process. This way the participant is able to stay more present. Traumatic issues that were skipped over and never resolved before can surface, be processed and replaced with new messages of comfortable, joyful and effortless re-birth. Your world changes and you develop a more confident relationship with those around you.

Prior to the workshop, participants complete a detailed questionnaire telling as much as they know about their birth experience and setting their intention: Who am I? What do I want? “Then together,” says Lange, “we set the space, go into that exploration and watch the magic happen”.

For Mary Kay Fry, slowing the pace created a safe and sacred place for her. “I knew something amazing was happening,” she recalls. “It literally refreshed me even when it wasn’t my turn. During the whole time I was actually given permission, no, encouraged to receive all that I wanted. I was the ‘needy, greedy baby’ and it was great.

”What surprised me was that the space was not only safe, but light and joyful. Even when we were releasing trauma, there was joy in it. As a child, my deepest wound was that my mother was so busy and never had time for me. I was a happy child but I didn’t want to be happy in front of her because she might feel bad. That played out in all my relationships but this experience brought my joy back and part of my own healing is to let my essence of joy come forward.”

Guidelines for Healthy Living

Day One of the three-day workshop sets up the “Guidelines for Healthy Living.” The guidelines are there to ensure optimum comfort for everyone as the group gets acquainted and easily applies to daily living after the workshop is over. Comfort – Each person is encouraged to become as physically comfortable as possible, even if that means sitting on the floor in a pile of cushions clutching a teddy bear. Asking Permission – Everyone needs to ask permission before asking a question, making a comment or even touching another group member. “Holding the space” is a technique of pulling back your attention, i.e., your energy or qi, if it is too intense for the “baby,” or bringing it closer if requested. “Honoring the No,” is about saying No, setting boundaries and honoring people’s space. Sexuality – The group is encouraged to speak comfortably about sexuality as it is a natural part of the birth process. Above all, Confidentiality is critical.   

Healing is a Team Sport … It’s All About Support.

Days Two and Three get down to the actual process and the group agrees consensually whose turn it is, which in itself is a discovery process; it’s not a matter of who wants to go first, but whose turn it really is. This tests how solid the container or womb surround is. 

“Creating the container – i.e., creating a safe place to re-pattern and complete the process – is a group effort. When it is someone’s turn, she or he gets to be supported by everyone else in the group in ways that get discovered moment by moment. When the container is solid, the healing can take place,” Lange explains. “If it is fragile, then you have to go around the room again until everyone is in agreement or it won’t be safe enough for someone to take a turn. At that point the whole room can move according to the baby’s rhythm. No one is rushed through his or her turn because the physical body works at a much slower pace than the emotional, mental or spiritual bodies when releasing trauma.” Lange cautions everyone not to check out, but to check in with their bodies to see how they are responding to the process.  She claims that “Your body is your best biofeedback system.”

During the workshop Lange makes sure everyone is relaxed and that energy is flowing. Once that happens, the group drops into resonance with the long tides, a concept in craniosacral therapy  associated with the first stirring of life and motion that emerges from a deep stillness at the center of our being.  

“At this level,” she says, “everyone is moving at the same deep rhythm of energy that connects the earth and the fluids of the body.  When you are in the long tides,” she continues, “the old trauma can lift up, filter and resolve through the fluids in a more joyful way. We often live in overwhelm so our muscles and nervous system can become tight. When trauma comes in we can get brittle; chronic tension makes it hard to resolve trauma and weakens our immune system. For instance, if you take a brick and drop it on a hard surface, it can shatter. But if you drop it into water, it floats gently to the bottom creating ripples on the surface. These ripples are a metaphor for what happens in your body when releasing trauma through the fluids, such as shaking, crying, twitching, etc. At times”, she continues, “I truly feel that we are midwives guiding the soul into the physical body in a more joyful, conscious way – this time around”.

To visually demonstrate the long tides, Lange ends the first day with a video of a mother whale and her baby.  (The video was actually made by film producer Christian Fry after he had taken one of the early Birth workshops in the late 90s.) Their bonding is effortless as they move through the ocean together while a protector whale watches from the murky background. Everything is light, graceful and effortless and for the group, some traumas are already releasing. The group is encouraged to sense the effect of the archetypal images deep in their own bodies.

As a result of the workshop, Avalon recalled an Aha! moment with her mother who was in a lot of pain because she needed knee surgery. “She kept putting it off” Avalon remembers, “and it hurt me to see her in so much pain. I realized I was carrying my mother’s pain but was afraid that if I differentiated from her pain and took what was mine, i.e., joy, I couldn’t have a relationship with her as a daughter and would be left out of her life. Once I decided to let go of her pain, and without saying anything to her, she scheduled the surgery! Was my letting go part of her ability to step forward? I don’t know. But I changed and she changed. We’re all connected.”

And that is exactly how the workshop works. One of the best things about this technique is that judgments dissolve when working at the baby level. When using birth as metaphor, whether you are claiming your turn or are part of the womb surround, everybody involved is free to take what they need for their own healing at all times.

At the end of each person’s session, everyone in the womb surround records an essence statement for them to take as an inspirational reminder by witnesses of the perfect healthy baby blueprint that she or he accessed that day. They also are asked to write down how they intend to take their experience into the world, how they will use it and who their support contact is. Follow-up is important and Lange advises everyone to have some support system in place once they leave so that they can continue to develop their new neurological pathways.  For those who choose, Lange is available for follow-up phone consultations or she recommends arranging a few sessions with a therapist who specializes in working at this level.

It takes a highly skilled team to navigate a group of six people through this process.  The techniques are a synthesis of decades of training and practice and a dedication to showing people how to heal themselves. The Langes have an unwavering ability to be present every moment, to witness each baby step and gently ebb and flow with the energies of each person. To maintain this focus, they periodically take breaks to debrief and support each other in order to prepare for the next sequence. “I used to lead workshops by dictating from the outside. This way is from the inside and when you allow the potency to build from the inside there are no preconceptions; the perfection of the inner blueprint is revealed moment by moment and there is nothing any of us can control from the outside when that flow starts to happen. Our job, it turns out, is to have fun and pleasure and create joy,” says Lange. “It is a total celebration of the power of Life’s creative forces!”