Introduction

Our body lives in darkness.

We are born into a lit world, we open our eyes and learn to know everything around us. But have we ever stopped to think that the body itself goes on living in darkness?

Our heart does not see light. The brain, the liver, the kidneys and the other organs also do not need sight in order to do their work. And yet, within this darkness, an entire life exists.

Billions of cells, chemical reactions, flows, sensations and thoughts. All of these take place inside us without pause.

We are formed in the womb, inside darkness, and even after we are born the body continues to exist within it.

This thought is what led me to develop the theory I call "Shells of Darkness."

I imagine our body as an inner world that lives in darkness and aspires to exist in balance and in calm.

But we do not live cut off from the world around us.

We eat, drink, breathe, feel, think, listen and respond. At every moment we bring into our inner world something that comes from outside.

Some of these things nourish us, gladden us and contribute to our sense of balance. Others may harm us, weigh on us, or change the way we feel and behave.

Those external influences that I see as disturbing our inner balance I call "Shells of Darkness."

They can arrive through the food we eat, the air we breathe, the substances we come into contact with, and also through words we hear, hurts we experience and emotions that remain inside us.

I picture the body as an inner sea.

When the sea is calm, the waters move in harmonious motion. But when shells of darkness merge into it, I imagine how they change the movement and create waves and storms.

Sometimes these storms express themselves in our thoughts, our emotions and our behavior. And sometimes I wonder how external influences may also express themselves in the physical body.

Out of these thoughts, many questions were born in me.

How can we identify the shells of darkness?

Can we reduce their entry into our body and into our thoughts?

And can we, through awareness and choice, change behaviors that have already become part of us?

In this short essay I wish to share with you the way I look at the body, at the soul, and at the connection between them.

This is a personal theory, a way of thinking that I develop out of observing life and the processes that take place inside us. It is not scientific research or a proven medical explanation, but an attempt to understand things from a different point of view.

From time to time I will ask you to close your eyes and imagine what I describe.

Not only to read the words, but to try to see in your imagination the inner world we carry inside us.

Because perhaps it is precisely when we close our eyes and stop looking at the world outside us that we can begin to think about everything that takes place within.

The body lives in darkness. The darkness is not its enemy. The question is what we allow to enter into it.

© 2026 Nurit Rozenblat. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed without the author's prior written permission.