Upaya Retreat

How did I ever think that hanging out with two neuroscientists who practice Zen Buddhism and two zen philosophers, at one of the best Zen retreat centers in the country, could lead to anything but a challenging as well as reflective time in my personal and professional life.

I loved the lectures that took place last weekend in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the Upaya Foundation and I also loved the quiet contemplative practice that was woven into this silent retreat. Sitting quietly from 7-8 in the morning, eating together in silence, doing work together in silence, watching the snow fall in the silent wilderness surrounding the center, and engaging in lively discussions in the afternoon and evening with reflections from Roshi Joan Halifax.

I went to this retreat to meet and engage in discourse with the neuroscientists, especially Richard Davidson, who is Director for the Laboratory of Affective Neuroscience as well as the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A major focus of his current work is on interactions between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala in the regulation of emotion in both normal subjects and patients with affective and anxiety disorders. He has also studied and published several papers on brain physiology in long-term Buddhist meditators. I never got the questions that I arrived with answered, but I have a host of new and more important questions for the scientists and philosophers.

My burning question, to which there could be myriad answers, is: Does birth HAVE to be considered one of the four passages of life that cause suffering? What if birth could be about connecting and feeling the power of connection to source?
Not only have I seen this in many many water borne children, but I have seen them grow up and live fearlessly, boldly and with great compassion and intention.

More on that later.......

Lethbridge, Canada - Birth, Breastfeeding and Bonding Conference

The doulas of Lethbridge have out done themselves with a conference this past weekend that was outstanding in content, organization, good will and nourishment for body, mind and soul. I attend a lot of conferences and usually find that I would do things differently if I were in charge, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in big ways. But this conference was so good that I could not find one single thing that I would have changed - well, okay - maybe the room venue - but just so we could hold more people. They will have to find a bigger hotel ballroom for their 2011 conference because when the word spreads about how good this one was, everyone will want to attend. There was so much going on that I didn't even find out how many nursing mothers showed up at the nursing challenge.


One of the unexpected highlights of the conference was a performance by a local musical family - mother and father and 9 children, seven of whom performed. They were so delightful. And then I was recruited along with other members of the audience to participate in a very cute skit. I'll make another post and put up a few photos. They made me put on a floppy hat, a huge dress and then stuffed a pillow under the dress. Viola!! I was suddenly pregnant and pretended to be an irritable birthing woman in a horse drawn cart. Two lovely women were the horses!! Can't wait to post the photos. What a delight in the midst of serious learning and processing!! Thank you Daleen Bybee, Andrea Johnson and all the volunteers and committee members that made this conference possible.

My flight into Calgary was highlighted by a divine appointment with Ruth Reed, a clinical social worker who stopped me during a work session on my computer to discuss the content of my lecture. Turns out she works for an agency in Edmonton that focuses on childhood trauma. I think I'll be going back to Edmonton in the Spring to present the information about infant brain development, the primary developmental period and waterbirth to not only doulas and midwives, but to social workers, too.

For me the real highlight was one of a serious nature and that was listening and interacting with Nils Bergman, MD, from Cape Town, South Africa. He is a quiet soul, but full of passion, knowledge, enthusiasm, and great concern. He helped us shift the paradigm into seeing the harm that incubators bring to the human brain. Babies need to land on the mother's chest and stay there in the habitat - the place where the infant brain fires the right neurotransmitters and wires itself for the capacity to love, feel safe, be nurtured and feel whole. The skin of the mother responds to the skin of the baby and the two begin a chemical conversation, just like the one that was going on in utero. We know this - every mother does, on an instinctual level, but our birthing and post partum practices continue to separate mothers and babies causing real physical and emotional harm. It is not that skin to skin is safe, it is that incubators are dangerous!! Incubators equate survival of the bodily functions, but not growth and development of the brain. If the brain gets hooked up properly, the rest of the functions for which we depend on incubators (such as lung, heart, kidneys, warmth) work better with more efficiency and expediency. And this does not just apply to underweight or at risk premature babies, but to every single newborn on the planet. What kind of human being do we want to create and what behaviors do we want to foster? It all starts in the minutes after birth.

Do we still get angry or experience hurt or disappointment? Yes. We are only human with human emotions. And with emotions we can change them as quickly as we can change our appearance or hair color. More on that later.
I was returning from a teaching trip in Vancouver, Washington at SW Washington Medical Center where they have instituted a waterbirth program and have expanded it to include the department of Family Practice Medicine. Three of the doctors who train residents joined us for the day with the intention of incorporating waterbirth into the training of Family Practice residents. So, I have to thank Dr's Cooper, Reid and Liu for their attention, suggestions and entheusiasm. I was greatly inspired and grateful for their participatation.

Overcoming adversity and accepting delays or what appear to be set backs in our lives. That was a topic of conversation on one of my flights today.
My answer to this woman was that we can chose in the moment to be in fear and see whatever it is as an obsticle or we can look at it a divine preparation time. Seeing everything through a heart of love - through G-d's heart - gives us the ability to not only live in the moment, but to accept these challenges as a tool for building compassion. I reminded her that the quickest way to heal a negative situation is to pray for the other person with love in our hearts. As difficult as that might sound it works amazingly quickly.

Do we still get angry or experience hurt or disappointment? Yes. We are only human with human emotions. And with emotions we can change them as quickly as we can change our appearance or hair color. More on that later.
I was returning from a teaching trip in Vancouver, Washington at SW Washington Medical Center where they have instituted a waterbirth program and have expanded it to include the department of Family Practice Medicine. Three of the doctors who train residents joined us for the day with the intention of incorporating waterbirth into the training of Family Practice residents. So, I have to thank Dr's Cooper, Reid and Liu for their attention, suggestions and entheusiasm. I was greatly inspired and grateful for their participatation.

2009 a year of travel and talk

It has been quite the year of travel and presenting workshops in all parts of North America. I sat down and counted my saved boarding passes a few weeks ago and realized that I had sat on 57 separate flights since January. I always look forward to the flights because I never know who I am going to be destined to meet and engage. I call my seat mates "divine appointments." This year I have had interesting appointments, to be sure. The conversation when we are cruising at 35,000 feet usually revolves around childbirth in the US. Most people are completely unaware of the state of maternity care in our country, but always in complete agreement that the birth process and immediate post partum care plays a role in shaping the relationship between mother and baby and future behaviors of the child.

I recall a woman from North Carolina crying in the middle of the night as we flew from San Diego to Charlotte, when she realized the impact that birth could possibly have played in the lives of the kindergarten children she has been teaching for the past 20 plus years. She recounted that she had home births, quite by chance, in the Chicago area in the 1970s with Gregory White. The depth of our conversation struck her on the heart level and that is what led to her tears. We prayed together in the darkened cabin with lightening flashes in the sky as our only illumination. There was also a business man from New York on a flight from Chicago to Atlanta who vowed to let every pregnant woman, and every woman thinking about having a baby, know that they needed to investigate their choices and consider a home birth or waterbirth.
The common thread that binds us all to this message is that people understand immediately that there is a connection between the way we are born and the way we develop in our psyches.

The impact of birthing practices on future health and well being becomes obvious to everyone when having quiet personal conversations.
The travel has taken me back to Oregon from my new home in Ft. Lauderdale, to California, Kansas, Ontario, Canada, North Carolina, Arizona, Illinois, Tennessee, Georgia, Bermuda, Washington, and different parts of Florida.
As the fall conferences begin, I look forward to my "divine appointments" and to meeting the wonderful, genuine women and men in each conference and workshop who desire to change the way we welcome babies into the world.

What We Do in Pregnancy and Birth Matters

What I see is just the covering
The most important is invisible....
From the Little Prince by A. de Saint-Exupéry

This question came in this morning and I decided to make it a separate topic.

"implying that children, and adults, are different than they would have been had their mothers had different "experiences." This seems an extraordinary claim. Have you any proof of this?"

Yes, there are ever increasing volumes of proof scientifically, both retrospective and prospective, as well as observational, that lead scientists, researchers, behavioral psychologists, cellular biologists and neurologists to the same conclusion. WHAT WE DO IN PREGNANCY AND BIRTH MATTERS.......AND affects the way we live life.

I will post a comprehensive bibliography on my website in a few days that will give you the actual scientific references. The research in this area has been going on for almost fifty years.

The mind of the child - what are the influences? What are the memories? Do we make decisions at birth and before that effect our relationship with the world?

Memory before 3 years old is intrinsic - always there, present, taking everything in and storing the memory in the brain for future reference. It is on a cellular level, flavoring and coloring all our responses.

Bruce Lipton, PhD, a medical school professor and author, states in his book, "The Biology of Belief" that humans are not, as was previously believed, victims of our genes, but that the environment and things that go on in our environment, including pregnancy and birth, has a direct effect on our DNA.
He goes on to explain that the activity of cells reacts to the environment, but more specifically, our perception of the environment directly controls the activity of our genes.


Dr. Joe Dispenza, an expert in neuro-biology stated in a recent interview, "There is scientific proof that the mind state of a pregnant mother affects the growth of her baby's brain. Dr. Dispenza elaborated, "A mother who is relaxed and in an environment in which she is able to cope adequately - rather than one that causes her chronic stress - is going to encourage the development of the fetus's forebrain, the area that allows us to reach logical conclusions, control our impulses, and successfully navigate our emotions." Inadequate development of the forebrain has been suggested as a possible explanation for aggressive and anti-social behavior in children, potentially leading to violent behavior, criminal offenses, and higher rates of drug abuse later in life.

Researchers conclude that the mother who is relaxed and free from stress during birth gives birth much more easily, sometimes painlessly and with a totally different attitude. And the baby who is placed on her chest immediately and left there skin to skin for many hours receives a message of love, attention, completeness, welcome and perceives infinite possibilities. Not true for the baby whose mother gives birth in pain, stress, with drugs that the baby also receives, and is immediately separated. A painful or traumatic birth can be overcome with remedial work and an acute awareness of what the baby is trying to communicate after birth.

A stressful, painful birth is not a prescription for psychiatric problems for the rest of ones life, nor is a gentle birth a guarantee that a child will have an easy peaceful life, but.....there is a connection. This connection is virtually ignored by the medical community and is only now being addressed publicly in films, books, and in the press. I'll write more on this topic in future posts. A very good film to watch is, "What Babies Want: A Exploration of the Consciousness of Infants.

Dr. Joe Dispenza, famed neurologist featured in the film, What the Bleep Do We Know, will lead a presentation that addresses the biology of the infant mind at the first Gentle Birth World Congress and Whole Baby Expo, September 27 – 30, 2007, at the Portland, Oregon Convention Center.