We have approximately 100 trillion cells within our body. Biologist Dr Bruce Lipton explains our body to be a skin covered petri dish, meaning that we are not just one big solid physical body, we are trillions of tiny little cells, each of which is its own organism and consciousness. Because each cell has its own consciousness, each cell is connected to the Universal field of energy that is everywhere at all times. Every cell in our body is primarily energy; only .00001% of our cells is matter. So even though we appear to be physical, of ‘form’, we are almost 100% energy that you cannot see with the naked eye. So if we are mainly energy, what is contained within all this formless space in our body? Light waves and particles, or the entire universe. Every cell holds information in the form of frequency. Because everything within our Universe is energy, everything has its own frequency. This is the Quantum reality of our bodies, of our Universe. This is called Quantum Physics. Furthermore, within this field of information within our cells, our cells store memory of our life experiences, like an inventory of all the events that have happened to us and our predecessors. These experiences can be contemplated. We can learn from them and become wiser – or simply store them and let them run their course. Ultimately, they can do damage.

The process of working with experiences is interesting. As mentioned above, our cells store information. When a person is not capable or willing or simply doesn’t have the time and resources to process their experience, it is stored in the cells in its raw form. If it is a distressing experience, it is stored as a ‘trauma’. Most of the time you won’t even realise it’s there, but it is – lying in wait, often times affecting your life in ways that you wouldn’t even be aware of.

As the body changes, threat detection systems in the primitive brain can be activated. This part of the brain responds strongly to touch, safety, and presence. If change in the body can be supported, cellular memory can be modified without needing to remember or even understand the traumatic event. However if this change cannot be supportive, the trauma memory can become stuck like glue within the cells.

Erasing vs. Transforming Trauma Memories

An example of cellular memory is experiencing a surprisingly unpleasant sensation when someone touches you, fully incongruent with the present situation. The power to heal is in everyone, as cliché as it may sound. When the healer within you senses that the time is right, you can start to resolve and heal unprocessed cellular memories. This is why sometimes your subconscious mind may just start bringing up your old ‘stuff’, because it is ready for you to start looking at it to heal it. However, ‘healing’ trauma is not the same as ‘erasing’ them – with healing, you’re transforming them into wisdom and awareness and releasing them out of your neurology. The first step is becoming aware of the experience, identifying it, and understanding that it is not the memory of the trauma itself that hurts you. It is the perception of the trauma you remember that’s hurting you.

For instance, let’s say someone’s mother died. It is natural to grieve. This is trauma that is stored on the cellular level. It is not the loss that makes us grieve, it’s something else. It could be that you didn’t have a good relationship with her and you realised it was too late to make amends. It may be that she died of a certain hereditary illness and you’re afraid you’ll die of that same illness too. It could be that you feel lost without her guidance, love, and support, and when she died, you had this traumatic feeling that you still remember. You felt this lack of direction would plague you your whole life now that the one person who guided you is gone. It wasn’t the fact she died. Everyone dies. This is not the cause of traumatic memory itself. It is the meaning attached to the memory and the associated physiological and energetic response the body goes through during that experience that makes it traumatic.

When you realise the perception of the event is what traumatised you, and not the event itself, you’re on the path to healing.

There are moments in life when intuition tells us we are ready to process these unresolved cellular-level memories. You may be aware that you need to part ways with some of the unresolved experiences in your cells to move forward, grow, and develop. Sometimes one has to temporarily revisit unresolved memories to resolve them, engage in actually feeling them, to achieve forgiveness or closure. It can be a somewhat painful experience temporarily, but ultimately, it is extremely rewarding once the trauma has been healed. Other times, we can let go of these memories without actively engaging in the cause.

How do we choose?

It’s often quite easy to know when something’s not working well in our lives. Feelings of anxiety and pain are hard to ignore. However, cellular memory is easy to overlook, because it’s not concrete – at least that’s how it seems. When people feel bad, they tend to think the problem is owed to their present circumstances, but this is often not the case. Making efforts to change the circumstances only makes us more stressed because they are not the source of our problems.

Symptoms of pain and anxiety are actually located in the subconscious or unconscious – “cellular memory.” Cellular memory is the same as just “memory”. Scientists like Dr. Bruce Lipton have added “cellular” because previously it was believed memories existed only in the brain. Now, they have found memories are in cells throughout the body, not just the brain. Hundreds of patients with brain surgery have proved this, as have the experiences of organ transplant recipients where the recipient can recall memories of the person whose organ it originally was. Information is stored in the cells and tissues of the body.

Dr. Lipton’s Discovery

Dr. Bruce Lipton, a research scientist at the University of Wisconsin, was cloning human muscle cells, trying to figure out why they atrophied (died). He found that individual muscle cells react and change based on how they perceive the environment, not necessarily on what it actually was. Further research led him to find that this was true for people as a whole. We draw conclusions based on our perception of the facts, not the facts themselves. According to Dr. Lipton, practically all health problems are caused by a limiting belief nestling in the unconscious. The unconscious mind is much stronger than the conscious mind, because it predates it by millennia. Without modifying your erroneous beliefs and perceptions, the odds of having the life you want are minimal.

According to Dr. Joe Dispenza, nature does not “waste anything in her attempt to pass down information to living organisms.” This is how it prepares future generations to cope with the same environmental conditions that previous generations had to face. The environment determines how our genes develop. Our DNA is like a history book of the generations before us. Research is just beginning to uncover nature’s wisdom, so maybe it’s time to enrich the book by demonstrating altruistic behaviors and traits. Ultimately, thriving with the smartest should replace Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.”

Karl Dawson’s EFT

Karl Dawson has found a technique that has helped people dramatically change their relationships with the past and transform their mental and physical health. He is among the few that have mastered EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) and helps people transform traumatic memories and attain emotional health. By releasing stress and trauma from within the body, people are able to overcome physical and psychological issues. Dawson’s Matrix Reimprinting techniques build on EFT protocols, employing new sciences and quantum physics with the use of the mind and body to create rapid personal evolution. He applies epigenetics, the study of heritable phenotype changes that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence, to help people understand they are all made up of energy and connected by a whole energy field. According to Dawson, people hold traumatic life events in their cells not just as memories, but as specific bodies of energy, which he calls Energy Consciousness Holograms (ECHOs). It is possible to work directly with these with the Matrix Reimprinting techniques. They are easy to use and gentle on clients to find core issues, related trauma and beliefs very fast, and to be able to locate unconscious trauma going back to a person’s early years in order to release these traumas from the subconscious. People are rarely aware these memories even exist.

Berceli’s Muscle and Cellular Memory

Dr. David Berceli speaks of ‘muscle memory’ and ‘cellular memory’. These concepts relate to the importance of information stored in the body. However, it is key to understand that the brain needs to be involved in processing the patterns of information flow throughout the body in order for the information to be available to our awareness. Whether the memory is explicit or implicit depends on where it is or has been processed – whether unconsciously or consciously.

A common example of muscle memory: a little boy is being shouted at by his father. His shoulders tense, his neck tightens, his cortisol levels skyrocket. This happens quite often, and a pattern forms – shoulders tense and neck tight. Decades go by, and this boy, now a young man, is getting treatment for his neck pains. The tissues in his neck are chronically tightened, expressing long held contractions. A shape in his body forms, similar to the pattern generated when his father shouted at him. He starts to feel uneasy and may think about his father.

This example of muscle memory is the tone and tension of the neck, while the cellular memory is cellular membrane receptors on cells that became sensitive to cortisol, immune system signaling and inflammatory chemicals that the body released as a response to fear. The movement patterns are simple, default “templates” held in the unconscious, the old, primitive brain.

Sensory nerves indicate changes in tension and communicate them to the brain. When the brain gets involved, we have emotions, thoughts, and feelings generated in awareness. With implicit memories, the main activation is in the brain stem, limbic system governing emotions, and the cerebellum. When you touch the man’s neck, he gets scared, but doesn’t know why. It is important for professionals to note the changes and surges in the rhythmic activity of the body as implicit memories arise. These are the best early warning signals of something important to come.

Implicit memories are very simply coded in the “old” brain, frequently without a timeline. The amygdala in the limbic system, which helps us detect risks and threats, triggers the ‘fight-or-flight’ or ‘immobility’ responses if it detects danger in the incoming information stream.

If the “higher” brain gets involved, the person’s memory becomes explicit – they have a grasp of associated events and a timeline as some form of context for the memory. One becomes aware of explicit memories only after the body has changed. The higher brain, or prefrontal cortex, should indicate when something happened. Was it recent or not so recent? A good therapist should honour the memories and respect reoccurring themes and keep orienting the client to resources in the environment and in their own body. Ultimately, the client should realise that whatever it is, it’s not happening at the present, it is a relic of the past, even though his body is not exactly experiencing it like that.

Dr. Berceli agrees that one does not need to remember or understand for trauma to heal. The ultimate goal is to “overwrite” the code using information from the present. The body is a great source of positive news that can help a person start living in the present.

Why Therapy Can Be Ineffective

Sometimes, physical and/or psychological therapy can go on for years and fail to make a lasting impact because it’s focused entirely on the present, or on rehashing the past over and over without actually healing the past traumas. It can fail because the therapist addresses the prefrontal cortex, i.e. the conscious mind, as in, “Let’s talk about your father/mother etc.,” depending on the trauma they have and are experiencing. Other therapists try to delve into the unconscious, but they’re merely stumbling around, fiddling with things they don’t understand. What we all should be doing as therapists is targeting and healing the source, which is the original cellular memory of the trauma that’s causing the issue in the first place. This is something that can be done utilising powerful subconscious techniques.

We need to make an effort to stop the memory from sending the fear signal that is compromising the immune system and the person’s resources and then rework the memories so that they yield positive responses as nature intended. For this to work, we need concrete tools that are designed, proven, and capable of reworking memories, deprogramming and reprogramming.

Recovering from Trauma

As you’ve now come to understand, trauma is energy and memory that is stored at the cellular level of our whole body, and that it is important that we utilise techniques to heal this trauma at these deeper levels. These techniques are powerful subconscious mind techniques. Without healing these traumas at the subconscious level, we’ll either know we haven’t dealt with them and thus keep avoiding and trying to repress them, or we think we’ve healed them for them to rear their head at a later point when triggered. In order to truly heal from your trauma, you must get to the root of the trauma and reprocess it. Once you achieve this, you will find that these traumas are no longer distressing for you and controlling your life which will open up doors to a life of greater peace and happiness.