Integrated Prenatal and Perinatal Dynamics
Skills for Working with Birth Trauma that Include the Baby's Experience
New York City
​2024-2025

With Stillpoint Cranial School 
​In person. Hybrid spots available
  • Module 1 August 2-4, 2024
  • Module 2 October 4-6, 2024
  • Module 3 December 6-8, 2024
  • Module 4 February 7-9, 2025
  • ​Module 5 April 11-13, 2025
  • Module 6: June 6-8, 2025
Where: Balanced Arts Center, 151 W. 30th St, 3rd Floor, NY, NY 10001,  https://www.balanceartscenter.com/
Times: 9:30 am - 6 pm each day, with 1.5 hours for lunch 12:30- 2 pm each day
We include 2.5 hour in-service practices in between modules. These include:
  • Sunday September 8 2-4:30 pm, topic Decompress the Layers
  • Sunday November 10, 2-4:30 pm, topic, The Power of the Placenta
  • Sunday January 12, 2-4:30 pm, topic, Working with the Stuck Place (Double Bind)
  • Sunday March 9, 2-4:30 pm, topic, Induction Dynamics and Finding an Authentic Impulse
  • TBA, 2-4:30 pm, topic, Working with Resistance, Kindness as an Intervention
All Times are Eastern Time. 
IPPD Modules 1-3: Basic Dynamics. . . .
 . . .​We come into form, make our body, build relationship with our parent, and are born
 . . . We welcome a child into our hearts, minds and bodies, help make their body by nourishing them in our womb, and birth our baby
 . . . We are spirit, matter and relationship. Our lifelong patterns start here.
Module One: Preconception/Conception DynamicsPreconception and Conception are vital times in human development. In prenatal and perinatal healing, we often observe that the influences on parents just before and during conception may repeat in birth. This module will bring attention to:
  • Transgenerational/Intergenerational Dynamics (Patterns of Health and Challenge)
  • Trauma-Informed, Resilience and Healing Centered Approaches
  • Trauma Sensitive Intakes
  • Creating a Welcoming Space
  • Conscious Conception
  • The Baby's Experience of Being Wanted
  • Your Practice as Safe Haven
  • Evidence Based Tools for Your Practice in Attachment, Attachment Styles, Adverse Childhood and Positive Experiences
  • Relationship of the Parents
  • Conscious Early Parenting
  • Clinical Skills:
    • Differentiation,
    • Repair
    • Embodiment
    • Presence
    • Relationship
    • Listening
    • Self and Co-regulation
    • Boundaries
    • Tracking Self and Other
    • Creating a Welcoming Space
    • Creating a Gracious Space
    • Trauma Sensitive Intake
    • Tracking the Health: Blueprint/Imprint
Module Two: Prenatal DynamicsThe themes for Module 2 in Integrated Prenatal and Perinatal Dynamics focus on the prenatal period. We will traverse the territory of prenatal experience from the baby's experience, and also support the parents to practice prenatal bonding. Integrated Prenatal and Perinatal Dynamics practitioners will understand the world of the vulnerable prenate, how to support parents, and the midwife's perspective on the prenatal period. Our skills will always return to understanding the map of the autonomic nervous system, working with resourcing, imparting skills of being, relationship, listening, recognition and conversation. Over arching themes include:
  • The Principle of Choice
  • How We Come Into Relationship
  • The Embryo and Early Development
  • The Placenta and What Nourishes?
  • Home and Connection
  • The Impact of Stress on Pregnancy
  • Understanding the Umbilical Cord
  • Variations on the Uterus and Placenta
  • The Baby's Experience In Utero, including Constraint
  • The Imprints from the Prenatal Period
  • Our clinical skills include:
    • Meditations
    • PPN Principles, especially the principle of Choice
    • Autonomic Nervous System states around coming into relationship, building and making a home, putting down roots, our relationship with receiving, especially what nourishes.
    • Interpersonal neurobiology
    • Recognizing intrauterine constraint
    • Broadening and deepening states as tools for stabilization and transformation
    • Table work, working with umbilical affect and touching the belly
    • Table work, working with pregnant mothers with intrauterine constraint
Module Three: Physiologic Birth DynamicsIn this module, you will identify the birth sequence patterns for mother/birthing parent and baby that may happen without any interventions. Even though many families strive for births with the least amount of interventions, the patterns without them can also be overwhelming. Your curriculum includes:
  • Recognizing birth patterns of all kinds that occur without outside interventions
  • Double binds
  • Creative Opposition, Dynamic Squeeze
  • Deepening and broadening states
  • Leading Edge
  • Identifying vectors and compression
  • Calling a pause
  • The importance of "Baby Time"
  • Speeding up and slowing down
  • Two layers of support
  • Harmonizing the surround
  • Slipping into the space
  • The clinical skills you will learn include:
    • How to make repairs for difficult births, part one
    • Learning from the inside out about the baby's experience by identifying your birth journey, and your own sequence
    • Identification of pelvis shapes and bony landmarks that the baby encounters in the birth process
    • Understanding the birth sequence, natural birth and labor and delivery
    • The midwifery model of care
    • Working with birth process on the floor
    • Working with birth process on the table

IPPD Modules 3-6: Birth Intervention Dynamics and Trauma Patterns

 . . . We are not the Imprint, but many of us think and feel we are. We are Blueprint and our life experience in our bodies.
 . . . Integrate the trauma imprint and become a walking piece of art on Planet Earth.
Module Four: Chemical Imprints and Womb Dynamics In this module you will learn about chemical imprints and their effects on the baby especially, and anesthesia, analgesia from the birthing parent's perspective. 
  • Toxic Womb (Chemicals - endogenous and from substances)
  • Stress and its impact on the baby, and parent/baby bond
  • Anesthesia
  • Analgesia/Pain Relief
  • Augmentation
  • Inductions
  • Clinical skills will emphasize
    • Boundary Repair
    • Recognition of chemical imprints
    • Feeling Tone as practitioner
    • Time and Tempo as a trigger
    • Flushing the ventricles
    • Shifting Freeze to Fight/Flight in doable pieces
    • Inescapable attack from chemical imprints
    • Restoring a defensive gesture
    • Vibration, growl and push
Module Five: Birth Intervention Dynamics, Surgical and Mechanical InterventionsIn this module, you will learn about birth interventions, their impact on mothers/birthing parents and their partners, and on babies. These interventions include: 
  • Perinatal Tears/Episiotomy
  • Cesarean Section
  • Vacuum Assist/Ventous
  • Forceps
  • Additional information includes:
    • Research on doulas and midwifery model of care
    • Hypertensive disorders
    • Working with near death states for mothers and babies
    • Neonatal resuscitation
  • Clinical Skills will emphasize:
    • Working with the Blueprint
    • Mapping resources and layers of support
    • Search and Restore Inner Knowing
    • Repair for difficult births
    • Restoring a Defensive Gesture
    • Working with Medical Trauma, Horror and Assault
    • Working with Shame and Grief
Module Six: Perinatal Dynamics and Integration
  • The Sacred Hour, supported attachment, integration
  • Crying, Sleeping and Feeding Trauma
  • Integrating the Birth Story and working with families, Family Dynamics
  • Working with Adults, prenatal and perinatal assessments
  • How to do the Holding Healing Story and Messages of Repair
  • Putting the Baby in the Chair, the work of John Chitty
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