The Sacred Womb
Come home to your true nature; Embody The Wisdom Of Your Menstrual Cycle, Heal Across Your Soul’s Journey & Unify Your Divine Masculine and Feminine.
The Sacred Womb
Recalibrating Our Attachment Template: Incarnation To Birth
Our attachment template primarily determines how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world, and to recalibrate it, we need to work where it was formed: from incarnation, conception, in our Mother’s womb, to birth and our first year.
Our attachment template is formed by the time we get to about 1. Key events, memories, and ways of relating usually compound that template, meaning that patterns of relating keep repeating over time.
This leads to the development of what we might think is personality when it’s actually adaptive traits that keep repeating because they are trying to protect us from further pain. And because they were formed so early, these traits often feel like ‘that’s just who I am’.
When we identify these themes and patterns in our lives, we can also trace them into our Soul’s Journey and work with the whole root system of our consciousness. This all needs attending to to recalibrate our attachment template.
Whilst most of us won’t have a conscious memory of this very early and primal time in our lives, it is accessible once we are tuned in enough to our body and internal world. Everyone I have worked with can access this, we don’t need to be ‘spiritual’ – whatever that means!
This is also not a solely cognitive process. Deep remembering comes from the body, the mind, and the soul, which can all be accessed through the body, our six senses, and by slightly altering our state of consciousness, which we all can do.
I also find that doing this helps us to realise that babies aren’t born pure and open. By the time we are born, our sense of self has been developing for 9 months, the attachment template is formed, and we are bringing in themes from our Soul to resolve and reconcile.
My last caveat is I don’t channel anything for anyone when work – this is really important, as we do need a direct and embodied connection with what we remember, otherwise it doesn’t truly ‘land’ in our system and thus doesn’t actually recalibrate our state of being.
During the episode, I talk through the potential of remembering and recalibrating at the following key stages of coming into this life:
- Incarnation
- Conception
- Gestation
- Birth
- First Year
I want to remind and inspire those who are listening that it is possible to process pain that felt previously unbearable, once we are resourced and stable enough, we can remember, and we can unwind the adaptions in our system and come home to ourselves.
SOUL WORK TRAINING
Check out The Soul Work Training to integrate gestational healing into your practice.
Melanie Swan is regarded as a leader in healing the physical womb, restoring the metaphysical womb, and connecting with the cosmic womb.
She’s a Womb Medicine Woman and Soul Worker with 20 year’s experience – who guides and empowers women to come home to their true nature.
She hosts The Sacred Womb Podcast and runs The Womb Healing Training, and is currently writing her first book The Sacred Womb, which is, at its core, a handbook for the empowerment of womankind; due for release in late 2025.
Hello, hello, welcome back to the podcast, which today is all about recalibrating our attachment template from incarnation to birth. So I'm going to do a little intro and just kind of set the scene and then I'm going to talk about incarnation, conception, gestation which is the time in our mother's womb birth and the potential of what we can do then to heal our attachment template in the first year. Okay, so, yeah, what is our attachment template? So this is what I mean by it. It is the way that we relate to ourselves and other people and the world around us. So you might have heard like anxious attachment or avoidant attachment. I'm not going to go into all of that because it's. It's all comes under the heading of our attachment template and that forms as soon as we start to incarnate. It forms through our conception, it forms through our time in the womb and by the time we're born it's there, there's a blueprint for how we relate. So we don't just come into this world at birth kind of new and fresh and pure. We do have a new psyche, but of course we have a soul and we're already carrying certain themes that we want to learn and resolve and reconcile. So we bring our own stuff and then we interact within our mother's womb with our mom and our dad and the world around us, and then we sort of plop out we're born and most of that template is already set by then. So in order to actually recalibrate our attachment template, that's where we need to work. We need to work in those really deep states that are often unconscious, that feel like, well, that's just part of me and you know, working with our attachment template in this life and childhood really helps, but it doesn't actually get to the roots of what's creating the template and the defense responses in the first place. So I also want to be clear this is not a little magic wand. Nobody has one of those and there is preparation needed to do this work. We can't just go straight into this with someone, say, who's never had any therapy before. We need to have done our fair share of personal development so that we've got like a stable enough system and enough of the parts of us that need to be heard and seen, and our pain process needs to have been done before we can get to this. But when we do, our pain process needs to have been done before we can get to this, but when we do. It's fantastic, it genuinely is transformational. I'm not trying to sell this to you in a kind of glitzy way and say it's this and that I wouldn't do that unless I'd experienced it myself and I, you know, consistently seen it with the people I work with. So it's genuinely transformational.
Speaker 1:And you may also think, well, god, I can't remember that far back and nobody or I mean most people don't have a conscious memory of their incarnation and the time in the womb. But with some guidance, we can alter our state of consciousness slightly and we can all access this. We can all do it. State of consciousness slightly, and we can all access this, we can all do it. So I've never worked with anyone that can't do this. Definitely worked with people that doubt it, but then once we go in, it's there, because the memories, the felt sense is in the body. So we do have to work with the body, with it. So, yeah, there we go. That's the little, that's the little prep thing.
Speaker 1:And another little caveat is that I don't channel anything for anyone when we work together. This is just so important as we do need a direct connection from our body, from within us, as to what happened and how these defenses got formed and what the root is, and processing that is through the body as well. So, uh, yeah, no channeling. I don't think that's helpful. I think that's kind of a paradigm we need to move on from. And uh, so, yeah, if you choose to do this, you will be remembering everything directly. And, um, yeah, you don't have to be spiritual, whatever that means. It's just in our subconscious and unconscious once we go into the body. So, yeah, anyway, I think that's enough prep. I'm wondering if you're like yeah, come on, I'm even thinking, get on with it, mel. So here we go.
Speaker 1:Here is recalibrating our attachment template from incarnation to birth. So the work actually begins between lifetimes, in the space we were before we were conceived, that time where we didn't have a physical body, we're in spirit. Conceived At time where we didn't have a physical body, we're in spirit. So this isn't a theory I've come up with. By the way, this is all from direct experience of my work with many people, and this may simply be how our human mind constructs it, but it doesn't matter. Some people say it's metaphorical. It doesn't matter. We go there and then what is there is really key and it helps unwind and us understand a lot.
Speaker 1:So the first thing that we have the potential to remember is the resources we came with. They may, but not be remembered kind of literally. It may be like a felt sense or a deep knowing. Things are different when we don't have a physical body. We experience emotions and states differently, but we do come with guides and supporters and knowledge to be able to return to ourself when we come into this lifetime, to be able to resolve what we need to resolve. So we do come with all that support and often that's of huge, huge relief, because a lot of us have had tough times on earth and some of us think, oh, I don't really want to be here, what's the point of this and what's all the purpose? So being able to remember that we came with support, we came with wisdom within us, we came with light, we came with love and anything else that's there, is of huge support.
Speaker 1:The second thing that's also really helpful is to remember the choice that we made to actually come to earth and have a physical body, and that, again, is really, really important because it helps us make sense of oh. So I did choose to be here. Well, I wonder why? Because you know, earth isn't the easiest place to be and we do have challenges and sometimes really, you know, traumatic events and and connections. So remembering that we chose to come is really key because it kind of helps dissolve some of that victim mentality of, oh, I just can't wait till this is over and life is happening to me. So it helps us remember and restore a sense of purpose really, and when I say purpose I don't mean coming to be a carpenter or a therapist or whatever. It's remembering why we come for our own personal development. A lot of the time it seems to be just to develop, to grow, to explore and to experience. And the vehicles for that might be a certain profession or certain relationships or having kids, might be a certain profession or certain relationships or having kids. But to remember that core thread of why we came and that we did make a choice brings huge relief, as often events and patterns start to make sense and it gives a real context to our lives. And the other thing that we can remember is also that we do have some sort of soul, family, and that's really, really nice. That's one thing I remembered and the state of harmony and support and connectedness, uh, and I have, you know, kept that connection with them now and that feels really, really lovely. So, yeah, there we have it. That's not an exhaustive list, by the way. It's just some of the key things that we can remember. You might not as you go through it, and we might also process stuff like grief from leaving that soul family, or resistance to coming into earth family or resistance to coming into earth or we might also remember some of the themes that we're also carrying, that we want to work out and, again, that's really helpful because it gives context to what's happened in our life, particularly the difficult events. To say, I could see how this is sticking and an expression of the themes that I was already carrying. So, again, just anything that needs to be remembered there will come up and it's just huge, huge relief and support.
Speaker 1:Okay, so next up is conception. So we have two major things here the macro, like the bigger picture, and then the micro of the development of our nervous system. So, by the way, we are conscious here I know that we don't remember this, but really, truly, once we go in, we are actually present. For this it happens pretty, pretty quickly, so in the remembering and processing we do have to slow it down a lot. But the macro, like the bigger picture, is, uh, that our consciousness compresses into a physical. So we have, if you can imagine, like a, a soul. That's a big ball. It stays as a big ball, but its focus goes to the center and it compresses all its focus into a physical body in order to see itself. That's what I remembered and that was really really key. It was quite uncomfortable actually, but that was really really key to feeling into and actually knowing that I was a soul. I am a soul and some other people I've worked with have remembered that as well.
Speaker 1:So we need to have a look at the bigger picture. You might remember something else, you might get something else in your own way, but that's just one of the major things we can experience, which again changes our experience of being here and what it is and the potential we have and why we've got all this stuff and why it's important to understand ourselves really. And then the little picture, like the micro, is the development of our nervous system in response to our parents. We can feel our parents' state of consciousness at the time of conception. So this gives us good information for both. If you're going to conceive, your baby's going to feel both your states of consciousness when you do conceive and from the baby's perspective.
Speaker 1:If mum's checked out, dad's angry, all those sorts of things, our nervous response actually nervous system, sorry, actually is responding to that and forming in relation to that, and we're always looking out for ourselves. So it's always about self-protection. How am I going to cope with this Angry, let's say, angry dad and checked out mum? And yeah, that's where our defences start to form and that's where what we call our personality, or what we think of as our personality, starts to form. Of course it's part of us, but it's the truth, but it's not the big, big truth of us. So, yeah, anyway, whatever we need to process at conception can be processed. So pain is kind of understood, put in context and processed out. The body and any love that's there as well, we can amplify. So that's all changing our blueprint. So it's not changing what happened, it's just changing the charge that we hold in the body and the love that we hold in our body about who we are and being here.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll leave it there, and next up we have gestation, gestation, wow, okay. So this is where the juicy stuff happens as well. So the roots of all the roots in our system of what create our personality or defense responses, the root of that is survival terror. I know this sounds quite extreme for a fetus. However, when we land in the womb, what I'm finding is often mums don't consciously know they're pregnant and the womb has been dissociated from for so long that often even in really lovely people that just really want a child, the womb is kind of pretty empty. It's devoid of love, and that's the exact thing we need when we land in the womb. I've had people remember like it's the womb's kind of cobwebby and black blobs and empty and dark and dank and of course we don't want to be there then. So we can also feel mum's state of consciousness primarily and we start to form our kind of personality and our self-protection mechanisms in response to mum.
Speaker 1:So if we go with this thread of, say, mum's pretty checked out, then our sense of needing to survive really amplifies and we're like, oh, I really need to take care of mum. This, you know, in order to survive. And that's where the people pleasing is is coming from. It's actually parent pleasing, it's mum pleasing from, often from this very early time in the womb. So if mum's kind of unstable, if mum's, you know, got her own fresh air of unprocessed trauma, then that sort of message of mum hasn't got me. Oh shit, I better try and look after her in order to survive.
Speaker 1:It gets compounded in our nervous system and so people pleasing, or parent pleasing to really really unwind, that needs the work needs to be done in the womb, when we're in the womb, okay, and so if you can imagine this kind of terrified consciousness in a fetus, then we're going to have reactions to that. We're going to try and take care of them. We're going to try and amplify whatever pleases her or seems to please her in the womb and we're going to, like, put our needs to one side so that we don't burden her, something like that. Some version of that is usually there. So, in order to recalibrate our attachment template, we do need to process that root survival terror.
Speaker 1:And once it is processed, I can, hand on heart, say that we can then dismantle, go through our nervous system and dismantle over time all the shifts and kinks and squishes that we've done in order to survive. And you know, when we're kids we need our parents in order to survive. So it's an understandable thing to do, to squish ourselves some parts of ourselves and to amplify other parts of ourselves, um, and it can be undone through prep work and then nice thorough processing in utero and then, um, some work afterwards to to really let the nervous system relax and unwind. Truly. So there are very obviously. We're in, we're in the womb for about nine months, so there can be key events. We don't have to process every single day, every single moment, but we usually process like key events, like landing in the womb, the umbilical cord forming, and then there might be certain instances or mum might have certain experiences at certain points that need to be processed. But we also amplify the love as well, so that we're always returning to love, and that's really what makes the difference.
Speaker 1:It does sometimes change our relationships with our mums. It doesn't change our mothers, though. I want to be really clear about that, because obviously lots of us are healing our mother wound and some people want to heal their mother line and subconsciously that's really they want to heal their mothers in order that they get their needs met. It's not going to happen. It does help our relationship with self. It is going to help our triggers if you're in touch with a parent. But, yeah, we have to really focus on our own needs and come back home to our own body and ourself with this and, yeah, fabulous things come of it. So, yeah, that's gestation. Um, so let's go on to birth now. Okie dokie.
Speaker 1:So how we are born contributes to our attachment template as well, and we've got various different styles of birth. But what really is the determining factor, it seems, is how connected are mum and baby at birth, because the baby is conscious and hopefully this is going to be useful for you if you're going to have a baby or you're pregnant. The baby is consciousness. You can synchronize with the baby and you birth together, so they're in there or we're in there and we can be engaged with, but often are, you know, through the commercialization of birth.
Speaker 1:It's a very medical procedure and that's really affecting a lot of us because we just feel disconnected from mum at birth and that's very, very terrifying. Sometimes we don't want to come out and then we're pulled out with forceps. Sometimes there's an inducing I think I was going to say induction. Sometimes women are induced and that doesn't give an opportunity for the baby's free will to fully develop. Sometimes there is a cesarean and that, I can tell you is having devastating consequences on our attachment template. I don't say that lightly at all. I know it's medically needed very occasionally, but cesarean sections, c-sections, are having a devastating effect on our attachment template because the baby is conscious and can you imagine being in this lovely warm, dark space and suddenly it's slashed open and you're wrenched out and often there's very bright lights and the umbilical cord is cut straight away and you know the baby doesn't have chance to catch their breath and they're not given to mum straight away, especially if they're whisked off into intensive care or this isolated unit.
Speaker 1:I don't think that happens as much nowadays, but yeah, it's just horrific what it produces. It produces fear that there's just something wrong with our body, like intense hypochondria. It produces abject survival, terror, a feeling of abandonment, isolation. It's honestly, it's horrendous. So, if you can, I encourage you to have a natural birth where you feel connected to your baby, unless it's absolutely medically necessary and you you know you're not going to survive otherwise. Um, but there are so many doulas out there now, and hats off to all the doulas that are working. You're doing fantastic work. It's so, so needed, um, and I do wonder if the douas have had their own attachment work in the womb and at conception and at birth, because often we're drawn to things that we need to do ourselves. So, any doulas out there, if this is resonating with you, I'm here, my colleagues are here, and it's such important work and it'll help you to understand the process of birth, uh, and gestation even more.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, it's so important to stay connected to baby, uh, otherwise you've got survival terror right from the start and there's going to be defense responses, because that's always too much for a baby to feel and you know, this lasting sense of being interrupted and the free will not developing properly, which is really common for cesarean babies, that where you know people don't feel they've they can sort of get a hold of their free will very well. So, yeah, all sorts of things there's several books on this as well. I might list them in the show notes sorts of things there's several books on this as well. I might list them in the show notes. If I have a look at them, I will put a couple so you can look more into it. But yeah, that's birth and anyway we can remember it and it is totally possible to recalibrate it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we're on to first year now, so we can pick up at birth and think about that first touch with mum latching on, feeling mum's breath and feeling how mum is and dad and you know everyone that's in the room. I repeat, we are conscious, we can feel everything that's happening. So, yeah, it's really important that we take care, take really, really good care of these moments and not cut the umbilical cord too early and not just take the baby away and wash it. And it's not just a thing, it's a conscious being that is constantly forming its sense of the world by experience. So what we can do from the first year is really have a look at key memories that cemented that attachment template in place.
Speaker 1:And again, it's about processing pain, it's about understanding the context and it's about amplifying any love and really coming home to ourselves, which, once we've really processed the roots, you know whatever was unbearable, these defense responses that we have, that we think are our personality, do start to dismantle. It's not a straightaway thing, it's an overtime thing and you know, for further work we might have access to parts of ourselves that we didn't before, but it does initiate this real coming home to self that we are safe in our body, that we are safe to be here and that we did choose to be on earth. So all very transformational, it does take a good amount of time. The whole container of work usually takes a good few months. There's a good amount of prep needed and there'll be an unwinding of the nervous system. That happens after. It doesn't mean you're going to be in therapy for years, by the way, because it just it does have a natural unwinding if we stay present with it and work day to day with it.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, okay, so that is that is it? Recalibrating our attachment template from incarnation to birth to first year? So I hope I've put it in a way that helps you understand that it's deep work, but it is transformational and it does work and whatever attachment style you've got, it is relevant to whatever attachment style you've got. It is relevant to and the pain that was previously unbearable previously in massive capitals. Once we're resourced enough and we know we're okay and we have a sense of safety and security in our bodies, in the now, which we can do with loads of exercises and guidance and lots of prep, as I said, then it isn't unbearable anymore. It's just, it's just pain and once we can feel it, it moves really quite quickly and it's it's not unbearable, it's just stuff. So, yeah, there we go. That's it.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Oh, and what I wanted to say as well this is something I'm offering to therapists to train in as well, so that you can incorporate it into your practice. So, if you are interested, check out my website, the sacred wombcom, and go to training. It's got all the details of the soul work training and, yeah, there are various modules there, and recalibrating your attachment template is one of them. So I look forward to seeing some of you there. It's relevant for therapists and doulas and body workers and just healers of all kinds, because this is just so fundamental to how we relate to the world. I really, really want to help spread this healing work. So, yeah, okay, all right. Well, I wish you a great day wherever you are, and I look forward to talking to you next time.
