Here we are in January, the birth of a new year. Celebrations have settled down. Now it might be easier to settle in and check with ourselves. How is it to be ending a year and beginning a new one? How does it feel in your body, in your heart, in your belly when you consider this new beginning?
Every new beginning potentially reminds us of our original entrance into this life. It’s not by accident that a new year is often represented by a drawing of a new baby. We instinctively recognize the fresh quality available in starting something new, like a calendar year. What we often don’t consciously acknowledge is how each new beginning may resonate with our birth.
I find it interesting that drinking alcohol is so often a new year’s activity. How many of us came into this life under the influence of anesthesia, designed to disassociate our mother from her labor pains? Babies are also affected by these drugs, directly as well as indirectly. Babies born with anesthesia tend to be slower in their development. They are less present in their bodies. This used to be considered normal for babies in the west until women began returning to more natural birthing methods and discovered their babies were alert, communicative and ready to use the social nervous system already online at birth.
Indirect influence of drugs includes the effects of mother being less present and available for bonding. Anesthesia can also interrupt the natural dance between mother and baby as the womb contracts and baby pushes back. Under the influence of drugs, the uterine muscles may be more lax, contractions less effective. Babies also tend to be more limp and less able to push. The result may be the use of forceps, ventouse (vacuum extraction) and/or Caesarian section. While none of these are inherently bad and may be useful when used skillfully as needed, they have tended to be over-used and abused by those not as skillful as one might hope. The trauma and shock usually accompanying these methods can further interfere with bonding and just being present.
If we came in with this kind of lack of respect and awareness of the brilliant bio-
intelligence potentially expressing itself at birth, we may find later transitions, like a new year, also feel overwhelming, over-stimulating, depressing, reminding us of what we haven’t accomplished or how we feel like we aren’t enough. How many of us make new years’ resolutions as a way to attempt to address our feelings of discomfort with who and how we are?
What if we took this time to more fully receive ourselves and each other, to really embrace, love and accept who and how we are? What if we consciously acknowledged what we may not have received at birth and started giving it to ourselves?
While on the topic of acknowledgment, I feel it important to note that how we experienced birth may be a recapitulation of earlier events in our lives, like conception and the extent to which we felt welcomed and received, or not, when we implanted into the uterine wall and when our existence was discovered by our parents. Some of us easily found our way into life, being welcomed by parents who fully celebrated our arrival. Many of us missed this, being met instead by ambivalence, rejection or technology.
If this was your history, it is not too late to heal. The first step is awareness. If you don’t know consciously about how you were received, you may want to check in with your parents if available or others who might know your story. You also may want to spend time listening to what your body knows. If it feels overwhelming or challenging, I highly recommend finding support of a therapist, if possible one familiar with potential early wounding from prenatal and perinatal experience.
Just as our history tends to keep presenting itself, seeking recognition and healing, so the potential originally available for us as little ones remains waiting to be received and embodied. Your original potential is always there. How can you embrace it more fully?
To me, the new year serves as a reminder to return to a more essential me. The potential to be more, to accept who and what I am as enough. It took me many years to find this state of acceptance. I hope my offerings can support you in finding it more easily!
Now, it is relatively easy to enjoy ending a year and acknowledging that 2018 was a year of birth for me. My first book, The Breath of Life: An Introduction to Craniosacral Biodynamics, was born in April. I am repeatedly touched by how my baby is being received and apparently supporting its readers.
I am also delighted by how my online webinar classes have been received and the feedback from participants of how their lives and history are softened and healed by our work together. In view of this and the timing of this new year, my next webinar on Wednesday, January 9this called Fluid New Beginnings. In this online class, we use the profound and subtle practice of Continuum to support letting go of the old and embodying the new. An essential aspect of Continuum as I learned it from its founder Emilie Conrad is about embodying fluidity.
Being fluid means letting go of each moment as it passes and being responsive to what is available now. We practice observing habitual and patterned movement, slowing it down, using breaths, sounding and mindful presence to shed old skins and emerge, like the newborn, fresh and open. If you’d like to join us for this deeply relaxing, rejuvenating enquiry into your fluid nature, please click here to register now. If you are not able to participate live on the 9th, your booking includes access to the video recording afterwards.
However you choose to meet your new year, I wish you fluid ease and grace in this transition. May you birth what is important to you in this coming year.
