On a cellular level, emotions are literally cascades of hormones which cause us to feel what we do. There are ones that feel good such as serotonin, and others that move us into action such as adrenaline.
The mother and child share the same circulatory system when the child is in utero. Therefore, if the mother is experiencing elation, joy and comfort, then the child will also experience these emotions, and the accompanying hormones will shape their brain as well as their perception of the world. Children of non stressed mothers get more circulation on all parts of the brain, but particularly the frontal lobe where thinking, analyzing, most of the cognitive processes take place. This area is also where our personality is developed. These children will also tend to perceive the world around them as safe and welcoming.
On the contrary, if the mother is experiencing chronic stress, the accompanying stress hormones will cause the child's brain to go into the same stress reactions as the mother may be going through. The stress hormones will also increase circulation to the back brain or reptilian/reflexive part of the brain. Because circulation brings with it nutrients, the child's brain will be more developed in this reflexive area, making the child more prone to reacting and taking action in situations without having access to the frontal lobe or thinking part of the brain. The perception these children have of the world is more likely to be that the world is an unsafe and scary place. Even low grade stress can have the same effect. Adrenaline and Cortisol, two stress hormones, are useful in short spurts to get you out of truly dangerous situations, such as moving out of the path of a runaway bus or a wooley mammoth. But if it is released and circulated constantly in low levels, it can have many detrimental health and mental effects.
When a child is born, they have all of the parts of the brain they will need for life. Their brains are like Tonka toys. "Just like the real thing, only smaller". What happens is that the different parts go through sequential steps of elaboration, or a process by which a specific part of the brain goes through a "growth spurt".
So coming back to my method of working with parents as well as the children in my work, I do this because a lot of the blocks that the children have, have an origin in one or more of the parents. It is possible to clear an emotional/physical/psychological block from a child, but if the block is active in the parent then it can very easily be activated again. Imagine the child like the oil in a car, and the parent the filter. You can take your car in to have the oil changed, but if you don't have your filter also changed, then the clean oil goes through the dirty filter and impacts the performance of the whole car as a system. This is not to say that a shift in the child will not produce a change in the family dynamics. Sometimes it is not the parents but one of the siblings. But regardless of the origin, the family is a system and any one part being out of balance impacts the whole. But it's more holistic, comprehensive, and the changes "hold" better when more parts of the whole are addressed.
I see repeatedly in my sessions, where a parent/sibling clears a block and the child makes a shift.
I have personally experienced this effect in my own family, where my own blocks being cleared begins to make a shift in the machinery of my family. I had one of those very clear experiences today with a new client.
He is an adorable little guy who came with mom, and when all of us began working, he immediately became tired( this is a common reaction as kids are very sensitive to any changes in their parents' energy shifts). When kids who come to me say they are tired, I see it as their systems relaxing and because they are not used to functioning at that place, it feels like tiredness, when in fact it is relaxation. He laid on the couch as I worked with mom, and at different points he would come and lay on mom while she was working. When the body feels relaxed and safe enough, it is common that the emotions that the child(or the parent) has tucked away because it's is "inappropriate" or "not nice" come out. This can only happen when the child feels safe. This particular child today laid on the couch and crossed his arms and legs and out of the blue said very loudly, "I am so angry that I am not doing anything that you ask me to do!" and I told him, "Okay. You're allowed to feel angry. We all have times when we feel angry and that is normal. It's just no fun when you feel angry ALL THE TIME. You let me know when you're ready to work again." and went back to working with mom. Kids sometimes are unbalanced by this response because they are so used to being told to "be happy " or "get over it because it's not nice to be angry". He looked at me but I was focused on mom. I was doing an emotional release technique with her to "help him" and told her, "you may feel some emotions come up for you too. This is just what needs to come up to be cleared" and she stated, "I feel like what's coming up for me was all the times he had to go to therapy/sports/events where his body really didn't feel like it because it was too hard, and he still had to go." There was some emotion around this for mom as well. And I reassured her that even if it's after the fact, it's great if it can be released to make space. After mom had the realization and cleared some emotion around the situation, the little guy sat up and smiled and started talking about other things as if he had never been angry at all. His mom noticed this shift too.
Sometimes a large cathartic release is not necessary. If there is an acknowledgment of the block or emotion it is cleared and then the pathways are opened up. The air is clearer.
I think the future of health is to embrace all of the emotions as necessary and not hide or repress them.
I am constantly amazed and awed by the power of acknowledgment and honoring of all emotions and the healing power of that.