This is a small group workshop is based on the work of Ray Castellino, DC (retired), RPP, RCST®.  He originally trained a chiropractor, and then was influenced by formative teachers in the field of energy therapy, bodywork and trauma resolution, including Randolph Stone (founder of Polarity Therapy), Peter Levine (founder of Somatic Experiencing), Franklyn Sills (Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Pioneer), and William Emerson (pioneer in prenatal and perinatal psychology). His work is also highly informed by his training as a musician and music teacher.  Castellino is a master of sensing into the patterns that can arise from difficulties from the prenatal and perinatal period. He developed a training for a specific form where professionals could learn about the many patterns that can be generally associated with historical trauma, conception, prenatally, birth and attachment in the postpartum period.  His observations, somatic skills, and passion for healing early overwhelming events in the nervous system of the families he was seeing came about after he started treating babies. Seeing how families’ experiences affected the baby, he began to work with small groups to create a therapy that would help the whole family. The training he still offers creates practitioners in this field.  This small group workshop is the product of the training and form he developed. It is ideal for creating a safe container and experiential exploring prenatal and perinatal somatic patterns and your own early history, especially finding places where there is coherency, or health in the nervous system. Using your adult presence, the group consciously creates the blueprint in human development, one of flow, connection, and safety. We offer:

• Whole body learning
• Experiential interpersonal neurobiology
• Embodiment practices to access blueprint in the body
• Tools to improve your educational efforts in prenatal and perinatal somatic health
• Didactic debriefing for each pattern for integration and understanding
• Further resources for learning provided upon request

About the Early Period and Small Group Learning: The foundation of the Womb Surround Process Group is that whatever happens for the developing baby inside the mother is influenced by what went on around him or her as well has what organically arises in the womb.  There are many examples of how this can show up in an adult, including

• Our ancestral influences
• How we are conceived, and into what time, place or feeling state in our parents
• In utero development, including the events, feelings and emotions of the family around the developing baby
• Birth process
• Postpartum events, especially separations
• Attachment patterns

A small group of people comes together for each workshop and forms a “surround,” or a container for the person who wants to explore their history and repattern overwhelming events that have left an imprint that is still causing difficulty today.  Autonomic nervous system patterns are taught and discussed, then practiced. Overhwhelming imprint patterns can look like:

• Not feeling fully alive
• Difficulty with intimate relationships
• Deep feelings of ambivalence toward life
• Chronic pain or health conditions
• Patterns that often show up that talk therapy can’t seem to change
• Feeling held in chronic double binds, or feeling like there is no way out

These patterns are somatic, or held in the body, and implicit, or held in an unconscious way.  We can often still feel these patterns when something in present time triggers this deeply held body memory that is often coupled with overwhelming feelings, such as panic, anxiety, rage, dissociation and more.  The facilitator employs very specific principles and a form that allows individuals to drop into these early patterns and repattern, with the consciousness of the group mind.  The pace is slow, and the process pendulates between the present and the wellspring of coherency he or she first establishes, and the history that is overwhelming in small, digestible pieces.  Then, the facilitator debriefs the session later so that the person taking a turn  and the group can learn more about the pattern.  It is an excellent way to learn as well as heal.

These small groups offer an epigenetic form of healing while learning.  We now know that an environment around a cell can influence whether or not genes are turned off or on.  In a sense, working with positive, slow group energy, the issue at hand can be shifted with this experience.  Participants report greater clarity, better health, great insights, and positive connections with others.  It is also an opportunity to learn about helpful patterns around many of the issues of being human.  Teaching supports understanding our interpersonal neurobiology and how our younger selves made sense of our lives by bringing these patterns to consciousness.  It is great for parents as well as other curious adults, and for couples wanting to conceive.

Kate is highly trained in this process, starting in 1999 with William Emerson and his student, Karlton Terry. Kate completed a foundation training the birth process in the Emerson style.  She continued to train with Ray Castellino’s student, Myrna Martin, completing a full training in the Castellino method, assisting a second training, and assisting many smaller seminars from 2004 until 2014. She has continued to train with and assist Ray Castellino and is supervised by his clinical colleagues, Tara Blasco, PhD, RCST® and Mary Jackson, CPM, LM, RN, RCST® from the Building and Enhancing Bonding and Attachment clinic. She has also completed a full Somatic Experiencing® training, Verbal Skills Trauma Resolution Training with Anna Chitty, and is currently studying with Ray, Mary, and Tara and their Family Practitioner training. Kate has completed all the requirements to become facilitator for this work, including many process workshops and two practitioner trainings specifically for Womb Surround Process workshop facilitators. She teaches about prenatal and perinatal imprints, especially from an autonomic nervous system perspective, and is Founding Director currently Director of Education for APPPAH, the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health. This seminar is healing and continuing education in one.

Please call Kate at 434-996-2002 to register.

There are four spaces for lodging at the center.  Please call or text Maggie at 434-466-3441 to arrange accommodations which includes use of full kitchen.  Thanks!