MARY DANIEL HOBSON

Creativity

WO M B
T H E
I N
C R E AT I V I T Y

Begins in the Womb

UNTIL RECENTLY, scientists beliefs about the limitations

of infant awareness and intelligence seemed well grounded.
After all, the fetal and newborn nervous system is only
partially complete: At birth, the infant brain is only one
quarter of its eventual weight, with whole neural systems
still yet to develop. Moreover, the myelin sheathing of
the neurons, which moderates the speed of nerve signal
transmissions, is only partially formed. Since the brain
is so crucially involved in suffering, pleasure, learning,
memory, and thinking, neurologists naturally assumed
that these primary functions of consciousness were as
undeveloped as the physical structures that supported
them.This apparently logical assumption led scientists to
refer to the newborn infant as a brainstem preparation,
and to regard obvious signs of pain or pleasure in infants
as mere reflexes.
Over the past two decades, experimental advances in
embryology and fetal studiesusing intrauterine photography,
ultrasound imaging, the scanning electron microscope,

M A R C H M AY 2 0 0 5

# 6

RICHARD HEINBERG
and other new technologieshave given us a more direct
view into the world of the unborn. In dozens of crucial
experiments with newborns, researchers have begun to
pay attention not just to what infants should be able to
do, according to theory, but to what they are actually
doing. In case after case the new information flies in the
face of established theories. We are learning that babies
come into the world with well-developed senses of touch,
taste, and hearing; they move in response to pleasant or
unpleasant stimuli and both express and respond to emotions;
they smile and cry even in the womb; they are already
social beings, capable of interacting with others, imitating,
and showing affection; and they are already learning
about themselves and their environments.
Obstetrician and gynecologist Rene Van de Carr of
Hayward, California, notes that while brain growth in the

S H I F T : AT T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C O N S C I O U S N E S S

fetus is patterned genetically, the development of specific

neural pathways related to motor and mental abilities
is controlled by sensory input. He points to a study of
premature infants at Stanford University in which those
who received sensory stimulation before birth showed an
average increase of 13 points in IQ scores over those in a
control group. [Editors Note:A similar ongoing research study
of pre- and postnatal stimulation conducted in Venezuela by
child development psychologist Dr Beatriz Manrique over the
last sixteen years has found that stimulated babies tend to exhibit
accelerated visual, linguistic, and motor development skills as
well as higher intelligence and creativity over the first six years
of their life (see www.2bparent.com/research.htm for details).]
David Cheek, MD, an obstetrician and pioneering
hypnotherapist, praises efforts to stimulate intelligence
and creativity in the unborn and newborn. But he also
believes that it is important to avoid forcing too much
extraneous input on the childas by constantly beaming
loud classical music and Shakespeare directly at it in a
deliberate effort to produce another Einstein or
Mozart. The fetus, after all, sleeps up to twenty-two
hours a day and, says Cheek, probably prefers a quiet
environment most of the time. Occasional soft music

including some of the most primitive ones known

have beliefs that agree closely with what we are learning
from age-regression studies. Moreover, these same cultures
often have childbirth practices that seem in some respects
more humane and enlightened than those frequently
still followed in modern hospitals.
Anne Maiden, a psychotherapist and social psychologist,
has spent ten years in a cross-cultural study of birth.I was
interested in finding alternatives to our present Western
system of childbirth, and felt that an anthropological
point of view could be useful. Maiden has studied 80
cultures and visited 24; three of those that have received
particular emphasis in her work are the Tibetan, the
Balinese, and the Aboriginal Australian. She cites an illustrated,
recently translated medical text from the eleventh century,
Tibetan Medical Paintings, which deals in some detail with
each week of life in the womb.In the twenty-sixth week,
according to the text,the childs awareness becomes very
clear, and it can see its former lives. It can see if it was a
pure being or an ordinary being, and what type of birth
it had before it took this birth. In Bali, one woman told
Maiden that as soon as she became pregnant the first
thing she did was to talk to the dukun, the village healer.

The idea that fetuses and newborns are capable of interacting with
and being deeply imprinted by their social environments is far from new.
and speaking may be helpful, according to Cheek, but
it is the childs psychic and emotional environment that
is of utmost importance. [Emphasizing that point is a
recent study reported on in the July/August 2004 issue of
Child Development. It found that a mothers stress level
during pregnancy could have significant impacts on the
unborn. Dr Bea Bergh, author of the study, noted that mothersto-be who experienced prolonged stress between the twelfth
and twenty-second weeks of their pregnancies were more likely
to have children who exhibited anxiety and attention deficit/
hyperactivity disorders.]

THE UNBORN BEING IN

TRADITIONAL CULTURES

The idea that fetuses and newborns are capable of

interacting with and being deeply imprinted by their
social environments may be revolutionary from the
standpoint of conventional Western science, but it is far
from new. Indeed, many ancient and traditional cultures

S H I F T : AT T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C O N S C I O U S N E S S

His role was to help her enter into a dialogue with the child in
the womb in order to discover the childs identity and its purpose
in life.Those two questionsof identity and purposefollow
through all of Balinese education and spiritual training,
which aim to assist the incarnating soul to fulfill its destiny.
In Aboriginal Australian society the spirit of the child is
believed already to exist prior to conception, and is associated
in the spiritual realmthe Dreamtimewith a particular place
in the sacred landscape. Robert Lawlor, author of Voices of the
First Day:Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime, writes: To the
Aboriginal mind,the modern explanation of conception as the
collision of a tiny sperm and egg is absurd.In their view,sperm
may prepare the way for the entry of the child into the
womb, but the spirit of the child appears in the fathers
dreams or inner awareness before conception.Aboriginal
women consider their role in childbirth as that of providing
a temporary haven for a being with its own pre-existing
spiritual identity, and believe that the spirit does not fully
enter into the fetus until it has reached a certain stage of
developmentroughly ten weeks after conception.
# 6

M A R C H M AY 2 0 0 5

MARY DANIEL HOBSON

Creativity

WO M B
T H E
I N
C R E AT I V I T Y

Begins in the Womb

UNTIL RECENTLY, scientists beliefs about the limitations

of infant awareness and intelligence seemed well grounded.
After all, the fetal and newborn nervous system is only
partially complete: At birth, the infant brain is only one
quarter of its eventual weight, with whole neural systems
still yet to develop. Moreover, the myelin sheathing of
the neurons, which moderates the speed of nerve signal
transmissions, is only partially formed. Since the brain
is so crucially involved in suffering, pleasure, learning,
memory, and thinking, neurologists naturally assumed
that these primary functions of consciousness were as
undeveloped as the physical structures that supported
them.This apparently logical assumption led scientists to
refer to the newborn infant as a brainstem preparation,
and to regard obvious signs of pain or pleasure in infants
as mere reflexes.
Over the past two decades, experimental advances in
embryology and fetal studiesusing intrauterine photography,
ultrasound imaging, the scanning electron microscope,

M A R C H M AY 2 0 0 5

# 6

RICHARD HEINBERG
and other new technologieshave given us a more direct
view into the world of the unborn. In dozens of crucial
experiments with newborns, researchers have begun to
pay attention not just to what infants should be able to
do, according to theory, but to what they are actually
doing. In case after case the new information flies in the
face of established theories. We are learning that babies
come into the world with well-developed senses of touch,
taste, and hearing; they move in response to pleasant or
unpleasant stimuli and both express and respond to emotions;
they smile and cry even in the womb; they are already
social beings, capable of interacting with others, imitating,
and showing affection; and they are already learning
about themselves and their environments.
Obstetrician and gynecologist Rene Van de Carr of
Hayward, California, notes that while brain growth in the

S H I F T : AT T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C O N S C I O U S N E S S

fetus is patterned genetically, the development of specific

neural pathways related to motor and mental abilities
is controlled by sensory input. He points to a study of
premature infants at Stanford University in which those
who received sensory stimulation before birth showed an
average increase of 13 points in IQ scores over those in a
control group. [Editors Note:A similar ongoing research study
of pre- and postnatal stimulation conducted in Venezuela by
child development psychologist Dr Beatriz Manrique over the
last sixteen years has found that stimulated babies tend to exhibit
accelerated visual, linguistic, and motor development skills as
well as higher intelligence and creativity over the first six years
of their life (see www.2bparent.com/research.htm for details).]
David Cheek, MD, an obstetrician and pioneering
hypnotherapist, praises efforts to stimulate intelligence
and creativity in the unborn and newborn. But he also
believes that it is important to avoid forcing too much
extraneous input on the childas by constantly beaming
loud classical music and Shakespeare directly at it in a
deliberate effort to produce another Einstein or
Mozart. The fetus, after all, sleeps up to twenty-two
hours a day and, says Cheek, probably prefers a quiet
environment most of the time. Occasional soft music

including some of the most primitive ones known

have beliefs that agree closely with what we are learning
from age-regression studies. Moreover, these same cultures
often have childbirth practices that seem in some respects
more humane and enlightened than those frequently
still followed in modern hospitals.
Anne Maiden, a psychotherapist and social psychologist,
has spent ten years in a cross-cultural study of birth.I was
interested in finding alternatives to our present Western
system of childbirth, and felt that an anthropological
point of view could be useful. Maiden has studied 80
cultures and visited 24; three of those that have received
particular emphasis in her work are the Tibetan, the
Balinese, and the Aboriginal Australian. She cites an illustrated,
recently translated medical text from the eleventh century,
Tibetan Medical Paintings, which deals in some detail with
each week of life in the womb.In the twenty-sixth week,
according to the text,the childs awareness becomes very
clear, and it can see its former lives. It can see if it was a
pure being or an ordinary being, and what type of birth
it had before it took this birth. In Bali, one woman told
Maiden that as soon as she became pregnant the first
thing she did was to talk to the dukun, the village healer.

The idea that fetuses and newborns are capable of interacting with
and being deeply imprinted by their social environments is far from new.
and speaking may be helpful, according to Cheek, but
it is the childs psychic and emotional environment that
is of utmost importance. [Emphasizing that point is a
recent study reported on in the July/August 2004 issue of
Child Development. It found that a mothers stress level
during pregnancy could have significant impacts on the
unborn. Dr Bea Bergh, author of the study, noted that mothersto-be who experienced prolonged stress between the twelfth
and twenty-second weeks of their pregnancies were more likely
to have children who exhibited anxiety and attention deficit/
hyperactivity disorders.]

THE UNBORN BEING IN

TRADITIONAL CULTURES

The idea that fetuses and newborns are capable of

interacting with and being deeply imprinted by their
social environments may be revolutionary from the
standpoint of conventional Western science, but it is far
from new. Indeed, many ancient and traditional cultures

S H I F T : AT T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C O N S C I O U S N E S S

His role was to help her enter into a dialogue with the child in
the womb in order to discover the childs identity and its purpose
in life.Those two questionsof identity and purposefollow
through all of Balinese education and spiritual training,
which aim to assist the incarnating soul to fulfill its destiny.
In Aboriginal Australian society the spirit of the child is
believed already to exist prior to conception, and is associated
in the spiritual realmthe Dreamtimewith a particular place
in the sacred landscape. Robert Lawlor, author of Voices of the
First Day:Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime, writes: To the
Aboriginal mind,the modern explanation of conception as the
collision of a tiny sperm and egg is absurd.In their view,sperm
may prepare the way for the entry of the child into the
womb, but the spirit of the child appears in the fathers
dreams or inner awareness before conception.Aboriginal
women consider their role in childbirth as that of providing
a temporary haven for a being with its own pre-existing
spiritual identity, and believe that the spirit does not fully
enter into the fetus until it has reached a certain stage of
developmentroughly ten weeks after conception.
# 6

M A R C H M AY 2 0 0 5

From the moment of

conception, the child is made
to feel that it is a valued part
of its social and natural
environment.

MARY DANIEL HOBSON

According to anthropologist Colin Turnbull, the Mbuti

pygmies of central Africa see their true beginnings, the
first assemblage of those forces that ultimately lead to
their being what they are, as predating the act of
conception by eons and reaching back into antiquity.
Psychotherapist Jean Liedloff discussed her observations
of birth and childhood among the Yequana Indians of
the jungles of Venezuela in her influential book The
Continuum Concept. Visiting the Yequana in the early
1970s as a writer, she was impressed by the psychological
health and resilience of the people she met, and tried to
discover the reason for their constant good humor and
equanimity. She eventually decided that Yequana birthing
and childrearing practices were responsible: From the
moment of conception, the child is made to feel that it is
a valued part of its social and natural environment.
Similar attitudes infuse native North American societies
practices surrounding childbirth. Cherokee spiritual
teacher Dhyani Ywahoo notes in her book Voices of Our
Ancestors: Cherokee Teachings from the Wisdom Fire that We
choose a family wherein our gifts may flourish, through
which we can complete a cycle of learning. Even when
we are within our mothers we begin to hear and feel our
family around us. Within the womb the young person is
sensing the qualities of its parents minds and responding
to the thoughts directed by other people toward the
mother. For this reason it is very important that mothersto-be have a loving support system and an environment
as free from anger as possible.

urturing
N
the Possible:
0
Supporting the
Integrated Self from
the Beginning of Life

Excerpted from an article first published in Vol. 1, Issue 4 of

Intuition magazine.
RICHARD HEINBERG is the author of six books,
including The Partys Over: Oil,War and the Fate of
Industrial Societies (New Society, 2003) and Cloning
the Buddha:The Moral Impact of Biotechnology
(Quest, 1999). He is a core faculty member of New College
of California. Contact him at [email protected].

M A R C H M AY 2 0 0 5

# 6

W E N D Y A N N E M c C A RT Y

S H I F T : AT T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C O N S C I O U S N E S S

PRENATAL AND PERINATAL psychology (PPN)

has grown into a multidisciplinary field dedicated to the
in-depth exploration of the psychological dimension
of human reproduction and pregnancy and the mental
and emotional development of the unborn and newborn
child, as stated in The Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal
Psychology and Health. The heart of the fields unique
contribution is the exploration and understanding of
prenatal life, birth and bonding, and infancy from the
babys point of view.
The field coalesced in the 1980s with clinicians who
found their adult clients describing prenatal and perinatal
experiences to be associated with the origin of a life pattern
or belief, often debilitating or life-diminishing ones.
Finding little in the psychological literature, the clinicians
began to share their findings with one another and a field
was born. During the past thirty years, a wealth of clinical
experience with adults, children, and babies has been
reported, and a much deeper understanding of our earliest
experiences is now available. PPN research demonstrates
that these early experiences involve consciousness beyond
(before) the biological human self.

woven relationship between these two distinct perspectives.

Together they form the Integrated Self.
3. From the moment of conception we perceive,
function, communicate, and lear n at nonlocal
consciousness, energetic, and physical levels. Our ability
to transmit and receive communication during the
prenatal and perinatal period is much greater than
traditionally thought.
4. During our gestation, birth, and early infant
stages, we learn intensely and are exquisitely sensitive
to our environment and relationships. Through our
transcendent perspective, we have omni-awareness of our
parents and others thoughts, feelings, and intentions that
arise from their conscious and subconscious mind.
Through our human self, our experience is intricately
related to our mothers experience, the health of our
womb, and our physical/emotional journey at birth.
Based on these early conditions we form a foundational holographic blueprint for life.
5. This blueprint becomes the infrastructure from
which we grow and experience life at every level of our
beingphysical, emotional, mental, relational, and spiritual.

Based on our mothers experience, and our physical/emotional journey

at birth, we form a foundational holographic blueprint for life.
In 1999, Dr Marti Glenn and I co-founded the
Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology Program at Santa
Barbara Graduate Institute to help further the field and
train professionals. I continued to grapple with the disparity
between our current Western biologically-based models
of early development and the findings from prenatal and
perinatal psychology and PPN clinical work with babies
and children.With the help of a grant from the New Earth
Foundation, I wrote Welcoming Consciousness in 2004,
a developmental psychology book that introduces an
integrated model of development encompassing the
newly evolving PPN research and perspective. The
following are selected key principles of this model:
1. We are sentient beingsconscious and aware
from the beginning of life.We have a sense of self as we
enter physical form that is present prior to, during, and
after our human life.
2. From conception on, we have dual perspectives of
awareness: a transcendent perspective and a human
perspective. Our earliest experiences involve an intricately

S H I F T : AT T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C O N S C I O U S N E S S

Our early experiences become part of our implicit

memory reflected in our subconscious and in our
autonomic functioning.These affect us below the level
of our conscious awareness and directly shape our very
perceptions and conceptions of reality.
6. We already are making choices and forming
adaptive strategies in the womb and at birth that appear
to establish potentially lifelong patterns.
7. Young babies show us their established life
patterns developed in utero and during their birth.The
majority of babies born in the US show signs of stress
or traumatic imprinting.1
8. Many of the needs we have considered essential
for healthy development during infancy and childhood
are needs we have from the beginning of life: to be wanted,
welcomed, safe, nourished, seen, heard, included, and
communicated with as the sentient beings we are. From
the beginning of life, stress and trauma inhibit or interfere
with the natural relationship between a babys transcendent
self and its human self.

# 6

M A R C H M AY 2 0 0 5

From the moment of

conception, the child is made
to feel that it is a valued part
of its social and natural
environment.

MARY DANIEL HOBSON

According to anthropologist Colin Turnbull, the Mbuti

pygmies of central Africa see their true beginnings, the
first assemblage of those forces that ultimately lead to
their being what they are, as predating the act of
conception by eons and reaching back into antiquity.
Psychotherapist Jean Liedloff discussed her observations
of birth and childhood among the Yequana Indians of
the jungles of Venezuela in her influential book The
Continuum Concept. Visiting the Yequana in the early
1970s as a writer, she was impressed by the psychological
health and resilience of the people she met, and tried to
discover the reason for their constant good humor and
equanimity. She eventually decided that Yequana birthing
and childrearing practices were responsible: From the
moment of conception, the child is made to feel that it is
a valued part of its social and natural environment.
Similar attitudes infuse native North American societies
practices surrounding childbirth. Cherokee spiritual
teacher Dhyani Ywahoo notes in her book Voices of Our
Ancestors: Cherokee Teachings from the Wisdom Fire that We
choose a family wherein our gifts may flourish, through
which we can complete a cycle of learning. Even when
we are within our mothers we begin to hear and feel our
family around us. Within the womb the young person is
sensing the qualities of its parents minds and responding
to the thoughts directed by other people toward the
mother. For this reason it is very important that mothersto-be have a loving support system and an environment
as free from anger as possible.

urturing
N
the Possible:
0
Supporting the
Integrated Self from
the Beginning of Life

Excerpted from an article first published in Vol. 1, Issue 4 of

Intuition magazine.
RICHARD HEINBERG is the author of six books,
including The Partys Over: Oil,War and the Fate of
Industrial Societies (New Society, 2003) and Cloning
the Buddha:The Moral Impact of Biotechnology
(Quest, 1999). He is a core faculty member of New College
of California. Contact him at [email protected].

M A R C H M AY 2 0 0 5

# 6

W E N D Y A N N E M c C A RT Y

S H I F T : AT T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C O N S C I O U S N E S S

PRENATAL AND PERINATAL psychology (PPN)

has grown into a multidisciplinary field dedicated to the
in-depth exploration of the psychological dimension
of human reproduction and pregnancy and the mental
and emotional development of the unborn and newborn
child, as stated in The Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal
Psychology and Health. The heart of the fields unique
contribution is the exploration and understanding of
prenatal life, birth and bonding, and infancy from the
babys point of view.
The field coalesced in the 1980s with clinicians who
found their adult clients describing prenatal and perinatal
experiences to be associated with the origin of a life pattern
or belief, often debilitating or life-diminishing ones.
Finding little in the psychological literature, the clinicians
began to share their findings with one another and a field
was born. During the past thirty years, a wealth of clinical
experience with adults, children, and babies has been
reported, and a much deeper understanding of our earliest
experiences is now available. PPN research demonstrates
that these early experiences involve consciousness beyond
(before) the biological human self.

woven relationship between these two distinct perspectives.

Together they form the Integrated Self.
3. From the moment of conception we perceive,
function, communicate, and lear n at nonlocal
consciousness, energetic, and physical levels. Our ability
to transmit and receive communication during the
prenatal and perinatal period is much greater than
traditionally thought.
4. During our gestation, birth, and early infant
stages, we learn intensely and are exquisitely sensitive
to our environment and relationships. Through our
transcendent perspective, we have omni-awareness of our
parents and others thoughts, feelings, and intentions that
arise from their conscious and subconscious mind.
Through our human self, our experience is intricately
related to our mothers experience, the health of our
womb, and our physical/emotional journey at birth.
Based on these early conditions we form a foundational holographic blueprint for life.
5. This blueprint becomes the infrastructure from
which we grow and experience life at every level of our
beingphysical, emotional, mental, relational, and spiritual.

Based on our mothers experience, and our physical/emotional journey

at birth, we form a foundational holographic blueprint for life.
In 1999, Dr Marti Glenn and I co-founded the
Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology Program at Santa
Barbara Graduate Institute to help further the field and
train professionals. I continued to grapple with the disparity
between our current Western biologically-based models
of early development and the findings from prenatal and
perinatal psychology and PPN clinical work with babies
and children.With the help of a grant from the New Earth
Foundation, I wrote Welcoming Consciousness in 2004,
a developmental psychology book that introduces an
integrated model of development encompassing the
newly evolving PPN research and perspective. The
following are selected key principles of this model:
1. We are sentient beingsconscious and aware
from the beginning of life.We have a sense of self as we
enter physical form that is present prior to, during, and
after our human life.
2. From conception on, we have dual perspectives of
awareness: a transcendent perspective and a human
perspective. Our earliest experiences involve an intricately

S H I F T : AT T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C O N S C I O U S N E S S

Our early experiences become part of our implicit

memory reflected in our subconscious and in our
autonomic functioning.These affect us below the level
of our conscious awareness and directly shape our very
perceptions and conceptions of reality.
6. We already are making choices and forming
adaptive strategies in the womb and at birth that appear
to establish potentially lifelong patterns.
7. Young babies show us their established life
patterns developed in utero and during their birth.The
majority of babies born in the US show signs of stress
or traumatic imprinting.1
8. Many of the needs we have considered essential
for healthy development during infancy and childhood
are needs we have from the beginning of life: to be wanted,
welcomed, safe, nourished, seen, heard, included, and
communicated with as the sentient beings we are. From
the beginning of life, stress and trauma inhibit or interfere
with the natural relationship between a babys transcendent
self and its human self.

# 6

M A R C H M AY 2 0 0 5

B EC O M I N G

Resources
WEBSITES

Life in the Womb:

The Origin of Health and Disease
by Peter W. Nathanielsz
(Promethean Press, 1999)

Association for Pre- & Perinatal

Psychology and Health (APPPAH)
www.birthpsychology.com
A forum and resource center for individuals from
diverse backgrounds and disciplines interested in
the psychological dimensions of prenatal and
perinatal experiences

The Mind of Your Newborn Baby

by David B. Chamberlain
(North Atlantic Books, 1998)

V I B R A L I N G U A L

BOOKS

What Babies Want: An Exploration

of the Consciousness of Infants
www.whatbabieswant.com
A new video documentary on prenatal and perinatal
psychology that includes both cutting-edge science
and the customs of traditional cultures

Pre-Parenting: Nurturing Your Child from Conception

by Thomas R.Verny and Pamela Weintraub
(Simon & Schuster, 2003)
Prenatal Parenting: The Complete Psychological
and Spiritual Guide to Loving Your Unborn Baby
by Frederick Wirth
(Regan Books, 2001)

Santa Barbara Graduate Institute

www.sbgi.edu
Offering the countrys first graduate degree programs
in Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology

Remembering Our Home: Healing Hurts and

Receiving Gifts from Conception to Birth
by Sheila Linn,William Emerson, Dennis Linn,
and Matthew Linn (Paulist Press, 1999)

to the exploration of our understanding of human

9. As indigenous cultures have done for centuries,
experience from an integrated lens that honors our multicommunicating with babies during the preconception,
dimensional nature and echoes the ancient wisdoms held in
prenatal, birth and infancy period on is one of the most
many indigenous cultures. The new western frontier
powerful ways to support babies and can mitigate the
is clearing old beliefs that stand in the way of the fuller
impact of potentially traumatizing events.2
vision of who we are. Nurturing the possible, supporting
10. PPN-oriented therapies and ways of being demonthe Integrated Self from the
strate new possibilities of
WENDY ANNE MCCARTY, RN, is a psychology beginning of life, opens the
wholeness and connection with
consultant, educator, researcher, and author. She founded
door to help each new being
the Integrated Self, starting
the Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology Program at
to create a foundational life
at the beginning of life.
Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. Her new e-book
holographic blueprint that
Prenatal and perinatal
Welcoming Consciousness: Supporting Wholeness
supports their fullest creative
psychologys clinical findings
from the Beginning of Life and her other publications
life force and wholeness.
bring a tremendous renewal
are available through www.wondrousbeginnings.com.

BECOMING
vibralingual, a
word I coined almost
ten years ago, means becoming increasingly fluent
in several forms of vibrational
communication.The word is akin to
that of multilingual: fluent in understanding and speaking several languages. Currently, the most
generative exploration of vibralingual skills is being
supported by the Fetzer-funded Collective Wisdom
Initiative (CWI).
Being vibralingual means proficiency in attending to
those aspects of experience that percuss, create sound, or
vibrate. It entails listening to and knowing that sound or
vibration heard or felt in the moment is information that
has meaning.Vibration, in other words, is communication.
The sound of the breath, tone of voice, pounding of the
heart, visual and audible repetition of a water spigot turning
off and on, various textures of chirping exchanged by
two or more birds, tightening of the gutall are signals,
indications of an individuals or a
groups (or a flocks) state of being

S H I F T : AT T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C O N S C I O U S N E S S

ARTICLE FOOTNOTES

M A R C H M AY 2 0 0 5

# 6

S H I F T : AT T H E F R O N T I E R S O F C O N S C I O U S N E S S

MICHAEL ELLER

1 McCarty,W.A. (2002).The power of beliefs:What babies are

teaching us. Journal of Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology & Health,
16(4), 341-360.
2 McCarty,W.A. (2004).The CALL to reawaken and deepen
our communication with babies: what babies are teaching us.
International Doula,12(2), Summer 2004.

While Youre Expecting: Creating Your Own

Prenatal Classroom
by Rene Van De Carr and Marc Lehrer
(Humanics, 1996)

in the moment.
For example,
the companion calls
of birds are the lyrical
chirps you hear when birds
are nearby and eating happily.
In this way they signal to each other:
All is well. Im here, content.Youre there,
content. Chirp. But if a birds companion fails to respond
with a resonant chirp, you might hear an agitated chirp,
chirp, chirp: Where the heck are you? Im here eating
berries. Arent you there eating berries, and if youre not
eating berries then are you being eaten!?!
Being vibralingual means skillfully attending to
such moments in flocks of birds or friends or co-workers
to listen, to receive, to find vibrational meaningat
least as much and as fluently as we attend to moments
filled with words, linguistic meaning, and information.
Attending to the five vibralingual elements of collective
experiencebreath, intention, tone, rhythm, and
repetitionlends our ears to nuanced dynamics,
behaviors, and flutterings at the
door of the possible.

RACHEL BAGBY

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