When I see clients in my energy healing practice, I frequently need to work on people's trauma from being born. Often those births were not 'traumatic', but some of the common practices in the mainstream birthing model cause trauma imprints that affect people into adulthood.

When I go back into someone's birth experience with them, one of the things most people say is that it was too bright. They often feel like a light was shining right in their face and it was shocking and made them feel scared.

If you're birthing in hospital, it's likely your medical providers will want light to see what they're doing. That light doesn't only impact your ability to stay in your birth zone, your baby most likely will hate it. Consider having it in your birth plan that the room is dark when your baby is born.

It's common for babies to be whisked out of the birth canal and into whatever's next. Everyone is in a rush. For babies, who are used to being in the most calm of environments, the speed at which their bodies are moved can be unsettling.

Consider having your partner be the one to receive your baby when they're born, and have them gently and slowly bring baby to your chest.

There can be a lot of noise in a birth room. Your baby's been used to the muffled sound of your voice and all of a sudden people are talking, and they don't know any of these voices or sounds. Baby is not expecting to be born into a hospital room, they're expecting to be born into your arms, and this can be jarring to their nervous system. There's a strong connection between our auditory sense and our nervous system so this is a common disturbance.

Consider having it in your birth plan that everyone is quiet or whispers when it's time for your baby to be born, and have your partner whisper gently to your baby as they receive and bring them to you, and they will recognize and be soothed by their familiar voice until they reach you and hear yours.

Your baby can feel what's happening in the birth room. When your doctor starts to panic or says something that makes you panic, and the energy in the room becomes more hectic, your baby feels there's something to worry about. They internalize that fear and can arrive feeling like they're not safe. Without anything to actually be worried about, the nervous system stays vigilant until it can find the threat. Since there usually isn't one, babies get stuck with this imprint.

People who've been born by planned C-section often have the feeling of having been ripped from the universe (God/heaven/insert whatever word makes sense for you). One minute there, the next minute here, with no time to adjust. As well as the shock, they can be left feeling untethered or incomplete.

When people are born, they expect to be with their mother straight away. Even a short separation to get cleaned up, weighed and checked over can be traumatic. Babies have no concept of what's happening, all they know is you're not there and they feel scared.

All of these things can be done with your baby on your body. Unless there's an emergency, there's no need for your baby not to be brought to your chest, skin to skin, right away.

It doesn't happen as often anymore, but being in a nursery is very traumatizing for newborns. They have no idea where their mom is and feel their life is in danger.

Around 1 in 10 newborns will have a stay in the NICU and have a big separation from their mom. Doing what you can to avoid interventions will minimize your chance of a NICU experience.

The adults I work with who had experiences in their birth they found traumatic, typically have a baseline of an overactivated nervous system. It makes them prone to anxiety, hypervigilance and makes them feel like the world isn't safe (a belief that can get in the way on so many levels). They can have abandonment issues and struggle to trust others or receive love.

Children who experience their birth as traumatic can struggle with their behavior and attachments for the same reasons.

Birth is sometimes unavoidably traumatic, but a lot of the traumas that babies experience come from unnecessary practices that are entrenched in mainstream birth. The more we can avoid these experiences that babies find overwhelming, the more we can protect their nervous systems.

If you want to give you and your baby the best chance of avoiding birth trauma, a homebirth allows you to dictate more of what happens in the room.

But as the vast majority of people feel choose to birth in a hospital environment, we need to have strategies to eliminate the components that are avoidable.

Having Reiki while you're in labor changes the whole experience. Reiki is a healing modality. Rather than your baby being born into an environment of concern, panic and rush, your baby gets to be born in an energetically held, peaceful, healing environment that can mitigate some of the other challenging aspects of a mainstream birth.

Based on my experience of working with adults, I believe the most important experience in life is our birth. It sets our nervous system tone and shapes our view of the world and our place in it.

When birth is traumatic, and a baby's nervous system set to dysregulation, they default to feeling fear. I believe it's part of the reason many children have difficulty with their behavior or learning, and why young people are struggling so much with their mental health.

It's the reason I created Reiki for Birth. To counter the practices that are causing harm to our babies (and us) so more babies can have beautiful, supportive births and have the best start in life.