Where It All Begins : The Invisible Wounds of Birth

Between the hum of mosquitoes in the shadows, the birds still singing deep into the night, and the dense heat rising from the earth like from an ancient womb, I sit cross-legged, listening to Alice. The distant sound of waves cradles our exchange. In this liquid, timeless atmosphere, she speaks to me of births, not hospital births, but those that move with the rhythm of breath, of hands that hold, of the quiet presence of women who know. I listen. And as I do, something in me stirs, the therapist who, for over twenty years, has held bodies in her hands that remember what words cannot say.

Alice is a midwife. She trained in Mexico with the parteras and later supported women in France as a doula. She opens a doorway into a world I’ve long carried within me, one I recognise deeply in my own work. She often speaks of Michel Odent, the French doctor and obstetrician who showed just how deeply our entry into the world imprints us. Not only on a neurological level, but in our capacity to love, to feel safe, to trust connection.

As I listen, something ancient lights up inside me, a knowing I’ve always felt, now made clear. The way we arrive shapes more than our bodies: it leaves traces in our breath, in how we relate to closeness, to emotional flow. As an osteopath and trauma therapist, I feel these early imprints every day shaping how we relate for the rest of our lives. What Alice brings is a finer lens, a deeper understanding of how these first moments shape our sense of safety, contact, and presence. It touches the very core of my work: restoring the primal foundations of trust.

"Carry Our Generation" by Shianne Gould

WHEN THE HOSPITAL REPLACES THE WOMEN’S CIRCLE

Before the rise of hospital-based medicine, birth took place in warm, human settings, held by experienced women. Today, many babies are born into sterile, brightly lit, often noisy environments, where the mother lies on her back, hooked up to an IV, often in deep isolation. While this setting may offer medical safety, it can also generate significant anxiety. Maternal cortisol (the stress hormone) rises sharply, and the baby feels this directly through the placenta. Its nervous system begins life already steeped in a signal of danger.

In many cultures that have preserved the ancestral wisdom of birth, such as some Indigenous communities, children are still welcomed in calm, ritual spaces, held in the quiet presence of caring women.

THE EPIDURAL

The epidural soothes pain, but it soothes everything. It numbs. It severs. It slows the instinctive, archaic dialogue between the mother’s body and her baby’s. What brings relief to the mother also crosses the placenta and can numb the baby. The dosage is calculated for an adult weighing between 60 and 80 kilos. The baby, who weighs only a few, receives a neurochemical load far beyond what its forming system can integrate.

At birth, this may show up as low muscle tone, difficulty initiating sucking, an absent gaze, or a lack of responsiveness to contact. The baby is there… but somehow distant. This is sometimes referred to as neonatal dissociation. Later, this can become a way of life — difficulty inhabiting the body, feeling fully, staying present in the heart of experience. As if the nervous system had adapted by choosing numbness as refuge, hypervigilance as a way to stay safe.

I recognise this imprint in many of my patients, a kind of soft hyper-alertness, as if the body were floating above itself, held in a subtle, artificial safety. Never quite daring to root. Their nervous system, deprived from the beginning of full activation, learned to survive in half-measures in a state of hypo-presence.

C-SECTION BIRTH

To be born by C-section is to arrive without the passage. The baby’s body doesn’t descend into the pelvis, doesn’t feel the living walls of the birth canal close around it, doesn’t receive the rhythmic push of the uterus. The baby is extracted. This bypassed passage also means the lungs miss out on the natural compression that helps expel amniotic fluid and prepare for the first breath. There is no stimulation of the vagus nerve, so essential for nervous system regulation and the felt sense of inner safety. It also means missing contact with the vaginal flora during the passage, the very seed of the immune system. When this embodied ritual hasn’t taken place, grounding can be more difficult. Some babies struggle to breathe deeply, to activate their tone, or to fully arrive in the moment. Later in life, this can show up as difficulty moving through challenges, committing to transformation, or feeling like they’ve truly entered their own life.

I’ve seen in some people born by C-section a recurring pattern of avoidance, steering away from intensity, withdrawing from tight thresholds, struggling to feel their own strength during pivotal moments. As if their bodies were never initiated into the passage. And in others, the opposite: a relentless search for intensity. They seek fire, impact, the extreme, as if trying to force a crossing they never experienced. They can be adrenaline junkies: chasing thresholds, drawn to initiations, radical experiences… but don’t manage to integrate them. It’s an attempt to compensate for a primary dissociation, it’s the body’s call to relive what was never lived at birth.

PLANNED C-SECTIONS

Widespread in many English-speaking countries, planned caesarean births carry similar impacts to induced labour, but with an added layer of intensity. There is no journey through the birth canal, no alignment with the baby’s inner timing, and often a deeper level of anaesthesia. The child is quite literally taken out of the womb abruptly, without warning, without a physiological or instinctive impulse.

Alice shared what the Mexican midwives say: “White women can’t give birth anymore because they spend their lives sitting down!” And indeed, our modern sedentary lifestyle has profoundly altered the natural physiology of childbirth. The human body is designed to move. In many traditional cultures where walking, carrying, and physical labour remain part of daily life, the pelvis stays mobile throughout pregnancy. It adapts to movement, responds to the baby’s rhythm, and softens in preparation for birth. With the help of hormones like relaxin, the ligaments do their job and make space.

But in our still and seated societies, the pelvis becomes rigid, tissues lose elasticity, and it’s not uncommon for the baby’s head to be too large (or misaligned) to pass through the birth canal naturally. This lack of mobility often leads to more complicated labours, and sometimes, the decision to perform a C-section.

What’s presented as a quick medical fix is often the result of a long disconnection from our bodies, from movement, from the organic pace of life. Yet birth is a threshold, it needs time, gravity, verticality, and trust. Without those elements, we risk pulling babies into life before they’ve had a chance to arrive in their own way.

EMERGENCY C-SECTIONS AND GENERAL ANAESTHESIA

Sometimes, birth becomes a life-or-death situation. In those moments, an emergency caesarean under general anaesthesia can be a life-saving act for both mother and child. But it also leaves a deep imprint.

When the mother is fully sedated, as if absent from the moment of birth, the baby enters a world with no eyes to meet, no voice to welcome them, no maternal presence to receive them. They arrive in a sterile, often harsh environment, severed from the emotional continuity of the one who carried them. For some, it’s experienced as being born into death. And indeed, these types of births can unconsciously reactivate transgenerational memories: women who died in childbirth, broken maternal lines. The baby’s first story becomes one of survival, rather than presence.

Here’s what a patient shared about her own birth, she was born while her mother was under general anaesthesia, and gave birth herself to four children via caesarean, including two emergency C-sections:

“For me, it brought up memories of dying mothers and created a deep anxiety — this feeling of being trapped in a ‘no way out’ situation, and the belief that I had to find my own way through. It shaped many of my coping patterns in life.”

And yet, this can be healed. Through gentle, body-based approaches that honour the hypervigilant state of the nervous system, we can begin to restore a sense of safety and a felt experience of being welcomed. We can consciously re-enter life, reclaim that first doorway. And from that place, healing becomes possible, not just for ourselves, but for our mothers who went through immense trauma. And beyond that, we can send light back through our lineages, to the women and babies who never made it and free the generations to come.

INDUCED BIRTH

I was supposed to be born on a Sunday. But the doctor, for his own convenience, decided to induce labour on the Friday, just before the weekend. My mother, brave as she was, refused the epidural. But she was given an IV drip with synthetic oxytocin to start the labour. And that’s when it all imprinted.

My system, still sheltered, was suddenly flooded with a powerful hormone, but without the safety it’s meant to come with. Oxytocin is supposed to connect, envelop, open the body to bonding. But for me, it announced rupture. My body registered it as a brutal signal: “It’s starting! You have to get out! Now!” No transition. Just an artificial, chemical push. Imposed. I wasn’t ready. And I think I dissociated before I even arrived. As if a part of me left my body to avoid what was about to happen.

For a long time, I believed my difficulty with connection came from my family history. But through working with the body, I came into contact with an older truth: Every time oxytocin arises, in moments of intimacy, my system contracts. It doesn’t know how to receive. It anticipates urgency. It associates love with rupture. And I’ve seen this imprint in so many people born through induction: An impulse toward connection — immediately followed by a reflex to pull away. Panic in the face of softness. As if something inside still whispers: don’t surrender… you’ll be torn away. Their nervous systems often remain stuck in a dorsal collapse. These people struggle to trust the organic rhythm of things... They find it hard to taste a simple, stable, embodied joy. There is a deep need to relearn how to receive gentleness and to feel safety in the body.

PREMATURE BIRTH

Premature babies enter the world with a nervous system still in the midst of development, suddenly exposed to an external reality for which they are not yet prepared.

This abrupt transition can leave a lasting imprint. Feelings of separation, disorientation, or a lack of safety may become underlying themes in the child’s identity and life story. Stanislav Grof, in his work on the perinatal matrices, observed that difficult births (especially those that cut short the oceanic bond with the mother) often leave an existential imprint of isolation or exile.

Bernard Montaud, founder of corporeal psychoanalysis, also describes birth as a foundational shock to the psyche. In L’accompagnement de la naissance (Edit’as, 1997), he outlines seven somatic stages the infant typically passes through when entering the world. These stages can remain “unfinished” when birth is rushed or interrupted. In the case of premature births, he writes, the baby is swept into the world before having made an inner decision to be born. This experience can deeply affect their relationship to choice, embodiment, and commitment to life.

And yet, in some prematurely born children, this profound vulnerability also seems to open a subtle channel. The nervous system, not yet fully armoured by the usual protective layers, can remain open to invisible realms. I have a friend who was born three months early, his clairvoyance emerged very young. He senses emotional fields, energetic movements, and intuitively feels what others don’t express. It’s as if the early rupture of the womb’s protective veil enabled a direct gateway to the subtle worlds.

From an astrological point of view, premature births often correspond to strong Neptunian themes: Neptune on the Ascendant or at the IC, Sun or Moon in Pisces, or planets clustered in the twelfth house. These children carry porous, sensitive souls attuned to what lies beyond the visible, often seeking unity. But their gift can come with a cost: a sense of drifting, dissociation, confusion, especially if no safe container is offered to help ground their experience.

That’s why supporting these children (and the adults they become) requires gentleness: cranial osteopathy, body-integrating rituals, and work with perinatal memory. The goal is to restore a sense of continuity of being, while honouring the rare and luminous sensitivity of these souls who came too soon, or perhaps came early on purpose, to serve as a living bridge between worlds.

EPISIOTOMY AND VAGINAL EXAMS

There are medical gestures which, though common, leave deep imprints. Episiotomy is one of them. Often minimised, it involves making an incision in the perineum to ease the baby’s exit, especially in emergencies or when time is deemed short. But even when performed with care, this act opens a sacred area of the body without honouring its natural rhythm. The perineum marks the threshold between inside and outside, between gestation and emergence. When it’s cut, this passage becomes a forced opening and a rushed separation. For the baby, it can be felt as a sudden rupture, an unsupported entry, an intrusion into the momentum of birth.

Later in life, some children-turned-adults struggle to move through transitions slowly. They may react intensely when faced with emotional charge, either by merging completely or cutting off connection abruptly. There can be difficulty staying present in the heart of movement, receiving the rise of emotion without fleeing or dissolving.

For the mother, episiotomy may leave lingering pain, numbness in the perineal area, difficulty feeling pleasure, or a disconnection from the pelvis. The perineum, deeply linked to safety, bodily identity, and grounding, may retain the memory of this intrusion, sensations of violation, helplessness, or being rushed. These can linger long after birth. Healing often requires delicate work: osteopathy, massage, energy work, craniosacral therapy, or simply words spoken where the body couldn’t express.

And the same goes for another gesture, often underestimated yet equally impactful: vaginal exams performed without attunement to the body’s rhythm.

GROF’S PERINATAL MATRICES: A PSYCHOSPIRITUAL MAP OF BIRTH

Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, a pioneer in transpersonal psychology, dedicated much of his work to exploring how birth shapes the human psyche. Through clinical research and altered states of consciousness, he mapped what he called the four basic perinatal matrices, a blueprint of the birth experience, felt in the body, the unconscious, and the soul. He co-created Holotropic Breathwork with Christina Grof, a powerful method of exploring altered states of consciousness to integrate these perinatal layers.

1. The First Matrix corresponds to harmonious life in the womb, a state of total symbiosis with the Whole, a kind of oceanic union. If this phase is marked by maternal stress, rejection of the pregnancy, or a threatening environment, it may leave a core imprint of mistrust toward life itself.

2. The Second Matrix begins with the onset of contractions, when no way out is yet visible. The baby feels the uterus begin to tighten. If this experience becomes lodged in the body, it may later result in difficulty dealing with pressure, anxiety around time, or a sense of being trapped or powerless.

3. The Third Matrix is the passage through the birth canal, a time of struggle toward life, of confrontation with intensity and constriction. If this stage is bypassed, as in the case of a C-section one may be left with the feeling of having been thrown into life without choosing it, or an ongoing difficulty navigating challenges from within.

4. The Fourth Matrix is the moment of actual birth, a release, a breakthrough into light. This can leave an imprint of awakening and joy, or, if marked by violence or harshness, become encoded as a shock to the soul.

For Grof, these imprints often resurface during major life transitions: grief, love, relocation, identity shifts, illness, or the birth of one’s own child. They may also echo transgenerational or karmic memories. This is why purely cognitive approaches often fall short when it comes to healing these deep layers. To reach them, we must go through the body and the breath, through imagery, sensation, and symbol. In my practice, I often invite people to go beneath words to let the body tell the story where the mind can no longer follow.

Reference: Grof, Stanislav. Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985.

Further Reading:

• Grof, Stanislav. The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives. New York: HarperOne, 1993.

• Grof, Stanislav. When the Impossible Happens: Adventures in Non-Ordinary Realities. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2006.

• Grof, Stanislav. Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000.

  
  

THE NATAL MOON

In astrology, the natal Moon reveals how we love, how we bond, how we regulate our emotions. It often speaks to our own birth — what our body felt, how it adapted, and what it had to suppress.

A Moon in Aquarius may reflect early detachment, a rupture from the mother, or a highly cerebral environment. A Moon in Scorpio might carry the imprint of an intense or emotionally charged birth, unspoken emotions, or hidden conflict. Moons in Capricorn, Virgo, or Libra — especially when poorly aspected — can point to a demanding, distant, or unstable atmosphere. A Moon in Pisces, when overwhelmed, may signal a blurring between the baby’s emotions and those of the mother. A Moon in Cancer, hypersensitive to the family field, may experience early separation as a form of tearing.

To understand our Moon is to understand how our nervous system first learned to seek safety — and, at times, where it had to betray it.

NERVOUS SYSTEM REGULATION

The body speaks a language that words can’t always reach. To restore a sense of safety, we often need to go beyond the verbal — through touch, breath, and slowness.

1. Cranial osteopathy, craniosacral therapy — These gentle approaches help reconnect with tissue memories from birth, still active in posture, breath, and internal rhythms. They release perinatal or transgenerational shocks that remain frozen in the tissues and restore the organic flow of life.

2. Kinesiology  — Using muscle testing, this method communicates with cellular memory. It helps trace the roots of archaic stress and integrates a more aligned response — even when no conscious memory is present.

3. Watsu and aquatic therapies  — Watsu, practiced in warm water, recreates a sensory matrix of safety. It offers a gentle rebirth, a deeply enveloping experience that can heal the imprint of a violent or disconnected birth.

4. Polyvagal-informed approaches  — Gentle rocking, soft pressure, co-regulation practices… These simple gestures reactivate the deep roots of calm. A warm bath, skin-to-skin contact, or silent holding can restore a primal sense of safety.

SYMBOLIC AND ENERGETIC WORK

Some wounds only release when we enter the realm of myth, breath, and the subtle. Here are a few portals into deeper integration:

1. Hypnotherapy and family constellations. These tools allow us to revisit our birth and repair interrupted bonds in the perinatal field.

2. Rebirthing, Holotropic Breathwork, conscious breathing. These altered-state practices help access and release perinatal memories.

3. Archetypal astrology. Exploring the position of the natal Moon, the South Node, Chiron, or Ceres can offer insights into the soul’s experience of arriving in the body.

4. Homeopathic remedies. These act as vibrational keys that help access ancient imprints:

• Arnica montana: for physical or energetic shocks that haven’t been integrated.

• Aconitum napellus: for births marked by panic, suddenness, or violence.

• Opium: for frozen states or deep dissociation.

• Ignatia amara: for silent separations and early grief.

• Lac humanum / Lac maternum: when the attachment bond or the sense of being welcomed was wounded from the start.

These are remedies I regularly use in connection with somatic birth stories. Their action is subtle, deep and sometimes, strikingly immediate.

5. Symbolic rituals Guided meditations, water rituals, offerings placed on the body… All ways of honouring the cellular memory of our arrival into the world.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE

This text is not meant to blame mothers. C-sections, epidurals, inductions are sometimes necessary, and they save lives. Many women did their best within complex medical, cultural, and emotional systems. What I offer here is simply a different lens. An invitation to gently look at what may have been imprinted very early. And above all, to open pathways toward recognition, repair, and reconciliation. To understand what birth has written in us is not to search for someone to blame, or to become stuck in the past. It is to restore meaning, to find inner coherence again, to rebuild that thread of trust with life. And through that trust, to allow ourselves to generate joy from a deeper more rooted, embodied, and nourished place.