HEALING BIRTH
THE TRANSFORMATION OF LIFE BY BINNIE A. DANSBY
In the following article taken from a speech Binnie gave at the 1998 Midwives Congress Binnie discusses the Healing Birth - The Transformation of Life that it brings...
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
Midwives Congress 11-13 May 1998, Bremen, Germany