RAMZIA JAWARA
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[Science & Spirituality] How memory is stored in the body: Trauma & Healing
Author: Ramzia Jawara
The theory that memory extends further beyond the brain and is stored inside (but not limited to) the body, outside of our common fields of consciousness- is one that is gaining much momentum recently. We are constantly collecting and processing experiences as data which manifests into our entire being, our thinking and our immediate external surroundings.
Akasha (a-ka 'ska) is a Sanskrit word meaning "ether": all-pervasive space. In Indian philosophy akasha was considered the first and most fundamental of the five elements. It is the womb from which everything we perceive with our senses has emerged and into which everything will ultimately re-descend. In his book ‘Science: An Integral Theory of Everything’ Ervin Laszlo states that ‘Intuitive people have always known that the real universe is more than a world of inert, nonconscious matter moving randomly in passive space.’ Islam and Hinduism are two examples of religions that comparatively use Body, Mind and Spirit to transcend rationality in order to heal and manifest.
Muslims engage in five daily prayers that engage ritualistic movements whilst the Hindus practice yoga. Muslims recite Surah’s whilst Hindus recite Mantras that plant seeds in the mind. Both connect with higher powers that exist in the Akashic field that are neither seen or touched but only felt in our common reality. For the Muslims it is Allah, in Hinduism they are multiple Gods and Goddesses in addition to Brahman.
A COMPOSITE TANTRIC DEITY HOLDING ARTIFACTS OF WORSHIP, HIS BODY COMPOSED OF HINDU DEITIES WITH THEIR CONSORTS, ANIMALS AND MYTHICAL FIGURES, INCLUDING A LEOPARD AND A SIMURGH Pahari, circa 1830
The Mind, Body, Spirit complex is now being adopted globally through new age philosophies such as the Law of One, which uses the foundation of organised religion to mould a philosophy evolving with the concept of free thinking.
‘In primordial condition we have always possessed an instinctive knowledge of the sacred unity and profound interconnectedness of the world, a deep schism arose between humankind and the rest of reality with the ascendance of the rational mind. The nadir of this development is reflected in the current ecological disaster, moral disorientation, and spiritual emptiness.’ -Ervin Laszlo
My mind goes to the Global North when I think of a place that could benefit from spirituality, particularly new age spirituality because it is a place that, for a long time, the rational mind has been rewarded more than the intuitive one. Rational thought has brought much technological advancement, leaving little regard for the intuitive mind and has inevitably led to the destruction of what was there before. The merging of the two could lead to a happier, more healed place to exist in the world. An image that comes to mind is Hieronymus Bosch’s Triptych painting ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ depicting exactly this.
Garden Of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch, 1515
I am fascinated by the nature of Sacred Geometry. Throughout life times and millennia these patterns seem to reoccur, like a portal that links humans with plants and animals and all of existence through the art of naturally occurring mathematical shapes of divine perfection.
“The architecture of bodily existence is determined by an invisible, immaterial world of pure form and geometry”.- Robert Lawlor.
These sacred sequences have an effect on the body and can be seen in art, music and various forms of harmonic expression that many believe can be used for healing and manifestation as resonance is found between the merging of material and immaterial. The Golden ratio can be seen in the great Pyramid of Giza built around 2550 - 2490BC, a place of worship . It can also be seen in holy books, the ratio of the total number of chapters in the Quran (114) which represents the physical design of the Quran divided by the Quran Constant (70.44911244) which represents the mathematical design of the Quran gives 1.6181893; is amazingly almost equal to the golden ratio which is 1.61803398875. This ancient knowledge was discovered by indigenous melanated minds. These are holy places people turn to to heal unresolved issues. Today we still find the fibonacci sequence in humans, animals, plants, weather formations and all of the universe which just proves how interconnected we all are.
In his book “When The Body Says No” Gabor Mate, Physician and Writer, unveils the truth behind the mind-body connection by revealing how one's mental state has an effect on their physical condition and how both can be improved. He illuminates the hidden conditions between the mental state and physical illness. Scientists for a long time have attempted to understand the body in isolation from the brain when it is in fact part of the whole, wanting to describe human beings—healthy or otherwise—as though they function in isolation from the environment in which they develop, live, work, play, love and die. The Canadian William Osler, is one example of one of the greatest physicians of all time who suspected rheumatoid arthritis—a condition related to scleroderma—to be a stress-related disorder.
Below I will narrate Jackie’s story from Mate’s book – A girl whose memory was stored in the form of trauma that manifested into illness as a result of lack of self expression:
Jackie suppressed a lot of her emotional expression on a day to day basis and spoke through her Cello. She poured all of her intensity and pain into her music, using it as a medium to express her internal aggression. When engaged in music Jackie was fully animated by emotions that would have been diluted or not present anywhere else in her life. It is said that she was often riverting or almost painful to watch as she used it as a channel for all of that stuck emotion that had been kept in her body. Twenty years later she was diagnosed with MS and she said to a good friend of hers that whilst on stage she felt as though she could completely communicate the way she felt, in all other aspects of her life it felt like there was a brick wall between her internal world and the external. As an adult she was to write in her diary that she had never known how to speak in words, only through music.
This highlights the importance of self expression through creativity, speech and anything that needs to be released. In Hinduism this kind of issue would be tackled by working with specific chakra energy centres to move the stuck energy through the body before it has the chance to manifest into physical illness.
By healing ourselves, we heal the collective and by hurting ourselves we hurt the collective because we live in relation to each other. As Jiddu Krishnamurti said “Each one of us is the storehouse of all the past. The individual is the human who is all mankind. The whole history of man is written in ourselves.” Eckhart Tolle explains how old emotional pain is carried around inside a person which uses our emotions to control our thinking and inevitably manifests into actions which alter our external environment for better or worse as far as the brain is concerned. This is called a ‘Pain Body’. The pain body is the trauma stored inside the akashic field. For many people, the pain-body awakens particularly at the time preceding the menstrual flow. The body and the akashic field are a home for living thoughts and memories and blood-as far as energy is concerned- is the highest physical manifestation of the currency of pain in the akashic field hence, many feel premenstrual stress in the time preluding their period as they release pain and suffering.
If you cannot feel your emotions, if you are cut off from them, you will eventually experience them on a purely physical level, as a physical problem or symptom - Eckhart Tolle
Humanity has existed within the mental realm in isolation from the rest of the body for a long time and one could conclude from this that many people have period pains, because of unresolved trauma. The association with blood and violence from unhealed generational trauma leads to painful periods until we purge our trauma and the collective trauma, accumulated in the energy field.
In conclusion, The mind is complete in relation to the body and spirit and in itself can make a hell of heaven, OR a heaven of hell. Our memories are things that we look back on and they tend to spark an emotion in us whether positive or negative. Each individual memory is connected to a time or place that sparks something within each individual. Memory is linked to more than just an abstract idea floating in the air. How it is stored in people and places in the akashic field and can manifest as sickness or an environment rooted in Love. Our memories are the basis of our thoughts and even when they are forgotten in the brain they still remain stored in our bodies and in the bodies of places and things, so when we watch our thinking and our behaviours, making sure that they are rooted in love, the same will be extended outward. Now we are in an age where people are adopting new age spirituality which alert presence so that they can observe the mind that is stuck in memories. The fundamental problem is not the external stress, such as the life events quoted in the studies, but an environmentally conditioned helplessness that permits neither of the normal responses of fight or flight. Our ultimate destiny is to reconnect with our essential Being and express our extraordinary, divine reality in the ordinary physical world, moment by moment.