Six Universal Body Movements Expressed in Cellular Consciousness
and Their Meanings
by Terry Larimore, L.M.S.W. and Graham Farrant, M.D.
ABSTRACT: There are six body movements related to cellular consciousness, occurring during primal re-experience, that appear spontaneously in all people, everywhere around the world, across all cultures, and regardless of education. This paper describes these body movements and the accompanying feelings/experiences that are reported, which interpretations/meanings are also amazingly consistent. These experiences and typical body movements relate to the biological cellular events of the egg leaving the ovary, the sperm awaiting ejaculation, the sperm's journey to and fertilization of the egg, the egg's welcoming the sperm in, conception and the zygote's/blastocyst's descent through the fallopian tube, and the blastocyst's implantation into the uterine wall. The fact that hundreds of people the world over are spontaneously expressing the same movements and ascribing to them the same meanings is strong evidence that conception and surrounding events are powerful imprints on consciousness and personality. Healing the residual effects of these earliest events and these deepest emotions is a potent and positive force in one's life and therefore is an important key to bringing peace to our precious, fragile planet. In touch with this consciousness, we see how trivial are the differences between people and how linked and interdependent we all are.
A Key to World Peace in Cellular Consciousness
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 before 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.
Six Universal Body Movements
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
experiences 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 facilitators
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 reported an experience that was not, at that time, a part
of medical knowledge but was later discovered to be biologically 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.
Egg Leaving Ovary
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.
Sperm Awaiting Ejaculation
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 movement spreads to the whole body as
the person gives in to gravity and lies down.
Sperm's Journey to and Fertilization of the Egg
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.
Egg's Welcoming the Sperm In
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.
Conception and Descent Through Fallopian Tube
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 DNA throughout the interior of the egg.
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 DNA
from both the egg and sperm, begins the lifelong task of dividing to create
new cells. However, the most significant cell division that one ever experiences
is the split that transforms one from a unified, one-celled being into
two cells, beginning the process towards becoming a complex, multi-celled,
specialized creature.
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.
Implantation
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 placenta
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.
Timing
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 ejaculation 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.
The Truth
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 anyone'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.
Peace and Love
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.
TERRY LARIMORE is a therapist in private practice in Larkspur,
California. Terry offers trainings and workshops across the country
from Houston to Toronto, San Francisco to New York. See
www.terrylarimore.com
GRAHAM FARRANT, MD., 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
North America, he worked as a traditional psychiatrist until a patient
challenged him: "You're a nice guy, Graham, but I'm not getting
better. I read about this new primal therapy in America. Why don't
you go there and learn it, then come back and treat me?" He did,
then he returned to run his own primal clinic in Melbourne. 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 North America and Europe, offering
workshops and trainings in his groundbreaking work. He was well-known
and deeply appreciated for his ability and willingness to connect
with people on a heart level. With his primary interest in personal
contact (not the solitary task of writing), Graham was notorious
for not taking time from his workshop schedule to organize and record
what he knew. Because of that, his teachings reside primarily in
the people with whom he worked. 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
28 December 1993 in Melbourne. He leaves three sons, one daughter,
and many clients, colleagues, and friends who love and deeply miss
him.
This article was originally published in Primal Renaissance:
The Journal of Primal Psychology, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring
1995, pp. 17-24.
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