Patterns of shock and trauma created in our pre-natal lives, can create a template for how we respond to later events as adults, and as such lead to patterns of violence and aggression in are personal relationships and society at large.
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It seems that memory of these early traumatic events can be encoded as cellular memory, as researched by psychologists such as RD Lang, or cellular biologist Bruce Lipton. They have shown that memory is not a facility of the brain, as previously believed. It is therefore, not so far fetched to consider that what happens to us as sperm or eggs, prior to conception, may be carried with us for the rest of our lives, colouring our perceptions and later adult experiences. Many years of experiential work with adult regresses, conducted by Karlton Terry and Dr William Emerson, show that these early experiences do in fact create very serious impacts upon our lives. Indeed, through my own work with clients, I have found that many psychological and physical symptoms have their roots in these earlier pre-natal traumatic experiences. I have also seen that traumatic experiences can be condensed together in the bodymind giving even more of a charged emotional experience. For instance, the shock involved with the painful experience of having the umbilical cord cut prematurely, especially in an emergency situation, can cause chronic abdominal pain. During the treatment by regression to the original umbilical wounding, it was discovered that this experience is underpinned by an earlier trauma of tail loss by the client as a sperm. This experience has proven to be deeply psychologically annihilative with more far reaching implications than the symptom of abdominal pain. Stanislav Grof has described this experience of simultaneously being activated into different related traumatic events as being the result of a ‘coex’ system. This is a dynamic constellation of memories carrying a strong emotional charge and a corresponding intense physical sensation that arise together from different periods in the individual’s life. In the instance of this particular client, the experience of a trauma immediately after birth, has been constellated together with a pre-natal trauma from their ‘sperm journey’. Dr Emerson calls this ‘interactional trauma’ saying that the effect of these interactions is to leave a more difficult imprint in the psyche. Such constellated trauma can have a very strong impact upon the individual, giving rise to many diverse symptoms and psychological states, which may perplex the medical world and appear to be untreatable. Fortunately, thanks to the innovative work of many of the aforementioned researchers, and the re-patterning work of Dr William Emerson and Karlton Terry, it is now possible, both to identify the causes of these conditions and even to begin to heal them. I personally have witnessed remarkable breakthrough and improvement in difficult symptomology, through the employment of these methods and indeed have benefited in my own life, hence I am now an enthusiastic campaigner on the behalf of pre-natal trauma resolution techniques.
With a world currently overwhelmed with immense suffering caused by war, famine, high crime rates and mental illness, it’s important that we begin to understand where these conditions may be arising from. Dr Emerson suggests that aggression and violence are pathological symptoms resulting from reinforced or condensed traumas with strong themes of loss, annihilation, abandonment and aggression. In 1983 Psychiatrist, Alice Miller wrote her ground breaking book ‘For Your Own Good’ describing the hidden cruelty in child rearing methods which utilize violence and abuse as a means of controlling the child. Alice went on to say that when the child is unable to express to anyone, what happened, then he or she will later re-enact the abuse on another unsuspecting individuals. She adds that for a child to develop naturally, it needs respect and love from its caregivers. Alice Miller has identified that such dictators and mass murders as Hitler and Stalin were subjected to extreme abuse in childhood, leading them to perpetrate it at a global level on unsuspecting populations. The writings and research of Alice Miller amongst others has led to dramatic changes in legislation around what are permissible forms of child rearing methods.
Whilst great headway has been made in understanding how children can be damaged by abusive parenting, there is still a lot of consciousness needed on the part of both parents and medical staff around the devastating affects of abusive interventions during pregnancy and birth, such as amniocentrisis, forceps delivery, caesarian section and IVF technology. Many may argue a case for these interventions saying that they are life saving. However, all too often they are practiced routinely without any awareness or consideration for the devastating affects on the extremely fragile developing human being. Pre-natal researchers have discovered that not only are we extremely conscious of what is happening to us right from our earliest moments but that we are deeply affected and traumatized by these interventions and the unconscious attitude with which they are performed. This is alongside the emotional wounding we may receive as a result of the lack of awareness of our suffering. If child hood abuse can give rise to dictators that perpetrate genocide, what is the wide spread consequence of the unintentional violence that we perpetrate against our unborn children? Could we bring peace to the world by treating them with greater consciousness and compassion?
Karlton Terry is pioneering very profound pre-natal trauma resolution work with babies. He is able to read their body language whereby they accurately describe their pre-natal experiences and the suffering that they have endured. Through this deeply empathic work he has had some wonderful results. He is currently running a training for practitioners in the UK in healing trauma in babies. This is such important work that I would whole heartedly encourage anyone involved with birthing to investigate. If we can treat these traumas at the stage of babyhood, it is much easier than regressing adults back to their pre-natal lives. In babies, the memories are so much more easily accessible and treatable. If we are to create a peaceful and compassionate society full of conscious people who do not pollute and plunder the planet, then it would seem important that we begin to address this aspect of our emotional and psychological wounding. We may not all choose to take this path towards our own healing, but we can be more aware of how we have each suffered on this journey. Mostly we can treat our unborn children with tenderness and empathy.
For anyone interested in this important work whether to receive training or therapy, or to treat their babies, please see the articles on Karlton’s site:
www.karltonterry.com/taos/uk/index.html
– Juliet Yelverton