Articles
Downloadable Articles
If I were to walk into a room of mothers and declare that it was complete nonsense that birth was painful, I would expect outrage and anger in response. Yet the idea that birth may be painful for the baby as well as the mother carries very little weight. Read more
This article is based on a talk given at Annual Congress of the International Society
for Pre and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine, Maastricht, the Netherlands, November
2014. It has been published (in German) in the congress booklet titled "Schwangerschaft und
Geburt prägen das Leben" (Pregnancy and Birth Shape Our Life". The article addresses the underlying influence of birth trauma on
the physical and emotional well-being of the baby, which may have lifelong consequences. Read more
The general consensus amongst medical practitioners and scientists is that babies do not experience pain at birth and retain no memory of the experience. This is based on an understanding of neurological development and the nature of memory that is becoming quickly outdated. Read more
An interview with Matthew Appleton
“I was working as a Craniosacral Therapist, with a particular interest in babies and children. In my practice I was having good results, in that the babies and children were responding well to treatment. But, there were three issues that I felt I needed to develop more skills with. One was that there were some babies who did not respond so well and seemed to be trying to communicate something I was not fully getting." Read more
The therapeutic work with babies (Integrative Baby Therapy) has many levels of meaning to it. The resolution of present moment difficulties is just one of these. At another level we can think of this work as ecological. When we think of nature, we usually think of nature as out there. We go out into nature. The experience of walking through woodlands, swimming in rivers and lakes or standing on mountain tops may renew us in ways that are not so easily found in the city. Read more
The first 18 months of life, from conception onward, constitute a foundational period that will have life-long consequences in terms of psycho-logical and somatic development, with a high degree of influence on the future functioning of the autonomic nervous system (Odent, 1986). In recent decades, research into the world of the newborn, infant, and prenatal person or prenate has revealed a much richer strata of human experience than previously recognized (Chamberlain, 1998; Chamberlain, 2013; Stern, 1998). However, much of this research has failed to make its impact on prevailing cultural concepts or mainstream healthcare, including pediatrics, obstetrics, and midwifery. Read more