Welcoming the New Year: Releasing What Was and Embracing What Is, and Remembering Ray Castellino

As many have noted, 2020 has been a year we may prefer to forget and may be glad to see ending. It was a year full of challenges, probably for all of us. We can hope 2021 will be different. How can it not be?

For me perhaps the greatest challenge of 2020 was hearing about my dear friend and mentor, Ray Castellino, being diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and dying a few weeks later. 2021 will definitely be different  without him! His teachings and profound influence for me  and so many others live on.

Being with Ray

I first met Ray  in the year 2000 when I took my first womb surround process workshop with him. I had heard about Ray for years and had considered studying with him earlier but had chosen instead to study intensely with William Emerson, whom Ray also studied with. Both Ray and William were pioneers in prenatal and birth therapy with babies, children and families. I had chosen to work with William instead of Ray as part of my PhD in Pre- and Perinatal Psychology because I thought it more appropriate that I study with a psychologist (William) rather than a chiropractor (Ray). I realised when I began working with Ray how much I had to learn from him and how psychologically oriented he was.

That first womb surround was profound for me. Not long after it, my teaching at the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute led me to move to Santa Barbara, where Ray lived. My dream of assisting at his BEBA clinic for babies, children and families quickly became a reality. For the four years I lived in Santa Barbara, I felt like I lived at Ray and Sandra’s house, where BEBA was. I assisted in the clinic regularly, as well as taking his training and multiple workshops, and assisting him in what seemed like countless workshops. I grew to love and appreciate Ray on so many levels. More recently, I have valued his supervision and support as I have facilitated my own womb surrounds. I learned from Ray about the value and necessity of layers of support, for little ones, and for all of us. He provided an important layer for me and my groups.

Working with Ray taught me about the need for little ones and people of any age encountering little one states to pause and slow down our pace to avoid falling into and getting lost in past traumatic history. The principles Ray developed and taught for establishing and maintaining a safe container in working with this early material dramatically shifted the experience for both me and my clients negotiating the effects of this primal period of our lives.

After studying and working in this field for over 25 years, I find the structure Ray created for the womb surround process workshops the safest, most effective way I have yet encountered for healing early trauma. The healing of course includes my own. I am forever grateful to all that I learned and healed with Ray’s generous support and wisdom.

The Principle of Welcome

The first principle creating the safety that facilitates healing  in Ray’s work is the principle of welcome. Like all the principles, it relates to what little ones need in their surround as they are coming into form and growing up. I see this one as being about welcoming not only the arriving little one and the little one within each of us, but also welcoming each moment. When challenging moments arrive, like the many 2020 has presented, it can be trickier to welcome and embrace them, but doing so can be healing. Ray was an amazing role model for this welcoming, even as he was dying.

Photo is from Ray’s blog

In the end, which is another birth, my grief at losing Ray was countered by another important lesson. I was so deeply touched by how Ray embraced the light as he neared that final portal of this life, even in the midst of physical pain. His bliss felt contagious. I found myself feeling so happy for Ray that I could almost forget about my own loss!

As I consider all the losses and challenges so many of us faced in 2020, I wonder what other lessons, gifts and healing they might have offered us. Were we able to receive the whole of what was present? Perhaps that is what is available in 2021 – to receive more fully whatever we didn’t manage to embrace in 2020.

I wish you ease, health, and even potential bliss in this coming year!