Taste the atmosphere of the congress Embodied Mind with Thomas Verny 

Dr. Janus is the head of the international study group for prenatal psychology and medicine “Institut für Pränatale Psychologie und Medizin” in Germany.
In his long-term psychotherapy treatments, he observed again and again that prenatal and birth stress can have long-term effects and the success of the treatment can significantly depend on their processing. Dealing with prenatal and birth experience led him to some basic assumptions: there is mental experience before and during birth. This experience lives within us and affects especially how we feel at home in the world and how we cope with change. He is the author of several books “Psychoanalysis of prenatal life and birth”, “How the soul comes”, “Space of the soul of the unborn”, etc…..

Olga Gouni was born in Volos, Magnesia and her initial studies were in Law. She was engaged in Education, Research and Development of Social and Humanities Sciences with a special interest in Research and Development of Prenatal Sciences. She founded the Prenatal Sciences Research Institute SOPHIA and the International Journal of Prenatal & Life Sciences. 

She was Owner and Director of cosmoanelixis, Educational Organization of Prenatal and Life Sciences for many years. For over 10 years active member of COST ACTION [CA18211 (Perinatal mental health and birth-related trauma: Maximising best practice and optimal outcomes (management committee for Greece and STSM coordinator). She served as Co mmunications and Project Management Officer for the partner organisation cosmoanelixis in the Erasmus+ project entitled Baby Buddy Forward .  Author of books, editor of collective authorship projects, editor -in-chief of the academic journal, designer of educational programmes in Prenatal Psychology and pedagogical programs, instructor of many successful educational training courses in the field of prenatal psychology internationally. Olga created the Health Advancement Program “WELCOME” designed for pregnant couples with a focus on the (unborn) baby. Her vision is to synthesize and organize the acquired knowledge in the field of Prenatal Psychology and link the Academia with the Community. 

The days and works of Thomas Verny 
Interview at an international conference
Pre and Perinatal Psychology

Video Podcast
with Bruce Lipton PhD.
Topic: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness

Video-interview of Michaela Kalusová from Jemné zrození (Gentle Birth) with Dr. Thomas Verny

Scientific emphasis on the brain has been baked into our culture for millennia. The Western world even before the Greek civilization, has been patriarchal, giving rise to a hierarchical social structure. Power was first vested in the head of the family, then the head of the tribe, then the king and then to his trusted adviser (always a man), then to lower and lower officials. The same system exists amongst all animals. The strongest male dominates the group. Even chickens have their pecking order. But this system does not serve humans well.
 
The same vertical system was unconsciously adopted in medicine. The brain is at the top, the rest of the organs such as the heart, liver, etc. are bellow, then there are other tissues and cells, etc. Scientists think of this system as strictly one way, mostly top-down, rarely bottom up. The latter is usually perceived as negative, like when you have a duodenal ulcer or a heart attack. Add to this the Church’s jaundiced view of the genitalia and you hesitate to spend too much time contemplating your lower chakras.

My work shifts the emphasis to bottom-up instead of top-down communication advocating a more balanced approach to the body and health. This has far-reaching consequences for health and society. When the scientific community, especially the medical fraternity and pharmaceutical industry, gradually integrate these ideas into practice they will discover new and better treatments of many physical and mental diseases. The biosciences and the social sciences have much to gain from a more nuanced, nonbinary division between the brain and the mind and the brain and the body. Failure to recognize this is blocking the imagination and curiosity of scientists and also their access to funding.
 
Mike Levin at Tufts University speaks of the swarm intelligence of cellular collectives.
 
There is little fundamental difference between neurons and other cell types. It is now known that synaptic proteins, ion channels and gap junctions, for instance, were already present in our unicellular ancestors, and were being used by electrically active cells to coordinate their actions. Geneticists have shown that neurons evolved from far simpler cell types, and that some of the brain’s speed-optimized functions were discovered around the time of bacterial biofilms. Cognition has been a slow climb, not a magical leap, along this path.

The brain does not work in isolation separate from the body. The neurons in the brain are in constant communication with all the other cells, tissues and organs in the body forming one interconnected communication network.  The somatic and neural memory networks are connected and function as one unified system. The brain acts as a transceiver of mental activity, i.e., the mind can work through the brain, but is not necessarily produced by the brain.
 
Materialism and reductionism are science’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The Embodied Mind challenges the prevailing concept of deterministic neuroscience and instead open us to the likelihood that a precursor of the mind not yet understood may be one of the fundamental elements such as mass, gravity or electric charge that the world is made of. In other words, the mind is more than the brain though what that more consists of – we don’t know yet.

Since the lives of parents and grandparents several generations back, can affect their children even from before conception, would-be parents will keep this information in mind and adjust their lifestyle accordingly. There is now robust biological evidence of the transgenerational transmission of trauma to offspring by both parents. Mothers pass on trauma and other negative emotions like anxiety and depression by way of their Insulin-like proteins and modification of their unborn child’s hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) and fathers through their extracellular vesicles. In addition, probable familial factors are micro RNAs (miRNAs) and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the circulation as well as epigenetic changes in maternal and paternal germ cells.
 
People past that stage of life, may be able to achieve peace of mind with a variety of emotional issues by tracing their origins to their in-utero life and the life experiences of their ancestors. Such insights can be truly healing.

8:00-9:00

Registration and seating of guests

9:00-9:30

The beginning of the program
Activation of the water laboratory – Diana Siswarton
Dance performance “Fluid intelligence” – Filip Staněk
Welcoming the guests and introducing the purpose of the day – Tereza Winklerová and Lenka Melicharová

9:30-12:30

Thomas Verny – morning part of interactive presentation
GENETICS AND EPIGENETICS
THE BRAIN: HOW IT REMEMBERS WHAT IT REMEMBERS
MYSTERIES OF THE HUMAN CELL

12:30-14:00

Lunch break (Lunch is not included in the ticket price)

14:00-15:30

Thomas Verny – afternoon part of interactive presentation
REGENERATION, HIBERNATION AND METAMORPHOSIS
HEART TRANSPLANTS, PERSONALITY TRANSPLANTS?
THE QUANTUM MIND
SIGNIFICANCE

15:30-15:45

Didgeridoo sounds – Ondřej Smeykal

15:45-17:30

Panel discussion with international guests / moderated by MUDr. Helena Máslová
Dr. Thomas Verny – world-renowned doctor, psychiatrist, scientist and pioneer of prenatal and perinatal psychology
Dr. Olga Gouni – Greek psychotherapist and researcher specialized in Prenatal Psychology, author of the books “100 years of Prenatal Psychology” and “Stories from Embryoland”
Dr. Ludwig Janus – expresident of the International Study Group for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine in Germany

17:30-17:45

Book launch of Thomas Verny “The Embodied Mind”
Launch of the Czech version of Thomas Verny’s new book “The Embodied Mind”
The book will be christened by its four godfathers mental coach Marian Jelínek, writer Bára Nesvadbová, MUDr. Helena Máslová and MUDr. Radkin Honzák, CSc. – Czech doctors and pioneers of the psychosomatic approach to trauma and health in general. The publisher in Czech is Bohemica Books.

17:15-18:00

Sounds of gong from Lady Gong – Dana Zemanová

18:00-18:45

Break

18:45-19:15

Somatic experience of Embodied Mind – Zuzana Váchová and Martin Ďuriš
Our body is a musical instrument itself (Body Perscussions). We will explore its possibilities through basic, simple, yet powerful rhythms which will be inviting our heart muscles to beat in more coherent way with each other (research about rhythms and group activity can be found in the book of Dr.Thomas Verny – Embodied Mind). By playing on our body we will wake up our somatic receptivity and gradually we will move to the work with frequencies produced by our own body. Specific sounds used in the practice of Continuum Movement, or didgeridoo. We will look for the movements of water inside of our own body, but perhaps, around it too. This movements communicate with us through sensory sensations in our body. Through rhythm and sound we allow ourselves to stay in the silence, where we can listen to our personal sound of own Being. Together we will try to create more coherent resonance field and slowly we will dive deeper into our inner silence. Which is the birth place of inspiration.

19:30-21:15

Screening of the film IN UTERO
A documentary that for the first time collects compelling data that explains why some of us face challenges from the beginning while others thrive. Directed by Kathleen Gyllenhaal

The Secret Life of the Unborn Child

Pre-Parenting Nurturing Your Child from Conception

The Embodied Mind

Nurturing the Unborn Child

Tomorrow’s baby

the art and science of parenting

… and other books about Pre and perinatal psychology