BEING IN RELATIONSHIP IS MORE THAN WORDS
Communication is so much more than just words. We often think of it as how we talk, explain ourselves, problem solve or tell someone what we need. When things break down, we think it’s a communication problem when it’s really a lack of connection.
We’ve been in communication without words since before we were born. On a soul level we were in the presence of the aura of a parent. We sent messages through energy and telepathy and dreams. At the time of conception, we let off a spark of light called the zinc spark. As a blastocyst, we make physical contact with the lining of our mother’s womb. We send biological signals through the placenta such as: “I’m craving carrots today”. When we grow limbs, we kick and wiggle. If we receive a toxic substance, we recoil. If mom is under stress we reach out to her. Our rhythms align with her rhythms. When we were babies in the womb we were a dyadic unit with our mother.
Contact was our first language of communication.
Somewhere along the way we became disconnected with this subtle form of contact. We began to live in our heads, missing the little tiny exchanges beneath our words. At some point, contact became uncomfortable. If someone were to reach towards you, you might pull away. If someone needed something, you might immediately try to fix it. If someone becomes emotional, you might try to explain instead of just being with them. If someone gets quiet, you might pursue. If someone comes close, you might get tense. If someone moves away, you might chase them. You don’t even realize you are having this conversation.
Your body is talking, then the other person responds and the two of you are already dancing.
Relationships tends to become something that we think we have to figure out, rather than participating in. We get so wrapped up in trying to over explain, over analyze, control, please, shut down our own gut feelings or worry about what others are thinking.
Then we wonder, why can’t I seem to connect, or what do I do once I make contact? Yikes!?
FIRST TOUCH
Let’s begin with first contact and I don’t mean the one when you were first born and held by your mother. What if your first experience of relationship contact began even earlier? I mean the one at the time of implantation when you were a little blastocyst.
Ray Castellino described the moment of implantation as the baby’s “first touch” with the mother. It is the first template of making physical contact. There is still consciousness and a biological/cellular template being formed in the physically developing embryo.
“The love that is present in the field and the intention of the parents during the conception process and very early implanting stage of life, have a profound effect. The way the primary consciousness leaves the other side sets up the primary existential dilemma of separation, aloneness, loss, and longing in the individual as well as the primary pattern of connection.” (Castellino, 1996, p 20.)
If the parents are prepared and welcoming, the conceptus only has to meet the resistance of moving into the physical plane. Both the mother’s and the father’s willingness to receive this “consciousness” is vital to the imprint of the preconception/conception period. This willingness does not have to be a conscious decision; there can be some level of willingness in the unconscious part of the parents, if they do conceive. In polarity therapy there is a belief that the conception process provides the fundamental blueprint for the nervous system and the ability to keep one’s perspective mentally in the present moment. This energy can be held in the ectoderm layer, which becomes the nervous system, senses, skin, nails, and mucous membranes of the mouth and anus. It is held in the vertical plane, the midline axis. Babies will compress themselves when activated in these domains.” (Castellino, 1996, p.21-22).
Here’s where we can geek out on the science. The implantation process really is a biological conversation. The blastocyst isn’t just a little blob of a ball that sticks to the uterus like Velcro. There is bidirectional communication between the embryo and the lining of the uterus. The blastocyst sends molecular signals, the uterine lining responds and the uterine wall sends signals back. It has been described as a maternal embryonic dialogue. Both influence one another. Neither one is doing something to the other. There is a reciprocity, a sensing, a responding, an adaptation. There is timing. There is relationship happening.
Before mother and baby ever look at one another, they are already communicating.
IMPLANTATION IS A MIRACLE
Not all blastocysts implant. In fact, it is estimated that between 30-50% of fertilized eggs implant into the uterine wall. There needs to be a receptive uterine lining and the blastocyst is capable of responding, orienting appropriately and be in the right window of timing. The part of the blastocysts that forms the primitive streak which later becomes the spine is the part that embeds into the lining, truly supporting and holding the back. The biological exchange between them is complex.
This process is remarkable in that there is a biological as well as an energetic and telepathic conversation. Implantation involves adhering to the uterine wall, then engulfing into it by consuming the tissues of the wall. This connection is essential for survival. If a mother is unhealthy, ambivalent, or unhappy about being pregnant or being a woman, her uterine wall may not be very welcoming and nourishing. It is affected by her hormones circulation, and other aspects of her health. Sometimes that conversation doesn’t result in pregnancy and we don’t exactly understand why.
Science can’t really explain a kind of spiritual communication. Consciousness is participating in this meeting in ways we don’t fully understand or that science can explain.
CONTACT BECOMES RELATIONSHIP
Moving forward developmentally after implantation, the placenta forms and then the mother and fetus become increasingly interconnected. The baby’s developing nervous system becomes responsive to the environment. Then the baby begins to move. The baby responds to the mother’s emotional state and her environment. Then the mother begins responding to the baby’s movements. They become a dyad.
Research on maternal-fetal dyads has found relationship between maternal emotional arousal and fetal heart rate variability and mother activity. You move from first touch, to first conversation to an ongoing conversation.
WHO IS PARTICIPATING?
We tend to think of pregnancy as something mother does to baby. Mother eats, she breathes, experiences stress or talks or moves and baby receives. The relationship is more dynamic than that. The growing baby is also moving, responding, adapting, producing signals, influencing mother’s physiology and participating in the development of the placenta and the womb environment. Baby is participating in the dance.
OUR FIRST EXPERIENCE OF BELONGING
If implantation is the first template of your physical contact with another human being, then we can also think of it as the beginning or our experience of belonging. We are learning what it means to arrive somewhere and be received. We learn what it means to attach. If the environment isn’t receptive, what do we make it mean? We make contact and we experience safety, belonging, attunement and trust, if the environment is receptive very very early on.
RELATIONSHIP WITH ENVIRONMENT
From the moment the egg meets sperm, there is a relationship forming with the environment. We experience penetration and reception, expansion and contraction, impulse to reach, pressure, warmth, movement, rhythm, nourishment, hormones, sounds and taste. A baby is already learning about the world within the womb environment.
Research has found that maternal emotional arousal can be associated with changes in the fetal heart-rate variability and motor activity.
What is really interesting to me is that our earliest experiences of our lives are not remembered as stories, they become the way we orient toward life.
THE DANCE OF CONTACT
Our first conversations are non verbal. Our very first conversation is that:
I move and You feel me.
I make contact and You respond.
You become still and then I become still.
You become activated and my physiology changes.
You are still doing this dance today.
You are still reaching out and still responding.
You are still moving toward and away from one another.
You are still sensing when someone is available and when someone pulls away.
You are still changing in response to the people you are with.
You are always in a dance.
Your relationship patterns are what happens when contact occurs.
Do you reach out or wait?
Do you retreat or pursue?
Do you freeze or brace?
Do you lose yourself in the other person?
Or can you stay connected with yourself while remaining in contact.
FIRST TOUCH IMPRINTING
Here’s a simple practice to explore your own first touch imprint. Settle internally into your body, close your eyes and feel the place in you that wants to move toward touch with someone. Begin to feel the impulse of your arm wanting to reach out with the intention to make contact. It can be a meeting that is nurturing, loving, and present. As you naturally allow the impulse of your arm to reach out for contact, notice what sensations you experience in your body. Does it feel natural and easy, does it feel retracting or engulfing or does it feel barren and empty? Your body contains the implicit memory of the pattern and as you feel what is there, you may notice a story that emerges such as:
“No one is there for me”
“I will be taken over”
“They will just leave me.”
Just sit and be present to what is and let your body tell its story.
Now begin to notice in your day to day life when you reach, what is the response? What do you notice inside of yourself when someone comes toward you? What happens when you reach toward someone and move closer? Notice when you pull away or when you become listless or when you brace. Notice when there is a moment when you feel in sync with another person.
CLOSING
The baby is not a passenger, it is participating from the time it chose to incarnate in this lifetime. This is where science meets mystery. Our first relationship didn’t begin when someone held us. It began much earlier and more primal. It began when we first made contact, long before we had language. The first touch forms an implicit memory for the body to later express in adult relationships until it is re-written and re-patterned.
This article isn’t just about babies, it’s about every human relationship we’ve ever had. It’s a story of how you learned to reach and how you learned to respond. Your body is telling the story about whether it was safe to move toward someone and how you learned what happened when you reached and no one responded and what happens when someone reaches toward you. Later in life you might experience something that feels like a returning to that beginning but you don’t know what it is. Next, I’ll be talking about the relationship dance through pregnancy and birth.
INNER INFANT SANCTUARY
If you feel like you want a safe place to let your inner infant be met, felt and witnessed, you can join our weekly online gathering here:
Sources:
PubMed Preimplantation loss of fertilized human ova: estimating the unobservable
Pubmed: Embryo-maternal interactions at the implantation site: a delicate equilibrium
PubMed: Cell signaling in trophoblast-uterine communication
Prenatal Shadow: Cherionna Menzam-Sills PhD
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