Metamorphic Technique

What is the Metamorphic Technique?

The metamorphic technique is a simple therapy that enables clients to move from feelings of limitation towards accessing more of their potential. In short, it helps us to help ourselves.

What happens in a session?

The practitioner uses a light touch on the feet, hands and head (spinal reflexes). A safe relaxing space is provided where you can just be. There is no need to take a case history; some people may wish to talk, while others enjoy taking time out. A session lasts one hour.

Imagine your life as a river.

The river (your life force) is strong but rocks and boulders (lessons to help you grow) lie in your path. If you can stop hanging on to the river bank and go with the flow of your river, you can steer your way around the rocks and boulders. The practitioner uses a light touch on the feet which helps you let go of the river bank and go with the flow. Work on the hands helps you to steer around the rocks in your path, and work on the head helps you understand their purpose.

What can it do for me?

People are often drawn to the technique in times of difficulty, career changes, moving house, divorce bereavement or illness. Many find they cope better in these periods of transition. Some may wish to make deep inner changes without having to analyse the past, others find that in times of stress they are able to deal with situations more effectively.

Is it safe for everyone?

Yes. It is self-empowering. It enables you to steer your own path. The technique can be received on its own or alongside conventional or complementary approaches. It can be safely used by everyone, including ill or even dying people.

Pregnant women can receive sessions with absolute safety as often as desired. As diverse characteristics start to evolve in the time before birth, the technique can help create a safer environment in the womb for the baby to develop. Both mother and unborn child benefit from the sense of well-being that arises from this work. See Frederick Leboyer’s outstanding work on this subject in his book Birth without Violence.

The effects of negative energies at the time of birth

Melanie Klein has said that the basis of hatred and envy and thus all the other negative emotions is a deep primitive fear. This is probably related to what has been called “birth trauma” – the baby is seen as living in a beautiful paradise inside the womb and then suddenly being forced out with earthquakes and convulsions into a cold and hard external world, cast out from his/her Garden of Eden into the most frightening and forbidding terrain imaginable. It took Dr.Leboyer to point out to us that the trauma of birth was of our own making and not necessarily part of our heritage.

The baby’s state of existence changes from that of an internal, fluid environment to the external environment, but it should still maintain its close relationship with its mother, only now from the outside rather than from the inside. Birth is a stage of its evolution, not a time of trauma from which it seems never to recover. Dr.Leboyer has shown how our present birth practices – with the mother either screaming and straining or anesthetised ( and hence the baby anesthetised with her), bringing the newborn into a harsh, sterile environment of stainless steel and white walls, plucked out, turned upside down, slapped, placed on cold scales and then taken away – are so terrifying. Thus in his/her very first conscious moments the child has experienced fear which stays with him/her for life.

Dr.Leboyer showed us there is another way. The baby can be born in quietness and semidarkness so it is not traumatised by noise and light. The umbilical cord can be left pulsating to continue the last link with the mother’s internal world for as long as possible. The baby can then be placed in close relationship with the mother to allay any of its fears, so it can still hear its mother’s heartbeat.

In my experience, and in the experience of others who have participated in or observed a Leboyer birthing and the subsequent development of the children, there is a great difference. These children do grow up to be more loving, with fewer fears. And a similar experience occurs with the parents. They are bonded in a most loving and beautiful relationship. Such a non-traumatic birth can activate the thymos of the parents and the child in such a way that we psychiatrists never thought possible.

Dr. Leboyer’s work may be one of the most important and fundamental contributions of modern times. If a baby can be born without this deep fear, there will be no death instinct, there will be no hatred; he/she will grow up in a beautiful, loving household, a high thymus household. His/her experience of negative psychopathological states, so fully described in the psychiatric and psychoanalytic literatures, will be minimal. He/she will be creative. He/she will evolve.

But what of us? My own delivery was a traumatic experience for my mother, as I am certain it was for me. I am equally certain that your birth experience was little easier than mine. Thus, we probably started off with great fear from birth trauma as we have described. It has been stated by one school of osteopathy that most births are so traumatic that at birth the baby never takes the full, natural breath that expands his whole body, in particular, his skull bones, which have been enfolded to facilitate his passage through the birth canal. With a Leboyer birth, for example, the first breath opens up all these skull bones and opens up the whole body so that the baby’s normal development can take place. It is said that such an occurrence is rare, that the first breath is delayed, or even precipitated by the shock and pain of a smack on the bottom. The baby gasps for breath; he/she does not take that full, deep, relaxed, natural breath as he enters the world. It is also said that most of the structural problems that we develop throughout our lives are a result of this trauma. But a beautiful, natural delivery will be a time of love for all, a high-thymus time.

 The above is extracted from a brilliant book called Life Energy by John Diamond M.D. mainly referring to the work of a French Buddhist Obstetrician Dr. Frederick Leboyer.

Dr. Leboyer goes on to say “that if there is birth without violence, and if the child is carried prenatally with complete love, the child will be born knowing only love. He will know no distrust, no great fear, and will grow into a normal, high thymus person – someone we all should have had the opportunity of being.”  

 Children love to have their feet done, often for short periods of time. Parents with young children visiting a practitioner are encouraged to share the sessions as well so that they can receive some instruction and continue to use the technique at home. Many children who suffer with various chronic disabilities or learning difficulties really enjoy receiving sessions.

How many sessions will I need?

Sessions are easy to integrate into everyday life. You are free to receive sessions according to your own personal preferences and needs. You may like to have sessions on a weekly or fortnightly basis. Or you may prefer to come when you are feeling tired or uninspired. The contact provided is gentle and undemanding, offering a pleasant and relaxing experience.

What people say about the Metamorphic Technique.

Thousands who have experienced the technique affirm that life is never quite the same once you step on to the metamorphic path”

Jane Alexander, the Daily Mail

“Metamorphic Technique has slowly and quietly gained respect from not only those whose lives have been transformed by it, but from doctors and specialists impressed with the results for conditions ranging from dyslexia to eating disorders.”

Lorna V, the Sunday Times

“I had arrived feeling exhausted… and at the end of the session I felt rejuvenated. I skipped down the stairs and onto the street, full of energy; I hurried home feeling refreshed and positive and, at the end of the evening, fell into a deep, healthy sleep.”