Do you notice anything unusual about the front page of yesterday’s Daily Hampshire Gazette (my local paper, covering Hampshire County, Massachusetts and neighboring areas)?

Front page of June 20, 2023 Daily Hampshire Gazette

Take a moment to click on the picture (to enlarge it) and make your guess, then scroll down to discover what I saw.

 

 

 

Here it is” Of the four stories on the front page, 100% represent a positive report on a people’s struggle for a better world, either concerning environmental or social justice issues. Two of the stories are about a movement to ban plastic bags, one reports on local Juneteenth events held the previous day, and one chronicles an attempt to establish a state holiday honoring Indigenous people.

“But wait, there’s more!”

Two of the four stories are about kid activists! Fifth-graders at Fort River School in Amherst are meeting with their state legislators to move forward a bill that would replace the celebration of Columbus Day–a celebration of an extreme human rights violator and expropriator of other people’s property–with Indigenous Peoples Day.

fifth-graders at at Amherst’s other elementary school, Crocker Farm School, testified at a hearing at the State House, about 90 miles away.

As a lifelong activist who got my start at age 12, and the parent of two people in their thirties who each took their first steps toward activism at age 6 (five years apart) and have remained active into adulthood, I’m proud of what’s happening one town away from me. I’ve said for many years that you are never too young or too old to be an activist. I had two friends, Rose “Arky” Markham and Frances Crowe, who were still activists on their 100th birthdays (three years apart). And proud of my local newspaper for giving oxygen to important movements, especially when kids take leadership. Too often, kid activists are pushed aside and told that their voices, their actions, don’t matter. Listen to the voices of both age and youth. they both have a lot to share.

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The concept of cellular memory was made very real and personal to me today, in the woods.

Yesterday, it happened that I chose a very icy location for my daily hike, slipped several times, fell twice, and banged myself in a few places. I even iced one of the spots when I got home. Those areas were still a bit sore for a couple of hours but were OK by the evening.

Today, I went to different nearby woods, free of ice, just a thin and not-very-slippery coating of snow. And as soon as I got out of the car, two of the spots I banged yesterday—below my left knee and above my right wrist—started to hurt! They’d felt fine all day.

I am convinced they “remembered” that the snowy woods had caused pain the day before.

Even more remarkable: once they “realized” that the conditions were, in fact, different, the pain subsided quickly. Within about three minutes, my leg was no longer hurting. Another couple of minutes and my arm felt fine too.

If I’m reading the signals correctly, the implications are that any body part not only has a memory, but has emotions and even thought.

Since the mid-1970s, I’ve paid at least some attention to the way bodies react to stress. I’ve explored a number of modalities, from Re-evaluation Counseling (all about releasing rapped emotions that often manifest as tension) to rolfing to yoga to Network Chiropractic to Alexander Technique (and several others). And I’ve explored uncountable numbers of audios, books, and articles about our ability co influence our own fate and to manifest what we desire–often called the Law of Attraction (LoA). Many of these work on releasing stored tension in the body that stems at least in part from emotional distress.  Thus, my discovery today actually makes a good deal of sense to me. (And by the way, I have been enormously helped by the Alexander work, which I’ve done steadily since around 2005,  with a very skilled practitioner, Ruth Rootberg of Amherst, MA. Any Western Massachusetts people reading this might want to try her out.)

While I recognize that this may seem off-topic or too “woo-woo” for this blog, I’ll put out the idea that it’s actually very, very relevant. Changing oneself is key to changing the world. Understanding how much power we have to shape our own destiny helps us create the planet we’d like to live on—and looking at cellular memory might be a part of that. If we can have Prosperity Consciousness or an abundance mindset, can’t we also teach our bodies to de-stress?

Have you had any experience with this sort of cellular memory? Please share by posting a comment.

 

 

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