I am here because I encounter near death states when working with birth. I have been tracking my own near death at birth for 20 years and have had a lot of wonderful and meaningful adventures doing so. My experiences are being channeled into my training for professionals. In my experience, near death puts us in relationship with our consciousness, and the universal consciousness. Babies are very close to that universal consciousness. John Chitty used to say that they are Royalty of Humanity. The portal to who we really are is near for them. As we grow, we get layered on by our experiences. That is something that is meant to happen. Then we start to remember all this as we get older (or maybe we don't).
Also, our difficult experiences and adaptation patterns to them carry a lot of energy and are a portal to blueprint states (Anna Chitty). This particular imprint of near death carries a lot energy.
Today is Day 2. I will give you another report tomorrow
"Le'ts follow that."
"Let's take a moment with that."
"If your tears could speak, what would they say?"
"Can we stay a little longer here."
"I'm alive and I'm real."
"The body is speaking in its unspoken voice."
"I can sense your strength."
"Let yourself be with that feeling."
And So Much More .
Finally, Peter said, have you seen, Call the Midwife? A show on PBS. Oh, he said, you have to watch that. I cried when it was over. Luckily they are doing more. Watch that and then come back
At one point, he talked about the work of Emmanuel Swedenborg, where there are 4 kinds of wounds: The physical, of which there are many thousands; emotional of which there are 3: regret for the past, fear of the future, and not feeling present. Mental wounds that end up in one: critical self judgment, and Spiritual where the wound is the illusion of separateness. He made a gesture with his hand like turning a combination lock and said, you have to get the right amount of healing from all 4 domains.
When working with story, he will say to the person, "Take me with you," or "Walk me through what happened," and will will really go with them into the experience, especially positive experience. He normalized the difficulty, and then intervenes with pauses, touch, phrases, and tools like his voo, smooveys, bellicon. For the difficult part, he says, just touch it and return. Go back and forth and make a bridge. In my work we call this the Leading Edge (Hat tip to Ray Castellino and all my students, class A and B.) He uses tools of posture, of noticing expansion and flexion.
I also loved his description of our sense of self and how that starts in relationship to the placenta and our mother. His detailed description of the anatomy and the experience of the placenta made complete sense to me. And how birth trauma or even inutero trauma sets up a pattern of sheer effort to live and how that can manifest as authentic achievement with an overlay of pushing.
So much wisdom in 7 days. And this was just some of it. I went through 3 pens taking notes. There were many more lessons learned, mostly around the art of the relational field and knowing our natural capacity for healing. It was very good!