TWICE BORN – A Ssecond Chance – Holistic magazine 2007

Premartha and Svarup have been working in the field of Holistic Therapy for many years. They are wonderful creators, excellent teachers, and compassionate fellow travellers. Together, they conduct the process Twice Born, divided into two segments: the first part is called Primal-Childhood Deconditioning, and the second part Tantra-Sexual Deconditioning. As they complement each other, these two parts can be attended together in a sequence.

Rites of passage have existed in all ancient cultures on this planet., they were meant to help people, trough specific rituals, to let go of old stages of their lives and to enter into the new.
In modern life, these rites of passage are not consciously used any more. Elements of them are still there in, for example, the gathering at music festivals or in musical raves, or in sport events or in religious events. There, inn collective ways, through dancing, singing, through mood altering substances, or through simply connecting, people transcend their usual limits, and enter into unknown areas of themselves.
These collective gatherings do make a change. Yet, they do not deal with the personal conditionings that we have received from a very early age onwards. Those conditionings unconsciously bind us, in many different ways, back to the old and known again. Because of them, we are prevented to see life with fresh eyes. Even at a young age, we see the world with old eyes already.
The Twice Born Primal is a group process specifically designed to deal with the conditioning of the past. It supports people to become conscious of what they carry from the past, and to let go of it.
Like J., a young man of 27 years, son of two psychologist parents, well educated, studying for yet another degree, who, according to all this, should be happy.

But he is not. Inside himself, he hears continuously the messages of his parents, their hopes and expectations for him, and this paralyzes him totally. Because of this, he finds himself sabotaging his studies, and retreating from the world. The world has no attraction to him. Everything seems predictable and old.

When J. comes to the Twice Born Primal group, initially he feels embarrassed. There are others with so much more important problems. People mention violence, abuse, abandonment in their childhood. He also feels envy because they express so passionately their feelings about their conditioning, while, when he talks, everything sound so flat.
Conditionings can take any form. The can be implanted through physical invasion, like beating or rejecting. Or emotionally, by sabotaging and denying an individual’s feelings, or they can be Installed mentally, by giving a person no chance to discover who they really are, and what they like.
They not only teach us how we should be, they also stand in the way of finding out who we really are. We are conditioned by our family, school, religion, and surrounding. Much of this does not happen consciously. The people who condition us are most often just passing on what has been done to them. J’s two parents, passed unconsciously on all the pressure they received from their surrounding, about status, jobs, money. They did not want to destroy his life on purpose. Yet, the result of their conditioning is that J. cannot find his own direction, his own will to live.
Things are different for A. She is a woman in her late 40s. In her childhood, she has been beaten, violated, and abused by her father for as long as she can remember. She does not recall when she started to close off, and became hard and aggressive herself. She hates herself for becoming like this. Yet, it feels too threatening to relax and be soft. She destroys her relationships in this way.

When she comes to the Twice Born Primal, she has just broken up from a long affair with an alcoholic man. She does not feel anything, she says, only a constant pain in her stomach that won’t go. When she shares, everyone listens. People are touched by the pain that surfaces.
The unexpressed pain of the past is a major blockage to our being here. We want to open up, trust, be inspired, creative, but the conditionings of the past block it all.
In the groups, slowly slowly the participants start to acknowledge their conditionings. They feel convalidated in this experience, listened to. Maybe it is the first time somebody else mirrors them in this way. They feel the strength to stand up for themselves. To stand up for the child of the past, that child that is still there inside of them. It is as if the ancient warrior in them wakes up.
For the first time, J. admits his anger. He realizes that he has completely turned it against himself. It is the rage towards his well meaning parents, who he is not allowed to attack. When he expresses his anger he becomes alive, visible, a man.
A. acknowledges deeply her pain and sadness for her lost childhood. The tears that come mellow her, she becomes soft, more feminine.
After an intense clearing out in the group of the wounds of the past, J. and A. both feel ready to open up to their parents again.
Only, this time it comes from a different place. Not from resignation or fear, but from the understanding that beyond all the negative, unloving conditioning they have received, there are gifts from their parents and their past that they need to open up to receive.
Both discover that there is a child in them, still alive. A child that neither of them knows very well. During one of the meditations, they meet each other, both as children, and, for the first time in his life, J. goes completely wild, jumps, screams, makes faces, while A. allows herself to trust J.’s outburst, without panicking or attacking. Both have regained the connection to their original childlike energy.
At the end of the Twice Born Primal, they are both shining like two new born children. They are happy to know that the process will continue in the Twice Born Tantra
The Twice Born Tantra is another passage. It’s a Tantra process that covers adolescence. A journey through Adolescence to become a true adult.
A an J. both love the experience. The focus is less on therapy, more on meditation, celebration, on the expression of sensuality. They feel as if they have given themselves a big gift. After the Primal, now they can explore their adolescence in a new way. They fall in love with themselves. Great friendship grows between J. and the other men in the group. For the first time, he feels to be proud to be a man, and proud of the other men.

A. simply disappears into the process. Afterwards, she describes it as having been given a new womb to grow in, and that the femininity of the other women for the first time was not a threat, but a pure nourishment.

Slowly they both grow, through and out of their adolescence, starting to be attracted and intrigued by the other sex. It all feels absolutely new, unknown.

A sums it up when she stands up in a sharing session and shouts in total ecstasy: “I got a second chance!”
The Twice Born work is about getting a second chance. Giving it to yourself. It is about not wasting your life in nostalgia, or old hurts, and not remaining bound to the past, in one way or the other.
It teaches you that you too can get a second chance. That you deserve it.
Once you have understood this deeply, and experienced it deeply, you can start to see that life is continuously giving you new chances. That the old conditioning, which made you believe that we have to do things right and perfect at the first try, is outdated. You will learn that life is an experiment. That you are invited to play, to discover, and to move on. Charavedi, says the Buddha: keep on moving