Parenting is one of the most pleasurable and challenging tasks, we humans, face. All parents love their children and do their best for their children. However, parents worldwide are not happy with the outcomes. The remarkable progress in each field has happened due to conscious efforts to improve it. The same needs to happen with Parenting. We need to bring in more ‘awareness’ as all the damage that happens in a parent-child relationship is not because of a lack of love, it is because of lack of awareness. Usually, parenting is done by adults either in the way they themselves were brought up or they may adopt a parenting style which is completely opposite. Most of the parenting, however, done today is fear based and not love based. We are scared of anything bad happening to them and want to do everything to prevent that. When we are scared and operate from that, we pass on our fears to them. A lot of these fears are deep in our unconscious and are connected with our past experiences. The child is so deeply connected to us that even when we don’t show, they sense it and pick it up. Let’s face it, the fears are going to be there, but we need to acknowledge them and act out of Love; And that is what will help the child. We need to heal ourselves by looking into our past, otherwise, it controls us. This is why it is said- HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF.

This journey is also challenging because the child is full of energy and he will bring to you all the challenges you need to learn from; he will bring up all your unhealed stuff (that is if you see). This Alive Being will challenge your parenting style. All this unhealed stuff is in our Unconscious, which makes up 90-95% of us. When we are able to see this, we can take Parenting as an opportunity to heal ourselves. We need to empower ourselves, know, and heal ourselves so that we really pass our strengths and love to our children and not our fears.

Kahlil Gibran says – “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”

We are Spiritual beings having a physical experience. And to have this physical experience the soul chooses this couple – a mother and a father. But as we come on the physical plane, the Law of Forgetfulness comes into force. We forget our Spiritual nature, we forget that we are powerful beings and our experiences and the perceptions of these experiences start playing a big role. Mother and Father are the Gods for this child and he or she starts perceiving oneself through their eyes. For e.g., if a mother/ father rejects the child in any way – like for being a girl/being dark/by not having time for the child (which the child perceives as rejection), the child will carry this deep wound of Rejection for life. This child may grow up trying to please the parents (and later others) to receive their love; deep inside he or she will feel deep shame and rejection. Of course, all this happens due to unawareness. Every parent loves their children and wants the best for them, but the birth of their child triggers the birth trauma of the parents’ themselves, particularly the mother. The post-partum depression is all this unhealed stuff coming up inside of ourselves. It helps the child hugely if we can heal our birth trauma.

Case Study 1 – Mother was having difficult and prolonged labour due to which the child passed stools just before being born. The child was put in the NICU for observation as he had swallowed a bit of it and the doctors were scared that he would develop a chest infection. After a week spent in NICU, the child was back home but bonding was a problem as he just wouldn’t latch on and take the feed from the mother. A session was done with the mother (REBIRTHING BREATHWORK) where she connected to her own birth memory when she (as the child) was in 40-hour labour. The feeling she had carried at the time was – I WON’T BE ABLE TO DO IT and this got triggered with the birthing of her own child. With her releasing this trauma, the child started to bond very well with the mother and completely recovered.

Our own journey as children affects our parenting journey in a big way. The journey from the womb where we are one with the mother into adulthood, is one of growth, independence, and separation at various levels. At each of these stages, the child has various needs which need to be met by the parents and also a certain separation and independence which the parents need to allow and encourage.

When our needs are unmet as children, we will get triggered (irritated/ anxious) when our children have those needs.

Case Study 2 –  A six-year-old girl child was brought to me with separation anxiety. Till this age, she would be anxious from the previous night about going to school and would refuse to sit in the school if her mother didn’t stay out waiting for her. The mother was irritated with this child, not knowing what to do. In further case taking, the mother revealed that she couldn’t make any decisions for herself (CODEPENDENCE) – something as simple as buying something small for herself was difficult alone. With INNER CHILD HEALING and BREATHWORK, she could release her own traumas and heal this co-dependence issue, which helped her daughter in a big way. It changed her life and her mother’s in a big way, where now she is an Entrepreneur.

We carry our past as memories in our cells. Breathwork is a very effective tool to heal ourselves as the breath has all these memories encoded in it.

Dr. Preeti Kohli