Secrets of Your Cells: Discovering Your Body's Inner Intelligence (10 page)

10.

Suppressor cells halt action.
Once the immune defenders have duly eradicated the invader, another set of molecular signals trigger the all-clear switch; T suppressor cells halt the immune response.

11.

An important handshake.
You may wonder: if immune cells carry the marker of an invader, why aren’t they recognized as “not self” and attacked? Self cells “hold hands,” recognizing each other; hence, no attack.

The immune network is preeminent for its collaboration between the physical cellular universe and our more etheric consciousness. It serves to define the physical cellular self while being influenced by our invisible beliefs, attitudes, and psychological perceptions of self.

Who Am I? Discovering Self

Now that we have witnessed the uncanny intelligence of our cells in identifying and protecting self, let’s shift our conversation and think about what gives us as whole, multidimensional, and conscious human beings our positive sense of self, and how we may strengthen it.

A core belief I’ve held since I was a child is that every one of us has a special purpose for being here. How are we meant to use the spark of energy given to us at the beginning of life? To love? To work? To nurture the land or a child? To dream and complete a creative project? Each of us likely carries a seed of inspiration about who we are and why we are here. But what if we don’t have or hear that inspiration—then what?

There was a time when my inspiration and sense of mission had disappeared. “I” was truly lost and chose to travel a new path to uncover my spiritual self, apprenticing with a shaman. We worked with sound and nonlinear technologies to access parts of myself I had been unaware of. With practice, commitment, and community, I recovered more of me, and it was this path that offered me the greatest integration of self. I raised the old questions: Why am I here? What is my unique gift that would make the world a better place and benefit others? It is what most of us ask at some time in our lives, and we often need nontraditional means to access that information. I would now call them sacred technologies.

In my apprenticeship, I “stalked power” in order to be able to fully know and express who I am. In shamanic or indigenous traditions, power is called “medicine” and each person’s medicine represents his or her individual gifts, purpose, and power for healing the tribe. I found that one of my gifts was sound.

When we uncover our power and begin to put it into action, we truly are ourselves. It is then that we make the greatest contributions and use our gift of energy more wisely. We have so many pathways to tap into, know, and integrate the self. Since sound is my given medicine, here I offer ways you can use it to enliven your sacred cell self.

Engaging the Sense of Self: The Power of Sound

Arden Mahlberg, a psychotherapist in Madison, Wisconsin, uses sound to help his patients rediscover their core sense of self. He tells the phenomenal story in
Music and Miracles
of his first clinical experience with the sound “mmm.” One of his patients, a thirty-five-year-old man, felt inadequate and trapped in a safe job that he hated. He was depressed, and he feared failure. Mahlberg prescribed sound: imagining the “mmm” sound and then humming it. At first, the image and sound provided the man with more restful sleep—who couldn’t benefit from that? Then, after several months’ practice, he found he had created a radical shift in his identity. He gained a new sense of security and was able to change jobs without worrying about the outcome.
¹⁷

Now Mahlberg often uses this sound strategy with patients who’ve made little progress in “talk therapy.” Humming helps them find themselves. He asks patients who feel lost to first imagine the sound “mmm” and then hum it for between five and twenty minutes every day. In his experience, over time, these individuals become more assertive and confident, making clearer choices and decisions. Frequently, as they view themselves (the self) differently, their lives take on new rhythm and energy. In essence, they rediscover themselves and their true nature. Do you ever feel you don’t know who or where
you
are? Here is an exercise for you.

EXPLORATION

The Sound of the Self

Explore this experiment to strengthen your sense of self. Even if you feel just fine as you are, this can be an interesting enhancement to your well-being.

Set aside about five to ten minutes in a place where you feel safe and will be undisturbed. Sit in a relaxed position. Close your eyes and imagine or picture the sound “mmm.” You can simply imagine the letter
m
or pretend that you are hearing the sound. Another option is to make the sound silently. Do this part for a few minutes.

Now you can move on to the next step and practice aloud with sound. Take a deep breath, inhaling through your nose. Your mouth is closed.

Exhale, letting the breath out through your nose while humming “mmm.” Allow the humming “mmm” to last as long as your outbreath will permit. Now take another deep breath in, and once more sound “mmm.” Feel the sound vibrate your bones and tissues. Where do you feel the sound first? Repeat at least nine times to begin to feel the benefits.

Experiment with using high and low tones, loud and soft. Do you feel the sound in different places when your tone is low and when it is high? Feel the difference when you have your teeth touching as you hum.

Build your practice over the next few days until you are sounding “mmm” for at least five minutes. Be silent for a while after each session. Notice how you feel. You will find that five to twenty minutes of this changes your day. Keep a journal of your experience. Do you notice any physical changes, any new awareness or sensitivities? What about your sense of self, your boundaries?

The great teachers tell us that it takes at least twenty-one days to change a pattern. My suggestion is to begin the humming practice three days in a row, working up to twenty-one.

Warning!
Do not do this while driving a car. People often enter a deeply altered state as the harmonic hum slows down both brain waves and response times. This is excellent preparation for imagery or meditation, not for activity.

How Can Humming Possibly Help Recover the Self?

Our human knowledge of the therapeutic effects of sounding “mmm” goes back thousands of years. Socrates said that listening to humming kept him content, focused, and secure in himself. Kabir, the Sufi poet, said the sound moved him to ecstasy. The Hupa Indian tradition teaches
that when we wake up feeling out of sorts, humming will help our spirit return to us.

Mahlberg chose the sound “mmm” because he postulated that it is the archetypal sound of the self—there is plenty of evidence for this. Regardless of our cultural roots, as infants, we make the “m-mm” sound while sucking. When sounded with an empty mouth, “m-m” becomes “mama,” globally the most common first spoken word. In many languages, the word for mother emphasizes the “mmm” sound. Parents naturally hum their children to sleep. We purr as we take in pleasing nourishment: “Mmm, mmm, good.” Is it a coincidence that “mmm” is a sacred sound in many traditions: amen, aum (om), shema, shalom, salaam?

In the Hindu Upanishads, the “mmm” sound is said to provide a fundamental distinction between me and not me, self and other, inner and outer. In other sacred traditions this sound provides a link between heaven and earth. Aum and amen are sounded at the end of a prayer or spiritual verse. Shaman and anthropologist Angeles Arrien describes the sound of the letter
m
as the consonant sound that grounds our prayers; while “ah” opens us to heart and spirit, “mmm” brings us back to earth.
¹⁸

When we hear and make a repetitive sound, our brain waves slow and become similar to the delta brain waves of restorative sleep, which are also the first detectable brain waves in the fetus. When we hum, are we re-creating the peacefulness of womb consciousness—making a new safe place?

Humming vibrates the body, from inside the cells through flesh and bone, the strings of our cells, and into the mind. It attunes us, helping most of our cells to resonate together. This affords us the perfect time to align our ideas of self and intent.

If you already engage in a body practice such as yoga, tai chi, or qigong, try adding the “mmm” sound to your practice. You may find that it helps you further embody yourself.

Sound at Work

Many people find that repeating a sound as a single, monotonous tone induces and deepens the meditative state. In fact, I have worked with clients who were unable to meditate until they sounded “mmm” or did some kind of chant.

Witnessing such emotionally centering effects, I became inspired to try sound with people who had immune illnesses that featured failures in cellular identity. For a period of a year, I worked first with a group of eight women suffering chronic fatigue syndrome, a baffling disease mentioned earlier in this chapter. This is a condition with an ill-defined set of symptoms that result in diminished cognitive abilities, memory, physical strength, zest for life, and immunological integrity. Frequently, the people struck with it are high-powered overachievers, often women in roles that have traditionally been considered male. The syndrome certainly represents “losing the self” at many levels: you can’t do what you used to be able to do; you don’t remember what you’ve read; your energy is exhausted. You sleep but wake unrefreshed.

The women in my group practiced the “mmm” sound to see if they could recover more of who they once were. Every one of them reported that making the sound for even a few minutes gave them more energy and that over time they felt better about themselves.

As I began integrating sound and “mmm” into other groups, I repeatedly discovered that it was a powerful tool for enhancing well-being. One man with an autoimmune illness, for example, had unrelenting muscle and joint pain because his immune system had been progressively destroying his cells. The only strategy that relieved his pain was sound: he used humming with the “mmm” sound as described above as well as other tones.

Every cell, molecule, and atom vibrates, moves, and hums. Radio astronomers detect a constant humming sound everywhere in the universe. It is said that if the sound of our atoms is heard, it resembles OM (aum), the sacred Hindu sound. Yet aum is more than an ordinary sound
in the Hindu tradition; it represents the name and manifestation of God, or divine consciousness. Joseph Campbell described the inner humming sound as the primal energy and vibration of which the universe itself is a manifestation. And if sound manifests or organizes the universe, doesn’t it follow that humming can help us manifest our individual universes?

REFLECTION