this blog originally appeared at thesagemama.com

When I last wrote, I described my fear of tumbling and rolling in karate. Since then, I have made huge steps in how I feel about rolling. I would call my fear a phobia - it was that intense and limiting and irrational. No matter how much I tried to talk myself out of it, I couldn't move.

If you have a similar fear of heights or spiders, you'll know what I meant. I spent one hour working with a sports performance EFT practitioner and completely released my fear. [It was great work and once again I am humbled by the power of EFT.] My fear traced back to two incidents -- one which makes sense and one which is amazing to consider.

When I was young, I was tumbled in the ocean. I completely lost my orientation and bearings and remember being upside down in the water and confused about which way was up. I saw light and sand and turbulent water in every direction and I didn't know how to right myself. I don't remember how I found myself out of the water and on land. Obviously, the experience was very traumatic for me and because I couldn't process it appropriately, it imprinted in my body's memory. I had always known about this happening but never connected it to the lack of physical confidence I have.
The second contributing factor for my fear was my birth experience. Our birth experience is imprinted in our body's memory and can have huge impact on who we are today. I have worked with several different professionals who specialize in this work -- it's fascinating to explore. This is my understanding of how it works -- all you midwifes and birth process folks reading this, forgive me if I make an error in describing it.

Obviously I don't consciously remember my birth but I do know some of the details. My mother was heavily drugged (which meant I was as well.) Being drugged meant I, as a baby, couldn't use my body fully. I couldn't be born of my own accord, directing how fast to be born and knowing how I was oriented in the womb. Babies, when born drug-free, are very active participants in the birth process. The resistance of a strong force (the contracting uterus) provides something to push against - that helps the baby orient herself and also know her own body. It's the baby's first experience of using their body vigorously --- if that experience is thwarted, it can affect the baby in different ways. I notice this with my own children, the first being a medicated birth and the other two being natural births. While using EFT and tapping* on my birth trauma, I actually experienced body sensations of not being able to breathe, of muscles tensing and trying to move. In about 10 minutes I was able to release the trauma from my body. Then we tapped on the energetic imprint of the birth medications -- when tapping on that, I actually re-experienced the effects of the drugs. I talked really slowly, I felt sleepy and drunk. After two rounds of tapping, I was clear.

this blog originally appeared at thesagemama.com

I was recently re-reading Teach Your Own by John Holt and A Different Kind of Teacher by John Gatto. [For those of us unfamiliar with John Holt, he was a leading author and advocate for a different way of learning for children. He's one of the primary influencers in the unschooling approach to homeschooling. John Gatto is the former outstanding teacher from NY who won several awards and has since left the school system and is also an advocate for alternative approaches to teaching our children.]