The Epigenetic Revolution:
Bridging New Discoveries in Science with Alternative Approaches to Health and Healing

Lecture Goals:
-Learn how to better understand alternative healing work by understanding advanced scientific discoveries that point to the how and why energy medicine is effective
- Better understand and convey the validity and efficacy of alternative healing to clients, friends, and the “main stream”
- Learn to better market your alternative healing practice to the "other side" by bridging the gap between science and spirituality
- Walk away with a new view and renewed passion for the validity and efficacy of alternative healing and more confidence to take what you do out into the world!

Questions to Answer
1. What is Epigenetics?
2. What does this mean for health and disease?
3. What does this mean for consciousness, health and healing?
4. What does the discovery of epigenetics mean for me?
5. How can I use this information to help me personally stay well?
6. How can I use this information to help me explain to others, especially the "main stream" about how and why alternative healing methods are effective?

What is Epigenetics?
The term epigenetics literally means “control above genetics”. In order to understand what epigenetics is and the major impact it is having on the biological and health sciences it is necessary to first understand a brief overview of the history of the current scientific paradigm about genetics, health and disease.

History of the Current Scientific Genetics Paradigm: Charles Darwin vs. Jean Baptiste Lamarck

What They Agreed On:
-Life changes gradually over a long period of time(evolution).
-The reason for this change is so that an organism can become better suited and adapted to their environments.
-Life evolved from simple to more complex organisms over time

LAMARCK
-Best known for his Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics (1801) see below...
- If an organism changes during life in order to adapt to its environment, those changes are passed on to its offspring
-Change is made by what the organisms want or need.
-The important influence of the environment on the organism---the influence of the environment on the organism will be passed on to future generations (example of the giraffe
-The animals habits based on its needs and desires are what cause it and future generations to adapt to its environment over time.
-Lamarck was basically laughed at for these ideas and his work became marginal to mainstream scientific theory, having little to no influence on the future of scientific research, until now.

DARWIN
-The desires of animals have nothing to do with how they evolve-Changes in an organism during its have no effect on the future generations. (eg, just because you eat well does not mean your offspring will be affected by your good habits)
-Survival of the Fittest Theory (The offspring are born with their parents' helpful traits, and as they reproduce, individuals with that trait make up more of the population. Other individuals, that are not so well adapted, die off)
-This became the accepted scientific worldview for how life evolved.
-Darwin’s theory has served as the foundation or all of our biological sciences and beliefs about inheritance and genetics for the past two hundred years.
-Gregor Mendel’s work on genetic inheritance helped to bolster Darwin’s theory of natural selection and explain how traits are passed between generations via physical genes.

What Epigenetics Says
-Lamarck and Darwin are both right and both wrong. Lamarck was more right than originally believed.
-Though Epigenetics is not in complete agreement with all of Lamarck’s Theory (eg. Pre-determined plan of evolution, new discoveries in genetics has shown that Lamarck’s theories about the effects of the environment on the organism is critical.
-Epigenetic research shows that the effects of the environment on a population indeed have a huge effect on the genes of that population and most importantly that these effects can be found in the DNA generations later.
-Much of the foundation of Darwin’s Theory has officially been disproved by “new” evidence in epigenetic research.
-Evidence has shown that the environment of our ancestors and their experiences---what they ate, how they were feeling, how the environment affected them --eg. famine, pollution, trauma-- has a direct effect on our genetics via what are called epigenetic “markers”.
-These markers are chemical “tags” on the DNA
- Tags or markers influence the behavior and expression of the genes in future generations by what is called epigenetic inheritance.

How Epigenetics was Discovered-(Ghosts in Your Genes).

Conventional view of genetics and inheritance-Review
-Genes are set in stone at birth
-Genes are untouched by how you live you life, your actions and environment have no effect on the DNA that is passed on to your children
-Experiences are not inherited and genes are passed untouched to future generations

Marcus Pembrey-genetic doctor and researcher
-Works in clinical practice patients with genetic syndromes
-Found some patients did not fit the “normal” rules of inheritance
-Diseases he was seeing in his patients did not seem to fit with the accepted “rules” of inheritance:Angelmans Syndrome (a.k.a happy puppet syndrome) and Prader-Willi Syndrome
-Both caused by the same deletion in chromosome 15 but can result in two totally different syndromes.
-Inheritance pattern that revealed the origin of chromosome 15 held the key:
-Angelmans Syndrome—chromosome 15 inherited from the mother
-Prader-Willi Syndrome-chromosome 15 inherited from father

-Developed theory that the chromosome has some kind of marker or tag, a memory so to speak, that tells it where it came (mother or father)
-Theory of “genomic imprinting” –that genes have a “memory”
-helps to explain the complexity of humans and all of life---massive variations with less than 30,0000 genes

PTSD in Pregnant Survivors of 9/11 Terrorist Attacks
-Found high cortisol levels in saliva of moms
-also present in the children of the moms
-only found in the children of the mothers who were in their last trimester of pregnancy during the attacks, not in babies of women who were in first or second trimester.
-Purpose of such imprinting appears to hold significance for transgenerational adaptation, conveyance of environmental information to the offspring for purposes of adapting to their environment after birth.

-Key discovery: sensitive periods of development where imprinting occurs for women when they are in their mother’s womb, and for men right before puberty: critical developmental periods for the sperm and egg of future generations

-Major impact on development of disease-mice studies found that exposure to toxins in one generation led to an entire range of various diseases in future generations.

Morphic Fields and The Morphogenetic Field of the DNA

Rupert Sheldrake-Theory of Morphic Resonance
-Memory is inherent in nature.
-Most of the so-called laws of nature are more like habits.
-Suggests that morphogenetic fields work by imposing patterns on otherwise random or indeterminate patterns of activity.(DNA phantom effect)
-Morphogenetic fields are not fixed forever, but evolve
-How are these fields inherited? I propose that that they are transmitted from past members of the species through a kind of non-local resonance, called morphic resonance. (Conventional scientific theories cannot explain certain phenomena. For instance, when laboratory rats have learned a new maze, rats elsewhere seem to learn it more easily.)
-Morphic fields underlie our mental activity and our perceptions
-Morphic fields explain the reason for telepathy—see research, take telepathy tests on www.sheldrake.com

Vladimir Poponin – The DNA Phantom Effect
-Conducted research at Russian Academy of Sciences, published paper in 1995
-Human DNA directly affects the physical world, “The DNA Phantom Effect”—tested the behavior of DNA on light particles (photons), the quantum “Stuff” that our universe is made out of.
-Creation of a vacuum in a tube with light particles inside, measured the location of the photons within the tube and found that they were not organized in any pattern, in fact were totally unordered
-Inserted samples of human DNA into the tube
-Photons of light arranged themselves into regular patterns around the DNA
-When DNA was removed from the tube, the photons remained in the organized pattern even in the absence of the DNA.
-Suggest some kind of field present in or around the DNA
-Shows a direct relationship and effect of our DNA on the energy that our world is made up of
-Cells and DNA influence the physical world through this field
- “We believe the discovery has tremendous significance for the explanation and deeper understandings of the mechanisms underlying subtle energy phenomena including many of the observed alternative healing phenomena.”-Vladimir Poponin

Epigenetics and Consciousness, Health and Healing

Function and Purpose of the DNA

Old Paradigm (most of current biological theory is based on this)-DNA controls the function of the cell (DNA dictates cell activity and gene expression)
-DNA is fixed at birth and cannot be changed
-DNA is the “brain” of the cell
-Problem—“if the DNA tells he cell what to do and when, what is it that tells the DNA what to do, what mechanism “Turns on the switch?”

New Paradigm—Epigenetics
-The cell membrane is the “brain” of the cell
-Cell membrane tells the DNA what to do
-Information entering in through the cell membrane is the “Switch” that turns on or off the DNA
-Energy as a form of communication to the cell membrane

“An important study forty years ago by Oxford University biophysicist C. W. F. McClare calculated and compared the efficiency of information transfer between energy signals and chemical signals in biological systems. His research, “Resonance in Bioenergetics”, published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Science, revealed that energetic signaling mechanisms such as electromagnetic frequencies are a hundred times more efficient in relaying environmental information than physical signals such as hormones, neurotransmitters, growth factors, etc……..

……….The speed of electromagnetic energy signals is 186,000 miles per second, while the speed of a diffusible chemical is considerably less than 1 centimeter per second. Energy signals are 100 times more efficient and infinitely faster than physical chemical signaling……..

…….The trillion dollar pharmaceutical industry puts its research money into the search fro magic bullets in the form of chemicals because pills mean money. If energy healing could be made into tablet form, drug manufacturers would get interested quickly.” Lipton, Bruce, Biology of Belief p81

Role of Emotions and Energy Fields on the Membrane of the Cell
-Work of Candace Pert-Molecules of Emotion
-Chemical messengers called polypeptides
-Role of polypeptides in health and disease
-Emotions as a cause of the creation of polypeptides and a form of communication to the cell membranes

“…..the physical body can be affected by the immaterial mind. Thoughts, the minds energy, directly influence how the physical brain controls the body’s physiology. Thought “energy” can activate or inhibit the cells function-producing proteins via the mechanics of constructive or destructive interference.” Lipton, Bruce, Biology of Belief P95

The Implications of Epigenetics for Consciousness, Health and Healing in both Mainstream and Alternative Medicine

-Group Discussion
-Questions and Answers
-Starting Points for Conversation:
2. What are the implications of epigenetics for health and disease?
3. What does epigenetics research mean for consciousness, health and healing specifically in the field of holistic healing and alternative health care?
4. If the actions and environment of my ancestors are influencing and affecting my health and wellness now, what control do I have over changing those effects?—Introduction to alternative energy based healing techniques—Thetahealing, Reference Point Therapy, Integrative Energy Therapy, EFT, Energy Psychology Therapy, many others…….
5.How can I use this information about epigenetic research to help me explain to others, especially the "main stream" about how and why alternative healing methods are effective?

References

1. Braden, Gregg The Divine Matrix.
2. Sheldrake, Rupert www.sheldreake.org, website for biologist Rupert Sheldrake
3. Lipton, Bruce The Biology of Belief4. Pert, Candace The Molecules of Emotion