I'm becoming my parents...

Myth#3: IT IS IN MY GENES

I can’t help it, my Mom is overweight, heart disease runs in the family, all the women on my Dad’s side had cancer and on and on. I have read stories of individuals who die at the exact same age as a parent or grandparent because “no men in the family live past 45.” What if I told you that your genetic heritage may only impact a very small part of your overall health and wellness? What if I said that you are influencing the activity of your genes? The purpose of this article is to inspire you to begin researching, reading and asking questions about your body and health and the new sciences: Quantum Physics, Epigenetics and Neuroimmunololgy, to name a few. There are numerous books written on these subjects and I will list a few in the resources section. This is a vast topic and I can only hope to pique your interest.

“The new biology reveals that we ‘control’ our genome rather than being controlled by it. It is now recognized that the environment, and more specifically, our perception or interpretation of the environment directly controls the activity of our genes. This explains why people can have spontaneous remissions or recover from injuries deemed to be permanent disabilities.”

- Bruce Lipton

JOIN THE REVOLUTION

There is a revolution happening. A health revolution that is as necessary, as it is exciting. I have spent most of my life studying, exploring and subsequently working within the health and wellness field in direct opposition of the old model. The model that claims your body and therefore your health is simply a “structure” of DNA and a series of chemical and nervous system reactions; a mechanical structure. You are dealt a hand and you do that best you can with it. This never felt right to me. I credit my Uncle Lynn for exposing me to a world of “alternatives” and my Mom for allowing what a seven year old just did not feel made sense, to have access to reading materials that set me on the path I have been following since. My Uncle was a Holistic Health Practitioner in a time when most people were not even sure what that meant. This work was often loosely translated as witch doctoring, voodoo or quackery. He worked with the body in a way that recognized the energetic system, the subtle energies of plants and herbs and respected that thoughts and beliefs were as influencing as drinking and/or smoking. I used to sit in his office fascinated by the charts of energy meridians and was amazed that he could take a picture of someone’s eyes and see the health challenges they were facing. I was introduced to Louise L. Hay, Shakti Gawain and John Thie and many others before my tenth birthday and my fascination with all things “alternative” began. Now, this felt right; this made sense. Here is one thing that almost thirty years of exploring the essence of life, health and human behavior has taught me - you are not your genes. Your health and quality of life is not simply a chemical equation or sum of your parts. You are an energetic being, an informational conduit that is in constant communication with the bioenergetics field. You are composed of matter, but as science is now showing, you are essentially an expression of energy.

THE MOUSE: A DISTANT RELATIVE?

If we could explain the human form and experience by genes alone then we would match the mouse almost perfectly. We share 90% of the same DNA. And yet clearly, you are not a mouse. So, what accounts for the vast difference in the expression of your genes? The genes are essentially a blueprint, a guideline, but how they are expressed is determined by environmental influences. This is known as epigenetics. One of the definitions of epigenetics is, “the influence of environmental factors on the gene” and it attempts to understand the age old discussion of nature versus nurture. These influencing factors include everything from nutrition, sleep and exercise, to the most important aspects, which is your thinking and feeling habits; what you believe about your life and the world around you. It is the accumulation of factors over a period of time which determines which of the 30,000 options each one of your genes will express. This explains why an adopted child, with no genetic precursors to cancer or heart disease will develop the exact same health and life issues as their adoptive family. There is the exposure to habits and lifestyle, yes, but most importantly the repetitive beliefs that influences the child’s very thoughts and feelings about health and well being.

THE NEW MODEL

Our current day medical views are old and are based on the Newtonian model of explanation. This model is very cause and effect, what you see is what you get and there is mechanistic explanation for everything. This was advanced for its time and was essential to our understanding of how the observable world functions. If you apply this approach to the body, you can see the outcome; a medical and scientific approach that treats the body as a system of operations, devoid of any life force or energy. You have this gene, therefore you have cancer. Spontaneous healing cannot occur. A “feeling” is not observable as matter; therefore it does not belong in the equation. This model however, could not provide equations to explain the unobservable; the world of energy, the very stuff that makes up the universe and by which all is connected. Einstein said, “Everything is energy” and his view of humans as multidimensional beings whose physical and cellular organization is interacting, communicating and responding to complex regulatory energetic fields, is the revolution I am referring to. Your lifestyle and habits influences this energy but your thoughts, feelings and beliefs are the very code that guides its expression.

What this means as we move forward is that we must begin to look beyond the mechanistic view, to continue to explore what can be seen, but to also expand our vision to the unseen. Rewrite your future by recognizing the powerful interplay between your thoughts, beliefs, emotions and attitudes when it comes to your health and ultimately, the quality of your life. Open yourself to the possibility that the gene and your family history is only one small part of the information needed to maintain, restore or keep optimal health. You are not just your genes, nor are you at the mercy of them. You are the sum of all the influencing factors which make up the human experience and your health is a reflection of that.

CHALLENGE THE MYTH

What if you know that only 2% of diseases are truly because of a genetic fault – Down’s syndrome or Huntington’s disease, for example? Your overall health is determined by a multitude of factors which act upon the genes. What aspect(s) of your genetic history is expressed is very much influenced by your consistent choices, thoughts, belief and habits. Begin to visualize and speak about your health in a new way, recognize the body’s innate wisdom and then continue to support it through an array of healthy choices.

Resources:
The Spontaneous Healing of Belief, Gregg Braden, Hay House Inc., 2008
The Biology of Belief, Dr. Bruce Lipton, Hay House Inc., 2008
Defy Miracles, Caroline Myss, Hay House Inc., 2009
The Intention Experiment, Lynne Mc Taggart, Free Press Inc., 2007