2012 Pre-Conference Workshops
Cranial-sacral and pre and perinatal psychology tools, when used at birth, can reduce the need for medical intervention, and decrease the severity of birth trauma. You will learn anatomy of the skull, neck, and back pertinent to birth trauma, including practical information about the location, function, and vulnerability pertaining to cranial nerves, and blood supply. There will also be experiential hands-on exercises. Techniques will be taught for the resolution of birth trauma, including how to hold and decompress the sub-occipital area, spine, sacrum, and other traumatized areas of the body. You will also be taught how to quickly create a safe and healing container (“womb surround”) while helping the baby to re-connect with their resources. Strategies for how to help a baby that cannot tolerate touch will also be taught.
NOTE: This workshop will be limited to 10 participants and is only open to people who are present at birth and able to put their hands on the baby at that time, e.g. midwives, doulas, obstetricians, nurses etc.
Dr Dennis Hertenstein has a cranial sacral and chiropractic practice in Santa Rosa, California and has 40 years experience in trauma resolution with all ages, integrating pre and perinatal psychology into his work. He specializes in the resolution of birth trauma with babies and children. He has been teaching board certified cranial sacral courses, sponsored by chiropractic colleges and organizations internationally (US, UK, France, Sweden, Norway) for 25 years. Dennis has also taught classes on birth trauma interventions to birthing professionals suitable for application immediately postpartum. www.CranialWorkshops.com
The first part of this workshop takes us on an evolutionary journey into the cultural treatment of human childbirth, exploring cross-cultural birth practices in all six types of human subsistence strategies (hunting-gathering, horticulture, agriculture, pastoralism, industrial society, and the technocracy), noting pre-modern similarities across vast cultural differences, examining the homogenizing effects of modernization, and exploring the possibilities of a postmodern mentality for improving the technocratic treatment of birth.
In the second part of this workshop you will gain an overview of the sciences of cell biology & epigenetics, brain development, and child development and attachment and discover how modern science supports and furthers the best of ancient wisdom and intuition. You will learn what you can do, personally and professionally, to be a part of the growing movement to transform how we bring humans into the world and how we care for the mother-baby as one biological system, starting before conception.
Robbie Davis-Floyd, PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Texas Austin and Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology, is a medical anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of reproduction. An international speaker and researcher, she is author of over 80 articles and of Birth as an American Rite of Passage (1992, 2004) and lead editor of 10 collections, the latest of which is Birth Models That Work, which highlights optimal models of birth care around the world. Her current research project studies the paradigm shifts of holistic obstetricians in Brazil. Robbie serves as Editor for the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative (IMBCI): 10 Steps to Optimal Maternity Care (www.imbci.org), Board Member of the International MotherBaby Childbirth Organization (IMBCO), and Senior Advisor to the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction. Her email is davis-floyd@mail.utexas.edu.
Suzanne Arms has spent 40 years as a practical visionary, educating and advocating for a paradigm shift in how humans think about and the decisions we make about birthing babies and caring for the mother-baby pair from preconception on. An internationally renowned speaker, Arms is author-photojournalist of 7 groundbreaking books on pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, new parenting and adoption. Her book on birth, Immaculate Deception (1975 & 1997) challenged the entrenched system of modern hospital-based birth and was named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times. In the 1970s Arms co-founded one of the first modern birth centers and created and taught one the first course in the evolution of childbirth practices. Arms founded and directs the USA-based nonprofit/charity Birthing The Future(R), which has begun a global social media campaign called THE TIME IS NOW to focus attention on Birth and the Primal Period. Suzanne lives and works in Colorado.
This workshop will address the roots of health as patterns that begin in preconception, in utero, birth and the postnatal period and can last a lifetime. A basic understanding of epigenetics and transgenerational transmission of patterns of health will be discussed, as well as important influences during the prenatal, birth, and perinatal period. We will delineate healing processes for early trauma resolution, through discussion, exercises, and video clips of Myrna working with families.
Why can Prenatal Bonding (BA) be a Universal Healing? The application to far over 2000 pregnancies in Europe (and now beginning in the United States) and its careful evaluation is evidence for far-reaching empowering repercussions to the pregnant mother and even more to the growing new generation. Details about the immediate healing to every pregnancy and birth, as well as long term effects to health and personality of the child will be revealed. Since the first presentation of Prenatal Bonding (BA) at the APPPAH Conference at Asilomar 2009 numerous lectures and introductory workshops have been given at many places in Europe and in the United States. A training format has been designed especially for the US that welds Raffai's method with Emerson's Pre- and Perinatal Awareness, and Group-Analytic Processing. The method is being taught in the US in Seattle/WA and Champaign/IL. (Plans are underway for a training beginning April, 2013 in California.) – This pre-congress workshop also invites you to learn about the facilitation technique of Prenatal Bonding (BA), encounter case studies, evaluation, and the core principals of the 2 year training.
Medical specialist in psychiatry and psychosomatics, psychoanalyst, group analyst, systemic therapist, pre- and perinatal psychologist. Advisor and expert for psychiatry, psychosomatics, and psychotherapy for the State Medical Board. Founder and director of Arbeitskreis Psychosomatik Vorderpfalz (Psychosomatic Education Institute). He is an international renowned lecturer, trainer, and author for over 25 years. Authorization to teach Pre- and Perinatal Psychology from William Emerson and to teach Prenatal Bonding (BA) from Jenoe Raffai, Hungary, graduate instructor.
