How Epigenetics is Dissolving the Lines Between Science and Spirituality

[Edel O'Mahony]

 

 

My evolving journey has been to let go of mainstream indoctrination and conditioning and move inward to understand, acknowledge and know my ‘energetic’ presence. It has been a challenging journey, having to be ‘so far out on a ledge’, for most people’s comfort. Having no point of reference to turn to, I had to totally surrender to my intuition and trust it’s guidance, which brought to me the scientific verification to everything I knew as energetic.
The most exciting development has been through the expansion of study in epigenetics, here we are truly seeing the lines between science and spirituality blur and dissolve…just as they should be.
I do not profess to be a biologist, chemist or physicist in the conventional field. From my own journey of learning, growing and evolving, this article gives my perception of what epigenetics represents and how we can be in absolute control of our conscious creation with this knowledge.
What is epigenetics?

“The study of inherited changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence.”
So to put that in layman’s terms your, skin and eyes and teeth and hair and organs all have exactly the same DNA. You cannot genetically tell your skin from your eyes or teeth. These however, are very different in cell structure which behave differently.
This difference, not being a genetic factor has been given the term epigenetic. This means it is a difference not strictly due to genetic changes, more down to the way we utilize these genes.

What creates epigenetic instructions?

It turns out that there are two kinds of modifications that can affect DNA. To briefly explain: One is a biochemical modification that attaches straight to DNA itself, the most understood of which right now isDNA methylation. The other factor taken into consideration is that DNA is wrapped around a series of proteins called histones. Now if these proteins ‘hug’ the DNA very tightly, then it is hidden from view for the cell and a gene that is hidden cannot be utilized. It is the same as having a dead gene or a mutated gene.
So, what we know is that all the genes are present in ALL the cells. This means that the skin and the liver and the eye are genetically identical and contain the entire makeup of the human genome. However, it has been discovered that a tissue might utilize only 10 percent or sometimes 20 percent of its gene complement. That means then, genes that a tissue does not need, or should not ‘express’, are specifically turned off by these epigenetic mechanisms, while the other genes that the tissue needs to continue to express are protected from this ‘switch off’.

I don’t know about you but I find this such an exciting field of research!
When I guide clients through releasing the negative charge in their cellular memories, that I instinctivelyknew was brought through generations, from mother to child; epigenetics is now providing the verification and is revolutionising our understanding of gene regulation, stem cells, and disease. It is impacting our awareness on how our lifestyle may affect the lives of our descendants – as well as how our ancestors’ behaviour and environment has determined who we are and how our lives play out if we stay living in reaction.

Conventional medicine is operating from an archaic view that we’re controlled by genes, which epigentics has blown wide open. The eminent cellular biologist Dr Bruce Lipton has led the way in this field of research. He walked away from the standard medical practice many years ago, saying “Medical institutions are operating on fear. The funding and regulatory elements know that within each of us is the power to heal. For example, it is a proven fact that one-third of all healings are due to the placebo effect, which is controlled by the mind, but medical-related corporations based on making a profit don’t want us to know this. It’s interesting that more than 85 percent of doctors don’t even belong to the policy-making professional union called the American Medical Association. That means that the decisions made by 10 percent of the US medical community control the outcome of the entire medical profession. They determine standard practices, but they’re controlled by investors. And the FDA is heavily invested in the pharmaceutical business.”

Bruce Lipton conducted his own research and clinical trials that proved beyond doubt, the presence and evolutionary affects of epigenetics. It started with placing one stem cell into a culture dish, and letting it divided every ten hours. After two weeks, there were thousands of cells in the dish, and they were all genetically identical, having been derived from the same parent cell.

Then the cell population was divided and inoculated in three different culture dishes. Each culture medium was manipulated — so they became the cell’s equivalent of the environment—in each dish.

In one dish, the cells became bone, in another, muscle, and in the last dish, fat. What this demonstrated to Dr Lipton, was that the genes didn’t determine the fate of the cells because they all had the exact same genes. It was in fact the environment that determined the fate of the cells, not the genetic pattern. This meant that if cells are in a healthy environment, they are healthy. If they’re in an unhealthy environment, they get sick.
You still with me on this? Good!

OK, so, there are fifty trillion cells in your body and the human body’s ‘culture medium’ (like the culture dishes in Dr Lipton’s research) is the blood. When you move your body from one environment to another it alters the composition of the blood chemistry and the chemistry of the body’s culture medium determines the nature of the cell’s environment within you.

Now, this is where it begins to get exciting! The blood’s chemistry is largely impacted by the chemicals emitted from your brain and your brain chemistry adjusts the composition of the blood based upon yourperceptions of life. This means that your perception of any given thing, at any given moment, can influence the brain chemistry, which, in turn, affects the environment where your cells reside and controls their fate.

We now know that the signals sent to the brain through the cells originate from your beliefs. In other words, your belief, the ‘by-product’ of thought and subsequent perceptions have a direct and overwhelmingly significant effect on your cells.

What this reveals is that your mind will adjust the body’s biology and behaviour to fit with your beliefs. Science even has a term for ‘negative thought, it is called the nocebo effect, so for instance, if someone became paralysed and was told they would never walk again, they would believe it. The opposite of this is the placebo effect, which has been shown that positive thoughts and more importantly beliefs mediate healing.

Many might read this and wonder why they have not heard about these biological and energetic processes within the body. Well the positive and negative beliefs run in your sub conscious programmeand since the subconscious programs operate outside the range of physical consciousness, you don’t experience yourself ‘playing out’ these behaviours. What this means is that more often than not, you don’t even see yourself sabotaging your own life and so never take responsibility for the life you create.

This is where the victim mentality sets in, where you see yourself as the victim of forces outside of your control. Yet you can’t be too hard on yourself, as the major problem is that most people are aware of their conscious beliefs and behaviours, but not of subconscious beliefs,behaviours and programming.
In fact, through extensive research it has been recognised that most people don’t even recognise or acknowledge that their subconscious mind is at play, yet the subconscious mind is vastly more powerful than the conscious mind and that we operate 95 to 99 percent of our lives from subconscious programs.

So how do you put this knowledge to good use?

I am devoted to guiding people in the processes of taking back self power, which has to become a way of life. It starts with little steps, though the quicker you can reprogramme your subconscious, the quicker your external experiences begin to change.

Here are a few tips worth contemplating and actioning:

• As I mention often, vulnerability is your strength! You must be prepared to acknowledge the negative emotions you are allowing to keep recycling. This calls for the internal work on identifying memories you hold ,that still invoke a negative emotional response, as this is your indication you are holding the negative charge within your cellular memory and this will always affect your belief in yourself.
• Contemplation and observation are the foundation to beginning to change your subconscious programme. The most effective way is through any form of meditation that aligns with you, so you can detach yourself from your mind chatter and surrender to feeling through your intuition.
• Create specific commands for yourself around your vision of living your truth. Again this process requires trusting your intuition and feeling where and what will mean you live your highest vision and purpose. An example is, if you wake up on a Monday morning dreading the week ahead in your current lifestyle, you are out of alignment with your highest purpose, the feeling in the pit of your stomach, is your intuition communicating this to you. It requires time and space to really feel, what would exhilarate you, what you would experiences to live the life you love. Once you have a semblance of a vision, start to build commands to say to yourself every day around already living this.
• Become the observer. Every experiences you have, you created and it is reflecting your place of belief in yourself. Start to observe your experiences and be vulnerable enough to find the learning you need to take from each. This is the foundation of growing and evolving as a conscious creator.

Fully understanding your internal environment is essential in order to break the cycle of living through the sub conscious fear based conditioning that has allowed to run most of your life. It requires strength, courage, dedication and focus, as there is a good deal of debris to clear out!
Those who have reached an existence that becomes so uncomfortable, so painful to live; are usually the ones to be driven enough to make the changes.

My mission is to bring full awareness to as many people as possible, before their lives become just existing. It is not introducing radical change, it is allowing every and every person to wake up and remember that within them is the full creative force waiting to be unleashed. Magnificence is the truth of who you are…own it!

Reference information:

http://www.brucelipton.com

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/

http://www.science20.com/rationally_speaking/epigenetic_what