Learning From the Embryo: Imprinted for Change

Human embryo at 1 to 2 weeks

When you were an embryo your body developed from one cell that underwent division. It underwent division once, twice, tens of thousands of times. At every stage of forming and shaping, you were a complete, fully functioning organism. You often did not look like your final human form, but the only way you managed to survive your own creation was by being 100% complete and 100%  incomplete at every stage.

You had to accept change. The embryo undergoes over twenty different shapes before it arrives at it’s final human form (23 Carnegie stages based solely on morphologic features). And that’s the number science has come up with so that it is easier to study the stages of embryonic development. Your whole creation was a making and unmaking of yourself. A building and deconstructing. An expanding followed by contracting. It was your first experience of self expression in pursuing something you believed in. In the case of the embryo, your life depended on how determined you were to survive and how willing you were to change in order to do that. If the embryo does not change, it dies.

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