NOW!
Especially for Dads!
Healing Birth – The Transformation of Life
By Binnie A. Dansby
Midwives Congress
11-13 May 1998, Bremen, Germany
The most important
work anyone can do is to support and nurture a pregnant woman towards a
conscious, gentle and empowering birth experience!
This is one of my most deeply held beliefs. Over the past 23 years I have
developed Healing Birth Rebirthing (now known as Source Experience Breathwork)
for the purpose of providing a safe and supportive environment within which
people of all ages and professions can experience for themselves the universal
truths about conception, pregnancy and birth and the profound impact they have
on this creative process we call Life. I
am a devoted student of birth. I am
always deeply grateful for the opportunity to share with midwives about what I
have learned from birth. I want to
explore all of our thoughts about birth and ourselves as women, and to change
together those ways of thinking and being that are diminishing our life energy
and causing struggle and pain. We
Human Beings are consciousness that co-creates, we are connected in our ways of
being and thinking. We cause an
effect on everything that we touch. Midwives
hold the future in their hands, as well as in their hearts and minds, each and
every day. Midwives influence the
very fibre of society while participating in the most creative, powerful and
mystical of human experiences. Midwives
deserve to be supported, honoured and respected, and if this is not happening,
we need to look to our deepest personal and societal thoughts about conception,
pregnancy and birth.
Birth
is our “source” experience in the body, AND we were conscious at birth,
educable in utero. Birth affects
our whole subsequent mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
It is the origin of our emotional response to every situation we
encounter. The decisions we make at
birth are the foundation for the beliefs and patterns activated in this
lifetime. The
quality of birth affects the quality of life, and thus impacts and shapes the
quality of society. We can
easily see that the attitudes and patterns of each individual translate to the attitudes
and patterns displayed by nations. These statements form the basic
principles on which Healing Birth Rebirthing is founded.
In
1975, I began the profound and personal process of remembering, releasing, and
healing the physical, mental, and emotional experience of my own birth with
Leonard Orr, the creator of the Rebirthing Process. It was an introduction to another cornerstone of Healing
Birth Rebirthing, that the conscious,
connected breath is the most direct way to access suppressed fears and feelings,
so they can be healed. We use
the breath as a tool for bringing long buried physiological and psychological
stress and thought patterns to surface consciousness.
It is possible to eliminate primal trauma and transform the subconscious
impression of birth into a gentle and awakening event.
In 1976, I began to work with private clients.
In 1978, I left my career in art and design to pursue a career in healing
and transformation. In 1980, I
evolved from private counseling, breathwork, and training breathwork therarists to focus
on working directly with pregnancy and childbirth.
Listening to pre-natal experience and birthing practices remembered and
expressed by adults in private sessions, workshops and training groups had
inspired me to stop and deepen, to
listen, and to support the unborn and their parents during pregnancy and at
birth. In hospital, at home, in water or dry, wherever they chose to
be, I was there. In preparation for
birth we worked with rebirthing, guided visualisation-deepening, values
clarification, Archetypal Affirmations, the Resonance Questions, and the
Diagnostic Questions. All these
processes are designed to evoke powerful pre and peri-natal thoughts and
feelings, and they are very much a part of the experiential work in my trainings
and in workshops today. All of my
previous thoughts about birth and “how it had to be” changed as I observed
the new sense of individuation and self-esteem, connection and co-operation
engendered by doing this inner work. Results in both their births and their lives began to be
consistent with their desires. The joy and satisfaction expressed by the couples
and their families led them to invite their birth attendants and friends to join
in. Healing Birth Rebirthing was
born out of the work with couples and their babies, and their courageous
midwives and doctors, as well as my realisation that the human birth process is
the perfect physical metaphor for the creative process, the dynamics of
manifestation. People who have a direct experience of themselves as
consciousness before. during and after birth receive themselves, their babies
and their lives very differently than before. We are all engaged in conceiving,
giving energy to and producing results all of the time.
In 1988, the trainings in Germany and England began and in 1990, Denmark.
How
were you treated at your birth? What
do you really think about birth? Most
people born in civilised society think that birth hurts, that birth is not safe.
Fear of birth is remembered from our own birth experience and reinforced
by societal conditioning. In my
experience as a breathwork therapist, countless people have described feelings of danger
and alienation interwoven throughout their lives.
Instead of life on planet Earth being full of potential and a safe place
to be, everything and everyone is to be feared on some level of consciousness. Fear always creates conflict.
Fear takes the form of anger, resentment, judgement, opinion and criticism. It stops the flow of Life
Energy, stops the flow of Love... stops the action. . . stops birth! Action based in a consciousness of safety benefits
everyone! We can feel it and we can see
it in the results that are produced. Immediate reactions are always an
indication of where others or we are in consciousness.
These are the questions I ask:
“How
do I feel? What are the sensations
in my body?”
“What
do I want to express? What do I want to say?”
“What
is the result I want to produce? What
are my true intentions?”
These questions
will help anyone to “come home” to themselves.
They always support my clarity, and show the way to correcting any
mistakes that I may have made.
Thought
plus energy creates results in the physical is a foundation philosophy of SOURCE
Process & Breathwork and is one of the most ancient of truths, taught by
every significant teacher through the ages. Human experience is the result of
feeling Life energy registering in the body and having a thought about that.
Healing begins in the moment a life-enhancing thought (an affirmation) is
chosen to replace a life-diminishing thought, no matter how you may be
feeling. . . no matter how much energy is moving or not moving in the body. We may not always be able to choose how we feel, yet in every
moment, we have the power to choose what to think and speak, and in so doing, we
choose how to use our feeling energy. I
learned this lesson most clearly with a woman I was supporting in labour.
I noticed that as the contractions intensified she began to shout,
“No”. Very soon everything began to be still and stagnate.
I asked her to try, “Yes”, on the next contraction. . . to look into
my eyes and allow me to support her to stay with it. In a few moments, with the
next contraction, we did this, and the results were astonishing to her, to me
and to the others in the room. The
same woman, same body, same energy was opening before me, and we were laughing
at the end of the contraction. On
the next contraction she chose to say “Thank You”, and again big
change – opening and letting go. Personal
power is the ability to choose. All
of our choices make a difference!
A thought
planted in the mind and nourished by the breath, takes root in the heart of
every cell in the body. Research
shows that the endocrine system is affected by thought, and in each of the
energy centers identified by the ancients, the chakra system, there is an
endocrine gland. We can strengthen
our physical, emotional and spiritual bodies and handle more and more energy by
choosing to integrate thoughts consistent with life, such as:
The Archetypal
Affirmations. . . My body is SAFE, even
though I may be feeling afraid. . . The entire physical universe exists to
SUPPORT me and to LOVE me. . . It is safe to FEEL all of my feelings. . . I am
the One who CHOOSES what to think and how to use my energy. . . I am an
EXPRESSION of love. . . I am CONNECTED in love to all that breathes. . . I am
SPIRIT manifest in beautiful form!
Each
of these powerful and enhancing thoughts has an equally powerful and diminishing
opposite:
I
am dangerous. . . There is no one there for me. . . Feelings hurt. . . I have no
choice. . . I must have done something wrong. . . No one is listening. . . I am
alone and separate. . . Life Hurts are
thoughts that resonate all around and in us and cause chaos, confusion and
conflict. Who we are is not any of
these conflicting thoughts! We are each the One who chooses what to
think, to give energy, to create!
You and I share
a common experience. We come from
the warm waters inside another, the Mother – part of a Whole.
I observe that most of us have not come into warmth and welcome, safety
and support, consciousness and connection.
No matter what is happening, we have a defensive wall developed over all
the period since birth, shared by all those around us, and taken for granted as
“the way it is”. My intention, always, is to create a safe, supportive and
nurturing ambiance in which Spirit can reveal itself. No one reveals themselves fully to themselves or others until
they know that it is safe and, that there is someone wholly accepting them
exactly as they are. Those who have
had the experience consistently and have integrated the experience, can and do
provide that atmosphere for others.
It is time to honour the whole, complete, forgiving, powerful, creative
consciousness within us. . . for each of us to give birth to “the One who
intended to be here in the first place” – original intention!
Then the babies born through us and with us don’t have to forget.
We will improve the quality of life on planet Earth as we improve the
quality of birth! We will improve
the quality of birth as we improve the quality of our own lives!
In workshop
settings, I am always supported by midwives of Spirit, some of them are highly
trained to receive babies as well, and for that support I am deeply grateful. We have learned together that to be of greatest service, we
must connect in loving support of
one another, develop acceptance, compassion, and patience, and be gentle
in our care for ourselves. Recognising
the centuries of thought that we in civilised society have passed from
generation to generation as to the nature of life and how we are “supposed”
to live and birth, it is important that we take conscious evolutionary steps
together, open and learn together, acknowledge new possibilities for growth, and
change our minds together.
What would you
say if you were sure that "someone is listening"?
What would you
do differently if you were certain that "you are safe"?
What would life
be like if you knew beyond doubt that your consciousness causes an effect?
How would you
approach birth if you were convinced that the baby is making decisions?
Would it make a
difference if you were sure that your love is received and honored?
When
do we stop gathering information, and together, welcome the state of being that
will allow us to radically reconceive birth and all education about birth?
Transform
Your Life – Heal Your Birth
© Binnie A. Dansby, 1998