The GIFTS of the MOTHER WOUND and the SOMATICS of NOURISHMENT

Jaqs Clarke

Our bodies are designed to be mothered.

The suckling action of a newborn infant ensures a flow of vital nutrients, but also generates a rich holistic sequence of somatic nourishment designed to optimise our transition to our earthly environment. It is the feminine somatics of mothering that activate the biological switches for optimal embodiment. From a craniosacral perspective, the suckling jaw stimulates a rhythmic breathing action through the bones of the cranium, hinging at the spheno-basiliar junction. The suckling stimulates crucial blood and cerebral spinal fluid around the brain, and beyond. These pulsing fluids sweep like tides into our connective tissue where they facilitate a whole-body-dynamism, that is oceanic and buoyant. We relax deeply in the rock-and-roll of the softening tensegrity of this subtle innate choreographic momentum as each muscle, bone and organ gently rotates and spins in their own expansion/contraction/ spiral action. The suckling rhythm and the skin-to-skin contact resets the central nervous system to para-sympathetic arousal known as ‘rest-and-digest’, a state of deepening calm. Furthermore the suckling stimulates the pulsing of the sphenoid bone to activate the pituitary gland to cascade hormones into the soma to generate a deep immersion in oxytocin, seratonin and other bonding hormones that nurture our system with safety signals. Our bodies are designed to experience these innate somatics of secure attachment from birth right through our early childhood years, but those same pathways of nourishment can be self-generated as we move into maturity.

If a rupture in the bonding process occurs, a mother may develop post-partum depression and the child may spiral into low-self esteem and a life time of uncertainty about where and how they belong, an inability to foster secure relationships and continual patterns of disregulation and isolation. The mother wound manifests uniquely for every individual. While some may experience neglect, others can experience a blurring of identities, and remain overly fused. This often results in a child being held psychologically responsible for mother dysfunction. Those with a weak bond are more likely to be bullied, neglected, scapegoated, and ostracised from the family unit. Those who are overly fused may find themselves doing the emotional labour for others during their lifetimes at expense of their own needs.

It’s wonderful to celebrate the role of motherhood in our yearly calendar. But for many, across all genders, the lack of adequate mothering can manifest as a painful wound. It’s common for those whose mothers were unable to adequately nourish them to self-stigmatise and internalise this wound as shame and unworthiness. Underpinning the psychological maladies of the insecure attachment trauma of the mother wound though, is a soma left in deficit of positive bonding hormones, nutrients, and a self-regulating nervous system.

On the day of my birth, my mother’s GP advised her not to breastfeed me. As I was her 6th child he felt she needed to save her energy for the wider clan. I wasn't able to develop a secure bond with her and I'm not particularly unique with this story. Like many with the mother wound, my life rotated through cycles of over achievement, striving and exhaustion, disembodiment, shame, isolation, and low self-esteem. A mother wound can seem like an irredeemable stigma of unlovability, the remote frontier of attachment trauma, a far-flung psychic wilderness of no return.I was often told that the time of mother bonding only came once, and if you did not receive proper bonding at birth, it could not be repaired later.

Yet where many therapies have no strategy for resolving the mother wound, cranio sacral therapy is foundationally attuned to embryology, birth and nourishment. Our bodies are designed to receive nurturing at any time as a somatic experience not limited to co-regulation. personality or circumstance. We can remother our own bodies through the soma, from moment-to-moment, through a practice of self-attuning. We don’t need to rebirth, as remothering our bodies is possible through reactivating the same somatic pathways of receiving nourishment, calm and nervous system regulation that we were designed to receive as a baby and throughout childhood.

As we attend to the mother wound as adults we can discover wider coordinates of safety in any act of deep surrender. Any reactivation of vulnerability which results in acknowledging, allowing and letting go, the dropping of defences and surrender, is an activation of a biological signal that is absorbed by the connective tissue into a dynamic expression of buoyancy and resilience. Our connective tissue generates our own inner oceanic dynamism, and is activated by receptors for frequencies that are soothing and calming while feeling amniotic and familiar.

The subtle pulsing of the jaw in holographic breathing increases blood flow around our brains. It also initiates a subtle-body gateway that draws upon frequencies of energetic nourishment through the quantum field. This is the power of feminine somatics, our innate drive to heal is simultaneously emotional, bio-dynamic, and electromagnetic. The fluid field is wired to healing frequencies. The ability to surrender is the threshold. The act of nurturing is innate to the subtle fluid body, and we may learn to activate those gateways on a daily basis. We can heal through committing to ourselves, over and over again, and retraining our somas to float and relax into the safety of our fluid momentum and our own self regulation. As a daily practice we move more and more into a nourishing self intimacy towards secure attachment with self.

I see this process in my practice and I deeply honour those beginning and attending to this healing journey. The mother wound is so deeply primal and painful, yet it is a powerful journey of renewal and self-embodiment that has its own gifts. Attending to this wound signals a shift in self that is part of a global healing of the feminine lineages starting with our own. The traumas of today are both of the moment and historic. We have much to grieve. By attending to our own mother wounds we also heal our feminine lineages from the impact of systemic cultural norms that devalue the feminine and make pregnancy and mothering traumatic for far too many. Those who can surrender and face into the mother wound begin a journey of redesigning their own possibilities for future family, safety and community, while developing a secure attachment with their own divine source energy as the bedrock of their somatic well being. They understand that even the most secure of attachments are periodic. Healing the wound provides renewed possibilities of finding authentic co-regulation with others, that is sustained by our own somatic grounding. Solitude is space and time to self-actualise, to foster a deepening trust in self presence. Mothering is a natural expression of the energy of divine love that flows freely throughout the universe as frequencies and is infinitely available to all through our own somatic pathways. Our cells naturally attune to the frequencies of joy, love and the receiving of nourishment and nurturing.

Image by B K Lusk