The body often holds onto what the mind can’t touch. Early experiences we didn’t have the chance to process can stay with us for a lifetime. Working with a safe witness can help the body and memory meet in a way that finally allows a shift. This is my experience with an implicit memory I carried from birth. It became explicit through an intense flashback within the last few years.
I’ve been working with an osteopath who’s a remarkably compassionate witness. He’s excellent at attuning and allowing the process to unfold. I’ve known him for close to six years, and he’s one of the most trustworthy practitioners I’ve worked with. Over time, we’ve developed a relationship of exceptional safety. There was even a little rupture, and then the repair that brought a new level of safety, which led to my feeling safe enough to bring this up with him.
I asked my doctor if we could explore my earliest postnatal trauma, which occurred in the delivery room immediately after birth. Taking my first breath, I froze in the first half of the Moro reflex, the part where the baby stiffens and throws the arms out wide. This is normally followed by contraction, when the arms come back across the body and the baby curls into more of a fetal position. But I could not complete the cycle, because at that moment they said, “It’s a girl,” and my mother rejected me. I never had the opportunity to bring the arms inward, and it still needs that.
A Qigong exercise reminded me of the Moro reflex. It’s called Opening the Bow to Shoot the Golden Eagle, and is designed to stretch shoulder muscles, improve lung ventilation, enhance cardiopulmonary function, and strengthen the spine. It ends with movements that replicate the Moro reflex. I noticed my body loved doing that and realized why. So, I began to mindfully imitate the Moro reflex on my own. I say to myself, “This is the Moro reflex. My body’s learning that it can finish this, and someday I won’t need it anymore.” But it didn’t feel like it was enough. So I asked my craniosacral practitioner if he would witness it.
I thought it would just be me lying on the table, him sitting behind me with his hands under my skull as usual, and me making the motions a few times. No big deal. But as my friend and co-instructor Imogen Ragone says, “You get the most information when you get the response you don’t expect.”
Because of my doctor’s safe presence, his regulating influence, I was able to delve deeper into that memory. As he cradled my head, I opened my arms and held them there for a moment. I was back in that cold delivery room, frozen in that position, re-experiencing it all. It was terrible! It was a lot, but it wasn’t too much because he was helping me hold it, literally. I brought my arms in and made two strange sounds I can’t describe. I shuddered and started crying a little. My osteopath told me that right before I made the sounds, the muscles in the back of my head were spasming, and as soon as I made the sound, they stopped, and he felt a big release.
I felt the release, too. I couldn’t describe it, but something shifted. Later, I realized that this work was changing my relationship with that experience. Before, my relationship with that experience was, “This is so overwhelming I can’t even remember all of it,” or “I can’t do anything about it.” Now it’s, “I can remember it, and there’s somebody who can be with me to make it safe enough to approach and integrate.” That is a powerful shift!
From my experience with integrating traumatic material, I expect I’ll need at least several more sessions like that with my doctor because rejection at birth is such a big, heavy thing. But even just thinking about my doctor’s witnessing afterward helps change my relationship with it. That’s how I’ll be able to integrate it as part of my coherent narrative of this crazy life of mine and still be okay.
