The McCarrison Society - NL 40/1: Special Generating Healthy Brains Edition

NL 40/1: Special Generating Healthy Brains Edition

Article Index
NL 40/1: Special Generating Healthy Brains Edition
Chairman's comments
GHB Special Report On The McCarrison Society
GHB:Report by Conference Organiser Rev Simon House, MA
GHB: Preconception to late adolescence:
GHB: From past to present: evolution and epigenetics
GHB: CLEAVE LECTURE Nutrition, the brain and mental ill health
GHB: Our changing diet; deficits and disorders
GHB: Genomic imprinting for brain development and behaviour
GHB: 'Brainfoods': Modulating brain structure and function
GHB: The effects of maternal anxiety or stress during pregnancy
GHB: Cornerstones in the Psychobiological Development of Mankind:
GHB: A psycho-soma integration perspective
GHB: 'New Parenting', psychotherapy, prenatal
GHB: Attention deficit disorders
GHB: Priorities in Research Funding
GHB:Into the future; avoiding the cost of folly
GHB: References
News
Mind What You Eat
McCarrison meeting with Sustain
Future Events

Page 13 of 22

GHB: A psycho-soma integration perspective in psychotherapy with parents and infants.

Dr. Antonella Sansone: ISPPM, Psychologist, Infant Massage Teacher, Author – described how nutrition and emotional nourishment are both essential to the brain’s healthy development. She emphasised the link between nutrition and emotional environment of the newborn in her first book (Sansone 2004).

Antonella illustrated with Andrea’s story how her symptom of mastitis brought to light and healed a psychosomatic disruption in the mother. A mother’s milk flows in response to a variety of elements: sight, smell and feeling; thinking of the baby; a ‘quiet yet live holding’, and ‘rocking’ (Winnicott 1960).

Recognising this, Antonella told Andrea, ‘Don’t struggle to give her your milk. Your love, holding, and touching are even more important, and irreplaceable for her development’. For the first time I saw Andrea smiling at Rosy. Then she picked her up and Rosy gazed at her mother and vocalized for the first time. Congruent holding and communication sustain psycho-soma integrity, and that is the root of the child’s nutritional behaviour.

A lack of psycho-soma integration, this divorce between psyche and soma evident in Andrea, tends to be an intergenerational model, presenting as symptoms such as her mastitis, her tightened gestures while breastfeeding, her remarkably fast speech and sharp tone, and her inability to verbalise her feelings and internal world.

Antonella often drew attention to Andrea’s way of speaking fast while avoiding eye contact. Her language had a ‘faraway’ quality and she didn’t turn her face to her baby while talking. Understanding that studies show how holding, touching, and cuddling are fundamental to the child’s sense of security and healthy development, led Andrea to a turning point. For the first time, there was silence. Her face suddenly turned pale and her voice slow and trembling.

“My mother never stayed at home and never had time to hug or cuddle me”, Andrea said. “My father was an alcoholic, who liked going out with different women. He used to say that I was not a good daughter.”

But when Andrea’s painful memories, unattended for all those years, came to light, her words for the first time did not sound ‘far away’ from her body feelings. The long pause of silence and the downward direction of her eyes gave the impression that she was reliving her earlier experiences.

Baby massage offers a context for restoring and keeping alive that sense of being held and at ease in the body. It also constitutes a safe place where memories and feelings, locked in the body since infancy, can be re-
experienced and re-evaluated. ‘Andrea could perceive me as a mother who could enjoy playing with infants and take in this style of mother-daughter relationship’.

Playfulness, touch and infant massage can restore psycho-somatic integrity in both mother and baby. Nutritionists need to acknowledge the emotional aspect of nutritional problems and read the psychosomatic symptoms of altered eating behaviour.

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