by Heidi Smith
Editor's note: Below is an excerpt shared with expressed written consent from Heidi's recently released book, The Uncommon Book of Prayer, available from Hachette Book Group.
As a healing practitioner fascinated by the energetic domain of the natural world, I continue to be led into increasingly subtler terrains in my work. Mental healthcare professionals in the West are primarily focused on the brain, but I am more drawn to the relationships (internal, inter- personal, and transpersonal), the environment, and the finer structures that inter- and intra-connect us. The extracellular matrix (ECM) comprises those physical structures that, I feel, interface most closely with the subtle anatomy of the body and connect us, energetically, to all life. It is also the system that intimately resonates, literally, with our prayers.
The ECM was discovered in the mid-1970s and is a dynamic, crystalline fluid system made up of fascia, blood plasma, lymph, cerebrospinal fluid, and interstitial fluid. The matrix occurs between the external membrane and the internal cells, and is protective and communicative in nature. According to herbalist Matthew Wood, “Each cell in the body is completely controlled by the ECM around it.” No cell operates on its own and each is bound together in a communication network. The ECM “has a significant effect on determining the genetic expressivity of a cell.” Therefore, the implications for how our environment—those energies we expose ourselves to, as well as our own inner thoughts and language—impacts genetic expression of disease states are significant.
The fascia and ECM determine the environment of every cell and therefore affect virtually every aspect of human physiology. Another way to understand the ECM is as a field where information is stored and in which it travels. This array of fluids and structures, which was previously considered inconsequential, possesses its own intelligence and control network. It is the interconnectedness of the field that influences the whole. And interestingly, the lymphatic system—which is both embedded within the ECM and also serves as a vehicle to transport it throughout the body—originates and ends in the heart, our deepest center of resonance.
Craniosacral therapy is a healing modality that expressly engages the ECM and holds a special understanding of it. Dr. Penelope McDonnell, ND, a naturopathic doctor and registered craniosacral therapist, shares that “due to the way it is structured, the ECM responds to the resonance of intention, thought, and visualization.” She feels that, for these reasons, the ECM can be considered “the organ of prayer.” The approach of craniosacral therapy is to engage, follow, and support the nervous system. This process leads to a stillness that’s followed by a release (of memories and tension) and a reorganization. This whole progression mirrors the process of prayer. Dr. McDonnell emphasizes that the still- ness “is the moment of shift, where the greatest healing happens. And the greater the stillness, the deeper the access to trauma, so the body can unwind and release at the deepest level.”
The ECM is well suited to illustrate both the mechanical and vibrational nature of a system within the body. The Western scientific interpretation of the body is a collection of different forms working together as a machine. But even in this reductionist model, we are 70 percent water and 27.8 percent ECM. Even as proportionally dense beings, the fluidity of our form is obvious. Correspondingly, Newtonian science is mainly concerned with the level of form, but it doesn’t account for space, which happens to make up 99.999 percent of our universe.
SPACE IS THE PLACE
The “finding” of the ECM, which isn’t new at all, affirms the wisdom of many ancient and Indigenous healing technologies. The ECM shows us that what is controlling the body’s physical, emotional, electrical, and energetic functioning is less related to the physical cells and metabolic processes of the body and more related to the interstitial fluid and living matrix between physical cells and structures. It’s the space in between that is playing a major role in our lives. And that space can be impacted not just by the physical influences on our bodies and environment, but by emotional and energetic forces as well, such as our thoughts, words, and prayers.
Sometimes, when we pray, it can feel like we are yelling into a void of nothingness, cold and detached. I want to suggest, here, that the space and spaciousness of prayer hold great power and purpose.
Space is the air element. It is the wind. To the Egyptians, Shu was the deity of air, and also of peace. To the Greeks, air was aether, the atmosphere above the clouds. Within the chakras, the air element governs the heart, the center of the entire chakra system, and is connected to the breath. In TCM, air is associated with metal, the foundation of interoceptive awareness. In the alchemical tradition, air represented the life force, and it was represented by the colors blue and white.
Even though the universe is overwhelmingly composed of space, humans are primarily focused on form and what we can physically measure, as opposed to nonphysical reality. Space is not empty, nothingness, meaningless. It is not static, but instead ripples like the surface of the sea. Action happens irrespective of distance (but not faster than the speed of light), and this is known as nonlocality. Space is the co-creative wheel of the seasons—it is the winter, the darkness, the new and black moon, the void.
Patti Smith describes the creative potential of the void as something we can animate, and as a place where we can station our energy, questions, and wishes as we engage with life and evolve.
When we pray, we have the opportunity to access memories and to re-narrate, repattern, and/or release them if we so choose. Memory doesn’t function like a library, where you check out a book and put it back in the same place in your mind. Rather, it is accessed within the spaces and transmutations inside the brain, as “short-term memory is stored by chemical-electrical change in the neurons of the temporal lobes, and long-term memory is stored by an architectural change in the molecular shape of the neurons of the cerebral cortex.” Memories are also stored within and reprocessed outside of the brain, throughout the body.
Just as with the living matrix, space is not an empty, purposeless place—it possesses its own awareness and possibility. It controls and connects the entire web of life. The intelligent living space between is connected to everything everywhere, and it is possible to access and positively influence this space. The point is not to extract something from this plane, but instead to see it as pure potentiality—a part of life with which we can be in reciprocal relationship.
As a practitioner, I view the space between my client and me not as inert, but as a vital field. It’s not me, or you, but us, together. It’s the vesica piscis, where two spheres intersect to create a third element with its own alchemy. It manifests simply by coming together, and is strengthened by a shared intention. Here, a vessel is created, with its own knowing and intelligence, and the more you trust in this field, the greater the space you can hold for whatever needs to emerge.
Heidi Smith, MA, RH (AHG), is a psychosomatic therapist, registered herbalist, flower essence practitioner, and the author of The Bloom Book and The Uncommon Book of Prayer. She graduated from ArborVitae's three-year professional program in 2017. Within her private practice, Heidi works collaboratively with her clients to empower greater balance, actualization, and soul-level healing within themselves. She is passionate about engaging both the spiritual and scientific dimensions of the plant kingdom, and sees plant medicine and ritual as radical ways to promote individual, collective, and planetary healing. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her partner and two cats. For more information on her work, visit moonandbloom.com.