I woke at 3am with my mind playing back a phrase that came to me several months ago during a meditation, Every cell has a weight and a memory. Instead of falling back to sleep, I kept thinking about this statement and how important it is in terms of healing the body. Even when the mind chooses not to remember, the body does.

Cells, by their very nature, are programed to remember. It is how they survive, dividing and propagating themselves through generations upon generations to carry out their designated functions, yet we don’t always think about the emotional weight that our bodies carry.

You may have heard stories about transplant patients who suddenly develop cravings for foods they never liked before. There are also cases where personalities have radically changed, particularly after a heart transplant. It may sound crazy on the surface, but it makes sense. Cells, by their very nature, are programed to remember, even when the mind chooses to forget. They do it to survive and thrive, but sometimes, when the weight of the memory they carry is too heavy, they turn sluggish and lethargic. Over time, disease can set it.

Pause in reading this, and close your eyes. Allow your body to show you where it is holding density. For some of you it might be obvious, you may have an excess of physical weight in one area more than another, or you might have a persistent ache or pain. Go to these places and ask them to remember the origin of their density.

Let me give you an example in myself. Although I am relatively slender, my body holds extra density in my belly, in particular in the abdominal areas of my 2nd and 3rd chakras. This is where, as a young child, I started burying my emotions. Having no real outlet for emotional release, I swallowed my turmoil, and as a result I often had frequent pains in my abdominal region. As an adult, I had chronic IBS for two years, and I would wake in the wee hours of the morning with a bloated belly filled with pain. When I began listening to my body, and allowing the stories it had stored to surface, along with the emotional weight they carried, I began to heal, and the bloating decreased along with the pain.

In my early twenties, I was diagnosed with thyroid disease. Although I do not have the physical weight of a goiter in my throat, I have the energetic density of hypothyroidism. In my 5th chakra, therefore, there is energetic density. Although my thyroid is gradually regaining health, when I enter this space of my body, I can feel its weight. There are emotions stored here, waiting to be released. My cells not only carry my own memories of  my voice and truth being silenced with physical and verbal restraints, they carry generations inside of their DNA. Thyroid disease runs in my family, as it often does. Proof, I believe, that cells carry memories. How can they not?

Why would one person get a disease and not another? Chance? I don’t tend to give much credence to chance. If you dig deep enough, you can likely find a cause; an origin. We can ask the same question another way. Why do some people heal, and not others? The answers are similar in either case. The weight of memory.

A healthy, vibrant cell does not get diseased. It thrives, and carries out the function for which it is designed. Destiny, though, is subject to events. The cell exposed to trauma suffers. It mutates, or fails to replicate in perfect form. Sometimes it dies before it can divide. Physical trauma to the cell will compromise its health, but so will emotional. When we receive a cut, we apply pressure to the source of the bleed. We try to stem the flow of loss. What happens, though, to the body that suffers emotional trauma? It grows dense with the weight it is trying to release.

The body is always striving to find balance, yet many of us are unwilling to listen to its memories. Its not always pleasant to stop and listen to our bodies. What they have to tell us is often of a memory we have tried to ignore or forget. Like a child, the body yearns to be heard and understood. When we allow this occur, we start to heal density and the discomfort it creates. We shed the weight of repression as we release the trapped stories. Health returns as the energy of the cells spin more freely, and we feel lighter and more vibrant.

Sometimes the stories aren’t ours, but we’ve agree to harbor them in our bodies. Memories passed down through DNA, or through the empathic matrix of one being to another. Listen. Allow. Remember. Release. Heal. The body, like the soul, is always trying to find the light inside the story.