Somatic Integration Process Workshops
A Five-Day Journey to Your Essential Nature
This intensive workshop offers a sacred container for healing our earliest imprints and discovering the wholeness that existed before survival patterns took hold. Through Pre and Perinatal Somatic Psychology, we explore the consciousness and experiences held in our bodies from before conception through birth and early development—patterns that continue to shape how we move through life.
Understanding Pre and Perinatal Somatic Psychology
Pre and Perinatal Somatic Psychology is a holistic, body-centered field that studies how experiences before birth (pre-conception and prenatal), during birth, and immediately after birth shape our nervous system, emotional patterns, relational capacity, and lifelong behavior.
This integrative field draws from neuroscience, developmental biology, attachment science, early trauma research, and somatic therapy.
Historical Foundations
While academically recent, the heart of this work is ancient—rooted in the intuitive, relational wisdom of parents throughout human history.
Early 20th Century
Otto Rank proposed that birth itself is a psychological event with lasting emotional effects.
Mid-Century Development
Winnicott and others recognized that pre and perinatal events impact lifelong psychological patterns.
Somatic Integration
Reich, Franklyn Sills, and Ray Castellino expanded embodied approaches.
Formal Organization
The Association for Pre and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH) was founded in 1983.
An Ancient Foundation
While the formal academic field of Pre and Perinatal Somatic Psychology is relatively recent, the heart of this work is ancient. Throughout human history, across all cultures and traditions, mothers and fathers have welcomed and nurtured consciousness in embodied, heart-centered ways— attuning to the baby in the womb, honoring the sacredness of birth, holding newborns with reverence and care.
This intuitive, relational wisdom of parents throughout time is also part of the developmental field of this work. The modern field of Pre and Perinatal Somatic Psychology both honors and studies what caregivers have always known: that we arrive as conscious beings, that our earliest experiences matter profoundly, and that we thrive when met with loving presence from the very beginning.
Key Principles of the Field
Implicit Somatic Memory
Early experiences are stored as body-based memory in the nervous system, influencing stress response, regulation, and relationships.
Embodied Relational Healing
Healing occurs through body-based and relational practices that allow early imprints to transform.
Developmental Continuity
Psychological and physiological patterns emerge before birth, shaping attachment and limbic imprinting.
Attachment and Early Bonding
Bonding begins before birth and remains foundational throughout life.
The Work We Do: Growing Consciousness and Agency
This work recognizes that our journey as embodied consciousness begins before physical birth. Ancient wisdom traditions, particularly Sanatan Dharma, have long held that consciousness precedes conception, that the soul carries intentions into embodiment, and that our earliest experiences shape how we meet life.
Our experiences from conception through birth and into early childhood live within us as implicit memory patterns—often as imprints and double binds: impossible situations where we had to choose between equally essential needs.
Examples of early double binds:
A baby whose cord is wrapped around their neck must choose between pushing toward birth (survival) or pulling back to protect their airway
A baby in a womb filled with maternal stress chemicals must choose between staying connected to mother's emotional state or protecting their own nervous system
A newborn separated from mother after birth faces the impossible choice between calling out (using precious energy without response) or going quiet and conserving (abandoning the relational lifeline)
These early adaptations were brilliant survival strategies, yet they can limit our sense of agency and aliveness as adults. We may still feel caught between opposing needs, unable to move forward or speak up, or disconnected from our deepest impulses.
What We Learn and Discover
This work is about growing consciousness and agency within the field of our earliest patterns. Through attunement, resonance, and supportive relationship, we build both inner and relational resources—discovering capacities for choice, voice, boundary, and connection that weren’t available during our original experiences.
Rather than being unconsciously driven by survival strategies formed before we had words, we learn to:
Metabolize or differentiate from what was overwhelming
Complete what was interrupted
Discover we have choices where we once had none
Differentiate from the unresolved material of our family of origin
Build inner resources to meet life with more presence and possibility
Mature and develop our nervous system by healing in relationship—recognizing that wounds created in relationship must be healed in relationship
We may touch the thread of our essential nature—what we at The Human Development Center call our Original Health, the blueprint of wholeness present before survival patterns formed.
Birth Process Workshop Structure- Birthing Awake Consciousness
Building the Foundation Together
On our first day, we take time to create the relational foundation:
Check in together, sharing intentions and listening deeply
Learn the Eight Principles—secure attachment in action
Understand the Form—the structure of individual turn work
Begin building trust and safety in the relational field
This essential preparation allows each person to take their turn with the full support of the group and the facilitator's guidance.
Five Consecutive Days
We gather each morning at 9:30am and remain responsive to what wants to emerge, concluding at flexible times as the work requires. This spaciousness honors that healing happens in its own time and cannot be rushed.
Please bring:
Nourishment for yourself (food, water, herbal tea)
Comfort items (cozy clothing in layers, blankets, pillows)
Personal supports (journals, tissues, meaningful objects)
The Eight Guiding Principles
Welcome
We welcome you as a unique conscious being, all parts of you including any physical strengths and limitations, the entire spectrum of your emotions and thoughts. To be welcomed and received for who we are is a conception right, a birthright, and a primary developmental need.
Mutual Support
We support each other to come into connection in a way that mutually respects and encourages everyone's wellbeing. This is non-competitive and win-win, not cooperation at the expense of self.
Choice
You can move at a pace that allows you to track your experience and know if the direction feels right. You have space to say yes, no, or maybe. "No" is always welcome and honored—it is actually a repair for times you may have been forced to do something without choice.
Co-Regulation
We support each person to take the time they need to integrate their experience moment by moment and stay regulated. When you feel activated or notice yourself moving out of regulation, you can take a pause. When someone pauses, all processing stops until that person's pause is complete.
Self-Care
Please eat, rest, hydrate, eliminate—whatever you need to support yourself. Self-care supports not just you but the entire group. Taking care of yourself is a contribution to the whole.
Eye Contact
We practice making brief, frequent eye contact (about every couple of minutes) with the intention of mutual support and cooperation. Without this gentle checking in, distance can grow and we may begin making up stories about others based on our own history.
Touch & Attention
When touch is offered, it comes with mindfulness and pacing. Every step of the way, the person receiving touch has choice. We also practice differentiating touch from attention—recognizing that all beings are as responsive to what we do with our attention as to physical contact.
Confidentiality
We can speak freely about our own experience, but we hold sacred each other's stories. We ask for permission before sharing another person's story outside this circle.
The Turn Process
The workshop centers on individual "turns"—dedicated time for one person to explore their early imprints while held by the group. Each turn typically lasts 45 minutes to a few hours, paced by what the person's nervous system can integrate.
Why Birth Creates Such Lasting Imprints
Birth is our first major rite of passage, and how we navigate this journey becomes a template for all life's transitions. Birth creates deep imprints because:
It occurs during critical neurological development
It's stored as preverbal, implicit memory in our body and nervous system
It involves our survival at the most literal level
It's our first experience of agency (or lack thereof)
It's our first relational experience outside the womb
The patterns become blueprints for how we move through challenges, ask for help, navigate being stuck, trust our timing, and relate to support
Your intention doesn't need to be specifically about birth. You may come with questions about relationships, creativity, feeling stuck, or any current pattern. Birth foundation often reveals itself naturally as part of your developmental framework—the soil in which later patterns grew. The body knows what it needs to show.
Stages of a Turn
Turn Selection - Who feels called to take a turn
Affirming the Person's Turn - The group explicitly welcomes them
Preparing the Surround - Arranging physical and relational support
Orienting to Intention - Sharing what's being brought to explore
Body of the Turn - Following sensations, impulses, movements; meeting contractions and expansions; discovering what was needed but not received; finding completion
Integration - Consciously supporting the nervous system to settle and reorganize
Essence Statements - Witnesses share their own experience using "I statements" to orient to and differentiate their own material
Follow-Through - Ongoing support as integration continues
Group Size and Scheduling
Workshops are offered to small groups of 7–8 participants. Dates are scheduled collaboratively.
The Invitation
This is slow work. Sacred work. Healing happens in layers, over time, in community, and always in service of your deepest wholeness.