Somatic Marker, Memory Field, or Anchor Point. What is the difference?
Portrait of Lenin, 1997. Canadian photographer David McMillan first visited the city of Pripyat in 1994. (Inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone: Photographer David McMillan captures a city frozen in time)
On my shelf sits a substantial collection of old Polish movies. DVDs from the time before streaming services took over. Yesterday I watched a 1991 satire comedy titled Controlled Conversations (Rozmowy Kontrolowane), directed by Sylwester Chęciński. In one scene, the main character is trying to make a call from the hotel's reception desk. It is midnight on December 13, 1981. The phone suddenly stops working. I remember precisely where I was and what I was doing at that time. Many Poles share the same sentiment. At midnight, December 13, 1981, martial law was declared, and it changed everything. Borders sealed, curfew installed, tanks and armoured carriers deployed to the streets, and plenty of people arrested.
Controlled Conversations (Rozmowy Kontrolowane), directed by Sylwester Chęciński
I remember an ad-hoc meeting at my grandparents' place. Phones were not working, but somehow everyone knew where to go. We were all very nervous, upset, and, frankly, lost in this new situation. Lost until one of my uncles appeared at the door. The winter of 1981 was one of the coldest, but to him it was nothing. When the Soviet army invaded Poland on September 17, 1939, just sixteen days after the German attack, he was arrested and sent to Siberia along with thousands of Polish patriots. For him, the Second World War lasted twelve years. Frigid years. He said we should not worry too much. The family was safe. We just needed to organize and be resourceful, and we would be fine. I am sure he did not think martial law would last nineteen months - nineteen months versus twelve years was nothing. But he was right. Inspired by his perspective, we did what we had to do to support each other to go through this stretch of darkness.
When we face a dramatic event or a radical change, all the emotions that suddenly flood our bodies are combined. If they are not "processed" correctly, they could form a Memory Field. A dark cloud that, if triggered, would bring back the same experience. We would feel exactly as we did during the original event. A Hard Wall emotion, or a few of them, could also follow our subconscious response.
On LinkedIn, I found an old 2020 article by Martin Lindstrom (a Danish author and expert in branding and consumer psychology) titled "The World's First Global 9/11." It is a great summary of how we react to major events that change everything. They put a "Somatic Marker" in our memory - a term coined by Antonio Damasio, a world-renowned neuroscientist and Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Philosophy at the University of Southern California. It is precisely what happened to me on December 13, 1981, but, apart from the memory (the conscious part), it was also installed in the energy field (the subconscious).
Lindstrom asks, "Do you remember where you were when you heard the 9/11 news?" I remember this very well... a bit scary though - I was on a plane from Amsterdam to Rome. 9/11 on the plane, right. Anyhow, every time I hear "this call will be monitored for quality purposes," my Somatic Marker takes me back to 1981. Damasio calls it a Somatic Marker - in Body Code, we call it an Anchor Point. Often, during a session, when the client's subconscious directs me to a Memory Field and asks me to add the age (a timestamp), I ask whether that Memory Field also serves as an Anchor Point. And, if the answer is yes, could we go back to this time? Once there—a bit of time travel, but since time doesn't exist in the traditional sense, why not—we can find and release the original imbalances and misalignments that initiated the deviation from the normal body rhythm. Once corrected, upon our return from the past, we ask whether anything is creating friction or resistance that prevents the return to the normal body rhythm, and make all necessary adjustments.
A card from one of Discover Healing presentation, edited by the author.
Further, in the article, Lindstrom examines the coronavirus and the marker, which will surely be embedded in our memory. According to him, those fear-based memories accumulate, so more markers increase the likelihood of being scared. Fear amplifies fear.
"We can count on it. Coronavirus won't be the last frightening event we face. Next time, our fear tolerance will be a bit lower. Fear will create an even bigger ripple effect throughout the world. We'll continue on this journey, transforming how life will be ... forever."
~ Martin Lindstrom.
According to him, the coronavirus caused a major behavioural change in society. We will see long-term consequences in the way we interact with each other.
Since I am wandering into memory lane, let me bring one more event. Saturday, April 26, 1986. Do you remember this date? I do. About three or four days later, our friend, who lived in Norway, started calling us in Poland with a piece of very gruesome news. Something was wrong, very wrong. Throughout Scandinavia, radiation metres went off the charts, indicating a nearby disaster. For days, there was nothing in the Polish media about Chernobyl disaster. Nothing. When they finally admitted something had happened, they downplayed everything - it was the Western propaganda trying to put down our Russian friends. The weather was beautiful. Kids were playing outside. The worst was the unknown. Should I go out? And if I go, what should I wear? Not to mention that, regardless of what you wear, you will bring some particles back. How bad was it? Chernobyl was about 500 km from the Polish border. Pretty close.
Surely, everyone could bring memories of some dramatic events from the past. Events that potentially formed a Somatic Marker, or, following Body Code naming convention, Memory Field. However, what I found is that quite often, major events, spectacular in their significance, are not the ones that cause most of the damage. Sometimes, experiences that are hard to remember are the real culprits. They are hard to remember, because subconsciously we push them away, creating a dissociation - an energetic property that sits within our energy field but is "dissociated" from us. To maintain the status quo, we spend quite a bit of energy keeping them hidden. Possibly up to 3-4% of our life energy. That's a lot of energy. Luckily, there is a way to get it back. It takes a bit of diligent work to find and release all imbalances and misalignments, but the result is awesome. The feeling of the energy coming back is priceless.
