In this interesting short story which has transpersonal elements, the writer describes how she relived experiences felt simultaneously in giving birth and in being born. This was the second time she has had regressive experiences about her birth. The first time was about a year ago when she experienced Reichian bodywork.
The experience, occurred during a rebirthing (breathing) session with a friend. She describes it as wonderful and amazing and wrote:
"The thing that surprised me more than anything was that during the regression I felt as if I was being born, and at the same time, I was giving birth to my first child.
In my rebirthing
experience I felt that the feelings and sensations I had when giving birth to my
first child were not only brought about by my panting to endure the pain while laying on
my back, but also triggered the unconscious memories of my own birth and by the
memory of the anesthesia used in my own birthing. I didn't have any anesthesia with my
children, apart from the local one applied to me for the episiotomy.
So now I
understand that the feelings of helplessness and exhaustion I had when I had to push my first child out were brought about by the memory of the anesthesia. That's why I couldn't do anything to react; I was paralyzed by the memory of the anesthesia!
Ever since I started realizing that there was something wrong when I started pouring
all my pent-up anger at my children, I started looking for an answer -- reading and later
having therapy. I have also tried other therapies but somehow felt that I needed to go still deeper, for there were still things that made me react in pain and that's how I got into this rebirthing experience.
I am happy to share this experience with others. I think that most people usually go about
wearing masks of "I-have-no-feelings," pretending everything is all right, even
though they might be dying inside. I think that suffering is something we all human
beings share and many things would change if we all took off our masks instead of
hiding our pain."
This morning I had a most wonderful experience. I had a therapeutic session where I remembered my birth. The experience was brought about by breathing alone.
First, I started breathing deeply with my mouth. It first helped me to relax
all of my body and then I started feeling how energy ran through my body,
towards my hands. I felt the energy move more and more till it started
vibrating so much in my hands that they were moving too.
The same energy went through my body to my genitals and legs and I could
clearly feel how it went through my body and out, as in a great energy
cascade, that took away with it all of the pain. Then I began having images of my
own birth which were a mixture of sensations.
I was feeling at the same time as if I was being born, and as if I was my mother
and as if I was giving birth to my first child. I integrated the three experiences in a healing way. Suddenly, I started feeling dizzy because of the anesthesia and felt sick in my stomach. The discomfort came and receded in waves.
I was born in 1955, the time when women were put to sleep during childbirth, just at the most important moment when they needed to start pushing. As a fetus I felt panic, with my mother anesthetized and asleep, unable and unwilling to help me and the forceps coming in at me. I felt so helpless and so scared.
In my mind I was shouting at her, asking why she didn't want to feel, and
why she didn't want me to be a woman. I could feel all her pain as well as my own. I could also feel how the forceps were tightening around my head and how I was
gasping for air.
There appeared to be a long red tunnel with light at the far end. The light
suddenly turned into a terribly blinding light, that was unbearably bright, but
nobody seemed to care.
I felt once again the same burning sensations I had in my vagina when my children
were born, how the babies slid out, and the attached umbilical cord. But at the same
time, I also felt that I was the baby being born! There was a tightening
sensation in my body and a piercing pain in my right shoulder as I came out.
Suddenly I was in a room with bluish green walls, in the blinding
light, which I could not stand, but nobody seemed to know or care what I was
feeling. I was terribly cold, with everybody just handling me and
weighing and measuring me, without having the slightest idea of what I was
feeling.
I was crying and wanted to shout at them, "Can't you see that I am cold? I
don't want to be here!" I was still feeling the sickening sensation of the
anesthesia, which made me cough.
The birth experience was like a mixture of images. I felt the forceps on my head, I was
choking and coughing
and suddenly went into the fetal position. Then I fell
asleep for a few seconds and I woke up in an incubator. I was still cold and
feeling dizzy and sick in my stomach and smelled anesthesia in the room.
At the same time, however, I felt a great peaceful sensation and could clearly see and
feel the light of the energy that went into my body through my head and
navel. It went down to my vagina and out in a curtain of light that seemed
to envelope the whole world. I had a wonderfully pleasant sensation of all this energy
concentrating in my genitals, with a nonstop, almost orgasmic sensation, as
a great powerful and healing force radiated out in a healing light that was a
mixture with the light outside that had a very different brighter and livelier color.
I had the insight that now I finally knew what it meant to be a woman and what our purpose in life was. I knew that the inner healing force that was within me, was like a light that would always be on, no matter what the weather outside was like, whether sunny, cloudy, or stormy.
I experienced a wonderful, creative, loving and healing power. I feel as though it is stuck
within us like in a cage because of all the horrible aggressions which babies must endure as they are "welcomed" into the world by insensitive, ignorant and pain-crazed
people including parents, obstetrical physicians and midwives.
It is time that we all wake up and treat new-born babies as feeling knowing beings. Babies should be welcomed in a cozy, loving environment, instead of the insensitive treatment which is the norm in most hospital OB wards.
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