Orgone
Therapy in Pregnancy and Labour
An Introduction for Midwives, Ante-Natal Teachers, and Expectant Parents
This text is available as a printed leaflet. Enquiries to info@orgonecore.org.uk
Peter
Jones RM
This essay
introduces the use of orgone therapy in pregnancy and labour to midwives and
ante-natal teachers. This therapy, almost unknown in Britain, can help women
prepare themselves for an active and as natural a birth as possible and also
work as non-intrusive ‘first aid’ in labour. It can have a very powerful
effect on physiology, often in a very short time, though convincing people
unfamiliar with the therapy of this is difficult. We are so used to seeing drugs
as almost the only agent that influences physiology that we find it difficult to
accept that subtle, gentle interaction between two people can profoundly affect
physiology. There is a taboo in Western medicine, particularly strong in this
country, against making any connections between feelings and physiology. It is
difficult to say in words how this therapy works and has such an effect on the
physiology of labour, though there is a coherent theoretical model to support
it. I am willing to demonstrate it or run a workshop anywhere where there is a
particular interest. I have a great deal of experience running such workshops.
Before I trained as a midwife I worked as an orgone therapist for many years.
This essay will not go into the theoretical background in any detail, but it
will outline the basic principles and show readers where to look for further
information. My Orgonomic Midwifery is a more detailed text with a large number
of references to follow up.
Peter
Jones,
Preston,October,
2008.
Orgone therapy was developed as a one-to-one form of psycho-therapy for adults
by Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) and grew out of psycho-analysis. It was the first
therapy to make use of and work with physical attitudes, breathing, muscular
tension (armouring) and physiological signs as clinical material. This
body-orientated approach proved much more effective than ‘talking’ therapy.
The dissolution of the armouring released long-buried memories of the situation
that had caused it, as well as outbreaks of suppressed feelings and deep changes
in behaviour and physiology. Reich’s clients reported sensations of something
moving within their bodies which were often strong, occasionally overwhelming.
The stronger the sensations, the stronger were the accompanying emotions.
Though the feelings were often
pleasurable, if the sensations became too strong, they could provoke anxiety and
an urge to close up against them. Reich equated this rise and fall in sensation
with expansion and contraction, or in plain English, opening
and closing, pleasure and anxiety.
Never
one to take anything for granted, Reich observed this expansion and contraction
and the accompanying sensations. He wondered if they were basic biological
processes observable in living nature and started studying protozoa under the
microscope. He was indeed able to observe these currents in amoebae and while
studying them came across physical
manifestations in his laboratory of a vital force whose movement he assumed was
what people were reporting in their therapy. This summarises years of
concentrated work in a few lines. You can follow up Reich’s discovery of the
orgone in The Cancer Biopathy. Reich named this force orgone energy
– hence orgone therapy, orgonotic, and orgonomy.
All these coinings come from the Greek root – orgein, which means to
swell.
Energy Functions, Feelings, and Physiology
Reich
realised that this process of expansion and contraction occurred in the
physiology, too, and that in the autonomic nervous system para-sympathetically
innervated functions accompany pleasure, expansion, and opening, and sympathetic
ones unpleasure, contraction, and closing, and that the organs follow a
four-beat cycle of pulsation – mechanical tension ®
energy charge ®
energy discharge ®
mechanical relaxation. He first named this the orgasm formula, as
he first observed it while studying sexuality and the factors interfering with
his clients’ capacity for sexual satisfaction, later orgonotic pulsation,
claiming that the capacity for this, in accordance with the organism’s needs,
both internal and external without interference from armouring, was a state of
health. (Orgonotic = charged with, excited by orgone energy.) Anxiety pushes the
organism towards a sympathetic state, This is detailed in chapter VII of The
Function of the Orgasm. The disturbance in the functions of the ANS is built
into the organism by armouring and tends to correct itself when the armouring is
released. The basis of the use of orgone therapy as first aid in labour is the
fact that one can often effect this change temporarily using basic physical
techniques and by working with the breathing. These temporary positive changes
are often seen in one-to-one therapy as armouring is temporarily dissolved
Orgone Therapy and Childbirth
If you have already begun to glimpse a connection between this preamble and childbirth you have obviously got an intuitive grasp of the energetics of childbirth and physiology. In Reich’s schema of the ANS he does not actually include the innervation of the uterus and cervix, though this is described in detail in Dick Read’s Childbirth without Fear and fits Reich’s model. Uterine contractions are mediated parasympathetically and cervical tone sympathetically. Dick Read presumed that the ‘refusal’ of the cervix to dilate was caused by fear of the pain of labour stemming from ignorance for the most part. He did not know about armouring and its effects. Reich’s discovery of armouring and the effect of our past, particularly our childhood, on our physiology, provides a much more complete explanation for the many difficulties women experience in labour, (quite apart from those inflicted on them by unsympathetic care and unnecessary intervention).
The orgone-therapeutic understanding of health assumes that every woman carries within her the capacity to give birth using her own power, as long as she still retains some contact with it. Where her life experience has deprived her of contact with that power, orgone-therapeutic preparation and support combined with positive midwifery care can help her make contact with it again. There is also much evidence that shows that a traumatic birth is ‘remembered’ by the organism, if not consciously, and affects a person throughout life. For this reason, as well as for the sake of the mother’s experience, midwives and obstetricians should do much more than at present to support normal birth and avoid medical intervention. My preliminary research shows that orgone-therapeutic support can be a natural, safe way of helping a woman mobilise her innate power to give birth and avoid trauma to her baby. For the childbearing woman a significant general effect of armouring is the loss of trust that her body will do what it needs to do when giving birth. Armouring destroys the sense of wholeness and strength that we are all born with.
Orgone
therapy as a safe, non-intrusive way of providing support in labour now needs
testing on a much wider scale, both by midwives learning to use basic
orgone-therapeutic techniques in their work and by volunteers who are willing to
prepare themselves for active natural birth by joining preparation groups during
pregnancy.
The
Therapy in Practice
The long-term aim of orgone therapy is to dissolve all the armouring and to restore the full capacity for orgonotic pulsation throughout the organism. (All of us, man or woman, have some armouring, and so virtually every woman’s capacity to give birth spontaneously is reduced to some extent.) Not every pregnant woman can have orgone therapy, but it can be used ante-natally to help an expectant mother to open up, to find out if she has any very severe armouring that might interfere with labour and to devise ways of mitigating its effects. Long-term orgone therapy is a careful blend of work with the breathing, massage or kneading of tense muscles, and verbal analysis of fixed attitudes and defences, whose aim is to help someone become aware of what they are doing to inhibit feeling and movement. This varies with individuals; examples may help readers to get some idea of common defences. Someone unable to express anger might hold her shoulders tight and raised, reduce the charge of any feelings by restricting the movement of her diaphragm, and hold her throat tense. By encouraging her to drop her shoulders, helping her to breathe more fully and express her feelings in sound, we will probably find that there is less resistance to labour from tension and lower pain levels. This loosening up puts a woman in touch with the process of labour, often leading to a positive change in the way she perceives her contractions and the demands of labour.
Another person may
suppress their ability to cry by armouring herself in the eyes, scalp, and
forehead and the face-muscles involved in weeping. When such a person feels
distressed, one can often see these muscles twitching as the crying tries to
break through. (Certain feelings are contained in certain areas or segments
of the body; one can see what feelings are likely to be suppressed in any
particular part. See The Segmental Arrangement of the Armor in Character
Analysis by Reich.) If this armouring can be released, perhaps only
temporarily, in labour, this can have very positive effects. One woman who I
tended in labour at the mercy of the above pattern and a husband who repeatedly
told her not to cry was, with encouragement, able to give in to her urge to cry
and immediately her contractions got stronger and less painful. They would
become more tense, painful, and inhibited again, until she had a good cry. This
shows how well simple orgone-therapeutic advice and support with a few simple
physical tips can help a woman stay more open in labour. Therapeutic preparation
and support aims to enable a woman to surrender to the spontaneous movements of
labour which are inevitably inhibited by armouring, as well as unsympathetic
‘care.’ With severe armouring, as many readers will know intuitively, all
spontaneous movement is lost and labour becomes a plodding, traumatic ordeal.
Energy Stasis and
the Onset of Labour
A healthy metabolism means the movement and discharge of energy, the discharge occurring via the pulsation of the organs, the expression of feelings, movement, sexuality, and childbirth. Armouring blocks this movement and discharge and leads to energy stasis. Orgone therapeutic theory suggests that where labour does not start spontaneously this may be due to energy stasis. An orgone therapy session in late pregnancy usually induces strong Braxton Hicks contractions, which suggests that it could be used to induce labour naturally, non-intrusively, safely, and even pleasurably. (For more details see my article The Onset of Labour – an Alternative Theory.) Severe armouring may prevent this, though in such a case more thorough preparation during, if not before, pregnancy would probably improve the outlook and the effectiveness of orgone therapy in labour. Complete breathing is an effective gateway into the functioning of the autonomic nervous system. Most people’s armouring interferes with their capacity to exhale completely; they are to some extent, at least, holding their breath. This leads to a sympathetic tendency physiologically. Fuller expiration mobilises the parasympathetic leading to effective contractions with no inhibition from the cervix. (From the point of view of orgone therapy a uterine contraction is in fact an opening and expansion and the cervix holding itself closed is a closing or contraction.) Fuller breathing, in particular fuller expiration, appears to cause a rise in oxytocin levels, as it also assists the let-down reflex in breast-feeding.
Emotional Contact and Physiology
Emotional contact is another important capacity which is limited by armouring. It plays an important part in midwifery care and affects physiology. This capacity returns if enough armouring can be dissolved. One aim of orgone therapeutic preparation for labour is to help a woman to restore contact with this capacity so that she is aware of how and when she drifts in and out of contact with her carers. A woman experienced dramatically the effects of this contact on her physiologically after one of my baby-therapy workshops. Though she had not been breast-feeding for six months, she found that she was lactating again, after she had done some simple orgone therapy with her child that she had learnt at the workshop. (For more about this work with babies, go to Baby Therapy.)
Orgonomic Midwifery contains a much more detailed exposition of orgone therapy in labour and extensive references as well as questions for research suggested by the application of orgone therapeutics in midwifery. Texts cited here are listed again for easy reference. C O R E has been planning to run a part-time course in orgone therapeutics for several years, but we have not been able to start this for lack of interest. C O R E can run short courses and workshops in this therapy for expectant mothers or midwives and ante-natal teachers. Input for even a few minutes is helpful to women in labour. Please send a stamped A5 envelope, if you would like more information.
References
Jones P (1995); Orgonomic Midwifery – an Introduction to the Use of Orgone Therapy in Childbirth Education and Labour, C O R E, Preston.
Reich W (1973); The Cancer Biopathy, Vision Press, London.
Reich W (1983); The Function of the Orgasm, Souvenir Press, London.
Dick Read G (1960); Childbirth Without Fear, Heinemann Medical, London.
Reich W (1960); The Segmental Arrangement of the Armor, in chapter XV, 3, Character Analysis, Vision Press, London.
Jones P (1996); The Onset of Labour – an Alternative Theory, Complementary Therapies in Nursing and Midwifery, No 2, 1996.
Jones P (1995); Orgone Therapy with Babies, C O R E, Preston.
Jones P (1997); Armouring, Grounding, and Birth Position, Modern Midwife, Vol 7, No 2, February, 1997.
This text is available as a printed leaflet. Enquiries to info@orgonecore.org.uk
Copyright, C
O R E and Peter Jones RM
Centre for Orgonomic Research and Education