Raymond Castellino | Founder, Master Trainer, Facilitator
Ray Castellino was known for his significant and lasting contribution to the field of prenatal and perinatal therapy. He passed away in December of 2020 after actively teaching his work around the world for 50 years.
Ray began his growth oriented journey in 1969 and drew on decades of experience as a natural health care practitioner, consultant and teacher. His roots were in Polarity Therapy, taught by Randolph Stone. This core paradigm was formative to how he thought and worked. He was a pioneer in the field of pre- and perinatal therapy with the use of energetic and somatic approaches to facilitating secure attachment and bonding. His practice focused on the resolution of prenatal, birth, and other early trauma through group process workshops that he developed for families and individuals called Womb Surrounds. Ray had dedicated his career to developing and teaching this method. He developed a three phase training process that includes: 1. The Foundation Training; 2. Practitioner Mentorship; and 3. Training Trainers.
Ray’s work began with the development of the Womb Surround, a small-group process workshop for adults. As his work evolved, he discovered that the skills utilized in his workshops could also be applied to working with families and children. This new application of his work saw the birth of the family clinic known as BEBA — Building and Enhancing Bonding and Attachment. Continued research, facilitating workshops, and key collaborative innovations gave way to the development of teachable methods used today in the Somatic Blueprint® Foundation Training.
One key innovation was the development of the eight guiding principles for working with small groups and families. These principles are the foundation for creating safety, high function levels, and the optimal growth of babies and children in the context of their relationships within their families. Ray has developed an approach to supporting families and small groups of adults to efficiently and safely evolve into harmonic resonance and co-regulated states while supporting individuation and differentiation at the same time.
Together with Mary Jackson, Ray developed a system for evaluating the needs of pregnant moms, their babies, and co-parents. This involves establishing layers of support for the baby, the parents, and the birth team. When the layers of competent support are in place the mother and baby are free to find the impulses they need to birth from the inside out.
Working alongside Mary Jackson, Tara Blasco, and Anna Chitty, Ray discovered and developed several ways in which to anchor into a universal resourced state of being. This is referred to as accessing the “Blueprint Energies”. These blueprint states of consciousness provide a basis for gently and safely discovering early imprints, that is, implicit somatic memories, through intention, a co-regulated tempo, movement in highly cooperative relational fields, and connected social processes. This team, and these discoveries ultimately led to the creation of Castellino Prenatal and Birth Therapy Training in 1995.
Castellino Prenatal and Birth Therapy Training has graduated fourteen classes from this groundbreaking model. Foundation Training number fifteen marks the inaugural class of Somatic Blueprint®, a new organization with new opportunities for professionals. The addition of the Somatic Blueprint® certification programs provide a vehicle for continuing this important work. In addition to opportunities to become a Certified Facilitator or a Certified Practitioner, professionals will also be able to learn how to teach the Somatic Blueprint® methodologies ensuring that they continue into the next generation.
Ray is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences including the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health, the American Polarity Therapy Association, the Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America. He was also a founding board member of the Alliance for Transforming the Lives of Children.