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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 Gary W Addis, LMT on
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"they are properties that emerge from the coordinated activity of cells as they interact with environmental conditions."
Yes. Coordinated cell-brain activity. Using whatever methodology, the injured tissue sends signal to the brain that it remains in a less than optimal state. Some call it a positive feedback loop that reinforces muscle tendon/ligament guarding, or some other clinical term. What is the problem if Boris and others choose to euphemistically refer to it as muscle memory?--the result is exactly the same. Boris has plainly stated a number of times that he does not believe, as you suggest he does time and again, that cells contain wee brains that think and operate independently.
(actually, sometimes they do act independently of central control: they call it cancer).
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Permalink Reply by Ravensara Travillian on
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What is the problem if Boris and others choose to euphemistically refer to it as muscle memory?--the result is exactly the same. Boris has plainly stated a number of times that he does not believe, as you suggest he does time and again, that cells contain wee brains that think and operate independently.
If Boris were referring to it metaphorically, and he made that clear, there would be no issue. However, he has stated categorically many times that he believes that cells carry memories. I'm not saying that he believes that cells contain wee brains; I'm saying that there is not enough neural machinery in epithelial cells to support a literal reading of what he is claiming.
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Permalink Reply by Christopher A. Moyer on
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If Boris were referring to it metaphorically, and he made that clear, there would be no issue. However, he has stated categorically many times that he believes that cells carry memories. I'm not saying that he believes that cells contain wee brains; I'm saying that there is not enough neural machinery in epithelial cells to support a literal reading of what he is claiming.
Yes, precisely.
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Permalink Reply by Boris Prilutsky on
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Hi Mike.
Absolutely. Who is constantly in treatment room seeing it.the bottom line of why I did offer my article and share my experiences is to awake awareness in regards of phenomenon of:" body cells carry emotinal memories"and importance
to look for it at the time of treatment, because it is extremely important to sustain results.Christopher and Raven during all discussions argue about locations of this memory. And no matter that many times I tried to explain that this discussion is about phenomenon and no one knows where it's stored, they still tried to distract message.even in today post Raven claimed:"However, he has stated categorically many times that he believes that cells carry memories."
the following is sentence from my article:"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."
Which is simple not true and everyone who will spent time to read my posts at this discussion will see it. These guys just need podium and decided to choose my post/ discussions, to praise each other, and to promote classes. I'm positive no one who is clinician , taking seriously Christopher because all what he does , has no importance for our industry, and this grants could be spent for real research.Mike. Once I had with you professional discussion on pregnancy massage. Obviously we have different views on it, but we and other participants discuss one topic and didn't distract massage of others.most likely some practitioners who followed our discussions agreed with you some agreed with me or with other participants but most important everyone could learn from our discussions. I hope that participants in this discussion will choose to focus on message and not on the destructions.
Best wishes.
Boris
Mike Hinkle said:
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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Permalink Reply by Mike Hinkle on
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I guess we all have our ways. If it can't be explained to their knowledge they don't seem to grasp. I guess it's like we feel about pregnancy. I can understand them challenging me. You have such an extensive backgroud. They feel they are above reproach. I agree with them. we need to challenge the information they give us. They claim to be open and then explain every fact you give them away. Then go right back to the stance they entered the conversation with. I guess we are that way a lot also. We'll all find our ways. Mine is protecting modalities and nothings going away easy!!! Anyone practicing any accepted modality now, just keep on going. There is so much we don't know about even our basic make up of atoms. We are spending billions in research and there's a lot more coming. Things that will marvel those who don't believe cells have memory!
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These guys just need podium and decided to choose my post/ discussions, to praise each other, and to promote classes.
What?! That's rich, since I don't have any classes to promote, while you use this site as your own private advertising agency.
I'm positive no one who is clinician , taking seriously Christopher because all what he does , has no importance for our industry, and this grants could be spent for real research.
Yeah, except I don't have any research grants and haven't had one in years, so don't worry about it.
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Permalink Reply by Vlad on
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I'm positive no one who is clinician , taking seriously Christopher because all what he does , has no importance for our industry, and this grants could be spent for real research.
Boris - you've over-stepped the mark. If you don't publicly apologize for that you will speak volumes about yourself. If you knew anything about his work you wouldn't say that.
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Boris - you've over-stepped the mark. If you don't publicly apologize for that you will speak volumes about yourself. If you knew anything about his work you wouldn't say that.
Thanks, it's nice of you to say that. But don't worry about it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
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Vlad, Christopher has earned academic recognition. In psychology. His research interest in massage therapy is in how it can interact with the emotional center of humans...psychotherapy. Boris is essentially saying the same thing: that the mind can affect the body, and vice versa. IOW, semantics. Chris wants to distance his psychological approach to MT from traditional labels. IOW, the mind can affect the body, but the body cannot affect the mind or other muscles.
A question for you, Chris. Since you seem to deny the efficacy of the energy modalities (I myself am...skeptical, but open to learning), what is your opinion of the marriage between massage (i.e., "tapping") and psychological counseling as taught nationwide in one-day seminars? It practitioners claim to often cure combat PTSD in one session-- get 'em talking about their emotional issues and tap 'em in the forehead to get their attention!
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Vlad. I know that Christopher's main focus is on meta-analysis studies. meta-analysis in a way how he does it in my opinion have no practical application for us. Please advise if he does something else. The matter-of-fact is that twice in very unacceptable way he distracted discussions on clinical observation having no clinical experience . I kindly asked him few times or to discuss message or to stop attacking and distracting . First time Mike Hinkle at energy work group offered link to video where on front of our eyes very sick Wolf (apricot) got much better after Lady placed her’s hand on apricot . I mean was obvious that before this touch the neck of this animal was arched and twisted, and was obvious ,Apricot was suffering. This is clinical symptoms of very difficult neurological disease. After taking hands-off we obviously saw significant improvement. I posted that no doubt we did witness some energy work. As a clinician I know how difficult to deal with these cases as well as to reach some result. He immediately start attacking and telling that I am in minority who believe in it. I tried to convince him, that all what happened, happened on front of our eyes and we cannot ignore this fact. He vigorously continued to argue and to dismiss, and most likely distracted some discussion on important issue. If you have time please visit this discussion and correct me if I'm wrong. He cannot help us with his work and at least he should stop attacking and dismissing staff that he having no expertise and no clinical experience
Vlad said:
I'm positive no one who is clinician , taking seriously Christopher because all what he does , has no importance for our industry, and this grants could be spent for real research.
Boris - you've over-stepped the mark. If you don't publicly apologize for that you will speak volumes about yourself. If you knew anything about his work you wouldn't say that.
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Ravensara Travillian said:
What is the problem if Boris and others choose to euphemistically refer to it as muscle memory?--the result is exactly the same. Boris has plainly stated a number of times that he does not believe, as you suggest he does time and again, that cells contain wee brains that think and operate independently.
If Boris were referring to it metaphorically, and he made that clear, there would be no issue. However, he has stated categorically many times that he believes that cells carry memories. I'm not saying that he believes that cells contain wee brains; I'm saying that there is not enough neural machinery in epithelial cells to support a literal reading of what he is claiming.
Via negative/postive feedback loops the body and mind work together to maintain, or recover homeostasis. Hormonal action can influence the brain itself. A case of endocrine glands reacting to conditions within the body--not independently, but via the endocrine system-brain feedback loop. The mind itself isn't independent.
Like a king on a throne, the brain operates under constraints imposed by its internal and external environment. The thinking mind can send out an order, and the affected system(s) can refuse to (or be unable to) obey. For instance, I can decide to go outside and lift my Escalade. In a dire emergency, maybe I can, and cause severe damage to muscles and bones. Wisely, under normal conditions the golgi tendon reflex within the muscles will not permit the muscles to injure themselves-- especially, if that muscle has been injured in the past. Therefore, in a very real sense, individual muscles and other body systems can exercise a degree of independent control due to--are you ready?-- memory retained within the muscles.
Boris is not saying anything that I haven't said in the above comment. He has not claimed that this limited independence of action is due to wee brains within each cell's "software."
An automobile engine cannot decide to slow down because a tire is bald. The body is not a mechanical engine; to ensure the functional capability of the entire organism, the body can and does limit its response to orders from its controlling mind.
I repeat: the argument here is mere semantics.
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Hi Mike.please forgive me if I am not 100% relating my answer to your post.
For the last almost 20 years I'm teaching and practicing medical and sports massage at United States of America. Of course, my old country is culturally different including massage therapy education, which practice was totally different. The following are the differences:
1. Soviet Union was a big country but didn't have so many massage schools.
2. All schools (better or worse) taught the same curriculum from the same textbooks.
3. All textbooks contained material developed through research.
4. From time to time editions of this textbooks was updated, but this proposed updates where approved by scientific committee and only after a few good years of successful clinical utilization and, of course, good clinical outcomes. We had a common awareness that "NEW" doesn't mean better and have to be proven clinically and first of all.
As you can see studies and references to studies having importance but condition:” it have clinically be proven and for long-time as well sound scientific. I'm offering no reference because it is difficult for most to read Russian but offering explanation of Physiological effect of massage on the human body . Would any physiologist dispute it? I doubt because it's scientifically sounds data, but if one will deny because of lack of reference A) I will ask if presented information is known facts in physiology not in massage related issues but in general physiology? B) for 39 years I'm practicing this methodology and using this data and it does work. Plus it was researched by scientists. If one will deny it will have to offer different explanation. References to research is important but conditions are conditions.
Physiological effect of massage on the human body
Two factors define the physiological effect of massage on humans.
1. Local, mechanical factor - expressed by mechanical acceleration of venous blood drainage, some degree of lymph drainage acceleration, passive exercise for soft tissues, and breaking down deposits of calcium in soft tissue and stimulation of its removal from the body.
2. Reflex factor - the main power of massage therapy is its reflexive therapy. By mobilizing skin, connective and muscular tissue, we deform the proprioreceptors, which in turn creates action potentials (electrical activities) that through neurological pathways reaching motor and vasomotor centers. As a reflex (involuntary reaction of organs and systems to original stimuli) the body responds by expressing all positive changes that I mentioned earlier. In order to reach these results we must perform all sets of therapy in the inhibitory regime.Best wishes.
Boris
Mike Hinkle said:
I guess we all have our ways. If it can't be explained to their knowledge they don't seem to grasp. I guess it's like we feel about pregnancy. I can understand them challenging me. You have such an extensive backgroud. They feel they are above reproach. I agree with them. we need to challenge the information they give us. They claim to be open and then explain every fact you give them away. Then go right back to the stance they entered the conversation with. I guess we are that way a lot also. We'll all find our ways. Mine is protecting modalities and nothings going away easy!!! Anyone practicing any accepted modality now, just keep on going. There is so much we don't know about even our basic make up of atoms. We are spending billions in research and there's a lot more coming. Things that will marvel those who don't believe cells have memory!
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