Returning to the Roots: Early Imprints and the Path of Healing by mary Justus
Why Early Imprints Matter in Birth and Healing
Birth is more than a physical passage. It is the threshold where life imprints itself most deeply into our being. The way we enter the world—whether through ease, challenge, intervention, or separation—leaves a mark. These imprints live not in our conscious mind, but in the tissues of the body, in the nervous system, and in the felt sense of whether life is safe, welcoming, and trustworthy.
For doulas and birth workers, this terrain is especially meaningful. The clients you serve are at this very threshold, carrying their own histories as they birth new life. To meet them with awareness of these layers is to hold a field of possibility not only for a new child, but also for the deep healing of generational patterns.
It is equally important for doulas and birth workers themselves to engage in their own early imprint healing. When you explore and integrate your own earliest patterns, you deepen your capacity to hold space in a grounded, embodied way. Doing this inner work reduces the chance of unconsciously bringing your own history into the birth space, and allows you to meet families with greater clarity, neutrality, and compassion. In this way, healing becomes reciprocal: as you hold space for others, you are also supported by the wholeness within yourself.
What Are Early Imprints?
Early imprints are the patterns that form in our system before we have words or conscious memory. They may arise from:
The journey through conception, pregnancy, and womb life.
The birth process itself, whether vaginal or cesarean, medicalized or natural.
Early separations, such as adoption, NICU stays, or maternal health complications.
Pre-verbal experiences that shape identity and belonging.
These experiences lodge deep in the brainstem and nervous system. They influence how we respond to stress, how we bond in relationships, and how we carry ourselves through life.
How Early Imprints Shape the Nervous System and Identity
Looking at birth and pre-verbal experiences matters because they live in the most primitive layers of the body’s operating system:
They shape fight, flight, and freeze responses.
They answer primal questions: Am I safe in the world? Am I safe in relationships? Will I
survive and belong?
They ripple into the existential realm of identity, often without our conscious awareness.
Birth itself sets up a primal sequence of timing that becomes etched into the system. When we revisit these layers with awareness, we can update the deepest programs running within us— transforming the way we think, feel, and relate.
Why This Matters for Birth Workers and Families
For doulas, midwives, and parents, understanding early imprints changes how we approach birth and postpartum:
For birthing parents: Unresolved imprints may surface during labor or postpartum, when the nervous system is most open. Recognizing this can normalize and soften what arises.
For babies: The imprint begins in the womb. The way a baby is received and held in their earliest moments plants seeds for lifelong regulation and trust.
For families: Awareness of imprints allows generational patterns to be acknowledged, digested, and re-written with compassion.
For doulas and birth workers, tending to your own imprint work strengthens the container you hold. Birth is already a charged and vulnerable space. When you’ve met your own early layers, you bring a steadiness that clients can feel—an unspoken safety that reassures the nervous system of both parent and child.
DOORWAYS OF HEALING: An Integrative, Presence-Based Approach
The integrative work I offer is not centered on techniques or modalities, but on listening—deeply—to the body, the nervous system, and the field of awareness in which experience unfolds. While my approach is informed by years of study and practice in Polarity Therapy, Reiki, Perinatal Somatic Therapy, and somatic movement traditions, the work itself is not about applying a method.
These lineages have shaped how I perceive the body, how I orient to early imprints, and how I hold space. They inform the sensitivity, pacing, and depth with which we meet what is present. Sessions unfold organically, guided by the innate intelligence already alive within the person.
At the heart of this work is presence—an attuned, relational field where what was once overwhelming can be met, digested, and integrated. When awareness touches early layers of experience with enough safety and care, the nervous system naturally reorganizes. No fixing is required. Coherence emerges.
How This Work Is Informed
My background in Polarity Therapy has attuned me to the body as an energetic and relational system, where early experiences shape patterns of flow, charge, and organization. Reiki has deepened my trust in the body’s innate wisdom and its capacity to restore balance when met with gentleness and reverence. Perinatal Somatic Therapy has illuminated how birth, womb life, and early attachment live in implicit memory and sensation, beyond words. Somatic movement and Body-Mind Centering® have refined my ability to listen to the body’s developmental intelligence as it expresses through movement, breath, and tone.
Together, these influences support a way of working that is slow, responsive, and deeply respectful of the body’s timing. What matters is not the framework being used, but the quality of contact—how safety is established, how sensation is tracked, and how awareness is invited to meet what has been held.
The Healing Process: From Imprint to Integration
Healing early imprints is not about erasing the past. It is about digesting what was too overwhelming at the time and reorganizing around a deeper truth. As this unfolds, the nervous system regains its capacity for regulation, relational capacity expands, and new choices become available beyond long-held survival strategies.
Healing moves at the pace of the body—like breath—expanding and resting, opening and pausing. There is no force involved. The intelligence of the system knows how to find its way when given enough presence and support.
An Integrative Orientation
While these traditions can be named, they are not compartments. They converge into a single orientation: meeting experience as it is, in the body, with presence. Sometimes the doorway is sensation. Sometimes breath. Sometimes stillness. Sometimes a wave of emotion or a memory rising from a place that has never been conscious before.
The unifying thread is the recognition that the true healer is not outside of us. Healing happens as awareness meets the body with honesty, kindness, and enough support. The work is not something done to the system—it is something that unfolds in the presence of deep listening.
For doulas and birth workers, this orientation mirrors the birth space itself: intuitive, responsive, and alive. It honors the uniqueness of each nervous system and each unfolding moment, allowing both parent and child to be met with reverence rather than agenda.
Reclaiming Wholeness for Ourselves and Future Generations
When we explore and heal our earliest imprints, we are not only tending to personal wellbeing. We are reclaiming the possibility of parenting, partnering, and living from a place of coherence.
For doulas and birth workers, this awareness enriches the care you provide. For parents, it means meeting your child with more presence and fewer unconscious patterns. For all of us, it is an invitation to live from the wholeness that has always been here.
Closing Invitation
The path of healing is not about fixing what is broken. It is about remembering the sacredness already alive in you. Early imprint exploration invites us to return to the roots of our being—not only to heal the past, but to open to a more spacious and loving future.
Whether you are preparing for birth, supporting families as a doula, or seeking to understand your own journey, may this work serve as a quiet reminder:
The body is the temple.
Life itself is holy ground.
Mary Justus
Embodiment | Somatics | Meditation
RSMT, RSME, RPP, LMBT
336-290-4607
(New website coming soon!)
Guest blogger Mary Justus is a mother, artist, dancer, yogini, and teacher with over 25 years of immersion in yoga, meditation, energy medicine, astrology, and somatic practices. Her work is informed by deep study in Polarity Therapy, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Reiki, BMC®, trauma resolution, the Realization Process, and her lifelong devotion to non-duality. A near-death experience in early adulthood awakened her passion for embodiment and the mystery of consciousness. It is her joy and devotion to meet you right where you are — with curiosity, presence, and practical tools for navigating the path of healing and awakening.