The Intensity of Healing the Birth Wound

Please entertain, for the sake of perspective, this hypothesis: the specific circumstances of our birth provide us each with the "original wound" of this incarnation. Until we acknowledge and embrace this experience it will subtly inhibit our path toward realized self-hood.

Though there is much conversation in healing circles about energies that piggy-back into our present life incarnations, my hypothetical statement deliberately leaves out past life or soul group connection. As a shiatsu practitioner it has been my work to delve my own depths to better help correct those same (but different) inhibitions in clients. This study has yielded a fine-tuning point for gathering clues to support deep change: stay in this life and this body.

As many of us will agree, being born is intense. Though we do not have the mental dexterity to register the exact sensations in the moment, we are able to re-connect with certain depths of this experience as we become independent beings. Naturally, the parents notice instinctive responses in infants before the baby becomes aware of its own actions. Abnormalities in instinctive responses may include the following:

• Any person who was induced to be born may have a perpetual resistance to being externally motivated in life. Or conversely be unable to motivate without strong stimulation and support.
• Someone who was separated from his/her mother directly after birth may carry anxiety of being alone or abandoned. This person may have a difficult relationship with sources of nourishment, especially if his/her own mother's milk was not given in the first days. If this person is unable to make the initial bond of primal human embrace, he/she is likely to fumble through natural development stages.
• If a person did not go through the birth canal (ie. because of cesarean delivery) he/she did not make the primary journey from the womb to the stark reality of life. This person is disposed to collapse when faced with physical struggles, may lack timing and aptitude under the pressures of life.
• When a woman receives epidural injection during labor, the infant comes into the world anesthetized. The influence of drugs blurs the lines between the in-utero dream-state and air-breathing world. The person will not have a normal pain threshold, and may be unable to register experiences as they happen.
• When a baby is extracted with forceps pressure is applied to his/her head and neck beyond that already present in the birth canal. This child may be extremely sensitive to external stimulation and cry much more easily than seems in proportion with an experience.

I myself was injected in the crown with a local pain killer. Aside from creating disorientation and skewed since of perspective, my early life experiences were influenced by lack of peripheral sensation in my skull. I grew-up with bumps all over my head from running into things and no instinct to protect my head from cold and wind. On a psychological and emotional level, I realized in young adulthood that I had not developed separation from other peoples expressions of ideas and emotion. With the help of many hours of psycho-emotional therapy and years of self-study I came to realize the sensation of healthy boundaries.

Though we can easily blame our parents or the attending physician for these early traumas, the reality is that these experiences belong to us. Bringing this fact home may be a difficult and winding road, fraught with projections and painful emotions. Many people mire themselves for years in victimhood, yet this brings them no closer to the essence of their lives than remaining ignorant of dysfunction. In the long-run it is a personal journey.

The parent may attempt to speeding along a  child's healing, which may eventually support a young person's ability to accept help from outside sources. Some parents may happily assume the blame to release his/her child from the pain of self-recognition. To this parenting instinct I offer no encouragement. My only advise to parents is to be patient, allow the child to express it's own experiences and provide compassionate support for the natural healing process. Each parent has his or her own birth experience, and has healed from it to the extent required for adulthood. If a parent truly wishes to help, he or she will make an example by continuing to brave unknown waters of healing his/her original wound, and demonstrate understanding for other adults working through their own processes.

According to my original hypothesis, the deepest healing of our lives is accessed through early impacts on our physical bodies. The body is constantly at work shuttling our mental and emotional lives through the current reality. Through our lives there are myriad opportunities and doorways to self-healing. May we all welcome the challenge to open our own doors and accept these deep experiences as part of our selves. May we learn compassion to support this same healing in others.