As we continue our journey into wonder, this week I invite you to enter your inner terrain in a slightly different way.  Herbalist Matthew Wood (see Alfred Pischinger ) offers a new perspective on our traditional understanding of the cell, something we don’t usually question. In his writing, he re-orients us to the ‘goo’ in the spaces in-between the cells— the Extracellular Matrix—the substance outside of the cell that makes up a vast network of information flow and exchange.

Matthew Wood states, “The cells in our bodies are not independent units. They do not control their own feeding, elimination, migration, or reproduction; they are controlled by signals from the extracellular matrix (ECM) that surrounds them. This all-encompassing inner ocean unifies all our cells and controls them in a coordinated and integrated fashion.”

We exist within an amazing soup, one that manages information flow, communication, and regulation where the membrane of the cell (and what it lets in, or out, or transfers or not ) is the star of the show. The ECM is connected to every aspect of our being and it communicates through a superhighway that transmits and receives information from the top of the head to the tip of one’s toes in subtle and immediate ways. The assertion claims that the ECM is actually the primal organ system of the body and that it can and does regulate all aspects of our inner terrain through electrical, chemical, and energetic channels. Like the roots in a forest of trees that communicates through the mycelia, we, too, have our own inner regulatory and communicative superhighway that is incredibly tuned in, making micro-adjustments and sending regulatory messages in a sustained, coordinated dance. Isn’t that absolutely amazing!

How might this slight re-orientation away from the cell and into the ECM place you into wonder today?Is there some aspect of being within this inner ocean that beckons you to join and follow the flow of energy in your life—where it is moving and communicating and where it is not? Might the awareness that the membrane of a cell is at least as important as the nucleus somehow reflect to you about what is most important and about your own energetic membrane that surrounds you and connects to the vast ocean of our surrounding energetic world? Does knowing that there is an inner ocean that is working to regulate you and is sending and receiving signals encourage you to listen inward—to interocept and to use your 2^nd senses— to join with the music that is playing you each day?

I invite you to Wonder. In the following meditation we will  turn inward into the spaces in-between to listen and allow. Join me and allow that which feels like nothing to become the something that surprises and leads you forth.