Pathways - Summer 2012

this, whether you are feeding your baby or just sitting together enjoying each other’s presence. You might find this particularly relaxing if you are in a rocking chair. Just enjoy the feel of your baby’s little body against yours, and take the time to do…absolutely nothing.

If you give in to these quiet moments with your baby, you might find that a deliciously peaceful feeling sweeps over you. If you make a special time to enter into this meditative space together, this can be one of the most nourishing acts for you and for your baby.

For mothers, breastfeeding generates a cocktail of bliss-inducing hormones like oxytocin. But Nature also includes fathers in this delicious hormonal trance—just sitting quietly together, especially if you have direct skin-to-skin contact with your baby, will generate this hormonal infusion for both parents. Early childhood seems to provide repeated opportunities for you and your baby to feel more than just contented. It is as if Nature is doing its best to take you and your baby into states of bliss.

The bliss connection can be relearned in adulthood; we don’t need to see ourselves as irreparably damaged if early childhood did not furnish us with this fundamental biological experience. Psychological healing involves experiences that stimulate the growth of new neural pathways in the brain, much like forging new tracks through a forest to a clearing that is bright and sunny. Healing is about connection: stronger connection to our selves (our feelings, our emotional needs, our dreams and yearnings), and enriched connections with others. But thinking about our children: Doesn’t it make more sense to take advantage of the opportunities offered so generously by Nature during their earliest childhood? The human brain grows fastest during the first three years, and it can be quite a bit harder for a mature nervous system to relearn its connection to wellness.

Reclaiming Our Capacity for True Bliss

If that is the case, then what has happened to this human capacity for bliss? Has it been lost to us? Is it something reserved for mystics, monks and those who practice yoga and meditate for hours every day? A natural birth, breastfeeding and healthy attachment— those most generous purveyors of ecstatic hormonal flows—have been quite badly interfered with on a global scale and have all but been eliminated from childhood. Is it any wonder that we have lost touch with so much of the pleasure and the joy that comes from bodily life? Our brain’s pleasure centers have not been given the chance to grow enough neural connections, which leaves us feeling empty and needy. In their millions, people around the world spend their lives searching for this missing link to inner fulfillment. We look desperately for the lost bliss in artificial substitutes such as drugs, alcohol, food, fame, money or compulsive sexuality. All the mechanisms to produce these feelings exist in our nervous systems, but it is as if the bliss centers remain unplugged or the wiring has been cut.

The common problem of substance addiction would be dramatically reduced if we, as a society, did more to support the parent-baby connection at its fullest. This is not just speculation. Scandinavian researchers have linked substance abuse to the use of painkilling drugs during labor. The evidence showing that insecure attachment can lead to substance abuse is even clearer. Psychotherapists have known for a long time that obsession with power, fame or fortune is also a desperate compensation for the empty space inside where parental love and blissful connection should have been. These kinds of research and clinical findings have convinced many psychologists to redefine addiction to drugs or alcohol as an attachment disorder.