Based on those early experiences, there is a strong tendency to maintain the same beliefs and behaviors throughout our lives.

For example, when people first hear about this information as a possible source of behavioral and relationship difficulties, most dismiss it as irrelevant. For those born in technologically advanced hospitals, the dominant collective belief is that what happens to us at our birth doesn't matter. Our professional medical culture treats babies as objects, devoid of feeling and memory, incapable of conscious awareness. As a result, we remain anesthetized to the violent treatment we suffered at a time when we were utterly exposed. Thus we continue to propagate this numbing attitude towards the most defenseless places within our own psyches.

The hospital attitude was, and for the most part still is, that doctors know better than mothers how to give birth and that babies do not have the neural structures to be consciously aware. What science has yet to acknowledge is that we have awareness from the moment of conception and even before. This is not just a belief on my part. It is an experience, one shared by millions of people in other cultures and by those who have done rebirthing, holotropic breath work, shamanic inner journeys and explored other expanded states of awareness. Other cultures have always recognized this truth. Consciousness transcends the physical body.

Conscious Conception and Conscious Birth

In contrast, conscious conception welcomes the incoming soul as a gift and a teacher for us. The family chooses a time in their lives when they can really care for the child and the mother is fully supported during pregnancy. This paves the way for the fetus to fully mature and the mother to enter into a self confident disposition prior to the birth. Conscious loving birth is gentle and quiet, allowing the mother to go deeply within to harness the catalytic power of energies that can be orgasmic expansions rather than "normal" painful contractions as she delivers her child (yes you can actually orgasm giving birth!) See orgasmicbirth.com. Most medical practitioners have never even seen a normal birth let alone a birth like this.

The natural instinctive way of birthing allows the mother to surrender to the bliss of birth as powerful energies, new awareness and sensations surge through her, transforming her to the core of her being. The ecstatic energy allows her to deeply bond with her child. There is a dedication that is necessary to prepare for such a conscious birth by meeting the physical and emotional patterns that inhibit the free flow of energy.

Mothers hold the keys to the creation of the next generation of human beings and the more they are cherished and honored, given full natural childbirth education and support, the greater the potential for us to create a generation of conscious, connected, intelligent and loving children, children who remember their purpose here and whose foundation of relationship is love not fear.

Unresolved Birth Issues Will Come Up As Complications During Birth

What mothers need to do is:

• be encouraged to choose and to experience the power, transformation and maturation of natural birth wherever possible.
• prepare their bodies and emotions well before conception.
• consciously resolve any of their own birth issues prior to giving birth through experiential processes like breath work, emotional release counseling and emotional/spiritual bodywork.
• become educated in the spiritual and emotional aspects of birth.
• be fully supported on all levels so they can focus on the child growing within.
• strengthen their trust in themselves and their bodies.
• be surrounded by supportive people at the birth who have resolved their own birth issues.
• be respected and empowered to make appropriate choices and receive good hospital treatments when necessary.
• be given good post natal care, peace, quiet and uninterrupted time to bond with their baby.

When fathers are an integral part of conscious birth, they too become deeply transformed. Maturing and growing in love, the parents experience the foundation they need to openly love and cope with a new born infant. What fathers need to do is:

• also prepare their bodies and emotions well before conception.
• resolve their own birth issues if they choose to be present at the birth.
• address any hidden fears about becoming a parent.
• develop their support networks so that they can adequately support the new mother.
• become educated in the spiritual and emotional aspects of birth.
• when ever possible, have adequate paternity leave to bond with the new infant and the newly awakened mother.

What newborn babies need is to:

• immediately have skin to skin contact with their mother to stabilize their physiology.
• hear the voices of their parents so they know where they belong and feel safe.
• have sustained deep eye gazing with their mother and their father which accelerates brain development.
• gentle, quiet, warm and softly illuminated surroundings to give them time to adjust to the world outside the womb.
• be allowed to wriggle around if they want to so their body gets all functions activated.
• play to experience the joy of this world and stimulate brain development.
• receive good post natal care in order to be able to handle stress throughout life.
• feel loved but more importantly they need to have the gift of their total unconditional love received by those around them.

In addition, as babies grow they need to be:

• seen for who they really are as a conscious soul as well as an infant human being.
• heard and respected.
• allowed to gently enter the world at a pace which suits each individual child.
• protected from abuse, cruelty and torment.
• allowed to be in and explore the natural environment in unstructured ways so they develop their own relationship to the Earth that supports them.
• encouraged to retain the enchantment of nature and the unseen realms so they unfold into deeper forms of ecocentric spiritual life.

How the Light Goes Out Given that most of us did not receive a natural, conscious birth, we carry hidden emotional and spiritual decisions we made as a result of our formative experiences. For most adults now, the imprints before, during and after birth were so contrary to what we wanted and needed that the light of consciousness went out. We simply do not remember and dismiss any suggestion that it could still influence us now.

The innocence, wonder and unconditional love that the baby brings to the world can get so smothered in fear, loss, rejection, anger and pain, the child's only way of coping is to totally shut down and never remember that there even was a pre-wounded place of beauty and total self acceptance inside of them.

Hospital Birthing Practices

Women's bodies know what to do to give birth; they have been doing it for millennia. It is only in the nineteenth century that medial science convinced us all that all mothers should have their babies in a hospital. Medical intervention is wonderful for the small percentage of births that require it (somewhere between 10% and 30% of births), but way too many babies are being induced, forcefully delivered with instruments and unnaturally delivered by caesarian sections.

As a measure of just how real the birth trauma is in the USA, look at these statistics:

• America has the highest infant and mother mortality rates of the 27 industrialized countries.
• Only 1% of births occur outside hospitals, versus 30% to 40% in other advanced western countries.
• 90% of all births are considered traumatic in the USA and 45% are classified a major trauma.
• At least 70% of all births require no medical assistance in other western countries.
• One in three births are now caesarian, which is serious abdominal surgery not a convenience.
• When newborns cry it is said that they are healthy rather that they are hurting.
• 90% of males have been circumcised without anesthetic despite the fact that no medical association in the world recommends the procedure.

Babies routinely spend the first two crucial hours of life in the hospital nursery, rather than being laid on their mother's breast to rest, suckle, bond and stabilize. Instead, tubes are put down their throats and suctioned under glaring bright lights; they are weighed on cold scales, scrubbed clean with rubber coated hands and tightly wrapped up in bleached cottons. Blood is drawn and they are injected with antibiotics (just to be sure) and left to cry - none of which is necessary within the first critical moments of being born. After the intense struggle of the birth, this is a shattering experience for the baby.

Creation of Bonding Patterns When babies are unnecessarily separated from their mothers at birth like this, the force to bond is so strong it will still be expressed. The baby will bond with the plastic crib, the sound of machines in the hospital nursery, the bright lights, anything floating within their vision, the feelings of the other screaming babies or the antiseptic smells of the ward.

The newborn robbed of the primal connection with mother feels innately that there is something wrong and usually interprets this as being something wrong with them. The seeds of suffering are sown: self doubt, poor self esteem, an inability to deeply bond with others, powerlessness, feelings that the world is a scary place, problems with sleep, nursing and stress, deep abandonment and rejection issues, chronic anxiety and fear of the dark. The desperate need now to have over sanitized surroundings and lots of things to comfort us is reflected in our bleached, consumer orientated society. But it cannot placate the loss of real bonding.

Mothers are robbed of the most empowering and intimate moments of their lives as the child is whisked away. Post part um depression is now considered an acceptable malady rather than a true expression of the underlying loss and sorrow when the connection with the baby has not been fulfilled. The medical profession has no appreciation for the enormous spiritual and emotional energies that the mother experiences as she gives birth or that she may need support integrating these afterwards.

Birth Related Problems

We are now a population riddled with separation anxiety, chronic worries about time and money, lack of trust, depression, eating disorders, excessive consumerism, substance abuse, relationship conflicts and family disintegration. America has the highest rate of homicide in the world. Attention deficit disorders, childhood asthma, childhood suicide, abuse and violence are reaching extraordinarily high levels. Without the primary impression of nurturing, many people do not know how to naturally look after themselves, physically and energetically, let alone how to live in balance with the natural environment. Stuck in the adolescent phase of growth, as a culture we lack the maturity to care for ourselves, each other and the world in which we live.

As children become insecure, demanding, disruptive, isolated, angry and bewildered, they act out their distress without ever knowing why. Parents, fearful of being judged as bad parents, now turn to the same medical profession that caused the dilemma to make their kids acceptable. The USA has the highest number of children on psychotropic drugs anywhere in the world, four times that of the nearest country! Current estimates suggest upwards of 16% (15 million) children have been diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and we wonder why our kids aren't growing up to be responsible adults.

It is not the parents fault that this is happening and it is important not to blame mothers. We have all been seduced by the technological wonders of our time, believing the myth that cleaner is better and that hospitals are safe places. The unconscious propagation of birthing trauma from one generation to the next is reinforced by a medical system that is more concerned with convenience, lawsuits, costs and schedules than mothers instinctual wisdom about how to give birth. The lack of education and loving support of expectant women, mothers and their families continues to disenfranchise women and families to the extent that our culture if falling apart through lack of basic primal care.

Sexuality There is no room for sexual expression in a hospital ward. Denying the very primal, sexual, sacred nature of birth, the connection between love, sexuality and spirituality is lost at the very moment when it is being formed.

People harbor so many misunderstandings about sexual energy, suffering sex without intimacy and confusion as to how to get their sexual needs met. Pornography and sexual abuse is widespread. Is it any wonder when our essential formative sexual experience has been stripped of its tenderness and sacredness in favor of clinical convenience, when our body's sensitivity and sexual integrity has been disregarded from the very beginning? When our mother's most potent sexual moments are treated as an operation?

Today, fewer boys in the US are routinely being circumcised at birth as the ordeal and consequences of this practice are being realized. This form of genital mutilation often links violence, sex and impotence in the body/mind of the infant boy, a confusion which gets amplified when there is not adequate love and understanding in the family to heal the emotional trauma.

Vanishing Twin Syndrome

The validation of critical events within the womb is also helping mothers and their children deal with unresolved issues around birth. Evidence from ultrasounds shows that many of us started life with another sibling, sometimes twins were originally triplets, only to have the other disappear before the end of the first trimester. Estimates range from 15% to 70% of us may have had a twin that vanished.

It does much to explain the desperate search for our soul mates, why we can never find "the one" and feelings that part of us is missing. There is often a feeling of unresolvable loss, grief, abandonment and profound loneliness for the surfing child. There may be guilt that they somehow killed the other or that they were a parasite. Other traumatic effects include problems with toxicity as the foetus is reabsorbed by the mother and a longing to die rather than live without the twin.

Children have surprisingly recalled the other soul and, If mothers are made aware of the vanished twin, this loss can be validated and grieved together. This allows healing to happen early on, before the trauma becomes powerfully impacted and re-enacted throughout the child's intimate relationships.

Rebirth

It is never too late to heal the emotional and spiritual scars of our earliest formative experiences. Even if our parents are no longer with us to tell us what happened, there are deep healing processes and loving skilled practitioners who can help us remember our story.

The greatest freedom comes when we learn re-constellate internal relationships within us. By re-parenting the little baby that lies buried within our unconscious, we learn how to stop compulsively recreating the negative emotional patterns associated with the past.

As we birth ourselves into each new phase of life, whenever we go through a difficult transition or change relationships, our original birth blueprint gets triggered. When we know what happened and we remember the decisions we made about ourselves and about life as a result of those experiences, we can begin to make new choices. This is the journey of rebirth, an awakening to our essential authentic Self.

The Process of Growth

The young core places within us hold the keys to our authentic Self, our continued spiritual growth and emotional maturation. As it is pre-verbal, it is not a place that can be accessed by logical, talking therapies. The patterns lie within the unconscious, the unknown places of the psyche, and in the body. We need to be securely held by a loving guide, like a spiritual midwife, in order to discover the hidden layers of our fragmentation and surrender control. This delicate process takes time, patience and an appreciation that self re-parenting is both a great gift and a challenge, one that cannot simply be confined to the session room. It needs to be held with dedication, self discipline and most of all, with love, humor and wonder, as if we really do hold a new born baby in our arms now.

Our Birthright

There are tremendous costs, both human and financial, of industrialized medical birthing practices are being exposed in the media through documentaries and natural birth films. As many seek to repair their relationships, the work of raising consciousness is now the subject of popular day time television. Yet education about birthing practices and its impact on our culture is still greatly lacking.

I look at those who have had an easy embodiment and I am in awe at the freedom they experience as they embrace life. Natural born babies have a confidence about themselves that is palpable and they are not afraid to love. They easily maintain deep eye contact and have faster physical, emotional and spiritual development than hospital babies. They are sure of who they are and why they are here. They come into this world still connected to their essential selves, exuding wholeness and unity awareness. This is the birthright of every child and of every mother and father.

As bizarre as it seems, suffering is the great awakener. Seldom do we do the work of raising consciousness when we feel wonderful. So for those who do dive into the deep end of their birth circumstance, there is the anticipation of unlocking important areas of human potential, fostered by the intrinsic desire to find reconciliation and resolution with the past; to become whole.

I never underestimate the transformational power of love to heal and awaken. For many who genuinely seek an end to perpetual suffering, the end lies at the beginning.

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Rebirth:The Journey of Awakening