Cellular consciousness is the
complete memory that we each carry in our bodies of our earliest experiences,
including conception and the separate experiences of being a sperm and an egg.
Research in the field of pre- and perinatal psychology is showing how these
early times and experiences influence us in ways that we have never be-fore
been aware of, much less understood. It is being shown more and more that we
are constantly (unconsciously) and profoundly affected by these experiences in
every aspect of our lives.
It is our feeling and belief that psychotherapy on the level of cellular
consciousness is an important key to bringing peace to our precious, fragile
planet. This exploration of deepest emotions is revealing the consequences for
children (born and unborn) of our actions on levels at which we used to be
unaware that consequences existed. The knowledge gained in this work is already
having a profound effect on the field of psychotherapy as well as on the
"birth industry." It is an effective double-edged tool to heal hurts
that have already been inflicted and to help us to not
inflict the same hurts on our children. That is our wish and our mission.
In watching people access their
own cellular consciousness, we have found that there are six
body movements that appear spontaneously in all people, everywhere around the
world, across all cultures, and regardless of education. This happens
among people who have not spoken with one another, never been exposed to
information about cellular consciousness, and have not seen videos or tapes of
others expressing their feelings or reliving experi-ences at that level.
The purpose of this article is to share the information we have found so
valuable by describing these six body movements and the feelings and meanings
associated with each one. Our experience is that the more deeply we know
ourselves, the more sensitive and compassionate we become with ourselves and others. We hope this information will provide
confirmation to many who have been experiencing cellular consciousness in their
primal regressions (possibly without recognizing it as such) and help
facili-tators encountering such experiences in their clients. We hope readers
will take the information in this paper as descriptive—not prescriptive—and use
it to recognize what sometimes emerges, naturally, in regressive sessions. It
is not a checklist for what "ought" happen.
The "meanings" we list for each movement are the amazingly
consistent interpretations of the experience reported by adults who have
undergone regressive psychotherapy to reach and express deep feelings. The
meanings reported by therapy clients are remarkably parallel to the biological
realities of conception. These interpretations are reported
by people with little or no knowledge of conception biology. It
has also happened that a client has re-ported an experience that was not, at
that time, a part of medical knowledge but was later discovered
to be biologi-cally true. The fact that hundreds of clients are spontaneously
expressing the same movements and ascribing to them the same meanings is strong
evidence that conception is a powerful imprint.
Each peculiar experience/memory includes a unique set of feelings for
each person. However, there is a "typical" set of feelings associated
with each experience and, in some cases, we mention
some common variations in feeling patterns traceable to each experience. What
follows is a summary of the six universal cellular experiences including the
body movements and feelings commonly associated with them.
As people relive the experience
of being a ripe egg in the ovary, they routinely report feelings ranging from
an acute sense of regret at leaving the "sisterhood" to abject terror
at "going into the void" or facing "certain death."
This separation is particularly poignant when we remember that the eggs
have coexisted in the mother’s ovary since they developed at four months
gestation in her mother’s womb. So, not only have the eggs existed
completely within the universe of the mother but, for a time until the mother’s
birth, also within her mother’s universe and all of this grandmother’s
feelings, attitudes, chemicals, and so on. You can see how the egg’s history is
long-standing and pervasive.
To add to this, every person experiences, as an egg in the ovary, the
complete history of his or her mother before he or she was conceived, including
any previous children born to the mother, or babies conceived and aborted or
miscarried, as well as all the previous eggs who left
the ovary and died unfertilized.
Therefore, we see people re-experiencing the "danger" of
leaving the egg because of the previous miscarriage or abortion suffered by a
former "sister." In these cases, the first-born children in these
families share an uncertainty and insecurity not assuaged by the fact that they
were not miscarried or aborted.
The client’s body movement associated with this level of consciousness is centered on the left hip, with the body fairly straight
and rotating along the axis of the hip with the feet propelling the body
counterclockwise. Sometimes the body flexes rhythmically (sometimes violently)
and propels itself counterclockwise.
The emergence of "egg consciousness" is often
first displayed in a posture of the client in which the legs are wide
apart, often with the knees bent. Hand and arm positions symbolic of egg
consciousness include open arms and open hands with palms facing up.
The "hurry, hurry, I have
to get there" feelings of the sperm—trapped in the testicles in a state of
arousal awaiting release—is commonly the first "cellular" feeling a
person accesses when working with cellular consciousness. Sperm memories and
experiences are quite a bit easier to reach and express than egg
memories/experiences for reasons that will be explained
later.
Being continually manufactured by the
man’s body, sperm do not carry the lifelong history and memory that eggs carry.
A sperm is, on the average, only days-to-weeks old at ejaculation. Yet what the
sperm lacks in long-term history it makes up with an intense imprint of the
mood, attitudes, beliefs, health, and feelings of the father at the time of
ejaculation.
A man’s withholding his orgasm—either to extend his
pleasure or from fear of impregnating his partner—exacerbates the
sperm’s sense of tension and urgency. Other sperm feelings people report
include regressing to the experience of being a sperm inside one’s father’s
body and re-experiencing one’s father’s anger toward one’s mother (or women in
general), a tremendous need for acceptance, one’s father’s guilt at
experiencing sexual feeling, one’s father’s resentment at having to
"force" his wife into performing her "sexual duties," and
so on.
At least one person—upon re-experiencing her father through her
experience as a sperm in his body—has had such a deep knowledge of his essence
that she knew that the man she grew up with as her father was not, in reality,
her biological father. She confronted her mother with this knowledge, and her
mother confessed that she had, indeed, had an affair
and had never told a soul about it. The mother was even unsure which man—her
lover or her husband—was the father of her daughter. A deep, unshakable
"knowing" about their origins—as demonstrated by this daughter—is
common in people who have re-experienced their own cellular consciousness.
The body movements demonstrating sperm memory often begin with wrist-flicking, which is the client’s physical embodiment of
the sperm’s urgency and helplessness. People often begin this movement very
slowly. Then, on their own or with encouragement to let their wrists be loose
and to find their own tempo, clients begin a rapid and loose flicking of the whole limp-fingered hand from the wrist. This movement often
grows to include the forearm or whole arm. Commonly, the rapid shaking
move-ment spreads to the whole body as the person gives in to gravity and lies
down.
The sperm faces a Herculean task
of swimming the equivalent of eight to ten miles in his journey to the egg. The pH balance of the vagina, the viscosity of the cervical mucous,
the hospitality (or lack of it) in the uterine lining, the correct choice of a
fallopian tube and the journey up the tube (against the villi, which are
designed to carry the fertilized egg to the womb) are all tremendous obstacles
that must be overcome even before encountering the (relatively) huge egg.
This phase of the sperm’s experience is expressed by
the client in a rhythmical, total body "wave" similar to the swimming
motions of a tadpole, with the feet together and the head leading the way. The
client’s hands and arms are usually uninvolved and lay passively alongside the
body, or they parallel the body in "waves" of swimming movements.
One telling attribute of the sperm’s fertilization experience is the
focus of the burrowing on the top of the client’s head, between the crown and
the forehead. This contrasts with birth re-experience,
where the focus is on the client’s crown, and implantation, where the focus of
the burrowing is more likely to be on the client’s forehead/hairline.
Prior to fertilization, the sperm faces the experience of not being able
to force his way in and having to anxiously wait to be accepted, knowing that
the consequence of being rejected is death. Many people report a sense of
rejection initially for being the "wrong" sex—that is, a sperm that
would make the egg into a boy (if the egg preferred being a girl) or a girl (if
the egg preferred to be a boy). Many people also describe re-experiencing an
anguished "battle"—in which the sperm is not
lovingly welcomed by the egg but must woo the egg into accepting him or
exert whatever influence he can muster to win her acceptance. In these
instances, the egg grudgingly allows the sperm in, but these people are left
with a lifelong sense of "not being good enough" because of not
having been accepted readily on their own merits. Re-experiencing this
"rejection" and fully expressing the accompanying feelings, however,
offers relief from the lifelong sense of inadequacy.
By the time the sperm has
reached the egg, he has seen the relentless diminishment of his group to an
average of fifty survivors. Of these fifty, it was long
believed that the "victor" was the sperm that succeeded in
"penetrating" the egg. The analogy was one of conquest.
Clients re-experiencing their own cellular consciousness and, later,
electron microscopy has revealed that, at this point, the egg begins to exert a
choice as to which sperm will fertilize her. An enzyme coat that surrounds the sperm’s head—previously protected by a covering that is
gradually worn away in the journey to the egg—dissolves the egg’s outer layer.
The zona pellucida that surrounds the egg becomes honeycombed
as the sperm begin to "burrow." Then, as several sperm reach the innermost layer of the egg’s covering, the egg
puts out tiny arms to help "sweep" the sperm inward and, at one
point, they coalesce around one specific sperm to bring him in. It is clear
that the egg exerts her prerogative in choosing which of the sperm present will
fertilize her.
The movement associated with the egg’s exercise of this
"choice" is embodied in the motion that accompanies the phrase
"egging someone on"—the client’s bilateral motion of the arms,
reaching out with open hands to sweep the sperm inward toward its middle. The
motion often starts very small, then develops into wide, sweeping motions—the
arms completely extended, sweeping outward from the sides, around in front of
the body, up and then inward to the heart/chest.
Adopted children or children whose mothers died while they were very
young often report great satisfaction in the "knowing" they receive
of their mothers after an experience of their own cellular consciousness. It is
certainly true that our bodies can reveal to us the truth of our parents and of
our experiences with more accuracy than family anecdotes, history, and legends.
As the sperm is
brought into the egg, two things happen. First, the egg’s outer layer
becomes impenetrable to any other sperm. Second, the sperm
head "explodes," sending its
As clients re-experience this point in
fertilization, their movements switch to a lyrical, rhythmic, bilateral ballet
of union. The client’s body often rocks gently from side to side, sometimes
going up on one hip or the other, balancing delicately as the fingers continue
to express the nuances of this tiny new being’s earliest physical development.
The one-celled fertilized egg, or zygote, now containing the
The client’s movements as the zygote, and then blastocyst, during this
period are gentle, almost continual, and quite beautiful. The period going
"down the tubes" is usually one of bliss, union, relaxation, comfort,
and growth. This experience continues for the six to ten days it takes for the
egg to reach the uterus and implant in the uterine wall. Clients often report
re-experiencing the journey to be so comforting and pleasant that they are
reluctant to let the experience end.
Identical twins will often report that it is at this time, during the
descent through the fallopian tube, that they made the decision to split into
twins. In exploring separately through cellular re-experience their individual
experiences, twins overwhelmingly agree which one of them existed first and
which one is the result of the split. The reason for splitting differs in each
set of twins, but a common reason is the need for reinforcements or support for
facing the circumstances presented by the family into which they are being born.
The blastocyst—the multi-celled
fertilized egg—faces another crisis of survival when it leaves the fallopian
tube and descends into the uterus. At this point, the blastocyst must implant
into the uterine wall or die. In women who fear being pregnant or do not want
to be pregnant (for whatever reason), this connection often feels very tenuous
to the blastocyst. Many people who regress to this experience report a sense of
having to "hold on for dear life." It is possible for a woman to make
her womb a hostile place and to prevent implantation from happening. In women
with ambivalent feelings, implantation often occurs but only after a tremendous
struggle on the part of the blastocyst.
People who re-experience difficult implantations tell of trying to attach
and, when they fail, descending further into the uterus to try again. When such
a blastocyst finally succeeds in making the connection further down, its
location is such that the subsequent development of the pla-centa obstructs the
cervical opening, causing at birth the life-threatening condition of placenta
previa. This life-or-death crisis at birth is thus a replay of the
life-or-death crisis experienced at implantation.
Typical body motions of clients re-experiencing implantation include the
gentle "burrowing" action of the head, focused on the forehead, and
"grasping" movements of the hands. The grasping can get very
desperate as the blastocyst senses the woman’s inhospitality—ranging from
reluctance to outright hostility.
The preceding experiences have been described in the order in which they occur in
biology. However, in re-experiencing one’s cellular consciousness, these events
are most often relived and expressed out of "biological
order." The order in which these experiences emerge is unique for
every individual and is always the perfect order necessary for that person’s
emotional and physical healing.
Nevertheless, the body memories of being a sperm tend to be the easiest
to reclaim and express. And of these, the "hurry,
hurry" feeling of the sperm waiting for ejacu-lation is usually first
to emerge. Perhaps it is because that feeling is so prevalent in our current
society that it is usually quite easy for people to identify with and express
in cellular consciousness.
The tadpole-like swimming movements of the sperm on its journey often
emerge next, whether in the same session or many sessions later.
By contrast, the egg’s experience is much more subtle than the frenzy of
the sperm; consequently it usually emerges after the sperm
movements have been experienced. When egg consciousness does begin to emerge,
the movements expressing it—commonly the ones occurring next after the sperm
movements—are the sweeping arm movements.
There is no strong pattern as to when people re-experience the beautiful
descent through the fallopian tube or the burrowing of implantation.
Sometimes the urgency of the sperm waiting for ejaculation and then
swimming to the egg and the blastocyst’s attempts at implantation are
experienced together as a multilevel feeling of fear, terror, and urgency
embodied in the typical expressions of "I have to try" or "I
can’t make it."
At times, people experience the warm, maternal power of the egg welcoming
the sperm in together with the blastocyst’s period of bliss descending the
tube. Therefore outside of the tendency for sperm
feelings to emerge first, followed usually by the egg-welcoming-the-sperm
feelings, the other experiences tend to emerge in even more widely varying
order after that, depending on the person. This is true with the exception that
for most people the last experience to emerge is that of the egg leaving
the ovary. This is strange, of course, because it is the earliest experience to
occur biologically, though on a transpersonal plane, the soul leaving the
spirit realm and incarnating is an even earlier experience.
But the egg leaving the sisterhood
of the ovary is the first physical experience of taking a risk. The egg
(the person) at this point has no reassurance from physical experience that she
will survive and, understandably, this is often the most difficult cellular
memory to reach and re-experience.
Each person’s experience is
unique and individual. Many of the feelings expressed in cellular consciousness
happen simultaneously or people find that they flip quickly between similar
feelings that occurred at different times of development. People will often
process a particular feeling, related to a particular biological event, for
months or years, before the next one emerges. There is no correct pace or right or wrong order in which to relive or express
feelings.
The only absolute truth in doing cellular consciousness work is for each
person to remain completely true to his or her own experience. No one can know
the truth of any-one’s life better than that person.
The guidelines set forth in this article may be useful in making the most of
the cellular consciousness experience—both for the therapist
and the client. However, nothing in this article supersedes the
experiences of the person doing the feeling and inner exploration.
As we said at the beginning, we
believe that cellular consciousness is a powerful tool to bring about peace on
the planet. When we are in touch with our own cellular consciousness, we see
that there are few true differences between people. We are all in this together
and we need each other.
GRAHAM FARRANT, M.D.,
pioneered cellular consciousness work in seven countries and traveled
extensively for ten years sharing his knowledge in workshops and trainings. As the first Australian psychiatrist with certificates in adult and
child psychiatry from
It was through his extensive personal primal work as well as work with
clients that he developed the theory and practice of cellular consciousness. He
came to travel extensively in
Graham "retired" and maintained a small private practice,
looked after his health and spent time with family and friends in the last two
years of his life. He died
TERRY LARIMORE, L.M.S.W., is a writer and therapist from
Graham Farrant imbued many with his pioneering spirit. It
is no coincidence that Terry Larimore, newly arrived in