Specialist work
Reorienting Birth
Body-oriented work with early patterns, which the method associates with the period around pregnancy, birth and the time immediately after it.
What the approach is
Reorienting Birth is a specialised body-oriented approach in which very early patterns of experience and response are explored. Within the method, attention is given to the period around pregnancy, birth and the time immediately afterwards, and to how certain bodily and relational patterns can be examined in the present.
This does not mean that a present psychological difficulty can be explained directly by how a person was born. Reorienting Birth is a therapeutic frame for exploration, not a method for establishing a historical cause.
The work starts from the present
You do not need to arrive with the idea that you "have a problem from birth". The work starts from what is present now — a recurring way of reacting, difficulty in contact, boundaries, moving towards another person, separating, or a sense of your own footing.
Whether, and how far, the Reorienting Birth perspective is useful is judged within the therapeutic process, not assumed in advance.
In Diana's practice this is one possible frame among others. It does not replace the rest of the understanding of a person — their life history, relationships, present circumstances and the other things that matter.
How a session can go
Depending on the process, the work may involve conversation, attention to bodily sensation, movement, position in the room, an impulse to act or to withdraw, and other body-oriented interventions. What is observed is what arises in the present moment — bodily reactions, impulses, emotions, images and relating.
There is no required sequence in which a person has to "re-enact their birth".
Historical fact and therapeutic material
You may know from your parents or from medical records how your birth went. That is information about your history.
The images, sensations and associations that arise in therapy are treated as material for the present therapeutic work, not as automatic evidence of historical events. The aim is not to reconstruct an unverifiable account of a birth, but to work with the experience and the patterns available in the present.
What this approach cannot establish
Reorienting Birth cannot in itself prove why a particular psychological difficulty arose, reliably recover memories of birth, or predict a person's character from the way they were born.
How someone was born does not in itself determine their psychological development. A caesarean, a premature birth, forceps, ventouse, an induced or prolonged labour and medical complications can be part of the context that is explored, but they are not taken as the cause of a present difficulty.
The early relational context can be explored as part of the work, without that being an accusation against a parent.
When this perspective may be used
Diana may offer this frame when persistent bodily or relational patterns appear in the therapeutic process for which this way of exploring seems useful.
Working with Diana
The approach is part of Diana's specialist body-oriented training — Reorienting Birth for Professionals, Bodynamic International — and is used within her broader therapeutic work with adults.
Reorienting Birth can be part of a wider individual therapeutic process. Its length cannot be set in advance by the method alone.
Two different meanings of "birth trauma"
These are often confused and they are not the same. Work with early patterns in an adult is one thing. A woman who experienced giving birth to her child as traumatic is a different clinical situation, and it is worked with as traumatic stress.
Body-oriented work and consent
Reorienting Birth is a body-oriented approach, but the work does not necessarily involve physical contact. Where touch or another body-oriented intervention is proposed, it is explained first and used only with your consent.
You can decline or stop any particular intervention at any point.
Questions people ask
Do I need to know how my birth went?
No. Historical information can help, but it is not required.
Will we try to make me "remember" my birth?
No. The aim is not to recover unverifiable memories.
If I was born by caesarean, does that mean I have a particular psychological pattern?
No. How you were born does not in itself determine your character or your present difficulties.
Does it involve physical contact?
Not necessarily, and only with consent where it is proposed.
Is this a therapy in its own right?
In Diana's practice, the approach may be used as part of the individual therapeutic process.