Early Primalling: A Natural Process

In January of this year, Sam Turton came out to our home in Santa Rosa, California, to lead a weekend workshop called "Introduction to Primal Integration." My daughter Cassandra and her husband Patrick attended part of it.

Cassandra is very much into the whole continuum concept, and their son Ryan--my amazing grandson--was born at home in a midwife-assisted delivery. Cassandra is a very intuitive young woman, is the astrologer for a women's website www.spiralmuse.com, and raises Ryan naturally in ways we primalers would mostly laud.

What I find fascinating is that Cassandra and Patrick have been allowing Ryan to experience what appear to be spontaneous primals. The following is her email to me about this.

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Dad;

I didn't know the word "primal" after giving birth to Ryan, so I termed some of the things he did as "rebirthing himself."

Ryan was born at home at 1:51 a.m. This was after twenty-nine hours of labor that had ended with one complete hour of pushing him through the birth canal. After that, we were able to just roll up onto the bed and stay there together, breastfeeding and bonding for a couple of weeks. We got up minimally and left the house hardly at all.

As a new mom, it took me a week to realize that Ryan had a pattern of always waking and squirming and doing this uncomfortable crying and moaning between 1 and 2 a.m. Breastfeeding did not soothe him like it did at other times. After becoming aware of this pattern and observing him, I wondered if he was processing his birth experience. Realizing this possibility, I started to wake up more fully so that I could give him my conscious attention. In addition to that, I also began to acknowledge his process. I would say things like, "Yes, I know that must have been a very hard experience. What a tight passage you had to go through. You are safe now. We are going to take very good care of you. Your mom and dad love you very much." After two or three nights of that type of support, he stopped the pattern. The whole thing lasted for about two weeks after his birth.

Ryan is now two-and-a-half years old and the most recent primal experience we are aware of was when he would wake up in the middle of the night and cry inconsolably. He would also yell like he was mad. After going to the introduction to Primal and then having my partner Patrick have a primal therapy session, Patrick initiated the idea that we "sit" for Ryan during these experiences. We stopped trying to get him to stop crying by soothing him or trying to fix whatever problem he was mad at.

At these times, Ryan would yell things like, "Daddy get off the bed! Turn the moon light off! Mommy lay down!" His demands were endless, so we just sat there and gave him constant attention. We would say very little, maybe words like "Yes" or "Okay." Even if we said "It's okay," he would emphatically reply, "No, it's not okay!"

Basically, at these times, we just witnessed him. He eventually would come to completion, regain his senses/sensibility, and very sweetly request that I read him a book. I'd read to him and he'd turn out his own light and go back to sleep. This happened two or three (non-consecutive) nights. My sense is that he was possibly working through one or both of two things. The first being emotional energy from a big day in which he interacted with a lot of people, was away from home, and had no nap. Secondly, I think it's also possible that he had some residual emotional energy from nights in the recent past when we didn't take such an enlightened approach. At these times of exhaustion and frustration we made demands to go back to sleep in ways that made him feel less safe and supported.

Whatever the reasons behind Ryan's intense emotional experiences, Patrick and I both see them as primal-like processes. In fact, it is Patrick's opinion, and I agree with him, that small children are pretty much in a state of an almost continuous primal!

Cassandra

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Ed's note: Ryan may still be processing remnants of his birth trauma or using a prototypical "time window" through which to express painful emotions. Whatever it is, Cassandra and Patrick are allowing him the freedom and support to express his feelings. Bravo!

This article appeared in the Summer 2003 IPA Newsletter.