PHILOSOPHY  >  THE PERINATAL PERSPECTIVE

The Perinatal Period is the time beginning at conception and lasting through the end of the first year of life. It is during this sensitive time that the basis for how our nervous systems, immune systems and emotional coping strategies develop.

 

Science is beginning to decode how babies communicate with us even when they do not have all the words. The give clues are concealed in their posture, in their inconsolability and in the subtle movements babies make in and outside the womb. Babies are eloquent communicators and in this exciting time in history, we are just learning how to listen.

 

What challenges do we face as individuals and as societies if we consider the implications that babies can feel and remember their experiences? How can we provide the most emotionally and physically nutritious environment for children to be conceived and reared into? Most importantly, how can we remain compassionate with ourselves if we unknowingly missed opportunities to provide them with that optimal environment?

 

Emerging Families is designed around the knowledge that:

 

'it is never too late to begin the repair process of even the most unwanted and difficult experiences from the perinatal period and childhood.' The Secret Life of Babies

 

We already know that if families, before conception can receive proper support through rest, time together, naturally grown food and the solidarity of community, they are already making their journey easier and more enjoyable.

 

What Emerging Families adds is a re-training model that explores our unmet needs from the Perinatal Period, offers a chance to get now what was missed back then and frees us from what has been a continual pursuit of looking for it in our present-day experiences. We have all been affected in ways that are so subtle and ingrained that we sometimes do not even have words for it. We often unknowingly pass the effect of our unmet perinatal needs onto relationships, jobs, our students and to our children even as early as during their pregnancy and birth.

 

Very few therapies access this layer of awareness because it is often preverbal.

 

Emerging Families' programs aim to do this gently and compassionately.

 

We hope by resolving the impact difficult experiences have had on us from the Perinatal Period and early life that we effectively free ourselves from reactivity in our nervous systems, immune systems, making it easier to love and be loved.