The Hidden Power of Cellular Memory
Last Saturday night I was frying up some fish for our cat Yogi and set off the fire alarm. I quickly reset it, but it took more than half an hour to ‘reset’ our dog Sparky.
Before he came to me in November 2023, Sparky had had a loving home and family for the first two years of his life in Nunavut – the Eastern Arctic. Then they had a house fire, and when they went to rent their new home they were not allowed to bring pets. So he was surrendered to the Iqaluit Humane Society. He was there only two weeks when my neighbour Christina, who was there doing a spay and neuter clinic, met him. She sent me a photo of a small dog standing in the snow and said, “This little guy needs a home. And he is awesome!! And we are leaving in 6 hours.”
The rest is history, and the beginning of a new love story. And until last Saturday night I don’t think I really comprehended the terror he experienced during the fire. I tried to show him the alarm in the ceiling that I had turned off, but even though the noise was stopped he was still barking like crazy and trying to climb the wall to get to it.
When I picked him up and tried to distract him from the fire alarm, he jumped out of my arms and began frantically running around the living room and then upstairs as if he was looking for Yogi. And I wonder did he lose an animal buddy in that fire?
I picked him up again and he was shaking like a leaf. I got some Balancer for Animals Spray and stroked it on his back. That seemed to calm him a little, but still he went back to the fire alarm. I picked him up and we went out to the car and drove around the driveway a couple of times, but back in the house he began barking frantically. I picked him up again and lay down with his chest on top of mine. I just breathed and stroked his back with more Balancer on my hands, and finally with our hearts beating in sync, the shaking stopped and some measure of peace and calm was restored.
I share this story because it is such a clear illustration of cellular memory. In this case it was triggered by a sound, but in fact it could just as easily be triggered by a smell or a colour or even a weather experience or someone’s face or body type.
The point is we are multi-sensory beings and not all of our experiences get translated into words or conscious memories until something happens (like a fire alarm going off) to trigger the re-experiencing of that event. But for sure, all of these experiences are recorded somewhere in our Body/Minds.
However, if we can suddenly recall some horrendous experience and have a physical reaction to it, we must also be capable of remembering what a state of well-being is. And if cells can remember trauma, then cells can for sure remember wholeness and well-being. In fact, this is the medicine I have practiced for over 30 years now. I listen to symptoms, I take pulses, and I insert needles into acupuncture points where I understand that those needles will restore balance to the Body/Mind. The treatment is complete when all 12 pulses are in the same rhythm – no deficiency and no excess. In this state the Body/Mind recalls at a cellular level how to function to maintain optimal health and well-being.
We can do exactly the same thing by taking Essences, which send a message to cells which are not functioning optimally to support the well-being of the whole. It’s as if each Essence is a musical note, and if some part of the Body/Mind needs that musical note to restore equilibrium, those cells which are out of sync will be called back to their optimal function.
When I read my first physiology book I was in awe of how much of our body functioned unconsciously through the mechanism of homeostasis. Just for fun, when I was writing this blog post I asked Google the question: “How much of our bodily existence is governed unconsciously via homeostasis?” To my surprise the answer was over 95%. This means that most of our health and well-being is maintained beneath our conscious awareness – breathing, blood pressure, thirst, hunger, sleep cycles, circadian rhythms, blood sugar levels, tissue repair and immune system activation to name a few.
I was in awe of this reality of the body doing all these checks and balances to maintain life, and decided that we human beings are the greatest miracles in the world. But because by then I was also very aware that thought and feelings impacted on our physiology, I coined the phrase multi-dimensional homeostasis, which means that once we become aware of imbalance (because we have indigestion or constipation or frustration or anxiety) we have the opportunity to correct the imbalance by choosing an Essence which will restore harmony to the Body/Mind.
Simply by matching the symptoms of the experience we are having to the qualities of an Essence, we can restore well-being.
All this manner of thinking is supported by the ancient wisdom and practices of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), because they never saw Body and Mind as separate. These practitioners always saw human beings as physical, emotional and mental, and enlivened by spirit or energy or qi.
My point is that there is so much wisdom in TCM, and so many tools to maintain well-being, but the overriding factor is us feeling empowered to choose practices and interventions which maintain multi-dimensional homeostasis. And for me, Essences have proven to be one of the most powerful and impactful interventions for individuals to shift energy and restore wholeness, because Essences either dissolve cellular memory of some traumatic event, or restore cellular memory of well-being.