Have you ever thought to consider that your relationship to change and difficulty began before you were born?

Think about how you handle change. When life gets difficult, how do you respond? Do you push harder? Do you tend to fight or freeze? Do you feel trapped and desperately look for a way out? Are you able to feel your way through and respond?

What if some of your earliest experiences taught you something about how to meet pressure, struggle, change, and showing up in the world?

What if birth was one of the first times you ever practiced doing exactly that?

My birth story was full of a lot of pressure as if life is way too demanding at a speed I can’t seem to keep up with. I feel this theme run through every area of my life. I’m learning to let that pressure move in a way that serves me when I most need it and not when I don’t.

In this article I will be sharing how your birth story reflects how you relate to life’s challenges and the way you relate to yourself, others and the world.

THE FIRST RELATIONAL DANCE FROM WOMB TO BIRTH

How we experienced birth is our first template for how we meet challenges.

How we were born shows us how we meet life and relationships. In my last article, I explained how the moment of first touch to your mother womb sets up a template for our first contact in relationships.

As you grew in your mother’s womb that bi-directional dialogue continues and each phase, each transition sets up a relational template based on the environment at the time.

PERINATAL MATRICES

There are a number of people who have spent decades exploring the link between these earliest experiences with later adaptive styles or deeper psychological patterns.

One of them is Stansilov Grof, a psychotherapist who worked with altered states of consciousness and later developed what he called the Basic Perinatal Matrices. These are four experiential patterns that are stored as biological blueprints in the unconscious mind. These blueprints form what he calls condensed experiences where adult emotional triggers, relationship dynamics and patterns each originate from one of these matrices and we subconsciously react to. Each of these can be expressed in healthy or maladaptive ways as imprints. Each one forms the foundation of our psychological experiences and can influence our entire lives.

This is what each of the matrices look like.

BPM I: The Amniotic Universe & Healthy Attachment.

The time of being in the womb is primarily about developing deep existential trust, relaxation and a natural sense of belonging. In the healthy expression you access states of awe, mystical connection and comfort with solitude. The maladaptive expression or what is called the toxic womb is compromised by maternal stress illness, or unwanted pregnancy. It can later manifest as chronic paranoia, a vague feeling that the world is “poisonous” or that the world is an inherently unsafe place or severe attachment anxiety.

Chemical imprints come into play here too, such as the invasion of loud ultrasound, amniocentesis where the baby is poked with a needle, or toxic substances through the umbilical cord such as cigarette smoke, alcohol and drugs. Ultrasound pictures have shown the baby recoiling from the loud noise, parents fighting, and when a mother smokes a cigarette.

BPM II: Cosmic Engulfment of the “No Exit” Mindset

This is the time of labor where there is intense uterine contractions which might be experienced as absolute helplessness and a literal lack of an exit if labor is prolonged. This may manifest as depression, existential dread and severe claustrophobia. You can feel profoundly stuck in unhappy relationships, careers or mental loops. As a baby, if you could not see a way out, then later as an adult you struggle to see solutions to problems even when there are viable options.

BPM III: The Death- Rebirth Struggle & Aggressive Drive

This phase involves the pushing down the birth canal. This is where there is a mix of severe pain and survival instincts with explosive, aggressive energy. A healthy expression fuels a powerful drive for self transformation, healthy ambition, courage and the stamina to move through life’s challenges. The maladaptive expression can express as a need for hight stakes conflict, where you only feel alive when you are fighting an uphill battle or crises mode.

BPM IV: The Rebirth Experience & the Need for Liberation

This is the moment of delivery where there is a sudden shift from the pressure of the birth canal to the freedom of being born, the surrounding environment and cutting of the umbilical cord. A healthy manifestation with a strong birth imprint will have a continuous craving for liberation, breakthroughs and fresh starts. However, if the the delivery was highly traumatic such as with the use of forceps, heavy anesthesia or immediate separation from the mother, you may experience panic attacks during moments of success, a fear of winning or intense abandonment issues when you finally achieve freedom. or have issues with authority figures.

What makes a persons imprint maladaptive or healthy doesn’t just depend on the environment, it depends on the the relationship dyad. The continual back and forth communication between mother and baby continue throughout the pregnancy and birth and even after. Not only is there a biological and cellular communication happening through the placenta and umbilical cord, there is a form of telepathic consciousness occurring between the two of them.

BABY INITIATES LABOR

When the baby reaches full term, its brain and lungs signal that it is ready to be born. When the baby outgrows the limits of the uterus, there is a natural trigger that releases cortisol from the baby to complete the final maturation of the baby’s gut, thyroid and metabolic systems. The rise of the cortisol releases master proteins to activate the inside of the lungs. The lungs then secrete a fatty protein coating which prevents the lungs from collapsing when exhaling. The baby then sheds this protein into the surrounding amniotic fluid signaling to the mother’s body that it is mature. These chemicals and fetal DNA are packaged into tiny bubbles called exosomes. These then cross through the amniotic membrane and enter into the uterine wall. The mother’s immune system senses the baby’s lung proteins as a foreign but natural inflammatory signal.

Specialized immune cells then migrate into the uterine wall, releasing cytokines as a inflammatory response. Once the mothers body processes these signals, it triggers a reversal of the hormonal environment. The brake cutting off progesterone is released. The baby’s adrenal glands secrete a hormone called DHEAS, the placenta converts into a flood of estrogen which forces the mother’s uterine muscle to grow millions of receptors for oxytocin. At the same time prostaglandins begin to soften, then and ripen the mother’s cervix. Once the cervix ripens and the contractions begin, the baby is pushed downward. When the baby’s head presses firmly against the cervix, it triggers sensory nerves that shoot straight up to the mother’s brain, forcing a massive release of oxytocin which create the contractions. Stronger contractions push baby harder, releasing more oxytocin, amplifying the cycle of a positive feedback loop.

In other words there is a signal sent from the baby to the mother and says “I’m ready” and the mother’s body signals a response, creating a hormonal cascade that begins the process of labor.

ENERGETIC & TELEPATHIC COMMUNICATION

Science is becoming more and more sophisticated at explaining the cellular communication between mother and baby and is now more slowly catching up to the energetic and telepathic communication between them.

The womb is not just a physical incubator, it is also a interactive, highly conscious energetic matrix. A pregnant mother and her baby do not have separate psyches, they share a unified psychic field. The baby does not yet have a sense of an individual “I”, rather is completely submerged within the mother’s subconscious mind. There is a mutual imprinting happening between them. The thoughts, unexpressed fears, vivid dreams and sudden emotional shifts that are experienced by the mother are often instantly felt by the baby. These are not just chemical changes but are direct psychological experiences. Mothers often report picking up on a baby’s preferences, personality or even distress before any physical symptoms show.

You may have heard of how the heart generates the largest electromagnetic field of any organ extending several feet outside the skin. That means there is a bi-directional bio field where during pregnancy, the baby’s developing heart and the mother’s heart are in immediate physical and energetic proximity. The HeartMath institute has shown that when two people are in close contact, one person’s heart rhythm can measurably entrain or synchronize with the other’s brainwaves. That means when a mother tunes into her intuition, she may be subtly reading changes in the baby’s bio-electromagnetic output, turning them into sudden gut feelings or protective instincts.

One of the most common ways mothers report non verbal communication is through dreams and active imagination. A woman may have a dream where a consciousness introduces itself that she is pregnant. A mother may send calm and loving mental visual images to the baby during a stressful moment and find the baby go from frantic kicking to gentle rhythmic movement.

I have experienced one of my children coming to me as spirit and telepathically and energetically communicating to me that she was wanting to be born. I’ve had two pregnancies where right towards the end of the pregnancy, they revealed to me their names when I didn’t know their sex and both were correct.

MICROCHIMERISM

This last one is fascinating and it’s called fetal maternal microchimerism. During pregnancy, stem cels from the baby cross the placenta and enter the mother’s bloodstream permanently embedding themselves in the brain, heart and tissues. The two are living inside of each other. Even decades after birth, a mother carries her child’s living cells inside her own brain. It is possible that this physical integration provides a biological “antenna’ that keeps a mother’s intuition dialed into her child’s energetic frequency across distances long after birth.

MOTHER FEELS BABY

Let’s look at the whole journey of progression here from first touch to first meeting.

First touch→ implantation

First conversation→ molecular and telepathic communication

First relationship→ maternal-fetal interaction

First movement toward one another→ fetal movement and maternal response

First recognition→ mother feels the baby

First meeting→ birth

Many mother’s feel the soul of their baby before conception, some recognize the moment of conception and some make contact with the baby when mother feels the first kick and she begins communicating back.

PRIMAL THERAPY

I just recently spoke with a gentleman who described to me reliving his own birth experience through a modality called “Primal Therapy” which began in the early 1970’s and became quite popular. He worked with a practitioner for many months in a padded carpeted room where any feelings he might have were intensified and encouraged to be expressed. After a few months of this, he started to re-experience moments of his birth. He simply allowed the feelings to strengthen and allowed them to move through his body to move according to whatever impulse he felt.

During one of his sessions found his belly contracting while on his back, then rolled onto his side having the contractions and then rolled into a fetal position. These sensations slowly increased in intensity and he began to feel his body pushing him head first along the floor. His body moved spontaneously along the floor, when he became aware that he was reliving his birth. He describes it as feeling like it would never end and utterly exhausting. Finally it was over with an intense relief and then the need to breathe and then he cried out his first infant cry in an adult male body. He continued to come in with feelings about something in his current relationship that would trigger further birth primals. This led him to the belief that the birth trauma is the major trauma, the template for all that follows.

REPEATING THE PATTERNS

Birth is our first transition where we learn how to meet change moving from one environment to another.

If there are interruptions or mis-attunements during pregnancyand birth, you may find yourself stuck in relationships with other, yourself and the world around you. The difficulties of life are met much the same way birth was met.

Do you enter feeling trapped, feel a need to fight, or try harder? Do you feel as though you have to “get out” or that something is wrong? Or maybe you feel like you were yanked around against your will or you didn’t have the power to say no.

How do you move from one environment into another? As you moved from the womb into the world, how did you learn to move from containment to expansion? You didn’t learn to do this by yourself. Your body is always participating. Your mother’s body was participating. Your environment was participating. You experienced pressure, movement, resistance, support and timing.

You learned a relational pattern for how to meet pressure, change, and showing up. You keep unconsciously recreating that pattern instead of responding to what is actually happening now.

All of these themes ripple out into your relationships and your surroundings. They reflect your emotional patterns, the way you handle crises, how to know when to push and when to pull back. You keep repeating the same pattern to difficulty and change.

If you feel stuck, you may think that there is no exit. If you are pressured, you may fight. If you are overwhelmed, you may collapse. If you finally get close your goals, you may panic. When you feel something is about to change, you may create another crises. If someone tries to help, you might resit Then if life asks you to surrender and release control, you might push even harder.

Often times, you don’t even understand why this is happening. It’s just a familiar way of meeting pressure, relationship, change, and showing up to be received.

THE FORGOTTEN DANCE

For many of us, we lost contact with the dance. We learned to face challenges as something we have to overcome, rather than something we participate in.

Many of us approach so much of our lives as if we have to do it all alone. We went from being a one unit dyad within the womb of our mother to becoming our own individual who is the one to make things happen, push through and figure it all out. We came to believe we have to figure it all out, protect ourselves, make life happen and when life gets difficult, we buckle down and try even harder.

THE MISSING EXPERIENCE

You can create a new experience, one where you don’t have to do it all alone. A new experience where pressure does’t automatically mean there is danger or that being stuck means there is no way through. Your body can learn how to respond instead of react, and what it means to feel support. You can begin to experience what it means to follow your inner impulse of when to push, when soften and when something needs to be expressed. The re-patterning of new experiences helps you learn that you can stay connected with yourself as you move through change.

Your earliest experiences may have taught your system how to respond to life and these patterns can be re-coded and discover a new way to move through life.

Sources:

Scrib: Understanding Grof’s Perinatal Matrices

Mother Natal: What Causes Labour to Start naturally: The Science Behind Spontaneous Labour Jul 24, 2026

PubMed: Fetal-to-Maternal Signaling in the Timing of Birth