Insofar
as we observe illnesses through a watching and a listening that are biological,
we realize that they all begin with a shock, a precise, punctual event in space
and time.
8:01
8:02
8:03
8:04* 8:05
8:06 8:07
All
is well until 8:04. There is a before. There is an after.
This
event, indicated with an asterisk in the time line above, enters into the
biology when it is not managed by its subject. For example, one day I see my
daughter slapped in the public park. In a second, that enters me and becomes an
agitation; through my senses it makes contact with my history, which renders a
meaning – a meaning that becomes a sensation: "It's awful! Not right!
Rotten! Embarrassing! Unthinkable! Depressing!"
And
if I am without an immediately satisfying solution and this emotion does not
get expressed, this sense perception becomes a biological felt
sense: "It's indigestible" (which would affect the
stomach); "it's suffocating" (which would affect the
lungs); "dismantling" (bones); "disgusting" (colon); "a
breakdown" (kidney).
Unspoken
Emotions Reside in Our Organs
An
event becomes a sense and then becomes a sensation. It enters through our five
senses and then it tries to leave. When it is impossible for this sensation to
be spoken, it moves into the unconscious, into the biology, into the mind, the
brain, the body, the energy field. Each of these elements tells us about the
others.
Taking
a Chinese pulse informs us about the energy level of each organ. Since each
cell of the body is connected to a group of cerebral neurons, which itself is
linked to a biological function, observation of the brain allows us to
determine the type of felt sense that has been hurt and remained unspoken and
which organ is affected. And conversely, each type of illness, and therefore
the cells that are affected, tells us about which felt sense needs to be freed
for healing to take place.
If
healing does not take place, the patient will remain under unconscious stress
with respect to the shocking event – sometimes for years at a time – and a part
of his being, of his energy, is appropriated.
As
Carl Gustav Jung has written: "Everything that does not rise into
consciousness comes back as destiny," and I would add that it comes back
as a symptom, as an illness, as an accident, as a failure, as a discomfort;
and au contraire: everything that rises into consciousness no longer comes
back as destiny, as fate, as illness!
Biological
Dangers
In
the real world, when an animal swallows a bone (which is a biological danger
for it), the animal has a biological felt sense of something undigested, for
which the solution is to produce more hydrochloric acid. That is the archetype.
If
a morsel of bad meat ends up in an animal's intestine, the felt sense is one of
something rotten that needs to be excreted. The biological solution for
survival in this case is to make a tumor in the colon in order to produce more
mucus, so that this morsel of bad meat can slip away toward the outside.
If
the biological stress is one of being attacked by the sun, the solution will be
found at the level of the dermis. More melanin must be produced. We call that
tanning, and it has the function of protecting us from solar aggression.
If
I'm in a critical situation for which the biological felt sense is that I must
do something very fast, this affects a precise area of my brain that then
orders my thyroid to manufacture more thyroxine, which accelerates my
metabolism and gives me more chances for getting out of a conflict of slowness.
Biological
Reality and Reaction
Imagine
an old stag who has his territory and his herd of females. This stag
impregnates the females every year. Then one day in autumn a young rival
arrives, and the two males fight. The biological reality of the old stag is
that he risks losing his biological survival territory. He has to optimize,
increase his chances for survival in order to hold on to the territory that
sustains him. The coronary arteries are the organs that can help him with this.
He will then ulcerate, scour his coronary arteries in order to allow more blood
to flow, increasing the irrigation of his heart. In doing this, it will be
oxygenated more quickly and fully, cleansed of all debris, and will be able to
send more blood to his muscles, which then will receive more oxygen and sugar.
In this way the old stag has more energy to devote to holding on to his
territory.
These
are primordial, biological reference situations, which we call archetypes.
A
man came to consult me who showed signs of problems with his coronary arteries.
He didn't have any issues with his harem, no one had come to butt heads with
him and take his wife. . . . But just the same he did have a territory, or
something he considered as such, and that was his small business. His son
wanted to take over this business and told him one day, when he was in the
midst of transmitting an order to one of the suppliers, "You don't have to
order anything. This isn't your place anymore."
The
father found nothing to say in reply. From one point of view he was happy that
it was his son who was carrying on the business. But in one fell swoop he was
confronted with the reality of the fact that he was losing his territory. But
there was nothing to say. There was no solution. His felt sense at that moment
was that he was losing his territory. And at that moment he activated an area
of the brain in the right temporal cortex – the peri-insular area – which then
ordered his arteries to be scoured.
It
was senseless since it wasn't going to help him get his business back, but the
order had been transmitted. To use a metaphor, it's a little like someone who
shoots an arrow. Once the arrow has been released, it can no longer be stopped.
At
a given moment, there was a felt sense and that was it – the coronary arteries
were activated. This is the solution of biological adaptation that had been
programmed into him, one that has been a solution for survival for millions of
years and which has allowed us to adapt to the real world.
Real
or Virtual: The Reaction is the Same
But
sadly, our man was in a virtual world, only his brain didn't know
that. His brain didn't know how to distinguish between real and imaginary.
Just
imagine . . . One day I found myself among delightful friends where there was a
stunning cocktail. The cocktail I'd been served consisted of lemon juice with a
dash of strong mustard. If I tell you that I've prepared this same cocktail for
you, some of you are going to wince. Why? Does it burn? But it hasn't touched
your mouth! You're completely in the virtual world and yet you're already
disgusted.
For
this businessman it was just the same. All at once, his mind, his brain, and
his body received a shock. All at once, there was a memory, an association with
an ordeal; in the second that followed, a belief appeared that consisted
of: "Without territory, life has no meaning."
There
was this felt sense: I'm losing my territory. There was a void. There was
nothing left. Then came the survival solution in the biology: I scour my
coronary arteries, I get the blood flowing.
Down
the road our man managed to resolve his conflict. After a few months, he was
finally able to say, "How wonderful after all – I don't need this business
anymore!" He dropped it, he let go. He could then begin to reline his
coronary arteries, because there was no longer a conflict with the young stag.
He also healed his right temporal cortex. A little cholesterol came to the help
of this relining; it's a reconstruction material that allows the body to be
repaired.
What
Is the Illness Intended to Heal?
Jung
said we aren't here to heal our illnesses; our illnesses are here to heal us.
A
woman came to consult me one day because she had a tumor in her left breast. We
looked for the strongest, most dramatic event she had lived through and was
able to speak about, because once we speak of something, it is expressed.
If it is not expressed, it is imprinted. In biology what is not expressed
is imprinted.
The
first breast that a right-handed woman usually gives to her baby to nurse from
is the left breast. The infant then has its right ear over her heart, it hears
the cardiac rhythm and it is calmed by that. But what is the biological meaning
of the breast?
The breast is the only organ that has no use for its owner – it is for someone
else. If both breasts are removed, a woman can continue to live. The breast is
for someone else. A problem in the breast is therefore a problem in relation to
someone else. The breast is there to make milk, to nourish someone else, to
give of oneself.
So
I explained to the woman, Mrs. L, that with this felt sense there was someone
else, a child or someone in maternal relation to her, who had been in danger.
We moved back in time, Mrs. L "rejuvenated" and suddenly she
collapsed in tears. She then related this story:
She
had been at a fairground with her grandson. Wanting to ride on the ghost train,
the child had rushed forward and fallen with his hands on the rail just as the
train arrived. Within one second, Mrs. L envisioned the child's hands cut off,
and all the problems this handicap would cause, including her daughter's
depression. Mrs. L immediately saw one thousand and one things and felt guilty
for each one. It was unthinkable. She would have wanted to do something, give
something of herself, but there was nothing that could be done. She was caught
in a maternal impossibility. What she told me in the course of half an hour
took place in her head within one or two seconds.
In
fact, the child was unharmed. He had long sleeves and his hands were not on the
rail, but she hadn't seen that. He was just fine, with only a few scratches on
his knees. But at that moment, a very sharp emotion had entered into her. The
arrow had been released. After the incident, using her reason, she convinced
herself that all was well and the child was safe. But the important element was
not what she thought in her head. What counted was what she'd felt in her body
– what happened in her "gut." This accident could well happen again,
and this time for real. She began to have nightmares about it. She relived
these possible events in her guts. In her head, she was settled; there was no
problem. In her gut, she was no longer living in the present; that moment in
time was fixed, frozen.
When
scientists drill into an ice floe, they discover dust and gas that date from
prehistory. Similarly, all the stories are present in the history of a person,
in the deep layers. Everything remains.
And
for this woman, if a few years later she happens to see something on television
– a child in trouble, who falls or is knocked over, anything like that – that's
all it will take for there to be an effect, for that previous experience to be
awakened and unleash a symptom of adaptation.
Someone
else who has not experienced the same ordeal and has not then been programmed
for that event will not experience the events in the same way. Mrs. L, on the
other hand, has been programmed and she carries within herself the thought
that it could happen. She has this program in her mind, in her memory, in
her cells, in the nucleus of her cells, in the genetic code of the nuclei of
her cells – which eventually manifests as a tumor in her breast.
If
she were to conceive a child following this event, she would unconsciously
assign the child a mission: she must give the child all the winning solutions,
all the things that helped her, everything that was important for her. One of
the winning solutions for her is always to be ready to help others, to be a
mother for others. That's in her neurons and in her genes. In giving birth, she
would transmit this program, either through her genes or through education, or
from brain to brain. . . . And perhaps this future child would be named
Christian, Christine, or Christopher. . . . That is, he or she would be like
Christ in caring for others, in his disregard for self. Perhaps he or she would
become a nurse, a therapist, or a social worker, but, in any case, he or she
would be a pair of breasts. In a professional way and in a physical
way, he or she would incarnate unconscious fidelity, unconscious loyalty to
this survival program.
This
explains how we can meet people, both men and women, who have a strong chest
and are very sensitive to the troubles of the world without their knowing why
this is so. When we look into the line of their ancestors, we can find the
program that was installed at a given moment.
I
remember another patient who had been told that her son was autistic. That very
evening, she had milk flowing from both breasts. One diagnosis was enough and
no follow-up was needed. In some cases, the shock is so strong that, right
away, the biological program appears.
The
Onset and Phases of Illness
The
following list summarizes the biological progression of the onset of illness:
1.
The external event occurs
2.
The event is perceived by the five senses
3.
Immediately, the unconscious memory of another event having something
in common with this event floods in
4. Beliefs rise
up
5. Feeling is
invoked
6.
Feeling is transformed into biological coding in the brain, which has
a finite assembly of options that correspond to our biological reality
7.
In the final analysis, these options consist of everything that relates to the body, which
expresses the adaptation program
8.
Whenever the dramatic intensity is strong, the biological program may be
transmitted to the gametes (ova, spermatozoa) and any subsequent child will be
unconsciously faithful to this coding through his illnesses, through his name,
through his job, and so on
The
Phases of Illness
All
illnesses have two phases: The first phase extends from the shock to the
resolution of the shock. This is the stress phase. The second phase extends
from the resolution until the return to normal. This is the inflammatory,
healing phase.
All
of our biological reality, whether it's the mind, the brain, the body, the
energy meridians, the Chinese pulse, the spots in the iris – all develop at the
same tempo. If the person is in conflict, then the whole is in conflict. If the
person resolves things, then the whole is resolved.
One
day a man came to see me because he had developed a rectal tumor. He had been
passing blood from his anus since the month of February. I asked him what was
the positive thing that took place for him in February.
The
man was stunned. It didn't seem logical to him. But if there's blood, if
there's a large inflammation, it means that someone is in the process of
resolving something. He was in the second phase.
He
found the ordeal, which had happened one year before. He had five children, and
his second child (who was like him and with whom he got along the best) brought
his fiancée home with him for the first time. And all during the meal, she
continually made jabs at his son by making embarrassing remarks about him. It
was the father who experienced a shock at that time, but he was unable to say
anything about it. She was his son's choice and he loved his son and respected
his choice. But when he spoke to me about it, he said, "Oh, my goodness!
It was hard." And he made certain movements with his hand. So I asked him,
"What is your hand telling us?"
"Well,
I wanted to get rid of it. It was crappy what she did in my home." This
man was speaking to me with his rectum. His felt sense at the time of the
ordeal was that someone had deposited a rotten bit of meat in his home, in his
territory, and he wanted to get rid of this rotten bit but he couldn't. It was
stuck.
Then,
at the end of January, his son called him saying, "It's over. She's a pain
in the ass. You'll never see her again." He had no idea it had been an
ordeal for his father, who was no doubt delighted at this breakup. The next
day, the father began passing blood. Because at that moment, he was resolving
his crappy conflict. There was no longer any need to manage a filthy, rotten
item. He had moved on to the repair stage, to the solution.
The
delay in the appearance of symptoms is very variable depending on the felt
sense. It is unleashed in the same second as the original event, but the
symptom itself appears after a delay. For someone who has a conflict that is at
the level of the skin, the symptom appears quickly, since the skin is
immediately visible. If it's a decalcification at the level of the bone, it will
take time, months even, before it's noticed. The delay depends on the organ,
and therefore on the felt sense.
Sometimes
it seems to me that the human is like a passenger seated in a vehicle.
A
woman came to see me, saying, "I want to have children." At that
moment, it's the passenger in her who is speaking, and who is suffering from
being sterile. She wanted to go to the right, toward the forest of fertility,
and yet her car kept taking her to the left, into the desert of sterility. I
explained to her that it was her unconscious that was driving the car. This
sterile woman carried in her unconscious mind a memory that was a
message: there is a danger in being pregnant, even a danger of
dying. Her grandmother had died in childbirth; therefore, in her unconscious
mind, pregnancy was dangerous. Within it's own system of logic, the unconscious
mind is always right. It goes toward life, and in this case, life meant not
being pregnant. Once she understood that, she could deprogram, and
then make babies with the conviction that this problem was a "granny"
problem and that there were lots of other women who make babies and survive!
So,
it's a question of becoming aware of who is driving, who is at the
wheel. When I do this or that, when I produce a symptom, who is directing my
life, and why?
Another
woman was into bodybuilding. She went to the gym every day for an hour. One
day, right in the middle of a workout, she became aware that she was doing this
as a compensation, connected to her father, who put her down all the time,
telling her, "You're ugly, you're thin. . . ." She had forgotten that
but it was still there. Right in the middle of a workout, she realized,
"I'm doing all this for him! I'm boring myself stiff just for him."
She took off her outfit, took a shower, and never went back. She was doing it
only in terms of a compensation. That's what was driving her car. There was no
passenger inside who wanted to do bodybuilding. Bodybuilding could be continued
if there was another reason. But when it's just that one part that wants to do
bodybuilding or that wants to be sterile, for example, in such circumstances
there's no reason to go on.
The
Electrochemical Whispering of My Cells
The
appeal and specificity of the biological decoding of illness is to propose a biological
meaning – in the emotions, never in the intellect. If we could find
meaning only at the intellectual level, it would be annoying or amusing. But
when it relates to our personal history, it's no longer intellectual, it's
emotional.
Emotion
is the song of the cells, it's their whispering; it's the electric light, warm
and chemical, the subjective reality of the nuclei of the cells. Emotion is a
little cell speaking about itself and showing itself to be fierce animal,
modest monk, naked artist. It tells itself this openly, with satisfaction or in
frustration.
Article
Source:
The
BioGenealogy Sourcebook: Healing the Body by Resolving Traumas of the Past
by Christian Flèche.
©2008.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Healing Arts Press, a division on
Inner Traditions Intl. www.innertraditions.com
