How our birth experiences can shape the rhythms of our lives:

People often appear skeptical when presented with the idea that their birth experience could influence the rest of their life. Yet it’s a question worth sitting with: why do some people seem to flow through life with confidence while others live as though a catastrophe waits around every corner?

Ray Castellino, a pioneer in the field of prenatal and perinatal psychology, taught that our earliest experiences form deep biological patterns in the body and nervous system. These imprints can shape how we meet life — influencing our relationships, our decision-making, and our responses to change.

1. Birth as the First Major Transition

Our birth is the first great transition — a movement from one state of being to another, from the watery world of the womb into open air. The way this process unfolds leaves a kind of somatic memory or pattern in our nervous system.

A smooth and supported birth can imprint a sense that change and challenge are possible — even safe. In contrast, a difficult or traumatic birth involving interventions, separation, anesthesia, drugs, cord issues, or distress may leave an imprint that transitions are overwhelming, unsafe, or require struggle and over-effort.

These early experiences can echo through later transitions in life: moving homes, changing jobs or schools, beginning or ending relationships. Even seemingly simple moments — driving from one place to another, shifting from one task to the next, or navigating loss — can feel daunting. Becoming a parent, adjusting to an empty nest, retiring, aging, and approaching the end of life are all transitions that can stir these deep patterns.

And then there are the micro-transitions that touch us every day: entering or leaving a room, waking and falling asleep, beginning or ending a conversation, arriving or leaving a social gathering.

When I first learned about this work, I could easily understand the impact of the larger transitions. But it was the micro-transitions I tended to miss. I hadn’t realized how much time my nervous system needed to regulate between moments. I was surprised to discover that I often needed to pause — sometimes ten, twenty, even thirty times a day — just to let my body catch up.

I also began to notice how some people maintained a clear sense of themselves, moving through life with an innate trust in their own timing — a calm assurance that seemed to anchor them in each moment.

Some move through life at a gallop, urgency in their step, eyes fixed on what’s next, impatient with the slower rhythms around them. Others struggle as though wading through molasses, with life feeling more difficult.  These tempos, so different yet so familiar, are not random quirks of personality. They are echoes — the embodied memory of our first encounters with the world, the imprints of how we were received, touched, or intervened upon.

2. The Imprint of an Induced or Accelerated Labour

An example of a common intervention and its lasting imprint is an induced or accelerated labour.

A person born through this process may grow up with an inner sense of having to hurry — a feeling of “I’m not ready yet” or “I’m unprepared for this change.” The baby’s system didn’t have the chance to learn natural pacing because the rhythm between contractions and rest was disrupted.

Later in life, this can show up as always feeling pressured or rushed by outside forces, anxiety when things don’t move fast enough, or burnout from pushing forward before readiness. At the core, there may be a difficulty trusting one’s own timing.

Healing begins when this person learns to pause and feel their own readiness before taking action. Sitting with another person who can help them slow down and attune to that readiness supports the creation of new neural pathways — allowing a renewed trust in their body’s natural pace.

3. The Imprint of a Long or Difficult Labour

Another kind of challenging birth is one that was long or difficult.

The early imprint from such an experience might sound like, “No matter how hard I try, I can’t get through this,” or “I can’t get it right.” Life may then feel like a constant struggle, as the baby likely experienced cycles of effort and exhaustion without resolution.

As adults, these individuals may tend toward over-efforting — working harder than necessary to make things happen, feeling stuck or trapped during transitions, and becoming discouraged or collapsed after prolonged effort.

New neural pathways can be built by practicing pacing and completion, and by experiencing support in moving from effort to rest. These are biological imprints — they feel natural to the person — which is why gentle, outside support is so vital in the healing process.

Returning to our Innate Blueprint for Health

These are only two examples of how early experiences can shape the pace and pattern of a person’s life. The beautiful truth is that with awareness and compassionate support, these imprints can soften. When we learn to honor our own timing, we reclaim the rhythm that was always meant to be ours, our innate blueprint for health.

If you or someone you love has experienced a difficult birth and would like to learn more about how these early patterns can be supported, I invite you to reach out for a complimentary 15-minute consultation.