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Body Cells Carry Emotional Memory
Body Cells Carry Emotional Memory
By Boris Prilutsky
I found the theory that body cells carry emotional memories to be a true one. During my 38 years of clinical experience, numerous times I have witnessed the emotional reactions of my patients/clients to soft tissue mobilization. To more clearly explain this phenomenon, I would like to share one of my most interesting clinical experiences with you that support the theory of emotional memory being carried body cells.
Over 20 years ago, I treated one of the world-renowned boxers of the time from a shoulder injury. The right shoulder had a severe sprain/strain case with suspicion of possible rotator cuff tear. As with all such cases, after 24 hours of cold application procedures (cold application must be applied no more than 10-15 minutes and must be repeated every two hours) we started intensive massage therapy on the unaffected side in order to awake vasomotor reflex that will express by increasing blood supply to the injured extremities. I began to follow the treatment protocol for the above-mentioned purposes, starting to mobilize all groups of rotator cuff muscles layer by layer, as well as the anterior, posterior, and middle part of the deltoid muscles. As he was receiving the massage therapy, suddenly this big, tough, extremely strong man started crying, vocalizing sounds like that of a little boy. He was confused and expressed his embarrassment at breaking down in tears.
Being familiar with the theory that body cells carry emotional memory, I suggested to him to cry out whatever this emotional memory was. The sport clinical psychologist was informed of the incident. During his evaluation, this professional athlete, with the help of the psychologist, recovered a memory from his deep subconscious of an event that happened to him when he was eight years old.
Briefly, the story was that the boy's grandfather (his mother's father) once interrupted the constant fight between the boy's father and alcoholic mother; his grandfather attacked his father with a hammer. Afterward, the father was delivered in critical condition to the hospital and the grandfather was arrested. During this period of time, the little boy future boxing champion fell, off his bicycle and hurt his left shoulder. Crying, he came to his mom who was screaming into the phone, and asked her to comfort him because of the pain in his shoulder. His mother reacted in anger, and took his pleas as just whining for attention and she hit him with the phone a few times on this painful shoulder. All these years, on a subconscious level, this man carried difficult baggage of these memories of events related to losing the most important people in his life; his grandfather and father; and related to rejection by his mother. This kind of crying, emotional release tremendously helped this athlete to get rid of this subconscious trauma. This heavy emotional baggage was terribly disturbing and robbed him of a lot of happiness all these years, without him even knowing it existed. My experience has taught me that usually these emotional releases happen with people at the time when we perform massage (including deep tissue mobilization) in the inhibitory regime. Please be aware that emotional release may not be expressed by crying. Many clients may report to you that they have trouble sleeping and experience worry, or they may start shaking during the massage. Some of them will report unusual emotional sensitivity. Please explain to your clients that all above-mentioned reactions are very positive reactions and within the next few days of going through these reactions, they will feel a great deal better. Regarding the boxer whose case I presented to you, he later reported to me that he never thought that this subconscious baggage could destroy the quality and happiness of his life so much. He told me that thanks to this innocent massage therapy on the healthy shoulder, he was able to find peace within himself.
It's reasonable to assume that the memory of the emotional experience is stored somewhere in the brain - the system that is specialized in memory handling and remained inaccessible, as many other memories a human being experiencing during the life. But the shoulder cells hold the bookmark or a memory address of where the actual memories of the incident were stored in the brain. Thus by activating the shoulder cell you triggered the process of loading the content of that remote memory in the active memory, causing the aforementioned reaction.
As you can see from this episode, clinical psychology approach alone wouldn't be sufficient, because of the emotional memories carried by the cells of his body. Presently, I receive professional referrals from clinical psychologists.
Dear colleagues, I would like to encourage you to contact clinical psychologists in your neighborhoods and to offer them your services to incorporate massage therapy in their treatments. The Latin word "doctor" means educator. After being involved in many cases,at US it is clear to me that we should educate not only our clients about the power and importance of massage therapy, but also other health care practitioners.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Boris Prilutsky on
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Stephen it is probably cultural differences but in any case would like to thank you for reminding me about my mistakes.
"so glad Chris did not "get lost".usually I'm trying not to repeat the same mistakes but reminder can not harm.
would like to ask you two equally important questions1.what did you learn about meta analysis ? 2. how you will use this knowledge about meta-analysis.?I mean is it general education information or clinically useful information. Up front thank you for replying.
Stephen Jeffrey said:
Boris
thanks so much for putting this subject up for discussion:)
who could have guessed we would all learn so much about the potential of meta analysis results........I'm so glad Chris did not "get lost" as without his contribution we could well have gotten the wrong idea :)
Emmanuel you rock:)
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Dear Emmanuelle.
Actually bias scientists are intellectually dishonest persons. Therefore they will ignore any data available and will push special interest of ugly agenda. One of the classic examples is a professor Tchaikovsky from Canada who gave the interview to New York Times where he claimed that after research on subject of sports massage he come to conclusions that massage therapy is “feels good”procedure. Just to spare your time I'm offering a link to the article where we just pinpoint numerous times his intellectual dishonesty as well as incompetence. Usually it goes together , dishonesty and incompetence. We have to fight this kind of “scientists”
http://www.scienceofmassage.com/dnn/som/journal/1009/sports.aspx
Best wishes.
Boris
Emmanuel Bistas said:
The discussion has moved on since I was last here, but I want to bring closure to a couple points I raised previously.
"It doesn't matter if they are open- or close-minded. If they do the work honestly, the process brings the facts to light, and the person's tendencies have nothing to do with it."
It does matter. Researcher’s bias is one of the best known obstacles in research. There are several problems with bias, ranging from failing to see data when it’s there, to interpreting data in a way that is consistent with bias. Of course we would not want it to happen, but it does and it is well documented.
You haven't shown any evidence that Chris is closed-minded, just your interpretation of what he writes.
Not only has it been self-evident with various statements on this board, but Christopher said it himself in “(1) yes, it is true that there are certain ideas that I am comfortable ruling out based on the available evidence”. Is the objective of science to only take data and explain it with what we already know? What do you do when data is inconsistent with known theories - do you throw the data out, or do you move to explore new theories? In my opinion, an open-mind person would exhaust existing theories and move to test new ones. An open minded person would never say ‘reiki never works, whenever will, send bad energy my way’ as Christopher provoked in another post; he would say “I am not aware of any studies that have shown reiki to work, but I am keeping an open mind, I would encourage someone to show me the data”; there would be no emotion, no antagonizing, there would not be a need for it.
“Given the way Chris and Bodhi are routinely vilified on this board, I don't think that asking you to stick to the facts and evidence instead of just throwing personal attacks is unreasonable at all. “
Perhaps you should consider that many of the posts about Christopher and Bodhi are nothing but a result of the action-reaction rule. When someone tells you (as Bodhi did) that entry-level requirement for massage therapy should be a four-year degree and you ask “show me the umbers” and he skirts the question by only repeating the mantra, of course that is going to be ill-received. We do not live in Jonestown and do not drink the cool-aid. Show us the numbers.
“To ask for a number is to oversimplify how science works..”
If there is no magic threshold, at which point would you claim that, let’s say, energy work does not work? Because there are several people who have claimed this. In science, replication and the accumulation of results increases the confidence that we have in the results. For example, if I polled ten households and found they have 8 boys and 2 girls, I would be led to conclude that the ratio of boys and girls is 80%-20%, but if I repeated infinitely with different samples, etc I would come closer to the 51/49 that we know be true, correct? The reason this is important, is because when you come out and say “this does not work”, I am always curious – did you conduct one study and moved on or not?
“And no, a meta-analysis is not ever going to reverse previous results. A meta-analysis is a summary of the most solid studies that have been performed on the subject, and will only reflect the results of those previous studies.”
You were incorrect on this, as you admitted. As a matter of fact, meta-analysis are excellent tools in evaluating previous studies. 15 studies showing that taking aspirin did not have effects on heart disease were reversed in a single meta-analysis 2 years later. And you did not write “sloppily” as you said, you actually wrote/write beautifully, this was no sloppy writing. It’s okay for a researcher to be misinformed nobody is going to hold that against you. What is worth noting here is something else. See how Christopher responded to your replied with “This is not entirely true.” ? A statement “a meta-analysis is not ever going to…” is a true or false statement because of the ‘not ever going’ part. It could have been a “shade of gray” statement, but you made it a true or false statement with the certainty you put in it. A true or false statement cannot be ‘not entirely true’. Christopher could have said 'this is false' or 'this is not true', but he tried to soften his approach by saying "this is not entirely true" (by the way, it's entirely false). The reason I am even bringing it up is because this is one of the complaints that some of us have here: while our evidence-based leaders are quick to attack someone’s views, they are just as quick to let some other ones slide.
Take your response to Ty’s post for example: “I guess that's an actual somatization experience I've had, come to think of it. I processed the info of the death in my central nervous system, but it was too much for me at that level, so I had to express it physically at some random location in order to deal with it, including depicting a good and sympathetic friend as a violent physical attacker.” I wonder what Christopher’s response would had been had Boris said that. I mean, how do you know? What is the evidence to suggest that what you just wrote is actually true? What is the amount of information that can safely pass through the nervous system before this information is expressed at random locations? And is there any predictability in the randomness or is there true randomness, and so one and so forth. Can this statement pass a scientific test? I don’t think so, but it made it past Christopher’s radar.
I mentioned Dean Radin and his book “Conscious Universe”; I am plugging him/it again to raise awareness that there is a whole other side to science than what Christopher, Ravensara, and few others here may want us to believe. Scientific herding and ostracizing of people whose views are ‘out there’ exists, and lumping Bozo and Galileo in the same sentence because they both made us laugh can explain how it can happen. Scientists are as prone to making mistakes as anyone else, they are not super-human.
You said “When you can show us that he has really done that, then I will check him out. “. I do not need to show you anything, you do. And you do, because chances are that any research you do is done with my (or someone else’s) money. If you want to convince us, you should at least make an effort to be informed. There have been calls -even on this forum- for contributions to organizations supporting massage research. Who conducts the research, whether those individuals are biased or have an agenda or particular views (as the 'split' that you mentioned that is coming, several times), are all valid questions. That is why I write here, not because I dislike Christopher or you or anyone else, but because I know there are people who read these discussions even if they don't participate. There is so much riding on the research/evidence-based concept that it's too important not to question certain things.
Ravensara Travillian said:
So, if I think that a researcher is closed-minded, it is because I do not like him? It cannot be of what he has said on this forum? That’s a new one.
It doesn't matter if they are open- or close-minded. If they do the work honestly, the process brings the
etc.....
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Permalink Reply by Stephen Jeffrey on
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Boris !
You misunderstand ! my reply was not to remind you of your mistakes but make note of someone else's misunderstanding =
"And no, a meta-analysis is not ever going to reverse previous results. A meta-analysis is a summary of the most solid studies that have been performed on the subject, and will only reflect the results of those previous studies."
In discussing your article we have learned lots about the character of the contributors along the way not least your good self.
Boris Prilutsky said:Stephen it is probably cultural differences but in any case would like to thank you for reminding me about my mistakes.
"so glad Chris did not "get lost".usually I'm trying not to repeat the same mistakes but reminder can not harm.
would like to ask you two equally important questions1.what did you learn about meta analysis ? 2. how you will use this knowledge about meta-analysis.?I mean is it general education information or clinically useful information. Up front thank you for replying.
Stephen Jeffrey said:
Boris
thanks so much for putting this subject up for discussion:)
who could have guessed we would all learn so much about the potential of meta analysis results........I'm so glad Chris did not "get lost" as without his contribution we could well have gotten the wrong idea :)
Emmanuel you rock:)
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Hi Stephen.
I appreciate clarification.the most important to remember is that my initial goal was to discuss clinical phenomena, that in my opinion every massage therapist have to be aware of as well as to address it for better and sustain results in stress management.I still hope that it was successful attempt.
Best wishes.Boris
Stephen Jeffrey said:
Boris !
You misunderstand ! my reply was not to remind you of your mistakes but make note of someone else's misunderstanding =
"And no, a meta-analysis is not ever going to reverse previous results. A meta-analysis is a summary of the most solid studies that have been performed on the subject, and will only reflect the results of those previous studies."
In discussing your article we have learned lots about the character of the contributors along the way not least your good self.
Boris Prilutsky said:Stephen it is probably cultural differences but in any case would like to thank you for reminding me about my mistakes.
"so glad Chris did not "get lost".usually I'm trying not to repeat the same mistakes but reminder can not harm.
would like to ask you two equally important questions1.what did you learn about meta analysis ? 2. how you will use this knowledge about meta-analysis.?I mean is it general education information or clinically useful information. Up front thank you for replying.
Stephen Jeffrey said:
Boris
thanks so much for putting this subject up for discussion:)
who could have guessed we would all learn so much about the potential of meta analysis results........I'm so glad Chris did not "get lost" as without his contribution we could well have gotten the wrong idea :)
Emmanuel you rock:)
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Dear members.
Below you will find information about my up coming FREE workshops.
Hope to see you all.
Best wishes.
Boris
Thursday, April 28 6 pm to 9 pm
The role of medical and sports massage in treatment of neck, upper back and shoulder sports related injuries.
During this seminar Boris will provide detailed explanation on the nature of whiplash sprain-strain injuries, accompanied by a hands-on demonstration of mayofacial tissue release techniques and trigger point therapy. Boris will also stress the importance of hot and cold applications, stretching and post-isometric relaxation techniques. Frozen shoulder and Rotator cuff syndrome will also be discussed alone with hands on deminstration.
Saturday, April 30 9 am to 12 pm
The importance of legs massage in hypertension management and in reducing anxieties.
During this presentation Boris will explain the nature of Essential Hypertension and anxieties, why massage therapy is the most powerful methodology in this case and will demonstrate hands-on techniques on lower extremities. Because lower extremities carry bigger mascle mass than other parts of the body, Boris will explain the mechanism of the deepest massage technique possible and will deminstrate it on a model.
Saturday, April 30 1 pm to 4 pm
The role of medical massage in stress management, discovery of sexuality and improvement of sexual satisfaction.
During this 3 hour seminar Boris will deminstrate hands on techniques and discuss in detail the theory of "body parts carry negative emotional memories" and human relaction to release of these emotions.
To register please email to: support@medicalmassage-edu.com
All Workshops will be held at:
5301 Laurel Canyon Blvd, Studio City, CA 91607
Two blocks north of the 101 Freeway Exit
www.medicalmassage-edu.com
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Dear members.
Recently I had an conversation with physician ,board-certified in physical medicine . By many medical doctors , physical therapists as well chiropractors, she is considered to be one of the best experts at greater Los Angeles and therefore receiving huge amount of referrals. For many decades she is keeping very busy practice , including being former head of physical rehabilitation department at Cedars-Sinai medical Center. My question to her was what does she think on “Body cells carry emotional memories “theory? And if she facing this phenomenon at treatment rooms? I am offering very interesting and helpful and encouraging answer.
“Boris. Brain is located in head but mind is in every cell of our body”. At the time of stress management, orthopedic or sports massage we should look for it as well if client will start releasing this emotions just to encourage them to let it go . Otherwise will be difficult to reach sustain results in different cases of back and limp disorders, stress management ect.
Don't want to waste your time by repeating my advise on how at the time of procedure to pay attention to different clients' “signal reactions”. Have described it at this discussions.
I hope you find it as an interesting expression :” Brain is located in head but mind in every cell of our body.”
Best wishes.
Boris.
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Permalink Reply by Marion McCall on
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A visible scar stays in place, even though the tissue is replaced over and over again, so why not an invisible scar of trauma?
Ravensara Travillian said:It's reasonable to assume that the memory of the emotional experience is stored somewhere in the brain - the system that is specialized in memory handling and remained inaccessible, as many other memories a human being experiencing during the life. But the shoulder cells hold the bookmark or a memory address of where the actual memories of the incident were stored in the brain. Thus by activating the shoulder cell you triggered the process of loading the content of that remote memory in the active memory, causing the aforementioned reaction.
Since cells are replaced many times over during a person's lifetime, how do the old cells being replaced hand their "memories" over to the cells replacing them?
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Permalink Reply by Ravensara Travillian on
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By "invisible scar of trauma", I am not sure exactly what you mean.
Do you mean it in a metaphorical way--the effects of trauma are "like" an invisible scar? Because if you want to say, for example, the "invisible scar of the Khmer Rouge genocide is still having an effect today" on some of my refugee clients for whom the killing fields are more real than their lives in 21st-century North America, I would agree that that is an effective metaphor for the situation. But what they saw, heard, and experienced that traumatized them is not contained in epithelial cells that have been replaced many times over in almost 40 years, so it is a metaphor, not a literal description. It is saying that the situation is "as if" there is an invisible scar, not that one literally exists.
Do you mean the memories in the brain of the traumatic event that can be re-activated unexpectedly? If that is what you mean, then it is still a metaphor, because there is no actual scar tissue in the brain (unless we're talking about actual traumatic brain injuries, which I don't believe we are). But if that is how you are using the expression, then we are still not talking about epithelial cells somehow holding memories, despite not having nervous systems and being replaced over and over again.
Or do you mean something else entirely? If so, then I will have to ask you to explain it to me, because apart from a metaphor, I have no idea what an invisible scar of trauma would be.
Marion McCall said:A visible scar stays in place, even though the tissue is replaced over and over again, so why not an invisible scar of trauma?
Ravensara Travillian said:It's reasonable to assume that the memory of the emotional experience is stored somewhere in the brain - the system that is specialized in memory handling and remained inaccessible, as many other memories a human being experiencing during the life. But the shoulder cells hold the bookmark or a memory address of where the actual memories of the incident were stored in the brain. Thus by activating the shoulder cell you triggered the process of loading the content of that remote memory in the active memory, causing the aforementioned reaction.
Since cells are replaced many times over during a person's lifetime, how do the old cells being replaced hand their "memories" over to the cells replacing them?
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Permalink Reply by Christopher A. Moyer on
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A visible scar stays in place, even though the tissue is replaced over and over again, so why not an invisible scar of trauma?
Hi Marion.
That's a good question. I'll leave it to Ravensara to answer it from a specific anatomical viewpoint, if necessary, but conceptually the answer to your question illustrates the point she and I were trying to make. Scars (actual physical ones) do indeed persist, even as the cells that make them up die off and are replaced. This illustrates that the scar is not 'in' the cells. Rather, the scar emerges when a collection of cells grow under certain conditions. Even though we speak of a scar as a thing, we might more accurately think of it as an event - it is a slowly changing phenomenon that has not physical 'thingness' by itself. If we could watch a scar with time lapse photography, we might be able to more easily see that it is like a wave on the ocean.
Similarly, and despite what other posters in this thread have argued, emotions and other mental events are not 'in' any specific cells. Like a physical scar, they are something that emerges from the coordinated activity of many neurons interacting with each other. Similar to the physical scar, an emotion has no 'thingness' but can more accurately be thought of as an event.
A traumatic memory and the associated emotions, then, is like other mental events including other forms of memory, emotions, cognition, and personality. Each of those has continuity within a person, even as the cells that make up the person's body can be changing. None of those things can be found in any cell, because they are properties that emerge from the coordinated activity of cells as they interact with environmental conditions.
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Damn, Chris, you're good. If you're ever in the neighborhood, you have a standing invitation to guest-teach one of my neuro A&P classes.
Christopher A. Moyer said:
A visible scar stays in place, even though the tissue is replaced over and over again, so why not an invisible scar of trauma?
Hi Marion.
That's a good question. I'll leave it to Ravensara to answer it from a specific anatomical viewpoint, if necessary, but conceptually the answer to your question illustrates the point she and I were trying to make. Scars (actual physical ones) do indeed persist, even as the cells that make them up die off and are replaced. This illustrates that the scar is not 'in' the cells. Rather, the scar emerges when a collection of cells grow under certain conditions. Even though we speak of a scar as a thing, we might more accurately think of it as an event - it is a slowly changing phenomenon that has not physical 'thingness' by itself. If we could watch a scar with time lapse photography, we might be able to more easily see that it is like a wave on the ocean.
Similarly, and despite what other posters in this thread have argued, emotions and other mental events are not 'in' any specific cells. Like a physical scar, they are something that emerges from the coordinated activity of many neurons interacting with each other. Similar to the physical scar, an emotion has no 'thingness' but can more accurately be thought of as an event.
A traumatic memory and the associated emotions, then, is like other mental events including other forms of memory, emotions, cognition, and personality. Each of those has continuity within a person, even as the cells that make up the person's body can be changing. None of those things can be found in any cell, because they are properties that emerge from the coordinated activity of cells as they interact with environmental conditions.
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Thanks Raven. I hope we do get to teach something together someday. Perhaps we can look for opportunities to do so at future massage therapy conferences.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Hinkle on
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A lot of people feel this way, Boris. One is Jonathan Tripodi. He created a modality around it called Body Memory Recall. You can reach him at http://www.globalhealingtherapies.org/article_memoir.html I met him at last year's Festival. He was very excited about the program.
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