The Prenatal Shadow: Healing the Traumas Experienced before and at Birth

Explores the lifelong effects of prenatal and birth experiences • Explains how babies remember their experiences from the womb and birth as implicit memory, impressions that are held in emotions, images, and the body • Examines scientific evidence of how preverbal memory works and how prenates are highly responsive to their mother’s perceptions • Looks at how to become aware of and acknowledge implicit memory from the womb as well as how to heal and prevent birth trauma As somatic prenatal therapist Cherionna Menzam-Sills, Ph.D., reveals, in a world where it is believed that babies are unable to remember before they can speak, prenatal and birth experiences can easily become unconscious shadow, infiltrating the psyche and affecting personality, relationships, behavior, and perceptions throughout life. Drawing on scientific evidence of how preverbal memory works, the author shows how babies, even before birth, are exquisitely sensitive with remarkable potential that may be forgotten or eclipsed by traumatic prenatal and perinatal experience. She explains how babies remember the intensely formative experiences from this primal period as implicit memory, impressions that are held in emotions, images, and the body. She looks at how prenates are deeply influenced by their mother’s perception of safety or threat, including during labor and birth, which affects their developing nervous systems. Examining the healing and integration of the prenatal shadow, the author explores how to acknowledge and prevent birth trauma as well as shares meditative practices for sensing the little one within and offering them what they need. By acknowledging and integrating the prenatal and perinatal shadow hidden just beyond conscious awareness, we can heal our relationships with ourselves and our loved ones as well as reconnect with our original potential.