Your beliefs become your thoughts
Your thoughts become your words
Your words become your actions
Your actions become your habits
Your habits become your values
Your values become your destiny
(Mahatma Gandhi)
Dear Friends,
Welcome to this weeks blog on why parents matter? Or why does ‘what we do’ matter?
In this Blog, which is from a chapter in my book The Art of Birth, I would like to offer some insight into the power of our consciousness and how as parents we are co-creating human life. This is particularly relevant to conception (and even pre-conception). There is much debate about nature versus nurture; are we a product of our genes? In which case parenting has little consequence other that common sense care, or is it down to our environment to affect the outcome? Well, according to Bruce H. Lipton and others, ‘…parents have overwhelming influence on the mental and physical attributes of the children they raise.’ (Verny and Kelly 1981 cited in Lipton 2009). And apparently this all begins before birth!
It is thought that the environment, created by the parents, not only affects the development of the child (both pre and post birth) but contributes to genetic determination. Many leading experts in the field of pre-birth life (Thomas Verny, David Chamberlain, Dr Peter W. Nathanielsz and many more) emphasise the importance of creating a nurturing and life-enhancing environment for the developing foetus which will assist a lifetime of better health. It even enables the brain to grow more healthily because the right genes have been activated by this environment. The following quote explains it clearly,
‘The responsiveness of individuals to the environmental conditions perceived by their mothers before birth allows them to optimize their genetic and physiologic development as they adapt to the environmental forecast. The same life-enhancing epigenetic plasticity of human development can go awry and lead to an array of chronic disease in old age if an individual experiences adverse nutritional and environmental circumstances during foetal and neonatal periods of development.’ (Bateson, et al, 2004, cited in Lipton 2009).
This is not meant to incite guilt but rather, once we understand that what we do as parents really matters, then we have the choice to make that extra effort to provide a holistic environment so our children will reach their full potential. Naturally, we have inherent behavioural instincts which are nothing to do with where, when or how we were born and yet we learn how to respond to these natural behaviours from our parents. As children take in their surroundings, they will subconsciously adopt their parents’ ways and beliefs which may look as though it is genetic. It is a kind of ‘brain washing’ which can be either positive or negative.
I think it is important to add that when we have a child, our circumstances are unique to that child at that time which will be different to subsequent children. There are not one set of parents who are the same as another. We are individuals who have been raised uniquely…
This discussion continues in my book The Art of Birth – Empower Yourself for Conception, Pregnancy and Birth which is available on Amazon, my website or other major distribution channels.
Have a lovely week…
Warm wishes,
Alex xx
Alex Florschutz
