In the following article, I want to introduce the perinatal matrices according to Stanislav Grof. Just as in CranioSacral Therapy, specific repressed traumas come to the surface when applying the Holotropic Breathwork technique, with birth trauma being the most common phenomenon. The founder of holotropic therapy, Stanislav Grof, determined four distinctive phases with their characteristic manifestation patterns.
Knowledge of the individual manifestation of each perinatal matrix can help us in therapy better determine the quality of the trauma and the imprints it leaves. Since every unfinished or negatively valued life process binds potentials and energy, therapeutic reappraisal is of great importance when supporting the individualization process of the human being.
In my series of articles to which this contribution belongs, I holistically address the topic of trauma treatment through consciously induced alternative states of consciousness, comparing CranioSacral Therapy with Holotropic Breathwork. In this context, the Perinatal Matrices are essential because they emerge when one goes below the surface into the depths of the unconscious.
The Perinatal Matrices
The Freudian Perspective
In traditional psychiatry, psyche mapping is limited to postnatal events. Sigmund Freud said the newborn is a blank slate, a tabula rasa. There is nothing of interest to the therapist that was before birth, including birth itself. Strangely, birth itself is not considered a psychological trauma in contemporary psychiatry. Yet, the immediately following experiences during breastfeeding are considered profoundly influential—for the rest of our lives.
Thus, we are asked to believe that the childbirth experience is useless and does not impact the psyche. However, it may express itself and be experienced as a potentially life-threatening and highly challenging situation.
The Birth in the Gynecological Sense
Gynecological birth can last 45 minutes, 2, 15, 40 hours, or even three days. In the most dramatic case, the child may even die in the birth canal and must be resuscitated. The fact that the child does not notice anything strange is the current state of psychology. There should be no record of it in the memory.
After the birth, the child is put in the female breast immediately or later, depending on the doctor’s decision. This situation can be either satisfactory or unsatisfactory, given that this early educational experience can profoundly impact lives.
Undeniably, the period immediately after birth, the increasingly applied “skin-on-skin bonding,” and the further breastfeeding period play an important role. Still, the experience of childbirth itself has so far played, at best, a secondary role. Therefore, I plead that emphasis on therapy should not be placed only on this postnatal period.
Birth, according to Stanislav Grof
Through my experiences and re-experiencing different stages of birth, I have increasingly understood Stanislav Grof’s model more and more and realized why, based on his observations, he expanded the classical cartography of the human psyche to include this “perinatal imprint.”
We carry the memories of the experiences after birth, the individual Freudian unconscious, and the powerful imprint of the prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal processes. That is the process before, during, and around birth.
Birth in itself may represent a biological process that has not been completed, but may also be the primary traumatic experience of the human being in his life in general.
Stanislav Grof
The Matrices of Birth
Transformative Processes
The transformative processes, growth, expansion, and healing processes to come to a new level of experience and reach new dimensions can also be associated with unpleasant, sorrowful, and painful feelings—just as a fetus can experience. It usually has enough space in the mother’s belly, floats weightlessly in the amniotic fluid, and is nourished, and consequently, it grows and becomes bigger and bigger. At some point, it is so big that it is restricted in further growth. Then it becomes increasingly uncomfortable.
A dichotomy arises between the security of the abdomen versus the confinement of the uterus and the pressure of suffering. Something must change to follow the different natural processes of growth and expansion. We do this transformation cycle throughout life, over and over again. If we don’t get stuck, we keep moving forward. Meanwhile, “getting stuck” is also part of the cycle with Grof. He described this birth cycle and everything connected as a process with four distinct phases and divided them into perinatal matrices.
Birth as Trauma
The significance of such experiences far exceeds that of ordinary psychological traumas. The emotions and bodily sensations resulting from situations in which the survival or integrity of the organism was threatened seem to play an essential role in developing various psychopathological forms, a fact that academic science has not yet recognized.
Regression from Birth Processes
When people experience regression from the birth process, they experience it in particular clusters of experience. Experience clusters are interrelated experiences of different understandings of the same quality. Moreover, the different phases are not all the same quality.
As Upledger also observed, the birth phase may not have been naturally planned or predetermined, but it can leave a much more intense imprint on our psyche than the one that happened “organically.”
After multiple observations of thousands of “rebirths,” it was found that each of these clusters is characterized by specific emotions and psychosomatic experiences. According to Grof, each phase has its characteristic symbolic language that escapes from the collective unconscious. You could compare it to symptom language.
Thus, this broadly means that specific patterns that shape us are related to birth and are present in all of us, more or less the same experiential qualities and psychodynamic control systems of the psyche in later life, which emerge cyclically and in different life situations.
Continuation of the Matrices
Summary
With this introduction, I hope to clarify that the birth process can represent a trauma that can determine or influence a person’s whole life. In holistic therapy, we have several potent tools to devalue these experiences and neutralize the psychological consequences emotionally.
This intention can be a long-term and agonizing undertaking in classical psychotherapy, but the process can be accelerated tremendously with CranioSacral Therapy and Holotropic Breathwork, even in combination. Also, my experience shows that homeopathy can gently assist here.
The Perinatal Matrices at a Glance
- Basics of Perinatal Matrices
- 1st Matrix, “The Amniotic Universe”
- 2nd Matrix, “Cosmic Devouring and Hopelessness”
- 3rd Matrix, “Struggle before Death and Rebirth”
- 4th Matrix, “Death and Rebirth”
Thematic Questions
- What are alternative states of consciousness?
- Where can I find help with holistic treatment methods?
- What is CranioSacral Therapy?
- How can I get homeopathic treatment?
- Can I treat birth trauma holistically?
- What is Holotropic Breathwork, and where can I do it?
- What are transpersonal dimensions?
- Who is the author of this article?
Continue with the 1st perinatal Matrix >
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