Infant Parent Healing "We are each the union of the Mother and the Father."

Janel Martin-Miranda, MA, LPC (IL) Prenatal and Birth Focused Counselor CranioSacral Therapist

Artwork www.waterspider.net

Assisting and supporting parents to create healthy attachment

and bonding with their baby -- for a lifetime

The Science That Supports Prenatal and Birth Therapy

On Science Daily website: "How Babies Are Ushered Into Life

Determines How Healthily They Will Live As Adults",

Book By Cornell Pregnancy Researcher Says

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/01/990119075650.htm

click on the book to read excerpt on amazon.com

"Life in the Womb: The Origin of Health and Disease", by Peter Nathanielsz, MD, PhD

http://www.news.cornell.edu/general/PRESS92/PR09169201.html

The Biology of Perception,

The Psychology of Change

Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. & Rob Williams, MA

www.brucelipton.com

Bruce Lipton makes a compelling case for changing our traditional views of Biology and Psychology. Lipton and Williams challenge the prevailing myths of each discipline and provide a logical, scientific, and practical way to understand and use these revolutionary new ideas. Their work is shared in a video that is a masterful blend of the biology of beliefs and the psychology of change. As you watch the pieces fit together, you will experience the inseparable nature of the mind body connection.

Dr. Gerald Vind, PhD wrote, Prenatal Re-Imprinting (PNRI) at www.pnri.net. PNRI is a new interdisciplinary science and therapeutic methodology that makes it possible to reprogram the central part of the brain (paleocortex) in order to remove maladaptive and self-destructive personality patterns. The paleocortex can then be reprogrammed to establish positive beneficial foundations for personality.

Founder of the technique, Dr. Joe DiRuzzo says:

"Prenatal Re-Imprinting is a remarkable self-actualizing technology that selectively reprograms changes to the cellular level of the central part of the brain to replace negative and maladaptive patterns with positive self-actualizing patterns."

If you would like to read the research and literature on the scientific support for pre- and perinatal psychology and birth trauma, the best resource to begin with is Terry Larimore's Readings and Writings list.

Terry Larimore is a student of William Emerson, Ph.D., and Graham Farrant, MD. She has a comprehensive listing of writing by professionals from a variety of fields about shock and trauma, pre- and perinatal psychology, cellular consciousness, birth imprinting and lifelong psychological consequences.

Just a few of the recommended readings:

How People Act Out Early Emotional Wounds by Terry Larimore

She writes, "Keep in mind that if people are recapitulating their emotional wounds, regardless of how ‘productive’ they might be, they are still trapped by the energy of those early wounding experiences. Appropriate treatment brings relief from chronic patterns and allows greater flexibility in all areas of life."

Babies Are Conscious by David Chamberlain, Ph.D. (summary of research)

Symptoms of Shock in Adults and Babies: Physical and Emotional Indicators by Terry Larimore

Cellular Consciousness by Graham Farrant, MD

Eight Reasons Why Birth is Such a Powerful, Imprinting Experience by Terry Larimore

One of my favorites:

Universal Body Movements In Cellular Consciousness and What They Mean by Graham Farrant, MD, and Terry Larimore, MSW

“You are your brain.” Dick Swaab, Dir. of the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research

I like to say, "You are your PRENATAL brain."

...brain function and behavior are critically influenced, even permanently modified in major ways, by the environmental condition that exist during development. How we think, reason and see are not just inherited characteristics. Brain function, behavior, mood, IQ, and emotional stability are not solely a product of our genes.”

                                                                —Peter Nathanielsz, MD (OB), PhD (Vet) in “Life in the Womb:

It is scientific and logical that physiologically the structures begun at conception and completed by the end of the second month of gestation DO establish the biological, hormonal, emotional, and mental foundation for who we are to be our entire life. Every experience thereafter, whether in the womb, laboring and birthing, or life long is part of one long continuum of brain development.

From conception forward, the baby (brain and body) has developed in the maternal relationship and response to the environment. You are your prenatal brain. The human baby's experience and feelings of safety, love, support, worth, being wanted, etc are established prenatally through infancy. From before conception, in the sperm and the egg, we are fully living tissues of our parents and influenced on a cellular level by their lives. Our soul exists before conception and prepares to come into this live union. From conception and during gestation, and in labor and birth there is not one second of time that is not critical in building the baby's brain and body.   Every system and brain is literally built according to mother's physiology, her life experiences, and her perceptions of herself, the baby's father, and the world.

Birth is the human's first physical experience as the baby leaves the warm, safe womb to become a physiologically independent being. Continuing from and building upon the prenatal experiences and brain development, the labor and birth experience creates the emotional, physical, and psychological foundation for being in the world. It is a lens through which our brain experiences the world and will wire up our neocortex during childhood. From the last trimester through the first year of life, the Limbic system of the brain is "online" and developing our earliest perceptions and memories of love and fear, the two basic emotions.

This is preverbal memory, the precursor to the baby's language. The expressions of the early development don't "just show up" when a child learns to talk. By the day of labor and birth the newborn brain has a billion neurons present already wiring  up the neocortex. It is logical and scientific then that Babies Remember Birth. The experience of labor and birth is vitally important in the brain development of the human baby. Those billions of neurons, BUILT during the prenatal experience, will be the foundation of the neo-cortex, thinking brain for life, unless we repattern it. We do this by acknowledging the early   experiences and   providing new  experience for the brain to rewire.

Please click on the following articles to read more about the science that supports my work in Prenatal and Birth Therapy.

Conscious Parenting:

Nature, Nurture and Human Development

by Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D.

The Biology of Belief

by Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D.

Insight into Cellular "Consciousness"
by Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D.

Birth Trauma

by Elizabeth S. Anderson-Peacock, BSc, DC, DICCP

The Vulnerable Prenate

by William R. Emerson, Ph.D.

Risk in Infancy: Origins and Implications

by Claire B. Kopp and Sandra R. Kaler

Please also read Changing Our Hearts and Minds (Especially Obstetricians' and Psychologists' Minds) About Prenatal Life Based on Science.

Castellino, Raymond. “The Polarity Therapy Paradigm Regarding Pre-conception, Prenatal and Birth Imprinting.” Available through www.beba.org, and he is currently writing about his work.

Chamberlain, David. “Mind of Your Newborn Baby” (1975)

Myss, Caroline. "Anatomy of the Spirit."

Perry, Bruce D. "Incubated in Terror, Incubated in Terror: Neurodevelopmental Factors in the 'Cycle of Violence' In: Children, Youth and Violence: The Search for Solutions" (J Osofsky, Ed.). Guilford Press, New York, pp 124-148. 1997.

Perry, Bruce D. "Violence and Childhood: How Persisting Fear Can Alter the Developing Child's Brain." Citation: Perry, B.D. (2001b). Bruce Perry discusses five neural systems involved in regulating a child's response to threat: the Reticular Activating System, Locus Coeruleus, Hippocampus, Amygdala, and Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis, and then describes the clinical presentation and altered neurobiology of children exposed to violence. Heartrate data and gender differences are presented from children at the Branch Davidian's Ranch Apocalypse compound. Includes about 70 references, 3 figures and 2 tables.

Perry, Bruce D. "The neurodevelopmental impact of violence in childhood. In Schetky D & Benedek, E. (Eds.). "Textbook of child and adolescent forensic psychiatry." Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, Inc. (pp. 221-238).

Perry, Bruce D. "Childhood Trauma, the Neurobiology of Adaptation, and Use-Dependent Development of the Brain: How States become Traits." Infant Mental Health Journal, 16(4), 271-291. Bruce Perry and his colleagues argue that infants and young children may be more vulnerable to traumas than adults -- that they are not resilient, but malleable. They consider neurobiological consequences of repeated dissociative or hyperarousal responses on developing brain organization, and conclude that the more plastic developing brain may be more vulnerable to disruptions related to these responses. Evolutionary advantages of gender differences in responses to trauma (hyperarousal by males; dissociation in females) are considered briefly, and clinical implications are discussed. Includes about 70 references.

Pert, Candace. "Molecules of Emotion." She is the former NIH researcher who discovered the receptor site for the AIDS virus.

Prescott, J.W. "Only More Mother-Infant Bonding Can Prevent Cycles of Violence". Cerebrum 3(1): 8-9 & 124, Winter 2001.

Porges, Stephen W. "Emotion: An Evolutionary By-Product of the Neural Regulation of the Autonomic Nervous System." Paper to be published in C. S. Carter, B. Kirkpatrick, & I.I. Lederhendler (eds.), "The Integrative Neurobiology of Affiliation, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences."

Shore, Allan. "The Effects of a Secure Attachment Relationship on Right Brain Development. Affect Regulation, and Infant Mental Health." Infant Journal of Mental Health, 2001, 22, 7-66.

Shore, Allan. "The Effects of Early Relational Trauma on Right Brain Development, Affect Regulation, and Infant Mental Health." Infant Journal of Mental Health, 2001, 22, 201-269.

Shore, Allan. "Dysregulation of the Right Brain: A Fundamental Mechanism of Traumatic Attachment and the Psychoapathogensis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 36, 9-30.

Siegel, Daniel and Hartzell, Mary. "Parenting From the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive." An excellent resource for understanding the brain functioning and the new brain research. In this book he focuses on young children and does not discuss the experiences of prenatal and birth as significant; however, each chapter ends with a "Spotlight on Science" section that provides the science that verifies and supports the prenatal work of Dr. Castellino.

Teicher, Martin. "Wounds That Time Won't Heal: The Neurobiology of Child Abuse." Fall, 2000s. This in important contribution to the growing literature on the structural and functional brain abnormalities associated with child abuse and neglect.

A Baby's Birth - is a continuum of critical periods of physiological development that begins even before conception and completes at the mother's breast, in the arms of the father, and will be lived throughout life. -- Janel Martin-Miranda

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