BINNIE IN CONVERSATION WITH BREATHE MAGAZINE.

Q Do you suggest rebirthing sessions during pregnancy?

Binnie: Yes, very much so. I think that it is important, number 1, for a woman to get in touch with the baby that lives in her heart, with her own birth, before she gives birth to her baby, so that she can get a lot of the emotional and physical material that's still in her body out the way because we remember our births.

I also have noticed that every couple, especially every woman who has had an experience of herself as consciousness before birth, which is an experience that is available within Rebirthing, that she births differently. That acknowledgement of herself as consciousness, of remembering her birth, she comes to her birth differently. She is aware for instance that there's someone with her, that her baby is conscious. And so she communicates with the baby. There's a difference in the consciousness around the birth.

So it's valuable to her also to physically have a sense of the energy she's going to deal with whilst she's in labour. And it is wonderful for her to be able, during pregnancy, to handle that energy and know that she can. "Oh!, I can do this!"

To be with a Rebirther, or a partner who has been rebirthed, is even more valuable, so that they can work together, that they know they can handle all this energy with the breath, they can open to handle the energy breathing.

I definitely recommend doing Rebirthing during pregnancy.

Q There is another question you touch on in that. What are your thoughts on the father role during pregnancy?

Binnie: The father's role from beginning to end and onward is support; is support and participation. In that supportive role he can't carry the baby but he can carry the energy. To me the word father comes from "faither". It's like mother is earth [she growls a deep 'maa'] and father is faith. He has faith that there is a baby in there. He holds the vision and supports the woman.

I have a video tape of a couple - if you close your eyes and listen to the sound, it sounds like a couple making ecstatic love. There breathing full open breathing; their saying "ja" (yes) throughout and she's sitting on his knees, sitting back on him, in the water. She catches the baby, the baby comes out of her, he's supporting her, he's holding her. Then she brings the baby up and his arm goes around - it's stunningly beautiful.

The father is the one who says "You can do it". The father is the one who says "I love you and I want this with you".

It is so valuable for him also to be rebirthed so that he releases the fear in his body of birth. One thing that is available with Rebirthing, if you are focused on birth, not if your focused on "let's get out of here", but if you are really focused on safety in the body, this is the most valuable affirmation, the most valuable thing anyone who has a navel and especially a pregnant woman, is: "My body is safe no matter how I might be feeling".

If both people have moved through cycles of energy and released the fear of those feelings then they know they can do it.

Now for her, the energy in labour gets massively intense but he remembers, he has faith that she can do it. The support person that she chooses, the people that they choose to have around them, must be people to me (I mean if it was my ideal birth) they must be people who trust that she can do it and can help handle the energy.

I know that when you look into another person's eyes that you can handle the energy together. We are breathing one another, we are connected - this is NOT 'woo woo' stuff connection. It's the truth. We're breathing each other right now. So at a birth it's so important to have people who are handling the energy and know they are participating and have a role.

Men usually have been, you know, oh get out, get drunk and come back later. Or do something [else]. But when they know 'I have a real role here' it is so important. Every man has experienced birth - you have birth in every cell of your body. If you've re-experienced it, if you are allowed to be in that energy, it's ..... oh, you know !!!!!

The men who have participated at the birth's of their children, every one that I know of, has co-parented their children. They don't go away. The couple, the relationship, may change form, but not the relationship that is with this being, that is their child. It's so amazingly beautiful!

Men have been excluded from the most powerful and important events in life, for so long that it's a miracle that men are even willing to hang around [laughs].

Q What are your thoughts about conscious conception? Do you consider that important?

Binnie: Absolutely. I think that it is not always possible. It's the ideal, I think, for a couple to be wholly aligned on the desire for a child, aligned on the timing. This makes for much more ease in consciousness.

Many couples that I know have had direct experience of the soul that wanted to come through.

In anything, in business, in all relationships, having agreement makes the job a lot easier. And, my goodness! having a child is far more important than any business or any relationship that you are ever going to be in.

So, conscious conception is the next step in consciousness, I think.

People give, absolutely, more attention to buying a carpet or buying a new car, or buying a house ..... most people give more attention to those things than having a baby.

It just shows where are minds are! 

Q In your workshop is that something (conscious conception) that you touch upon, or go into?

Binnie: Not as often as I would probably like to. I teach a very wide range of things simply because all the work I do with adults ... I learn from all of my teachers. I've learned some techniques and things. Bottom line, I've affirmed and confirmed, all of the things that I teach working with birth

90% of the people I work with now are highly creative people - they are not necessarily pregnant with babies! They are pregnant with all the possibilities!

Conscious conception is something that I've worked with one to one. In the Ecstatic Birth workshops they are mainly people who are already pregnant.

The most important ground work you can do is release your fears about birth. There is so much collective fear, I think that bottom line are thoughts around birth are that birth hurts. What we think about birth we think about life. So life hurts, bodies hurt.

I don't know if we are going to get rid of it completely.

I can say, with humility, that I have less fear around birth than anyone I know. I've been working with it everyday for the past 25 years within myself.

To release our fears, to acknowledge the fears, that we carry at a cellular level, to allow ourselves to face them and feel them, to talk about them and work with them and keep releasing them - this is the most important thing you can do to prepare for birth or conception ... or any moment of your life. 

Q What are your thoughts on hot water rebirthing during pregnancy?

Binnie: I think it is the juiciest, most wonderful thing that can happen. [lots of laughter]

In warm water, [Natividad asked what temperature should it be?] It should be comfortable for the mother.

I don't work in really hot water because I think it enervates, it sucks the energy. I like it to be a little warmer than body temperature, not overly hot. Just like water for giving birth should be comfortable for the mother.

When I was doing my workshop "Birth Into Being" I'd be in the water, I'd rebirth 8 people, so I'd be in the water for 8 hours at a time. When your there for 8 hours you can definitely not be in hot water.

Anyway ...

One purpose of warm water rebirthing is to give this physical organism support. You take all of the gravity off, you have warm water, we can let go even more - and if there's someone holding you you can let go even more. A woman who is pregnant, it is essential that she learn to receive support.

Most women, most men and women have been born through the thought that "there is no-one here for me", "there's no-one here for me". No-one I have ever met is receiving the amount of support that is actually here. Most people are, you know, sitting lightly in their chairs, they are not even letting the chair hold them!

So to get into warm water and be able to connect your breath and let go and trust that its all taken care of is an extra ordinary cellular experience and it allows a lot of the birth fear, a lot of the negatively to come up, so that it can be healed.

Some women, when pregnant, weigh even more than their husband does, and you get really big sometimes and it gets so nice, he can hold her, or someone can and she can return to the womb with her baby.

I had one woman who had a swimming pool who gained so much weight that she would get in the pool everyday and float!

I think that warm water rebirthing is absolutely wonderful, any time for any one under any circumstance. 

Q Is water birth the best way for a baby? It can be presented as an ideal but in reality might not happen as was the case with both of my daughters. How do you think people should hold the idea of having a birth?

Binnie: Well, I can talk about two things: the ideal birth and why water birth. And also I think that we should all hold that every birth is perfect. Every birth is exactly the birth that all of the people involved, need in that moment. It is hard to do that, I know. But no attachment, no pain. If we have pictures of "The way it is supposed to be" then we are always going to end up with some disappointment and some dissatisfaction - which most people expect.

I think that the consciousness around birth is the most important thing. And if the consciousness is of greeting God, of holding this being has done it just exactly right, and that it knows that and can be greeted by ideally mother and if not by father or someone who understands that it is a lover, that it has come forth to love, then it will never have to question that. It never has to wonder "Is there anyone here for me?" This is the important thing, to honour this being.

In so many births the baby just gets forgotten. Honouring baby, mother, father, this divine triad. The consciousness around it is very important. Holding the vision that however it is, is exactly the way it is supposed to be. for everyone. OK! Co-creation.

Now to give birth to a baby in the water is ideal.

Sheila Kitzinger says that "the best place for giving birth would be the ideal place for making love." I personally love to make love in the water! I'm a Scorpio with Cancer ascendant, a double water sign so get me in the water!!!

For a woman to be able to move and not have so much gravity pulling on her body helps her release. Warm water helps the tissue stretch as well. It also allows the father to be either in with her or close by, holding her, touching her being with her. The baby comes from hot water, it's been in hot water for nine months. What I've noticed is that they come into a known environment. They've been really scrunched up, it's pretty tight in there and they can open in a known environment.

Now Joseph Chilton-Pierce talks about the fact in I think it is "Magic Child", he speaks about the 'perfect matrix for learning' is to be able to move from the known into the unknown and be able to refer back to the know.

We take babies, the majority of babies, we take them from warm water, close environment, pull them out, pt over here, wrap them up and put them in a little plastic box all by themselves. Is it a wonder that we don't know where we are, that we don't know what's going on! I think that it literally does things to the brain that don't get reorganised until we do some kind of self-exploratory work.

I've seen clients of relative intelligence seem to expand after a series of Rebirthing sessions. I think a lot of that is reorganising this disorientation.

So anyway, your coming from hot water, the baby gets to open, still attached to the umbilical cord, it doesn't have to worry about breathing, or any of this, comes into a known medium, open up the body without gravity and slowly comes into the next womb space - mother's arms. And there is still time to play, to come up and play with the air, no sudden gasp to take a big deep breath; I call it "merfull" [demonstrates with taking little sips of air] they play with it. They don't have to do it all at one time, so they are not startled into taking the first breath. Most people are still in shock from taking that first [and takes a gulp of air].

Robert: That happens a lot in sessions, doesn't it. There is often a period when there is a suspended breath and then [takes a panicky gulp]

Binnie: Exactly. I honour that space so much. I would never leave a client in that space. I've seen people walk away "Oh they went to sleep". That's the place where you need to go in with them, because I've seen so many births where that's happened. The baby comes out and then all of a sudden [make the sound of a panic gulp] because they've been shaken. The consciousness around them is: "Is it going to take a breath?"

Everybody seems to be terrified around this, yet the truth is we are designed to breathe. And if we don't, maybe we were not supposed to! Of course, though you do everything you could to give it the opportunity. But what I notice is that given the opportunity, if everybody is patience, ... if there is stillness, ... the being can come into it.

The most important thing at a birth is the consciousness that "You can do it", "Your body's safe no matter how you're feeling", "I'm here for you, you're surrounded by support"

If that consciousness is there you are going to have a different kind of birth and that we are all here to greet god, y'know. Can hardly wait to greet God!

Q What are the main characteristics of children who have been born in a conscious way?

Binnie: The certainty that there is someone here for them, the certainty that they are acceptable exactly as they are, that they have something to give, that they are love-able. To be seen.

How many of us have had that? How many of us have been greeted by God, mother? This is why it is so impactful, the tantric breaths, the eye-work, it is so impactful.

A baby born in this conscious way has it. Knows how to do that.

That's what I think!