ASSISTING THERAPEUTIC PACING WITH NATALISM

In part, the raw substance of the unconscious in natalistic work is found within the specific visual images, colours and forms. These primal forces do not have to be conscious material to find a resting place in natalistic works of art. The possibility for symbolism and hidden meanings in art allows the pre- and perinatal unconscious to be represented, and yet to become known to the creator only as she or he is ready for discovery and integration. The artist places conscious and unconscious material in an artwork and generally the artist recognizes what has been put into the artwork when they are ready to move into that area.

Respecting the natural unfolding of the psyche, "natalistic art in therapy" like most art in therapy approaches is non-assaultive and non-confrontational in working psychotherapeutic-ally. There is a wisdom to the inner consciousness and the mind of the body which brings forward material at a pace and in a progression which each person can manage and integrate.

For this kind of spontaneous and natural unfolding to occur with natalistic activity it is important for clients to be in charge of the pacing and direction of their therapeutic healing. Allowing artists to lead the way allows them to reach deep into core issues without powerful primal forces taking on destructive or debilitating qualities. Khamsi (1987) recognizes:

Birth feelings can help or harm. Consequently, psychotherapists should be particularly sensitive with alleged birth material. Clients should neither be pushed nor invalidated with respect to birth material. Clients need to feel safe in order to relinquish control and complete the experience; birth feelings seem to emerge and be integrated only under such conditions. It is imperative that such clients be allowed to move at their own pace, and to verbalize their experiences in their own ways. (p. 57)

The burden of working through and resolving difficult early trauma can often be managed with the pacing of natalistic art activity. As Johanna stated:

The workshop experiences affected my ongoing therapy by making me brave, to continue to hammer away at painful memories. I think it assisted me to go deeper in myself and my memories. It allowed me to fall deeper into myself.

It was kind of hard in the beginning, I almost could not do my therapy when I was doing the workshop. The ways of working were different. But eventually in my individual therapy I was constantly telling my therapist to give me the crayons and paper. The drawing technique from the workshop helped because before in my therapy I did not used to do that. The technique of drawing I was able to bring to therapy helped me to get into the pain, release the pain. I was able to actually access pain that I so afraid of.

The art process itself assists with opening up feelings and managing them as they are released; in effect, the art process becomes an intrinsic component of the therapeutic support system. Particularly in working with volatile preverbal material, the nonverbal qualities of art add an intimate and accepting nonverbal guide to move through the pre- and perinatal realm.

In part the psychological wounds of early preverbal experience are identified and mastered through having them surface and resurface in some of the ongoing events or conditions in a person's life. Janus (1991) states:

Early memories seem to be stored as complete scenes or episodes in the lower structures of the brain. They are thus unlike later memories which are stored in the cerebrum and which can be retrieved with the use of language. Awareness of early memories is achieved through a repeated acting-out of their content. (p. 204)

Natalistic creations provide a safe container for these early non-cognitive feelings and experience to recreated through.

The phenomenon of "art as container" can be intensified through the technique of womb surround circles which create the vessel of womb. As one artist commented, "There was something about the enclosed spaces being safely enclosed." Another natalistic workshop participant explained:

The technique of lying on the paper and having a line drawn around us to symbolize the containment of a womb was a very powerful experience. It helped to send me inside and center me in a cellular experience. Having the line around me made me feel more like I was enveloped in a womb. It gave me a sense of safety and containment. It was notable that such a simple act should have such a profound effect.

From the place of safety created by various containers of art, deeper psychological material can be explored. As McNiff (1981) elaborates:

Through the arts the person experiences catharsis while being supported by the structure of the particular modality. The discipline and concentration necessary to produce art makes the venting emotions all the more satisfying because the focus of expression is sharpened and the entire process is controlled by the person. this offers an important alternative to feelings of being overwhelmed by the negative dimensions of our emotions. (p. 46)

Traumatic pre- and perinatal content in the psyche is often associated with overwhelming and transmarginal emotions (Lake, 1981; Findeisen, 1993). When this layer of material arises in the healing process the person is confronted with quite deep feelings. Verny (1981) states, "In intense psychotherapy an individual is forced to work through a minefield of emotionally charged memories, and in the course of that hazardous journey, he or she may unwittingly...set off one of those mines" (p. 189). For some individuals the intense feelings of birth trauma and other life threatening experiences can be too much to face and resolve. Birth feelings when not properly managed can actually make them retraumatizing, Khamsi (1987) writes:

When harmful, birth feelings were an exhausting and debilitating ordeal. "I really thought I was nuts," stated Barbara, "I thought I was never going to get better, ever. I mean, I wouldn't want anybody to go through what I went through. [Birth feelings] were harmful in a sense that there wasn't enough structure in my life, I was nothing but a mass of feelings and that's all I did. (p. 50)

For some the journey into the transmarginal dimensions of the perinatal realm can be an excruciating though bearable challenge. Khamsi (1987) continues that for some people immersed in working through the overwhelming conditions of birth, "Optimism and spirituality sometimes seemed temporarily lost, and sessions sometimes left subjects feelings hopeless, sore, tired, and/or vulnerable" (p. 51). This is not a positive portrayal of a process which is supposed to be making people feel better.

When moving into birth material a flood gate can be opened to a reservoir of preverbal pain. After decades of being buried, denied and not dealt with, the powerful feelings call for release and resolution. Sometimes these newly liberated primal feelings are not easily buried between sessions. Khamsi (1987) reports that in therapy when birth memories began to release:

Physical pain was often present, typically in the head or chest. The body would sometimes vibrate or contract against one's will, in everyday life as well as during sessions. Some felt "pulled back" into birth feelings and had to "get into them" almost constantly to relieve bodily discomfort, frustration, and tension. Sometimes conscious and concerted efforts were made to stop such feelings from emerging. (p. 51)

The person confronted with overwhelming primal forces needs an anchor to reality. This can be provided by art and the therapist. There needs to be containment and context in which to manage and make sense of the early preverbal feelings and issues. Noble (1993) warns:

When the boxed-up feelings, piled high like building blocks, start to tumble down, the beginnings of a new structure need to be in place as a safety net. Clients need supportive relationships wherein they can experience both mutual connections while maintaining healthy boundaries. (p. 91)

In birth trauma work with infants, Emerson (1987a) has observed that if the catharsis was too intense for the infant, emotional implosion occurred. According to Emerson (1987a) the pre- or perinatal trauma was turned back on the infant and "catharsis would continue unabated" (p. 69). When primal trauma is released without ongoing context and containment, "Some immediate changes were evident," but frequently, long-term resolution of the birth schema was not as positive when overwhelming and unmanageable abreaction seemed to internally reverberate, and may have even been a revictimization. Emerson (1987a) suggests, "This observation supports the notion that strong catharsis alone does little to eliminate the existence of primal pain" (p. 65).

Primal pain was initially repressed or split off because it was overwhelming to the psyche. In certain conditions, returning to that primal pain can be to no avail. It may possibly even retraumatize the individual. When the infant has a supportive catharsis where there is a "high degree of contact and presence" with the infant, then healing is "most optimally foster[ed]." The process of promoting a "healthy defensiveness and the containment of primal feeling...is called implosive containment" (p. 65). Emerson (1987a) suggests that, through implosive containment, "the more defensive the infant (while still exhibiting some defencelessness), and the more contained the catharses while still qualifying as catharses), the more likely the process will be healing for the infant" (p. 65). In other words, abreaction is desired, but there is a necessity to not overwhelm the psyche with too much of something it has previously considered traumatic. Emerson (1987a) considers that, "This conclusion challenges a basic tenet of primal therapy with adults, i.e., that the more intense and deeper (below layers of defense) the level of catharsis, the greater the healing potential (Janov, 1973). The obverse is true with infants" (p. 65).

Some degree of [a] balance between defense and defencelessness during catharsis with adults may also be a component of healthy abreaction. Emerson and I have discussed the possible application of his concepts of infant "implosive containment" to therapeutic resolution with the abreacting adult. It seems that, at some point, abreaction of overwhelming early trauma can be a form of therapeutic revictimization. It is in exactly this role of "implosive containment" that natalistic art activity offers particular advantages. It facilitates healing regression with pre- and perinatal material.

The artist's relationship with the art piece can be used to manage the processing of early memory by varying the size of the drawing, the images, or the spatial relationships in the picture; intensity of feeling can be increased or reduced; surfacing material can be clarified or faded out; meaning or context may be changed; emotion can be contained or released and [other] therapeutic outcomes may ensue. Any of these aspects of the artistic healing process can proceed consciously or unconsciously on the part of the artist.

When natalistic drawing has been the means of connecting with and bringing out deep emotions, then the cessation of art activity will help to close the gateway to those early memories. At times when a person is working with natalistic art, and the intense emotions are not subsiding near the end of the session, then the person can be encouraged to fold, roll up or in some way put away the drawing as a means of assisting closure. Cynthia explains how she managed closure and containment:

The drawing was too painful to even look at. At the time I did not want to do any more processing on the material. I felt a lot of sadness. I wanted to leave the drawing in the art room as a safe place. By leaving and keeping the drawing there I did not have to go home with the memory and the emotions of the drawing and the experience.

In addition, a client can make a nurturing or protective drawing which can be used to cover or contain a drawing which is filled with traumatic material. This barrier or healing drawing can be left in the therapy studio as a further assurance of containment and a safe place. Natalistic drawings can be taken home and used for separation and containment when overwhelming early feelings surface outside the therapy setting. Between sessions the protective drawing can be used as an image to contain, absorb or transform anxiety as it arises. Susan states:

Over the week I made a copy of the drawing from the previous session. The top drawing was "the womb as it was" and the bottom drawing was "the womb as I would like it to be." The good womb had trees in it, and birds and music. It was really kind of silly, who has trees in a womb. But the drawing did give me nurture.

Art work can serve to transform or re-image overwhelming psychological forces while they are actually being faced and worked with. In this manner the powerful emotions, in part, are paced as the artist approaches an emotion in transition -- there is the sense something powerful can change and that the effort to face the issue and its pain is worth it. Cynthia shares:

That feeling of not having a boundary or a body is something like the explosion in the drawing. The black explosion was actually done in blue. The blue in the drawing represents the same thing that the black explosion represented in two drawings back. The black explosion is an uncomfortable feeling. And by changing it to blue I'm making it more spiritual. I give way and allow myself to float in this expansiveness. There's a sense of hope and caring that goes with it. It's a different thing. It's similar to dissociation but it's not the same. There's a way in which I am trying to transform the explosion and make it more palatable.

In becoming more "palatable" the early wounds are less painful and are more therapeutically approachable. The artist can continue to process feelings and issues which may otherwise have been unbearable and [otherwise] avoided. The changing of energy or form is not a denial of inner forces, but is a transformation of the material which assists with a release and reinterpretation of the initial wound and all the life interpretations which were layered on it.

The therapeutic pacing which natalistic art and activity provides is as idiosyncratic as each individual. I continue to be surprised at the unique ways in which people employ their therapeutic art. It is important for the therapist to respect and encourage the natural pacing and therapeutic unfolding occurring through each client's art. Often part of the therapeutic process is the client becoming more in touch with his or her inner wisdom and personal truths and having these acknowledged by another individual.

SPATIAL MATRIX IN NATALISM AND NATALISTIC ACTIVITY

Traumatic childhood and prenatal experiences often defy logic or a rational order for how life and events should be. In addition, human emotions, particularly those of a traumatic nature, simultaneously exist in the present, past and future of the mind. Painful events are initially interpreted as "what will always be," and life stresses are viewed through a lens covered with an opaque picture of old feelings. As Noble (1993) points out, "The human species is unique among animals in that humans can look back and forward: back to the pre - and perinatal phase and forward to its consequences" (p. 250). Creating artwork can take the artist beyond the linear restrictions of verbal communication (Wood 1984). In the artwork itself, thought can be laid down outside the usual confines of time, relationship in space, and rational logic of order.

Miller, (1984) says that, in creative expression, "Visual images are capable of working on many levels of expressing seemingly contradictory ideas and feelings simultaneously" (p. 132). Art work allowed Cynthia to work with the contradiction of a womb where she felt both love and hate. In looking at her drawing Cynthia observed:

It is interesting that there was black and red inside the womb, and the yellow on the outside. Later on that changed, the yellow went inside and the black and red went outside. It is expressing two different dualities. I was very confused in the womb. I didn't know which way it was -- love or hate. In my drawing again there is two opposing, the love and the hate. There is always those two opposing dualities in my experience. My mother was wanting me and not wanting me.

For me there are two kinds of wombs - a toxic womb and then a loving womb.

Often the complex or illogical patterns of family dynamics or the context and attributes of a particular emotion will fall into place or be more observable in therapeutic artwork than within the parameters of ordered language. Schaverien (1992) asserts, "This is evident when the image becomes embodied. The embodied image is multi-dimensional, multi-faceted, and simultaneously public and private. Such a picture exhibits and connects with feeling on several levels simultaneously" (p. 102).

A single art work can approach and process the paradoxes of human relationships and events. Sarah found combined in one sculpture feelings and perceptions of herself and her mother with whom she was in conflict. The sculpture related her childhood womb events to her present situation:

The experience of hollowing out the space within her arms was about trying to carve out a space that was solely for me. Again there is the duplicity that on one hand the space represents the hollow in her, and the hollow in me; and then on another hand the space represents a place that I am looking for and a place that I want to be in. In a sense it is like I want a womb for a nurturing space, that is my need; and yet the womb is the empty devouring cavern which I do not need. I think that part of the power of art is a piece of art can represent a wide range of experiences simultaneously.

Art can capture a range of experience in what seems like the paradox of my feelings in the ongoing push/pull relationship with my Mom. On one level I am still longing and wanting her to be that ideal mother. At the same time I know that she can not do that, and I want to push her away. She could never do that for me now as a thirty three year old woman, it is to late. I am beyond the stage of the womb and it is time that I separate from her. All those diverse and seemingly contradictory feeling and experiences can simultaneously be projected into and expressed in one piece of sculpture.

Processing psychological material through creative expression allows access to what Blakeslee (1983) identifies as, "the right brain's superiority at recognizing fragmented or incomplete information" (p. 27). Williams (1983) explains:

The right hemisphere appears to specialize in simultaneous processing or processing in parallel. It does not move from one feature to another but instead seeks patterns and gestalts. It integrates component parts and organizes them into a whole. It is interested in relationships. (p. 26)

Through the window of her artwork Johanna reflects on her experience of traumas; interwoven with the complexity of the human experience:

It is really hard to have the birth trauma drawing as part of me, it is an awful feeling. To look at the drawing feels like, "Here it comes, here comes the bad stuff." That is kind of how it was. I still do not like to remember it. It's a terrible feeling. The writing in the upper left hand corner is, "I am too big for my home -- I feel tricked. I decided to stay here, not ever leave. You said I could. But I cannot. It is too tight -- too small. I am outgrowing my space, I am so uncomfortable. I can't move in any direction without hitting walls, blocks. I cannot get comfortable. It is painful."

I would never want to really remember this. I have remembered it, but I hate it. I can not stay with the feelings associated with my birth for very long. The writing on the drawing continues, "I struggle finally to get out -- the only choice left -- I cannot stay. I have to be forced out. You won't let me out. In fact you make it harder. You press down on me like a vice. I cannot get out. Why are you making this so hard for me. The pressure builds - so much pain."

Lower Down on the other side is written, "Full of doubt. Full of fear. Death, unwanted, confinement." To me birth is so uncomfortable, it feels like a torture. The feeling of confinement and torture from the experience of birth left me with the messages during my life that, "confinement and torture were normal," and "that is what I expect to happen."

I have a feeling that I got it too. It still scares me to think that unfortunately life reinforced those initial feelings. Birth and life, my birth and my life. I guess it was because of that woman that was just an imprint -- it told me right there, "that is the way it's going to be for you, for me."

Because of the torture and confinement of birth there were ways that I accepted and did not turn away from, or did not protest, torturous experiences later in childhood. Their seeming normal allowed them to reoccur and to be habituated. When abuse did occur it left me with the feeling of, "this is what I should expect and one more time I just have to suffer."

If birth had been different I think if I had encountered confinement and torture as a child I would have not reacted by accepting it. I would have told somebody. I would have done something about it. I imagine I would not have blindly walked into more and more situations of terrible behaviour being done to me.

Each time I left, but I still knew, "Oh, ok, I've got to go through this. It will end. I will get through it." Somehow experiences in birth and in utero taught me the process of leaving my body, and dissociating. In some ways I am thankful I learned that ability to dissociate.

In Johanna's drawing of feelings surrounding the birth experience, the prenate has a form reminiscent of an early fetus (five to eight weeks). The early developmental stage is presented in the shape of the head and legs. Hands and feet appear to be stumps or non-discreet. The head is also tortioned forward, with the chin against the chest, as is common to the early fetus.

These may only be coincidences, but they may be indications of a relationship between birth trauma and some other early prenatal experiences. Certainly Johanna has spoken about a relationship between the two time periods; that the forms and style of her drawing represent two time periods lends further credence to her suppositions. It is interesting to note that, though the eye and tilt of the head in the drawing are characteristic of early fetuses, the size proportion of the head to body is typical for an infant or even young child. This would make sense if Johanna connected through her drawing with a relationship between her birth and childhood confinement and torture.

The length of the arms and legs as well as the sharp angle of the buttocks are not fetal proportions. The manner in which the arms are reaching for the head are more like a child-like than an infantile. The sense of floating seems fetal and the sense of confinement anticipates birth. A black mass wrapping the fetal head and part of the buttocks suggests the ominous pressure of birth.

In Johanna's drawing the prenate, the womb and the area outside the womb are all black. It is interesting that a bright and lively blue was chosen for both the womb surround and the outline of the prenate as well as a filling colour inside the prenate. The choice of these colours and the various depth of their shade are concerns which could be explored with the artist.

This artist has used a spiral in other drawings in this series and it is found in this drawing as well. The continuity of images, colours and form represented in a number of drawings created over a period of time can be used for exploring patterns, finding integration and relatedness of events, or to serve as a landmark to generate conversation and encourage the artist in self exploration.

Deborah found that the spatial matrix of art allowed her the repatterning experience of looking up out of the crib into the eyes of parents who were welcoming. As Deborah explains:

The drawing is from the visual perspective of what I would have wanted to have seen while I was laying in a cradle. In the group sharing after the drawing exercise I was able to lay on the carpet and have a couple of people hold the drawing over me. It felt great. Some of the other people laid down looking up at the drawing while others held my drawing over them. It was validating to have others see the drawing from the perspective of the baby.

The images in the art work allowed Deborah to internally manifest her positive feelings of bonding. By involving others in assisting her in manipulating the work of art, the bonding and nurturing experience took on social dimensions.

Part of the spatial matrix of art activity is its ability to go beyond the limitations of a singular time and location. Sarah noticed in one of her drawings:

The image of the one fetal head actually has three different sizes. There is the inside line and fetal body, the middle shadow in the fetal body, and the outside line in the fetal body. When I look at it I see it as representing different stages in it's development.

Van Husen (1988) makes note of the variation in body proportion which can be experienced during regression or while closely connected to early material. These spatial distortions can appear in works of art or be experienced somatically. Van Husen (1988) describes:

One day, while getting a detailed description of how the fearful person felt all curled up in a soft, dark corner trying to feel safe, I asked if she was aware of her body proportions. With that question being answered in the affirmative, I asked what was the size of the head in relation to the shoulders. When the answer was that the head was much bigger than the shoulders it dawned on me that I must be listening to a prenatal recall.

I then questioned how many months the person had been in that residence. I was told three months. Later checking my embryology text, which, I must admit, I was no longer too familiar with, I discovered the head-shoulder was accurate for the length of pregnancy; this was a fact I was not familiar with any longer when I elicited the response from the patient.

Since then, I have used these body proportions as given by the patient as a guideline to the period of life the recall seemed to cover. (p. 180)

Consciously and unconsciously art images can facilitate the spatial matrix of time in which most trauma exists. When acting out of the legacy of old pains, the past is present, and the present is past. These illogical positions are manifest in the fluidity of art imagery.

It is likely that newborns and prenates experience and interpret stimuli [far] more multimodally than children or adults. Multimodal activities performed by adults may assist in stimulating a fetal state of consciousness in the adult. When I initially developed natalistic techniques to be multisensory, ie. incorporating sound, drawing, movement, writing (Rico, 1983), relaxation and visualization (Gawain, 1978), among others, I did not intend the multisensory approach of natalistic art in therapy exercises to be recreating a state of consciousness specifically infant or prenatal in origin. What I was hoping to do, was in the context of producing creative art, to simulate many of the stimuli which were present at birth or in the womb. Certainly all the stimuli which are reminiscent of birth and the womb do trigger, to various degrees, material from those times. In addition to environmental triggers there may be process triggers as well.

Some of the art activity process triggers would elicit forms of experience common to or associated with the newborn or prenate. Creative activity through literally creating oneself, is the primary enterprise of the embryo and early fetus. Another process activity would be the state of being which comes about as a result of being in darkness, particularly while curled in a ball, in some form of enclosing surround. The darkness and the tight enclosure could be external environmental triggers; but the closing off of visual stimuli and processing and going inside of oneself with a mindful awareness creates a shift in ongoing process and consciousness.

Each time an external womb recreating stimulus is added, there are further environmental and process triggers which recreate for the psyche a sense of the womb and womb consciousness. In addition, each time a stimulus is taken in and processed in conjunction with other ongoing experience there can be a significant change in process. The accumulation of a variety of products of simultaneous processes facilitates multimodal processing. In the mediated actions of a variety of simultaneous processes different states of mind are elicited.

Multimodal processing can involve the simultaneous activity of various areas of the brain; for instance left hemisphere and right hemisphere, or frontal cortex and hind or mid-brain. In addition multimodal processing may involve the unifying of cellular or body memory/thinking with cortical memory/thinking. In this manner various, somewhat separate and diverse forms of awareness, blend into a greater form of consciousness.

NATALISTIC ACTIVITY AS ALTERED STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The original birth and prenatal experiences are stored and reverberate in various levels or modes of non-cognitive consciousness. In part this early traumatic material is stored in nonverbal parts of the brain as images, sensations and feelings. There is some suggestion that the pre- and perinatal material which is mediated through cortical function is largely stored in the right brain (Lake, 1981); and in the lower brain-stem, and is mediated by the hypothalamus (Holden, 1975). Williams (1983) suggests, "While both hemispheres process sensory stimuli, it seems likely that stimuli that are nonverbal are processed primarily in the right hemisphere" (p. 35). Preverbal/nonverbal material would likely be activated through right hemisphere activity. Art and creative activity initiates a shift of consciousness into the right brain. Natalistic activity therefore brings the artist closer to the realm of pre- and perinatal consciousness partially through right brain processes.

Early preverbal memory is also a likely inhabitant of the mid-brain and lower brain. According to Chamberlain (1987), part of the prenatal experience has been "mediated by lower levels of the brain" (p. 86). This is echoed by Holden and Janov (1975) who suggest, "there are intermediate or buffer zones (such as the limbic cortex) between the levels of consciousness [within the brain] which control and filter the amount of access between them" (p. 99). Rossi and Cheek (1988) state that there are "emotional-memory-behavioral patterns associated with the limbic system" (p. 412); and Livingston (1978) considers that this brain structure may be partially responsible for storing "any biologically meaningful experiences" (p. 19).

Art may have particular advantages for both inducing or accessing states of consciousness and other dissociative states. McNiff (1981) has noted the capacity for art activity to create "hypnotic trance states," and induced trance is a direct route into dissociative consciousness. Combining focusing, relaxation, guided imagery, regressive induction techniques and selected types and pieces of music in conjunction with the art techniques in natalistic art in therapy promotes shifts in consciousness. These altered states of consciousness are important for accessing early material and promoting healing to preverbal traumata. Sarah related:

When I was doing the drawing and writing in the workshop I was quite often definitely in an altered state of consciousness from the natalism exercises of the visualizations and relaxations, the countdowns and the music. The most pervasive feeling in that altered state of consciousness was one of floating.

McNiff (1981) suggests, "Hypnotic trance states are achieved in the expressive therapies through the mesmerization of art experiences and activities that restrict the perceptual field through sensory focusing and meditation" (p. 13). Wadeson (1980) suggests that the visual realm can return one to the pre-language development blocks of the psyche; artistic expression also allows or even encourages shifts in levels of consciousness. Brigette found that natalistic activity created an internal state which was familiar to her during other creative activities.

There was an experience of the drawing as an internal place internally and it was effort to come out of that to make language. I was in some state where using language and communicating with someone else was another state. It was effort to change from the one state to the other. The strongest thing that helped facilitate that movement from one state to another was having been there once and having had a positive experience of doing it.... Some of my best writing comes from a similar kind of half-awake half-asleep state when I first wake up. Trust from having been there previously was probably the deepest thing for allowing me to go into a deep place, the counting and music helped as well. I was willing to go there and I was not resistant to anything. There was a trust level that was important.

For most people art activity is not attached to the well defended cognitive structures of language and left brain rational thought. According to Blakeslee (1983), there is "the tendency for the right brain to specialize in non-verbal thinking and the left to specialize in verbal thinking" (p. 180). Within the brain itself, creating artwork and doing creative activities shifts an artist from left brain thinking to right brain thinking (Edwards, 1986). This shift to right brain thinking helps to move the artist out of the rational mode into the realm of feelings. Blakeslee (1983) asserts "the right brain is the specialist in emotional matters" (Blakeslee, 1983, p. 179). In addition to being associated with the world of feeling, time spent in the right brain modality can be quite non-verbal.

The creative right brain is noted for its ability to process thought outside the dimensions of rational language. Blakeslee (1983) says, "Because of the right brain's inability to express itself, it has been unfairly called `the unconscious mind'. A better choice of words might be 'the nonverbal mind'" (p. 27). If birth and womb consciousness are, in part, associated with the right brain, then the shift to the right brain while creating art may have significance for eliciting preverbal experience.

There may be other shifts in consciousness related to more primitive thought processes or earlier forms of consciousness which also occur in response to the art process. The shifts in consciousness -- from left to right brain; and from higher frontal brain to lower mid- brain; and even from cerebral consciousness to some form of body mind) or what Janov (1975) suggests is "consciousness at the individual cellular level" p. 120) may be part of what is experienced as altered states of consciousness which occur while producing art in general and natalism in particular.

For all the speculation regarding exactly the nature of exactly what is occurring during the creative process, it must be kept in mind, as Nadeau (1984) notes, "creativity is still a mysterious element of the human brain. Over centuries there have been attempts to understand, and to clarify the creative process, and still scholars admit that we know little about what creativity is" (p. 37). While acknowledging our limitation for understanding creativity, Nadeau (1984) also stipulates it is clearly known that "creative activity provides opportunities for self-discovery and personal development" (p. 37). Though it is not precisely known what happens in the psyche with art activity or with regression to birth feeling, it is clear that both are associated with non-ordinary states of consciousness.

At some point, the artist and the person in birth regression must let go and move into the deeper, preverbal levels of consciousness and processing. While in those non-ordinary states of consciousness the regressed individual retains a connection with the external self, but there are also additional conditions of consciousness which are experienced. During therapeutic episodes of giving over the focus of control to other conditions of consciousness, the observing self is present to remember the unfolding experience. Khamsi (1987) notes:

Birth feelings seemed to constitute a unique type of awareness. Common were reports of a qualitative shift away from ordinary consciousness; sometimes this felt like entering a different dimension or a deeper realm of experience. Common was the sense of the body "taking over," or of "letting go" or "surrendering" to the feeling or to the deeper self. Paradoxically, subjects claimed to be totally involved with their internal experience while simultaneously registering the presence of others, the perceived safety of the situation, or even a self-awareness by way of an "observing self." (p. 52)

Like archaic rites of transformation, natalistic art processes combine art activity and rebirth experience. Art activity and various forms of therapeutic rebirth likely share common elements of consciousness. Indeed, rebirth has historically been associated with the creative endeavours which combined art, myth and ritual (Eliade, 1958). The contemporary natalistic artist experiences the shifts of consciousness common to therapeutic birth regression, art activity and archaic rebirth rituals.

INDEX:
THERAPEUTIC PROPERTIES
OF NATALISM

Page 1

• NATALISTIC THERORY DEVELOPMENT
• NATALISM IN ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL
• NONVERBAL CONSCIOUSNESS
• THERAPEUTIC PROPERTIES OF NATALISM

Page 2A

• Natalism as a Holistic Process
• Psychological Imagery in Natalism
• Decreased Defences Through Natalistic Activity
• Natalism as Expression of the Unconscious

Page 2B

• Permanence of Natalism
• Body Expression Through Natalism and Natalistic Activity
• Natalism as Objectification
• Emotional Release Through Natalism

Page 2C

• Assisting Therapeutic Pacing With Natalism
• Spatial Matrix in Natalism and Natalistic Activity
• Natalistic Activity as Altered State of Consciousness
• Natalism Assists the Preverbal to Become verbal

Page 2D

• Creative and Physical Energy in Natalism
• Repatterning Through Natalism
• Physical Repatterning
• Repatterning Numbing Qualities of Anaesthesia

Page 2E

• Natalism as Psychological Induction and Suggestion
• Natalism as Communication
• A Life Force in the Womb
• Representation, Symbolism, Metaphor and Interpretation in Natalism