Secrets of Your Cells: Discovering Your Body's Inner Intelligence (18 page)

Strings vibrate. Pluck a guitar string, and the adjacent strings will vibrate; the strings resonate with one another. The same is true of drums—strike one, and another close to it will vibrate in response. Consider that our cellular strings respond to movement, sound, humming, music, and chanting. Coming into harmony with our cells takes on a whole new meaning when you remember the resonating intelligence inside. Perhaps the scaffolding of our cells is the location where energy, movement, and vibrational healing take place.

Figure 4.5
Two centrioles; notice the regular structure of nine sets of three microtubules; image by Don W. Fawcett/Photo Researchers, Inc.

EXPLORATION

Strut Your Stuff

Hum, move, dance, get a massage. Discover what moves you to let go.

“Seeing” Energy

According to noted Northwestern University scientist Guenter Albrecht-Buehler, cellular movement is part of the cell’s intelligence.
¹⁴
Cells seem to move intentionally toward each other: through a microscope you can see them touch and then slither away. To guide their
movements, cells see and “read” each other’s energy with bizarre “eyes,” strange constructions of microtubules called centrioles (each cell has two). The centrioles were once believed to only guide cell division, but now it is thought that the centriole may also be the director of all cell movement. A unique mathematical construction, each centriole is built in series of threes (3
³
)—twenty-seven tubes (nine triplets) arranged to form a hollow channel in the center (see
figure 4.5
).

Resembling twisted pipes, the centrioles’ construction is certainly unusual; their function is even more so. It is said that our centrioles can detect infrared energy generated from neighboring cells, and this is what enables them to “see” each other energetically.
¹⁵
Through their centrioles’ eyes, cells pick up heat and each other.

Bending Consciousness

Energy-sensing centriole pipes cross and twist, bend and flex. Cells nearby respond and do the same. Nobel Prize–winner Francis Crick and world-renowned physicist Sir Roger Penrose join Albrecht-Buehler in proposing that the centrioles transmit information by changing their shape as a result of electrons flowing from one end of the centriole tube to the other.
¹⁶
According to these scientists, the electron flow down our cell tubes is “consciousness.”

Consciousness? What is it? Where is it? One idea about which there is basic agreement is that when we are awake and conscious, we have a consciousness. Following from this, Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff explored the theory that microtubules are engaged in human consciousness.
¹⁷
Hameroff provided cellular evidence by exploring the effects of anesthesia—ether and halothane—which freezes the microtubules in brain cells and induces sleep. The conscious aware state halts while survival-based brain functions remain active. So when microtubules in the brain are “frozen” by anesthetics, human alert consciousness disappears. The exciting role of microtubules and cellular fabric in consciousness is certainly a fertile area for research.

Clearing Our Pipes: The Shamanic Roto-Rooter

During my now many years of training as a “wannabe shaman,” and even before I started down that path, depression has been my periodic companion, visiting at times when I wanted to change but couldn’t—when I was stuck. Whenever I was rooted in the quagmire of old, unproductive habits and behaviors, my shaman-teacher Tomas would tell me, “Clear your pipes! Spirit can’t move through you to initiate change until you clear your pipes.”

I had no idea what pipes he was talking about or where they were, and I never asked. The truth was, I was embarrassed that I didn’t know. Were the pipes my arteries and veins, my windpipe, my energy channels? I didn’t think much about these enigmatic pipes; I wrote them off as yet another expression the shaman used that I didn’t understand.

Regardless, over the years I learned fairly dependable strategies for “unsticking” my mind or mood in the darkest of times,
if
I employed them frequently enough. Chanting and shamanic dance have been pretty consistent change makers, continuing into the present. On a recent morning spent working on this manuscript, for example, I felt the old “stuck-ness” return. My ideas felt old, my body and mind stagnant. I took a break, lit a candle, burned some sage, and closed my eyes. I began to chant, feeling my chest, ribcage, and heart vibrate and hum. At the same moment, a thought percolated to the surface: my cells had to be vibrating too! The invisible, flexing, fiber-optic tubes and webbing within my cell sanctuaries must be bouncing away, smoothing out the kinks, flexing, their electrons streaming.

An “aha!” moment—the light goes on. These centrioles could be the pipes in the shaman’s directive—clear your pipes! Chanting and humming activate your cellular shaman.

Calling Your Cellular Shaman

A cellular shaman pulls on the strings of the invisible, and when those luminous filament are pulled or pushed, everything changes.

A cellular shaman moves through, as archeologist, digging out old patterns and examining the remains—

To learn from, enjoy, prevent, ride through, or avoid altogether

Help your shaman choose.

Consider this: You have a particular pattern of behavior, such as reacting angrily to your partner or one of your parents, eating when you get tense, or chewing your fingernails while waiting in traffic. It’s as if you have an attachment point that keeps bringing you back to the same old place again and again, all best intentions aside. Repetitive behaviors like these imprint on your body’s cells.

Suppose you could cut loose from the broken record and create a new pattern to change your feelings, actions, and habitual responses. Psychotherapy can help—and so can engaging the cellular shaman.

EXPLORATION

Drum a New Rhythm

Listen to a shamanic drumming tape, join a circle, and discover something new.

BODY PRAYER

Giving Thanks

Flex your wrists. Bend them back and forth.

Reach up toward the heavens; flex your wrists again. Give thanks.

Reach down to the earth, touching her, giving thanks.

Repeat this three times.

Each time, you can offer a different prayer of thanks or of intent: to feel grateful, to free yourself from pain, to take on a new discipline, to forgive. You’ll know which prayer by listening to your shamanic wisdom.

EXPLORATION

A Visualization Journey

To prepare for this journey, take some time to find a good place to sit or walk for a while. If you’re walking, listen to where your feet want to guide you. Make yourself comfortable. Look around. Listen to the breeze. Feel the air or the sun on your skin. Take in the smells around you. Breathe in and out, letting the streams of air float easily together. Breathing in the universe unites us to our heritage, our home.

You can record the following instructions or simply recall them. Enjoy the journey and free your imagination.

Picture yourself entering a perfectly round structure, hide-covered and warm. There is a fire in the center, drums are softly beating, and the smell of piñon fills the air. You are home. You and your cells are peacefully at rest. As your eyes become accustomed to the dark, look around—people sit in a circle, drumming and chanting. Take a seat in the circle and notice who is in it with you. Drums beat the rhythm of your heart, and you breathe into your heart; it is resonating with the drumbeat.

Your heart cells beat in rhythm with the drum. Cells strum their tune throughout your entire body. You are breathing, moving, dancing, humming, and drumming your cells into a shared rhythm. Your mind is at peace in this cellular dance. You expand, connecting to a greater energy. Touch your own divinity and experience your own cellular shaman at play.