Perinatal or Womb Regression
Perinatal or womb regression refers to moving clients back through time to re-experience being in the womb. Doctors and scientists have done research into the life of the unborn child, and the memories of that life remain within the subconscious mind. They are accessible with certain techniques, such as hypnosis and age regression.
Prior to the last few decades of the twentieth century, doctors and scientists believed that the experiences of the unborn child were negligible, that the development of the child didn’t begin until after birth. Freud, for example, referred to the first years of early development as beginning only after the child is born and no longer attached to the mother’s body. However, beginning in the 1980’s, there was a lot of research being done in Europe and the USA about the awareness of unborn children. They studied the responses and interactions between unborn children and their families, and of the mind, feelings and emotions, as well as the external environment and experiences of the mother.
Life of the Unborn
Thomas Verney, M.D., author of Secret Life Of the Unborn Child, (1981), is a psychiatrist who has recognized the influence of prenatal and birth experience in his own work. He has also reported on the research of other investigators in his book.
Dr. Verney’s conclusions are:
The fetus can see, hear, experience, taste, learn and feel while in the mother’s womb.
The fetus not only feels but also responds to the mother’s thoughts, to her feelings, and to music, as well as to very loud sounds and voices taking place around the mother’s body.
The mother’s emotional states of ambivalence, acceptance of responsibility, or anxiety influences the health of the fetus as well as the growth and development of the newborn.
A pregnant woman’s choices to smoke or drink have such a profound affect on her unborn child, that the child will react, physically, just to her thoughts about having a cigarette or a drink.
Dr. Verney’s book was first published at a time when the scientific and medical community was still telling expectant parents that newborns do not see, hear, or experience pain the same way adults do. I remember being told this with my first daughter, in 1979. It was thought that there wasn’t really a consciousness or awareness before birth. Since then, there have been more studies done and more productive focus on the life of the unborn, as well as many more books written about them. Today it has become quite obvious that unborn children’s experiences are rich and full and layered with responses to the choices and actions of their mothers, as well as their mother’s own experiences and feelings. How well mother feels about herself and about being a mother are also important, and how much love and support the child perceives coming from its mother.
How does this come into the work of womb regression? These events and experiences of the unborn child are recorded in the subconscious mind of the child and are accessible through regression work. Unborn children feel and record all these experiences, thoughts, and feelings of their mothers as if it were their own.
It has also been noted that by the second trimester of the pregnancy, unborn children are able to perceive and experience the external environment of their mothers. Many practitioners of womb regression have found that such memories, experiences, and traumas while in the womb can also trigger memories of traumatic experiences in previous lives. Once these memories are triggered they can become the root of many of the problems that we need to resolve in this life. Therefore, it might be said that some of our personality traits, physical, and even emotional problems can be traced to experiences that we had while in the mother’s womb. This could be applied to both the actual pre-birth experiences, and past life traumas that were triggered.
According to Dr. Verney’s research, how we experience and express such feelings as grief, loss, rejection, loneliness, or physical issues such as sinus infections and headaches, can be traced back to the traumas surrounding birth. The theory of reincarnation and past lives will include that these effects of birth trauma are not limited to this lifetime, either. Birth traumas can be carried from all the previous lives stretching back the very beginning of the soul when it started its journey of incarnation cycles.
Dr. Verney writes that studies have shown that happy, content women are far more likely to have bright, outgoing infants. At the same time, a highly complex, subtle emotion such as ambivalence towards the fetus or pregnancy, can have a harmful effect on the unborn child. There is no physiological connection, these are feelings that are not of the body, but they affect the body and mind of the unborn child. Verney calls this kind of experience “sympathetic communication”.
Everything that a woman does or experiences while pregnant includes her unborn child. This is why a pregnant woman needs extra care and support from everyone around her. It is not intended that she be wrapped in bubble wrap and shielded from everything going on around her, but that we need to increase our awareness of how important her environment is to her and her unborn child. Occasional negative emotions or stressful events or circumstances will not have a lasting effect on the child, because he or she is strong and resilient enough to withstand small setbacks. The true danger is if the child feels shut off from the mother, if the mother is always unhappy or rejects her unborn, or when the child’s physical and psychological needs are consistently unmet. For example, when a pregnant mother uses harmful drugs, or endangers her child’s health by drinking too much, or smoking. Harm is done when the mother makes these choices without considering or caring how her unborn baby will be affected. The child experiences the lack of support and bonding necessary to grow strong and resilient within the womb.
We, as a society, must learn to recognize and accept that the world of the unborn child is full of sound and light and emotion. The child in the womb can feel and experience all the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of the mother as his or her own. This would enable us to better understand how important prenatal care and support of pregnant mothers truly is, including the reality of prenatal parenting. It is clear today that parents need to communicate with their babies before they are born and welcome them with messages of love.
While doing womb regression I have found that often clients who come for help with issues or problems that appear to have no conscious explanation, are able to trace the actual source to their experiences within the womb. As an unborn child they took on the issues, fears, doubts and negative self-images that their mother felt about herself. I have also had clients who believed that they were not loved, that they had been rejected, because of the circumstances of their birth.
If, for example, a woman is so heavily drugged that she is not even present at the birth, the child may find it difficult to overcome the lack of that very important initial emotional bonding with the mother. However, if there was a clear emotional connection prenatally, it is more likely that child and mother bonding can easily occur, even outside of the birthing room. This is just the kind of awareness and recall that can be discovered and explored during a womb regression session. The script for womb regression session is in the workbook.
Womb Regression – The Practice
In his book Life Between Lives: Hypnotherapy For Spiritual Regression, Dr. Newton tells us that womb memory and recall can provide a great deal of insight about the levels of experience and development a particular soul brings to the human form. The manner in which the client describes being in the womb, how the soul energy makes the connection to the expectant mother as well as the unborn little body, the perceptions about the environment of the womb and of the mother, brings additional insight and understanding to the current life as well as the higher levels of consciousness. It is a vast resource of information about the kind of spiritual journey the individual is capable of, as well as important guidance into the current life circumstances.
Womb regression is a form of age regression. Many past life regression practitioners use womb regression as a launch into the past life regression work. A specific womb regression session can be a very powerful and healing journey itself. It might be advised to do a regular past life session, first, as a womb regression session can, in some ways, be a more advanced level of connecting with the higher levels of consciousness. It would be easier for a subject who has already been through a past life journey and already aware of what it feels like to make that connection. If the subject has difficulty with past life regression, it would be harder to do more. On the other hand, many past life practitioners use a form of womb regression to move backwards into a past life memory session. This kind of womb regression may not go into as much detail, as it is just the vehicle to the deeper level of work, the past life regression.
Once in the womb memories, there are many questions that can be asked and answered. For example, at what point did the soul energy contact and connect with the tiny unborn body? In general, according to Dr. Michael Newton writes in his books, Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls, that occurs during the middle of the second trimester. It is an interesting side note that Dr. Thomas Verny writes in his book that the unborn baby’s sense of self, the beginning of true ego development, generally begins sometime during the middle of the second trimester.
According to Dr. Newton another challenge to being able to have a full connection to the womb experience is the mother’s state of mind, and her feelings about herself. This includes how she feels about herself, about being pregnant, and about being a mother. Her mind may be closed down to her unborn baby if she feels anger, doubt, fear, and if she lives with emotional or physical violence. This is especially true if the mother has no supportive relationships. Or, if the mother lives with people who are violent or indifferent to her and her unborn child.
How does womb regression help me?
Once this information is known to the conscious mind, it is a tremendous help to the client in integrating childhood experiences and relationships growing up. The first and most vital relationship is with Mother. If we know the root source of that relationship, we can gain insight into so much more about ourselves and our life’s path.
