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The Prenatal Shadow: Healing the Traumas Experienced before and at Birth
• Explains how babies remember their experiences from the womb and birth as implicit memory, impressions that are held in emotions, images, and the body
• Examines scientific evidence of how preverbal memory works and how prenates are highly responsive to their mother’s perceptions
• Looks at how to become aware of and acknowledge implicit memory from the womb as well as how to heal and prevent birth trauma
As somatic prenatal therapist Cherionna Menzam-Sills, Ph.D., reveals, in a world where it is believed that babies are unable to remember before they can speak, prenatal and birth experiences can easily become unconscious shadow, infiltrating the psyche and affecting personality, relationships, behavior, and perceptions throughout life.
Drawing on scientific evidence of how preverbal memory works, the author shows how babies, even before birth, are exquisitely sensitive with remarkable potential that may be forgotten or eclipsed by traumatic prenatal and perinatal experience. She explains how babies remember the intensely formative experiences from this primal period as implicit memory, impressions that are held in emotions, images, and the body. She looks at how prenates are deeply influenced by their mother’s perception of safety or threat, including during labor and birth, which affects their developing nervous systems.
Examining the healing and integration of the prenatal shadow, the author explores how to acknowledge and prevent birth trauma as well as shares meditative practices for sensing the little one within and offering them what they need.
By acknowledging and integrating the prenatal and perinatal shadow hidden just beyond conscious awareness, we can heal our relationships with ourselves and our loved ones as well as reconnect with our original potential.
• Examines scientific evidence of how preverbal memory works and how prenates are highly responsive to their mother’s perceptions
• Looks at how to become aware of and acknowledge implicit memory from the womb as well as how to heal and prevent birth trauma
As somatic prenatal therapist Cherionna Menzam-Sills, Ph.D., reveals, in a world where it is believed that babies are unable to remember before they can speak, prenatal and birth experiences can easily become unconscious shadow, infiltrating the psyche and affecting personality, relationships, behavior, and perceptions throughout life.
Drawing on scientific evidence of how preverbal memory works, the author shows how babies, even before birth, are exquisitely sensitive with remarkable potential that may be forgotten or eclipsed by traumatic prenatal and perinatal experience. She explains how babies remember the intensely formative experiences from this primal period as implicit memory, impressions that are held in emotions, images, and the body. She looks at how prenates are deeply influenced by their mother’s perception of safety or threat, including during labor and birth, which affects their developing nervous systems.
Examining the healing and integration of the prenatal shadow, the author explores how to acknowledge and prevent birth trauma as well as shares meditative practices for sensing the little one within and offering them what they need.
By acknowledging and integrating the prenatal and perinatal shadow hidden just beyond conscious awareness, we can heal our relationships with ourselves and our loved ones as well as reconnect with our original potential.
240 pages, Paperback
Published March 4, 2025
6 people are currently reading
10 people want to read
About the author
Cherionna Menzam-Sills
6 books6 followersCherionna Menzam-Sills draws on her extensive background in prenatal and perinatal psychology, embryology, bodywork, Continuum Movement, and other somatic therapies, as well as years of working with her husband, Biodynamics pioneer Franklyn Sills, to enhance her writing, teaching and clinical practice.
She is certified as a teacher of Craniosacral Biodynamics with the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America (BCTA/NA), and as a supervisor by the Craniosacral Association of the UK. Authorized in 2007 as a Continuum Movement Teacher by Continuum founder, Emilie Conrad, she integrates Continuum into her work, to enhance embodied understanding and experiential exploration of important concepts. Continuum is a mindful movement practice involving perceptual shifts and healing potential similar to those of Biodynamics.
Incorporating many years experience teaching and practicing various therapies since the late 70s, including mindfulness practices, somatic movement, bodywork, occupational therapy, psychotherapy and prenatal and birth psychology, Cherionna has taught students of somatic and dance/movement psychotherapy, as well as prenatal and perinatal psychology at graduate and under-graduate levels at Naropa University and the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute.
Cherionna’s doctoral work led her to develop a uniquely embodied approach to teaching embryology, which she has continued to develop since the mid-90s, incorporating it into her teaching and writing. Her somatic understanding of embryology enhances her sense of our fluid nature and universal Biodynamic forces guiding our formation both in the womb and in Biodynamic session work.
Cherionna has taught Biodynamics and Continuum across North America and Europe, often with her husband, Biodynamics pioneer, Franklyn Sills. Before becoming a senior tutor at Karuna Institute, teaching alongside its co-founder, Franklyn Sills, she taught her own Biodynamic trainings in Canada and the U.S., as well as guest teaching at the Craniosacral Therapy Educational Trust in London, UK.
Cherionna has contributed three chapters to Franklyn’s pivotal texts, Foundations in Craniosacral Biodynamics, Volumes 1 and 2, as well as having helped edit them. Through her relationship with Franklyn, Cherionna has accessed new levels of clarity in her understanding and ability to articulate this powerful work. Teaching and discussing Biodynamics with Franklyn have enabled her to embrace an updated, more purely Biodynamic approach to Craniosacral Therapy. She has been immersed in the Biodynamic community through being on the Board of Directors of the BCTA/NA and extensive mentoring with Anna Chitty, a major teacher of Biodynamics in Boulder, CO. She also has presented at Biodynamic conferences in the U.S., UK and Spain, integrating her somatic creativity to engage her audience in the profound mysteries of this beautiful work.
Originally from Canada, Cherionna lives with her husband in Devon, UK, where she has a private practice, currently emphasizing online supervision and mentoring.
More information at www.birthingyourlife.org
She is certified as a teacher of Craniosacral Biodynamics with the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America (BCTA/NA), and as a supervisor by the Craniosacral Association of the UK. Authorized in 2007 as a Continuum Movement Teacher by Continuum founder, Emilie Conrad, she integrates Continuum into her work, to enhance embodied understanding and experiential exploration of important concepts. Continuum is a mindful movement practice involving perceptual shifts and healing potential similar to those of Biodynamics.
Incorporating many years experience teaching and practicing various therapies since the late 70s, including mindfulness practices, somatic movement, bodywork, occupational therapy, psychotherapy and prenatal and birth psychology, Cherionna has taught students of somatic and dance/movement psychotherapy, as well as prenatal and perinatal psychology at graduate and under-graduate levels at Naropa University and the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute.
Cherionna’s doctoral work led her to develop a uniquely embodied approach to teaching embryology, which she has continued to develop since the mid-90s, incorporating it into her teaching and writing. Her somatic understanding of embryology enhances her sense of our fluid nature and universal Biodynamic forces guiding our formation both in the womb and in Biodynamic session work.
Cherionna has taught Biodynamics and Continuum across North America and Europe, often with her husband, Biodynamics pioneer, Franklyn Sills. Before becoming a senior tutor at Karuna Institute, teaching alongside its co-founder, Franklyn Sills, she taught her own Biodynamic trainings in Canada and the U.S., as well as guest teaching at the Craniosacral Therapy Educational Trust in London, UK.
Cherionna has contributed three chapters to Franklyn’s pivotal texts, Foundations in Craniosacral Biodynamics, Volumes 1 and 2, as well as having helped edit them. Through her relationship with Franklyn, Cherionna has accessed new levels of clarity in her understanding and ability to articulate this powerful work. Teaching and discussing Biodynamics with Franklyn have enabled her to embrace an updated, more purely Biodynamic approach to Craniosacral Therapy. She has been immersed in the Biodynamic community through being on the Board of Directors of the BCTA/NA and extensive mentoring with Anna Chitty, a major teacher of Biodynamics in Boulder, CO. She also has presented at Biodynamic conferences in the U.S., UK and Spain, integrating her somatic creativity to engage her audience in the profound mysteries of this beautiful work.
Originally from Canada, Cherionna lives with her husband in Devon, UK, where she has a private practice, currently emphasizing online supervision and mentoring.
More information at www.birthingyourlife.org
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