Within your body, cells contain intracellular (read: within the cell) fluid. 

Intracellular fluid means, quite literally, the fluid within a cell. So to truly understand the energy of this dimension of your fluid body, let’s start by understanding your cells at a high level—their anatomy, function, and processes. I promise to keep it non-boring!

As we often repeat ad nauseam in intro biology classes, cells are “the building block of life,” but the cell is a world unto itself. It comes from the Latin word cellula, meaning “small room,” and that view may help you the most when thinking about intracellular fluid and flow.

The Anatomy of Cells: Understanding Your Microscopic Rooms

Each small room has a double-walled semi-permeable membrane (a phospholipid bilayer), meaning fluid and some signaling ions (like calcium) can move across the boundaries. Larger structures like molecules and subcellular structures need to be escorted across these walls through intricate processes and specially targeted carriers that can open “doors.”

Within each cell is a nucleus, separated by another membrane. Joining the nucleus inside this tiny room are organelles—like the endoplasmic reticulum, lysosomes, mitochondria, to name a few—each with a specific function. Together, these organelles and the nucleus carry out our metabolic functions and cell division. 

An interesting side note: it has recently been found that the cytoplasm and most organelles are contributed from the egg (maternal gamete). This is why you can track solely your maternal lineage through mitochondrial DNA!

It’s not necessary to understand the intricacies of cell function and processes. But it can be helpful to recognize the amount of life happening within these microscopic rooms. The work done here is purposeful and completed with a level of necessity and (hopefully) accuracy that fits seamlessly within the whole.

It’s with this same accuracy and purposefulness that cells specialize and replicate. They become organs and organ systems. We have brain cells, blood cells, bone cells, kidney cells, skin cells, etc. And they form larger, more complex functions within our bodies. And at the root of everything is each tiny room doing its job.

Helping to hold each room’s structure, function, and energy is intracellular fluid—67% of the water in your body.

A Meditation on Cellular Environments in Your Intracellular Fluid

Instead of knowing what the cellular structures are and what *gestures wildly inside the cell* all of this means for fluidity, I find meditating or visualization to be helpful. If you can, picture yourself within the cell looking toward the nucleus, and then outside of the cell looking through a “glass wall” toward the nucleus and organelles.

Imagine yourself in these environments. 

How does it feel to be held within the cell wall, in community with each organelle doing exactly what it was designed to? How does it feel to know—just by being within the cell—that you are not only carrying out your role and function in this minute, but supporting the entire cell to do what it needs to do?

How does it feel to be outside of the cell looking in? Can you recognize the necessity of fluid in that internal environment? Can you feel the need for fluid to be held? How would it feel to be drawn into that environment? How would it feel to be pushed out?

Intracellular Fluid and Osmosis: The Dance of Pressure

The technical names for the cell and cell nuclei fluid are cytosol and nucleosol, respectively. A simplified view of how they function is as a fluid that can move across the semi-permeable membranes of the nucleus and the cell.

The inner ocean of the cell moves through osmosis, flowing from an area of high fluid concentration to areas of low fluid concentration—or, to put it another way, from areas of low solute concentration to high solute concentration.

Osmosis is a form of pressure, and the fluid responds by creating equilibrium, or a steady state, in water and solute concentrations across these barriers. Meaning, fluid is always going to move so that the volume of fluid and stuff suspended in the fluid becomes equal. As a result of osmosis,the pressure exerted within the cell is the same as the pressure exerted outside the cell.

Fluid movement in intracellular flow is minute, but it is life-sustaining. These micro-adjustments in stability between environments can mean the difference in cells being able to do their job effectively and purposefully, and cell death. Which is why, for this dimension of fluidity, environment is such an integral component of flow.

If a cell is placed in an environment that has a:

• High level of solutes outside of itself compared to inside the cell wall, fluid will flow out towards the external environment. This will leave the cell shriveled.
• Low level of solutes outside of itself compared to inside the cell wall, fluid will rush in and can cause the cell to explode.

This means that osmotic pressure, the energy you feel across boundaries, has a profound impact on our fluidity.

The Energetics of Intracellular Fluid and Flow

Intracellular fluid creates safety in feeling or experiencing pressure. Because of osmosis, there is an automatic adjustment to pressure that we experience from inside or outside of ourselves.

The intracellular experience of our energetic form helps us work with and regulate the feeling of pressure. This is the way your fluidity wants to move in small ways, micro-adjustments, to create the conditions for your entire system to work and thrive.

The energetics of intracellular fluid isn’t about vastly redirecting flow or making big changes, it’s the power in the small shifts, those that maintain your flow when the system could easily become out-of-balance. It’s your fluidity in maintaining the environment and the holding you require for your safety, your work, and your overall well-being.

When things become unbalanced, you pay attention to how your intracellular flow can move in to support it and maintain stability.

This simple mechanism of moving from one side of a boundary to another makes it safe to be in both. You are not stuck with the pressure, you can simply move and flow into a more stable state, or your energy can shift to support you where you are.

Paradoxical Initiation of Intracellular Fluid and Flow

The initiation of intracellular fluid is usually around boundaries (which is a form of structure—a relational component of the Muscle Realm).

You may experience your boundary requirements get shaken up, you may recognize a paradox in where, when, and with whom you need boundaries (it may not be what you thought!). You may find that you are too rigid with yourself and permeable with others, or vice-versa—and as you hold both of those truths, they begin to reorganize.

Another initiation is in control or lack of control of your environment. You may reconcile the seeming contrast between “no choice” or surrender with free will and personal choice. You may find that shifting your internal flow may be the thing that finally shifts the energy around you. You may find that flowing with structures and systems you don’t like to be exactly the thing that opts you out of them because you see through the fundamental truth of what is there.

There are so many ways that the paradox of intracellular flow may work in your life to break down seemingly irreconcilable truths about boundaries, environment, and energy flow.

Pay attention to where you feel rigid and dogmatic and ask yourself if there is another truth you haven’t seen in this situation.When you’re ready to work directly with your cellular wisdom, Intracellular Energy Healing: The Foundation of Your Inner Ocean offers two gentle energy work sessions that support the subtle wisdom of your cellular ocean. These paired sessions help you access your embodied knowing about creating safety while remaining fluid.