Embodiment · “Being Precedes Having”
Speaking to the Life Centers
Address the body’s organs, cells, and ‘life centers’ directly with words of life, intelligence, strength, and Spirit — claiming them awake, free, and whole — to enlist mind and attention in the body’s own healing.
Get still, breathe evenly. Go to each organ / life center in turn and speak to the life in it: “you are not weak or inert — you are vigorous, strong, intelligent, free, unlimited Spirit.” Keep on, silently and aloud, patiently, until it responds. Between times, guard your thoughts and words. Alongside medical care, not instead of it.
What it is
The most distinctive of Myrtle Fillmore’s practices: she spoke directly and personally to her own body — to its organs and to what she called the “life centers” — as one would speak to an intelligent, living agent.
In healing herself of tuberculosis she discovered, in her words, that “I might talk to the life in every part of my body and have it do just what I wanted.” Rather than affirming about the body in the abstract, she addressed the life within each part — liver, stomach, lungs — declaring it awake, vigorous, free, and full of Spirit.
This grew into Unity’s idea of the “Twelve Powers,” faculties seated in the body that respond to the directing word.
The Method
- Get quiet and turn attention inward to the body. Enter a still, kindly frame; breathe evenly, feeling that “the life-sustaining air is being used by every cell.”
- Go to each life center in turn. “I went to all the life centers in my body and spoke words of Truth to them — words of strength and power.”
- Speak to the life in each organ, naming what is true. Address the part by what it is becoming, not its complaint: “I told the life in my liver that it was not torpid or inert, but full of vigor and energy. I told the life in my stomach that it was not weak or inefficient, but energetic, strong and intelligent.”
- Declare each center free, unlimited Spirit. “I told them that they were free, unlimited Spirit” — centers of life and energy, the very life of God expressing in form.
- Persist patiently until they ‘wake up.’ “I did not become discouraged at their being slow to wake up, but kept right on, both silently and aloud, declaring words of Truth until the organs responded.”
- Guard the mind between sessions. “I did not let any worried or anxious thoughts into my mind, and I stopped speaking gossipy, frivolous, petulant, angry words,” holding the body as “the temple of the living God.” (Sourcing note: bracketed phrases are verbatim from Myrtle Fillmore’s How I Found Health and Unity teaching; the numbered structure is an attributed paraphrase.)
Source & Lineage
Myrtle Fillmore’s first-person account in How I Found Health is the seed text for this practice and, with the Healing Letters, the basis of Unity’s somatic prayer.
Her conviction that “life has to be guided and directed by intelligence” led to the Unity teaching of the Twelve Powers — twelve faculties seated in the body that the awakened word can direct.
Common refinements
Scolding the body. The word is to the life in the part (“you are strong, free Spirit”), not blame of the part for being sick.
- Impatience. Myrtle expected slow waking and kept on; one session is not the practice.
- Ignoring the off-hours. She paired the word to the body with guarding her ordinary speech and thoughts.
- Substituting for diagnosis. Speaking to “the life in” an organ tells you nothing about what is actually wrong with it.