Vancouver Sun<\/a>:<\/p>\n\u201cA paradigm shift is happening\u201d in the way that we understand the importance of\u00a0our life in the womb. That was the assessment of Dr. Marti Glenn at a recent\u00a0Congress of The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology & Health (APPPAH).<\/p>\n
She pointed out that, “researchers are beginning to discover…that the events\u00a0and environment surrounding pre-conception, pregnancy, birth, and early infancy\u00a0set the template out of which we live our lives.”<\/p>\n
While this paradigm shift is new to most people, it is a view that was put forth\u00a0decades ago by Dr. Arthur Janov, whose new book, Life Before Birth, explains\u00a0just how fragile we are while in our first home. He believes that many \u2013 perhaps\u00a0most – children have been damaged at a much earlier age than has been\u00a0traditionally acknowledged.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Janov has also stressed that we are especially fragile at birth, and infancy and\u00a0childhood as well. \u00a0All of these areas are readdressed in Life Before Birth.<\/p>\n
The main focus of the book is threefold: early development, including in the\u00a0womb; adult mental illness and disease; and the nature of a feeling therapy.<\/p>\n
One of the central themes in this book is that we are most vulnerable in the\u00a0earliest stages of our development. In fact, our experiences in utero and\u00a0infancy literally sculpt our brains and central nervous system. Janov explains\u00a0that \u201cimprinting\u201d may take place when the fetus reacts\u00a0\u201cto the womb environment by readjusting its vital signs, hormones, and\u00a0neurotransmitters to adapt to a new reality; he is getting ready for life in the\u00a0outer world.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, early experiences teach a fetus or infant what the world is like\u00a0and what to expect. The child\u2019s brain and body then make adjustments to be ready\u00a0for the future. If its experiences are healthy, it will grow in a normal manner.<\/p>\n
But if they are threatening (a stressed mother, an abusive father, or\u00a0environmental toxins, for example), then the child\u2019s body takes defensive\u00a0measures at the expense of healthy growth and development. Survival comes first.<\/p>\n
These changes can reach so deeply down into a child\u2019s cells that they may\u00a0actually determine if its genes are switched on or off. \u00a0This new science,\u00a0epigenetics, explores how a person can be deeply affected by, for instance, a\u00a0traumatic birth or emotional abuse, and how such damage may be passed on to\u00a0their own children.<\/p>\n
Stress ages our cells and is associated with increased risk for a host of\u00a0diseases of aging, including cancer, heart disease, and stroke.\u00a0Elissa Epel, an associate professor in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry, has\u00a0shown that the way people respond to a stressful event \u201cimpacts their\u00a0neurobiology and cellular health.”<\/p>\n
Epel adds that damage to a cell’s telomeres can occur in “the prenatal\u00a0environment” due perhaps to “poor maternal nutrition” and that it is correlated\u00a0with low birth-weight.<\/p>\n
That’s why Janov writes that loving a child is not just a feeling, but that it\u00a0also \u201cmeans fulfilling the needs of the baby\u201d, such as a providing a\u00a0healthy environment in the womb, lots of cuddles for infants, and a gentle,\u00a0natural birth. \u00a0The latter can be crucial. \u00a0He cites a study in the British\u00a0Medical Journal which found that, \u201cindividuals who committed suicide violently\u00a0were more often exposed to complications during birth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Janov\u2019s clinical focus is healing past trauma through his Primal Therapy (which,\u00a0contrary to a common misperception, has nothing to do with screaming). \u00a0Rather,\u00a0the focus is on re-connecting one\u2019s consciousness with trauma buried in the\u00a0lower parts of the brain. \u00a0Again, early pain was repressed in order for the\u00a0child to survive, but at the cost of healthy development.<\/p>\n
For Janov, it is this re-connection that is truly healing, and why relatively\u00a0superficial approaches, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) might be\u00a0able to address symptoms, but it ignore the source of one’s pain – emotional\u00a0and\/or physical trauma.<\/p>\n
Despite his focus on therapy, Janov stresses that the most important task that\u00a0society faces is to prevent the children from being hurt in the first place.\u00a0While he places a great responsibility on parents to be loving towards their\u00a0children, he does not engage in parent-bashing. \u00a0For one thing, parents\u00a0themselves are the product of THEIR upbringing, for better or worse.<\/p>\n
For another, it is clear that, for most children, the primary factors that\u00a0affect their emotional and physical development are the social determinants of\u00a0health, such as access to education, levels of pollution, inequality, and\u00a0poverty. One study found that children from\u00a0\u201clow socioeconomic environments showed a lower response to the unexpected novel\u00a0stimuli in the prefrontal cortex that was similar\u2026to the response of people who\u00a0have had a portion of their frontal lobe destroyed by a stroke.\u201d<\/p>\n
The study\u2019s co-author W. Thomas Boyce, now at UBC, emphasizes that, “We are\u00a0certainly not blaming lower socioeconomic families\u201d for problems that they did\u00a0not create.<\/p>\n
Here in B.C., the non-partisan children\u2019s rights organization First Call\u00a0emphasizes that our province has the worst child poverty rate in Canada for the\u00a0eighth year in a row. It rose to 12 per cent in 2009, coming in higher than all\u00a0other provincial and territorial rates as well as the national average of 9.5\u00a0per cent.\u00a0As long as these conditions exist, the cost to children, families, and society\u00a0as a whole, will increase.<\/p>\n
Life Before Birth raises issues of the utmost importance for all of us, children\u00a0and former children alike. Unfortunately, the book could have used a better\u00a0editor, especially to make sure that the sometimes complex ideas were expressed\u00a0more clearly.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Janov has again taken a leading role in illuminating what science\u00a0is showing discovering about raising healthy children. His book deserves a wide\u00a0readership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Peter Prontzos This a modified review that first appeared in the Vancouver Sun: \u201cA paradigm shift is happening\u201d in the way that we understand the importance of\u00a0our life in the womb. That was the assessment of Dr. Marti Glenn at a recent\u00a0Congress of The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology & Health (APPPAH). She … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Review of “Life Before Birth” by Arthur Janov”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29,44,6,4],"tags":[50,7,22,36],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arthur-janov","category-book-review","category-peters-posts","category-prenatal-and-perinatal-psychology","category-primal-therapy","tag-arthur-janov","tag-peters-posts","tag-prenatal-influences-on-health","tag-primal-therapy"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":299,"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions\/299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theprimalmind.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}