For so long we have prioritised our children’s birth to be a purely physical preparation, the priority being on the arrival/birth and its safety and efficiency, with little consideration for the body-mind connection, or energetic or psychological ramifications of current birthing and mothering support.

The priority has been for a healthy baby and a healthy mother in a one-dimensional way, that is arguably the minimum bar of care and consideration.  Many so-called healthy parameters are addressed by unhealthy and outdated ways of being and practice. Is it enough to survive a birth physically, to survive is an essential starting point, we cannot move on out of survival into ways of being and thriving, if our lives are under threat. But this is base line, for those of you seeking the breadth of their lives and not just the length, the ones that want to look at growth and increasing our humanness and humanity, who are interested in maturing not just biologically but psychologically as well, with wisdom, becoming an adult then these workshops are for you. An opportunity to deepen connection and understanding with ourselves and to invest in one if not the most important relationships of our lives, the ones we form with our children.

 

Conscious Parenting workshops and pre-natal educational classes that focus on embodiment to become more self-aware, to create more self-understanding, to become more conscious of our unconscious material, to become healthier in our ability to regulate and co regulate another, to form new ways of forming attachment and relationship that are coming from the position of adult and parent that is heathy, vibrant and breaths, rather than dirty pain that is passed down from one generation to another, relying on our babies and children to parent and take care of us, or passing down the beliefs we hold from our own wounding or things we did not receive. When we become parents, we must transition to become adults not just biologically but psychologically to. This workshop will look at developmental trauma around birth and will look at ways that we can support this having taken place or not taking place/lessening the impact of trauma by education. Trauma can be both one time and multiple, devastating and life threatening or chronic and repetitively neglectful, it can be from something happening, or something that should have.

Pre-natal educational embodiment classes for becoming a mother/primary caregiver. Whether this is for the first time, or you are looking for ways to do it differently.  Whether you are giving birth or not. If you are going to be a primary caregiver of young life, whatever your gender, sexuality, or path you have taken for creating a family, you are welcome. Becoming a mother can be a big transition  and even more so if you haven’t carried your child, you may be about to adopt, have had a surrogate and very soon you will have a baby or young child, these educational workshops may help you prepare.

​

The workshops will take place over the course of 10 weeks and there will be a maximum number of 8 people attending.

​

Being present and making conscious the unconscious woundings of our past, what parts do you want to take with you in your mothering, which parts are unhelpful, and you want to leave behind. These classes are guided by Tessa Fergusson a practitioner of Chinese medicine and body psychotherapist who specialises in developmental healing. My body psychotherapy practice looks at the way we form character in the first 0-7/8 years, character is seen as solid function, ridged bands of muscular contraction that limit our ability to feel, be conscious fully of our woundings and limits our ability to have choice. All armouring in the body limits feeling and limits choice, in limited choice and unconscious wounding, we risk carrying on those patterns, repeating cycles from one generation to the next, wounding our own children in a similar way as we were wounded. These classes explore our core beliefs about the world and our place within it, what stories do we hold that we are passing on to our children, unconsciously, within our bodies or obviously. How can making conscious some of our developmental woundings, of not receiving or receiving too little or too much of impact our own ability to parent/mother.

​

How important are the eyes, the skin, what does grounding mean for you, what does  grounding mean for your baby and how is it established. What is centring, how can we energetically encourage our babies to be able to centre, how do we encourage our babies to make contact, connection and relationships that will build a healthy foundation for the way they make contact, connection and build relationships throughout their lives. This is some of what we will be exploring together.

​

Each workshop is 3hrs and must be taken as part of an intention to come to all 10, drop in is not available. Payment to be made prior to the first session or an arrangement made for instalments, but all 10 workshops must be paid for regardless of the ability to attend all 10. The 10 workshops cost £250.

 

Week 1- Forming as a group and sharing own birth story.

​

Week 2-Birth and energetic embodiment- wounding and healing.

​

Week 3-Presentness, aliveness and contact.

​

Week 4-Instroke and Outstroke

​

Week 5-Boundaries

​

Week 6- Support

​

Week 7-Working with fear and keeping our grounding and centre. Pulsation, expansion, and contraction, sympathetic and parasympathetic.

​

Week 8- Breath

​

Week 9- Luo and generational wounding

​

Week 10- Closing circle.

​

A more detailed description of the weeks is below. Please feel you can contact me to discuss any of workshops to help you decide to join. The best way to initially make contact is via my email info@tessafergusson.co.uk or drop me a What’s app message (Cornwall reception) 077177 90944. I look forward to sharing time.

 

Week 1- 3hrs- Forming as a group and sharing own birth story.

Forming as a group, we will look at what allows us to be fully with each other and explore what this could be for us all, we will come to our own agreements with group confidentiality, kindness, a celebration of difference and non-judgement, and owning our stories without projection on to others. The first week we will share with each other what we hope to get from these weeks together and our own birth story, how we were born and the stories that surround it and what those stories gifted us or led us to form believes about ourselves. We will share as much or as little as we feel, but there will be space for everyone to share.

 

Week 2- 3hrs-Birth and energetic embodiment- wounding and healing.

What is the importance of how we are born? How does birth and our arrival affect our energetic ability to be embodied, to create healthy believes about ourselves and to foster meaningful and lasting relationships? We will look at ways that can minimise birth trauma whatever the birth scenario, and form an understanding of the early months needs of a baby to not just survive, but thrive and be fully embodied and alive? We will look at gestation to early months after birth. What are the ways that we can support the energetic vibrancy and aliveness of our babies and support any trauma that may have occurred. We will look at quality and intention of touch, wrapping and holding, presence, eye contact, and co-regulation, we will look at feeding and meeting the needs psychologically and biologically of our babies.

 

Week 3-3hrs- Presentness, aliveness and contact.

Care of the mother after birth gifts that resource to the baby. How do we resource and become sustainably present in our babies and perhaps our other children’s life in the weeks following birth? We will be looking at what presentness is, what does it gift to our babies and to ourselves, how do we develop self-awareness and the ability to track whether we are present or not and how alive and responsive are we to the moment. What responsibility do we have to put self-care in place for ourselves if we don’t have much help, what might that look like.

 

Week 4- 3hrs-Instroke and Outstroke

Staying in contact with ourselves in relationship with others, going in and coming out.

Developing awareness around how we are and how we feel, increasing our tolerances to sensation and feeling, growing understanding about our own embodiment. This week we will practice tracking ourselves, staying in connection with ourselves and our own processes, whilst moving and being in relationship with another. How might this be useful?

 

Week 5-3hrs- Boundaries

We will look at how we form boundaries. We will look at what happens in the womb, birth and after birth that promote forming a border, and the all-important time between mother and baby of merging, for needs being met, for feelings of safety and co-regulation. We will look at the No and the Yes in our bodies, in our voices and have in writing some of our wishes for ourselves and our babies for those who are around us to know. Can you see how boundaries can be violated in birthing and in early weeks parenting? Do you have the same views on bringing up your children as your parents, do they get involved? Are others always telling you what you should do? Have you had a birth that has violated your boundaries or experiences where your body has been touched or a procedure done without you body as well as verbal consent.

 

Week 6-3hrs-Support

We will be looking at what support is, how does it feel in the body, what are your requirements around support, what is your history of support, can you ask for support, and how would it look. We will be looking at the importance of support for baby/child and mother/caregiver.

 

Week 7- 3hrs-Working with fear. Pulsation, expansion, and contraction, sympathetic and parasympathetic.

Most of preparing to birth is keeping our centre, keeping grounded in reality and keeping our choices available to us. Birthing is a time to have agility, a focus an energetic towards and being able to make decisions in the unfolding nature of our births. But most of all it is keeping regulated when the whole system that surrounds birth is dysregulated and fear based. We will look at the body as pulsation, looking at the ways that you can relax and expand, what stops us from energetically expanding in our pregnant bodies, what are the energetic messages we give to our babies when we hold them too loosely or too tightly in uterine? Many of the processes after hopefully an orgasm in conceiving if it happened this way, which was an expansive energetic feeling have been most likely a lot of contraction, holding on tightly to your baby so as not to miscarry, contraction around testing, prodding, and poking that come with many pregnancies. Fear of test results, viability, 3 months, 5 months, 6 months and all the other milestones we are geared towards. Our bodies go into birth with lots of muscular holdings that don’t allow for our babies the optimum space to position their bodies in preparation to birth, and we have lost our sense of self contact, ability to soften and trust our bodies and our abilities to birth.

​

Week 8-3hrs- Breathing

Breathing, the importance of breathing to energise your body, to breath into your baby. How we breath will influence how we feel, and how your baby feels. How do you naturally breath? What awareness and understanding can we derive from being with our breath. Our breath allows for us to bring in this moment, to utilise our power, to trust in our bodies to be with the unfolding moment and to be able to respond to it. We will look at breath from a Radix body psychotherapy framework and look at breath and sounding to charge and discharge, to be able to stay connected with ourselves, the moment, and our babies.

 

Week 9-3hrs- Luo and generational wounding

What do you not want to repeat in your family, what generational wounding do you need to be aware of? What might be your blind spot or your overcompensation? We will look at what your emotional environment was like as you were growing up? What feelings were allowed and what were not. What feelings you have available to you and what ones are not so accessible.

 

Week 10-3hrs- Closing circle.

Closing circle, what you would like to take with you, what would you like to leave behind. What would you like to share with the other people here today. What are your learnings and awareness’s from these last few weeks together. What connections would you like to continue and in what way. The energy of endings and beginnings. How do we do we usually end and begin?

 

As well as these Conscious Mother workshops, I offer more intensive personal growth work opportunities once or twice a year. A new group is forming, please contact me if you are interested. I also offer one day workshops in several themes of embodiment. Please look.

I am looking forward to sharing these workshops with you. Please feel you can contact me to book a place or and to ask any questions that might facilitate your decision to participate.

 

With warmth Tessa

​

​

​