Shift Issue #06: Creativity • March 2005

Creativity Begins in the Womb

Recently, scientists' beliefs about the limitations of infant awareness and intelligence seemed well grounded. After all, the fetal and newborn nervous system is only partially complete: At birth, the infant brain is only one quarter of its eventual weight, with whole neural systems still yet to develop. Moreover, the myelin sheathing of the neurons, which moderates the speed of nerve signal transmissions, is only partially formed. Since the brain is so crucially involved in suffering, pleasure, learning, memory, and thinking, neurologists naturally assumed that these primary functions of consciousness were as undeveloped as the physical structures that supported them. This apparently logical assumption led scientists to refer to the newborn infant as "a brainstem preparation," and to regard obvious signs of pain or pleasure in infants as "mere reflexes."

Over the past two decades, experimental advances in embryology and fetal studies--using intrauterine photography, ultrasound imaging, the scanning electron microscope, and other new technologies--have given us a more direct view into the world of the unborn. In dozens of crucial experiments with newborns, researchers have begun to pay attention not just to what infants should be able to do, according to theory, but to what they are actually doing. In case after case the new information flies in the face of established theories. We are learning that babies come into the world with well-developed senses of touch, taste, and hearing; they move in response to pleasant or unpleasant stimuli and both express and respond to emotions; they smile and cry even in the womb; they are already social beings, capable of interacting with others, imitating, and showing affection; and they are already learning about themselves and their environments.

Obstetrician and gynecologist Rene Van de Carr of Hayward, California, notes that while brain growth in the fetus is patterned genetically, the development of specific neural pathways related to motor and mental abilities is controlled by sensory input. He points to a study of premature infants at Stanford University in which those who received sensory stimulation before birth showed an average increase of 13 points in IQ scores over those in a control group. [Editor's Note:A similar ongoing research study of pre- and postnatal stimulation conducted in Venezuela by child development psychologist Dr Beatriz Manrique over the last sixteen years has found that stimulated babies tend to exhibit accelerated visual, linguistic, and motor development skills as well as higher intelligence and creativity over the first six years of their life (see www.2bparent.com/research.htm for details). ]

The idea that fetuses and newborns are capable of interacting with and being deeply imprinted by their social environments is far from new.

David Cheek, MD, an obstetrician and pioneering hypnotherapist, praises efforts to stimulate intelligence and creativity in the unborn and newborn. But he also believes that it is important to avoid forcing too much extraneous input on the child--as by constantly beaming loud classical music and Shakespeare directly at it in a deliberate effort to produce another Einstein or Mozart. The fetus, after all, sleeps up to twenty-two hours a day and, says Cheek, "probably prefers a quiet environment most of the time." Occasional soft music and speaking may be helpful, according to Cheek, but it is the child's psychic and emotional environment that is of utmost importance. [Emphasizing that point is a recent study reported on in the July/August 2004 issue of Child Development. It found that a mother's stress level during pregnancy could have significant impacts on the unborn. Dr Bea Bergh, author of the study, noted that mothersto- be who experienced prolonged stress between the twelfth and twenty-second weeks of their pregnancies were more likely to have children who exhibited anxiety and attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorders. ]

The Unborn Being In Traditional Cultures

The idea that fetuses and newborns are capable of interacting with and being deeply imprinted by their social environments may be revolutionary from the standpoint of conventional Western science, but it is far from new. Indeed, many ancient and traditional cultures-- including some of the most "primitive" ones known-- have beliefs that agree closely with what we are learning from age-regression studies. Moreover, these same cultures often have childbirth practices that seem in some respects more humane and enlightened than those frequently still followed in modern hospitals.

Anne Maiden, a psychotherapist and social psychologist, has spent ten years in a cross-cultural study of birth." I was interested in finding alternatives to our present Western system of childbirth, and felt that an anthropological point of view could be useful." Maiden has studied 80 cultures and visited 24; three of those that have received particular emphasis in her work are the Tibetan, the Balinese, and the Aboriginal Australian. She cites an illustrated, recently translated medical text from the eleventh century,

Tibetan Medical Paintings, which deals in some detail with each week of life in the womb." In the twenty-sixth week," according to the text," the child's awareness becomes very clear, and it can see its former lives. It can see if it was a pure being or an ordinary being, and what type of birth it had before it took this birth." In Bali, one woman told Maiden that as soon as she became pregnant the first thing she did was to talk to the dukun, the village healer. His role was to help her enter into a dialogue with the child in the womb in order to discover the child's identity and its purpose in life. Those two questions--of identity and purpose--follow through all of Balinese education and spiritual training, which aim to assist the incarnating soul to fulfill its destiny.

In Aboriginal Australian society the spirit of the child is believed already to exist prior to conception, and is associated in the spiritual realm--the Dreamtime--with a particular place in the sacred landscape. Robert Lawlor, author of Voices of the First Day:Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime, writes: "To the Aboriginal mind, the modern explanation of conception as the collision of a tiny sperm and egg is absurd. In their view, sperm may prepare the way for the entry of the child into the womb, but the spirit of the child appears in the father's dreams or inner awareness before conception." Aboriginal women consider their role in childbirth as that of providing a temporary haven for a being with its own pre-existing spiritual identity, and believe that the spirit does not fully enter into the fetus it has reached a certain stage of development--roughly ten weeks after conception.

From the moment of conception, the child is made to feel that it is a valued part of its social and natural environment.

According to anthropologist Colin Turnbull, the Mbuti pygmies of central Africa "see their true beginnings, the first assemblage of those forces that ultimately lead to their being what they are, as predating the act of conception by eons and reaching back into antiquity." Psychotherapist Jean Liedloff discussed her observations of birth and childhood among the Yequana Indians of the jungles of Venezuela in her influential book The Continuum Concept. Visiting the Yequana in the early 1970s as a writer, she was impressed by the psychological health and resilience of the people she met, and tried to discover the reason for their constant good humor and equanimity. She eventually decided that Yequana birthing and childrearing practices were responsible: From the moment of conception, the child is made to feel that it is a valued part of its social and natural environment. Similar attitudes infuse native North American societies' practices surrounding childbirth. Cherokee spiritual teacher Dhyani Ywahoo notes in her book Voices of Our Ancestors: Cherokee Teachings from the Wisdom Fire that "We choose a family wherein our gifts may flourish, through which we can complete a cycle of learning. Even when we are within our mothers we begin to hear and feel our family around us. Within the womb the young person is sensing the qualities of its parents' minds and responding to the thoughts directed by other people toward the mother. For this reason it is very important that mothers-to-be have a loving support system and an environment as free from anger as possible." Excerpted from an article first published in Vol. 1, Issue 4 of Intuition magazine.

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