Prenatal and Perinatal Dynamics

What is Pre and Perinatal Dynamic Therapy?

Now we have a new somatic approach to helping families reduce the felt sense of trauma. Trauma is physical and can be reduced with a simple approach through the application of somatic experience, knowledge and practice. Richard has just completed a course in somatic therapy suited for the family as a whole. In Prenatal and Perinatal Dynamics our objective is the prevention and reduction of trauma in the family whether children or adults. This is an emerging field of support and help for all that have concerns and issues for babies, moms and their partner. Richards training under the direction of Kate White and Lois Trezise began in May of 2024 and just completed in June of 2025. Please call back later this summer for more information and available times.

 

Integrated Prenatal and Perinatal Dynamics

June 2025

Dear Name: Richard W. Crandall

Congratulations on completing your Certificate Program Integrated Prenatal and Perinatal

Somatics! The IPPD program is a somatic trauma healing approach for the prevention and

treatment of birth trauma that includes the baby’s experience. You have completed 127 hours

of training:

• 117 hours of basic and intermediate training

• 10 hours of in-service training

This certificate shows you have completed all the requirements for completion of the training. It

represents your commitment to the independent training program to support families during

their childbearing years. You can use the letters IPPD after your name, as they will signify your

completion of the training requirements. If you have not completed the homework assignment

you may not use the IPPD after your name. All graduates will be listed on the practitioner

website.

Our basic and intermediate training covers:

• Preconception/Conception Dynamics

• Prenatal Dynamics

• Physiologic Birth Dynamics

• Chemical Interventions and Womb Dynamics

• Birth Intervention Dynamics

• Postpartum Dynamics

Your picture and contact information will be listed on our website, ppnsomatics.com.

Graduates are granted the use of information in the curriculum for their own educational

programs with attribution. We ask that you do not copy the slides from the presentations

directly but find a way to present the information your own way. Owning the information with

attribution to our program will feel authentic to your audience. If you want to copy the slide

directly, please contact us for permission, and then you will use the words “from the IPPD

program, with permission” on the presentation.

ppnsomatics.com 168 Lake Ellen Drive, Chapel Hill, NC ppncenter@gmail.com 434-996-2002The information gathered here is a drawn from a lineage of instructors, including Ray Castellino,

Anna Chitty, John Chitty, and Somatic Experiencing©. We ask that you attribute the information

you use to the corresponding pioneer, and to Lois Trezise and Kate White, Integrated Prenatal

and Perinatal Dynamics. Currently, our Provider, Assistant and Faculty programs have stringent

qualifications, including student and teacher assessments. If you are interested in pursuing our

faculty track, please contact us.

We wish you well as you continue to serve families to prevent and heal from birth trauma, and

we look forward to seeing you in future offerings.

Best wishes,

Kate White and Lois Trezise

ppnsomatics.com 168 Lake Ellen Drive, Chapel Hill, NC ppncenter@gmail.com 434-996-2002

 

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Descriptions and Scripts for Feeling Present, Shifting States

Influences: Anna Chitty, Somatic Experiencing, Blueprint Resonance, Deb Dana, Polyvagal

Theory, Somatic Trauma Resolution. The processes here are from my trainings with these

incredible teachers, and my clinical experience.

The following represent scripts and questions for you as ways for you to practice working with

the autonomic nervous system and shifting states. Our body speaks in posture, gesture, feeling

tones, emotions, action. Our autonomic states are connected to speeding up or slowing down.

We track states connected to trauma, fight, flight, freeze, appease, please, and more. Our job is

to help people notice their responses to their experiences that are bothering them from a felt

sense, and to help them integrate using the somatic resolution tools of shifting states.

We all have our favorite questions. I have quite a long list in Module 1:

What are you experiencing?

What happens in your body?

How is it for you?

What do you notice?

I. Feeling the Body, from Peter Levine and Anna Chitty

We start with feeling the body in present time, usually with what the body is making contact

with, and noticing how that is.

Notice your body on the chair, couch or stool. What are you making contact with?

Is it hard, soft or smooth? Is it warm or cool? How is that for you? What do you notice?

If there are several types of materials notice the difference: Pillows, carpet, are they wearing

shoes or socks? If socks can they feel the floor? What is the floor made of? Wood, carpet? Tile?

Can you feel your sitz bones?

Are you sitting more on one side than another?

What happens when you notice?

Give yourself a body scan and notice any areas of tension. Tell me about it. Where is it in your

body? Is it on the surface or is it deep? Does it have a texture or a temperature? Explore the

details.

Is there a place in your body that has any ease? Or is more relaxed? Tell me about it. Explore

the details. Then shift back to the area of discomfort.

If you can’t feel your body, then feel around your body, clothing, sweaters, socks, pants.

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Feel your breath. Feel around your body.

II. Feeling into Something Good

I often start with helping establish coherency. Many times you have to listen to the story to

help someone settle. Listen to what they say for what their intention is, what their challenges

are, and what might be helpful to shift a state. People may mention good things. If you can’t

help them with finding something, good, I ask what is helping right now?

I often listen in the story that someone is telling me for something good. There is often

something there. Or something in the present. If I go too far away from the issue that brought

them in, the person can feel abandoned.

Let’s start with the present. Is there something here that you find supportive, soothing or

encouraging?

I am just seeking a baseline. Tell me about it.

What happens in your body? Where is it in the body, torso, stomach, chest, arms or legs?

Listen for key words. They may say: I feel more relaxed, I feel I have more space, I feel more

present. You ask, how do you know? What tells you so?

Unpack in a deeper way what they tell you:

I feel more relaxed.

Where do you feel that? In my chest?

Is more open, or softer or do you feel more space?

I feel softer?

Is it like butter or is there more flow or ease?

More ease.

Is it on the surface or is it deep?

It is getting deeper.

Ah, it is changing, see if you can track it now, as it softens. Is there a temperature change?

Yes, it is getting warmer?

It sounds like it is spreading.

Yes, it is spreading.

Deepening into something good:

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• Ask, tell me something that is good right now for you? Something that helps you feel

better

• Could be something you do or a place in your house or neighborhood.

• What helps?

• Has something happened recently that has been uplifting, connecting, settling,

inspiring?

• Tell me about it.

• Notice your body as you talk

• How does it feel?

Deeping Into a Resource, Anna Chitty, Verbal Skills and Blueprint Resonance

• Choose a moment in a memory or something in the present that is helpful, soothing,

encouraging, calming or uplifting.

• What senses make it most alive for you? Is it what you see, or sense, or feel?

• As you see that . . . (smell, touch) what happens in your body? Where is it in your body?

 Torso or legs or arms or stomach or chest

 Surface or deep

 What happens when you notice it

 Ask more questions, such as you feel that, what happens next? Have a menu

ready: Is it more open, relaxed, spacious or is there flow or ease for example?

• Refresh the memory, then what happens in your body? You may want to ask more

questions about the memory to get them to talk about it, then what happens in your body?

III. Aligning with Intention

I ask people what they want for themselves. Why did they seek me out. I align myself with what

they want for themselves. I meet them there. I don’t go seeking things. I listen and work to

have the conditions and facilitation help them. I often return to the intention to see if we have

met that.

a. Ray’s Form

I use Ray’s form: Intention, Relevant History, body of the session, completion then reflection of

what we did during the session. I find the reflection helps people feel themselves.

b. The Sequence

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I am always tracking where people are in their sequence.

Intention, preparation, action, follow through, integration

IV. Listening for the Challenge, Listening for What’s Good

I find that people will tell you what helps, what is needed, what they want to feel. You can

just listen for the places that feel supportive and listen for the challenge.

Example:

I just wanted to say “no”.

What happened in your body when you said that?

I felt satisfied and content.

When you feel satisfied and content, what happens in your body?

Try not to pry into the story. Follow the flow and wait for places where you can naturally

lead the person. They are there for a challenge.

a. Affirm the Challenge, Naming

When listening to the story, you can affirm “that was hard,” “that was challenging,” especially if

you know the birth pattern and/or intervention. Use affirming and naming to slow the pace and

come into a resonant field with your person.

b. Search and Restore Knowing

Listen for times when they said, “I know,” or “I knew.” You can even ask about their knowing.

Sometimes, I inquire, “How do you know what is true for you?” and “does your body

participate.” You can ask, “tell me about a time when you felt something intuitive and followed

it, and you were right.” Then deepen into the body with this sense. Many times we restoring

this connection to self and inner knowing to people who have birth trauma.

V. Shifting States, Creating Change, Leading Edge, Ray Castellino, Somatic

Experiencing

Working with shifting states is our “basic basic.” People who are suffering from trauma,

especially birth trauma are spinning in a story about how they are at fault, or they are bad or

wrong, or they did something wrong. They grind over parts of the story. Sometimes it has

deeper layers in their life or childhood. You want to get in there and create a counter vortex.

You look for the blueprint, the place that is connected to this negative spin. Then you create a

way to pendulate, or to go back and forth in small doable pieces. This is what you have been

practicing the whole year with the training.

Here are possible scripts. Someone tells you a part of the story, and you can start with:

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What happens in your body when you tell me that? Where is it in your body? Does it have a

shape? Is it on the surface or is it deep?

Come to the edge of it.

Back up a little and be next to it. How is that for you?

Now can you move a little closer? What happens when you do? Can you reach out and touch it?

Does it have a texture or temperature?

Back up again?

As the facilitator, see if there is something that helped then or there, that nurse or something

else. This is the counter vortex, deepen there. Build coherence, something good, to counter the

negative spin.

Then return to the overwhelming state and see if it has changed.

You want to track when the person who is in front of you starts to shift their state, either up

and out of the functional range into fight or flight or down and out into a freeze state. We

studied many varieties here, and what to do with these states: creative dynamic opposition and

squeeze.

Shifting state is the art of the somatic trauma resolution work you are trained to do. You want

restore flow, help your person to stop the negative spin, and worry, or bring them into a feeling

of aliveness.

VI. Deepening and Broadening, Anna Chitty, Blueprint Resonance

Awareness of now/Present time awareness. Orient to someone or something that feels safe or

stable.

How close is just right, not too far. Come to the edge of what you are noticing in yourself and

back up,

Resource: What helps you, what feels good, what is working? Move from the resource to the

challenge and back to change the stuck place, the energy. Add support. Slow down and feel

what is firmer, stronger, more stable, more secure, like bones or contact with something firm.

Broaden to

• Bring Presence

• Create Safety and Coherence

• Ground and Center

• Guide more, offer contact

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• Bring parasympathetic resource OR more tone, containment or support

• Corrective Experience

Script for Broadening:

• Settle yourself and find a place that feels just right, good.

• Slow down and notice how it is to just feel present

• Notice your seat, look around, find “glimmers” or cues of safety, What do you like here

now? Describe it. What happens in your body when you do.

• Feel your feet, squish up your toes, feel what your feet are touching.

• Feel you sitz bones. Are you sitting more on one side than the other.

• Mother Earth/Father Sky

• Press your feet into the floor or your arms into the chair

• Notice what you are touching with your fingers and describe it.

Broaden to Stabilize

• Bring attention to the present time. You can return to something in their life or

in the room that is resourcing.

• What helps you feel present?

• What distance feels good? Am I close enough?

• Come to the edge of the feeling in the body, touch it and back up

• If needed, return to something good

• Pendulate from there to the challenge then back

• Leading Edge, back up and hang in the space where the person is present and

aware of the imprint (Ray Castellino)

Deepen to

• Allow information and meaning to be revealed

• Collect information from a memory

• Access parts of self that have been not reachable without support or the implicit,

hidden, or in the unconscious

• Deepen self reflection

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• Hold space

• Bring insight for your person, they find it from the inside out

• More tone, sympathetic

• Transformational Experience

Script for Deepening:

• Tell me more about it. What happens in your body? Where is it in your body?

• Come to the edge of what you are feeling. Tell me about it.

o Does it have a shape. Draw a dotted line around it.

o Is it on the surface or is it deep

o Does it have a texture or temperature

• What happens as you stay with it? Does it stay the same or change?

• Is it pleasant or challenging

• If there are feelings, allow them

• I am right here. Can you feel me here?

• Wait with them as they explore, don’t talk too much. Feel into the space, see if they

are dropping out or if there is a numb or cold feeling. Be sure to track well as they

deepen unless you are deepening into something pleasant.

• If you are with something pleasant, as you deepen, often a blueprint state arises. I

find that often people will feel grounded and buoyant, or a feeling of warmth and

spreading will arise.

VII. Blueprint and Imprint, from Anna Chitty

As described in all the preceding bullet points, our job is to restore the body-mind to flow.

Trauma and overwhelming experiences create fixation. It is a “negative bias.” People often have

long term formative sequences (childhood, marriages, adulthood, cultural and societal

containers) that affect them. We work with both shock and developmental trauma when

working with birth trauma. You have learned all the layers of experience. You have a map of

understanding these layers. You name them, decompress the layers and work within them to

restore flow, to integrate the experience so that is no long fixed, spinning and repeating in the

mind and often the life of the person who are working with.

Sequence:

• Listen to the story

• Name the layers

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• Get the intention

• Work with finding coherency first (the blueprint, what is good or helpful for this

intention)

• Deepen into this coherent state or multiple states. I often establish 3 layers.

• Then move toward the challenge (you have affirmed the challenge when listening to the

story)

• Get the shape, what happens in the body, work with the approach you have learned.

• Stay curious, get them to be curious with felt sense questions: Shape, location, texture,

temperature, color, surface or deep.

• Come to the edge, back away. Or sometimes you can intensify the shape and then give it

space. Move back and forth to create a little flow, pendulation. You may have to prime

this a lot, or sometimes just a little. The body will start to do it by itself. Trust the body.

Trust yourself.

• Remember that with birth trauma, echoes and ghosts can influence the space, and you

are tracking parent, the baby and your self. Plus sometimes even the surround of the

birth.

VIII. Stability

Stabilization is first. Sometimes you need to listen to the whole story. People may not want to

create coherency. They may want you to join them in their distress. You are the horse and rider

that is riding up next to them, they are the out-of-control horse or the aimless, drifting horse

and you are bringing them into rhythm and connection. You bring your “ventral state” to the

person you are with. Remember the first three practitioners skills (John and Anna Chitty):

• Being, Ground, Center, Neutral, Nonjudgmental space

• Relationship (sweet spot)

• Listening (Listen with all of you, let your heart come forward)

I stabilize often with touch, firm touch into legs and feet, little squeeze with conversation and

felt sense exploration of places, people, and activities the person does with their body. I slow

the pace and bring my heart and my curiosity. I trust my body.

IX. Resilience

You build resilience by the process of titration and pendulation. The spin and negative story

recede. You notice the person recovering. You reflect how they have grown, have more

capacity. They notice, too. Their window of presence is wider. They no longer cry when they tell

their story. They can hear birth stories without crying.

X. Transformation

Besides, integration of the overwhelming experience and restoring a person (family) to

themselves) my goal is to listen for the essence in someone. These are quintessential feelings of

goodness, like gratitude, happiness, peace, connection, love, joy, delight, and so much more.

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These are states that we all feel. When these arise, I will deepen into those as much as possible.

Sometimes the barriers to those will then arise, and you can work with what you know.

Remember:

• Stabilize to Realize (resourcing)

• Educate about the State (psychoeducation about the ANS and Vagus)

• Feel to be Real (work sensation)

• Take the Lead and Provide the Need (corrective experiences)

• Hold the Space to Create the Place (create conditions for change)

• Deepen to Transform and Let the Essence Rise (beyond "fixing" and "healing," go into

the memory with consciousness and presence so your client integrates the imprint and

finds purpose, ease, and wholeness.)

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