Health: victims of our genes or creators of our destiny?
Health: victims of our genes or creators of our destiny?
How often do you hear phrases such as: “It runs in the family. It’s genetic. Almost everyone I know over the age of 60 has high blood pressure. What kind of medication are you on?”
I had an interesting conversation with a client in his early sixties the other day. He said to me (regarding his decision to have a second booster jab): “I trust my doctor. I’ve always trusted my doctor with health advice.” I understood his perspective and told him he must have a good doctor. He agreed.
I then asked him how his general health is. He said that he takes around 20 tablets per day for three serious conditions, and has regular steroid injections for pain in his neck and back.
This client’s complete trust in his doctor, despite his ongoing lack of wellness, got me thinking:
– When was it that our society began to reduce ‘health’ to simply the management of conditions – often with no healing taking place?
– When did we start outsourcing responsibility for our bodies and minds to a repeat prescription of tablets – and often little more?
– Where did we lose hope that we can regain health, not only keep ourselves alive with medical assistance?
– When did we lose our connection to ourselves and trust in our intuition, our often innate ‘knowing’ what is out of balance in our lives?
I believe it was when we began to move away from the natural world and to give away our power to external ‘authority’ figures, favouring a reductionist system of medicine that views humans as a sum of individual parts. It was when medicine put aside the deepest truth that humans are complex, multi-faceted physical, mental, emotional and energetic/spiritual Beings, part of the wider world and wholly dependent on the natural rhythms of life. Modern medicine has, of course, made some incredible contributions to human health, especially in the field of surgery and emergency care. However, in the process, tragically many of us have lost our connection to nature, to our own true nature and the most important principle of healing: create healthy and supportive conditions (and release any impediments to this) and the body will generally heal – as it is naturally designed to do.
In ancient times, the renowned healers were the ones able to help their patients to get better, through identifying the root causes of the person’s suffering and giving them advice on how to heal. (In fact, many healers only got paid if their patients got better -otherwise they were considered to have failed!) These healers were extremely connected to nature and had a broad understanding of the effects of diet, exercise, sleep, choice of work, living conditions, sunlight, toxicity and a person’s mental/emotional state. They also understood the importance of honouring a person’s individual make-up and disposition, and gave personalised advice, tailored to their individual situation. Herbs, nutritious foods or fasting were sometimes prescribed for a period of time, with the intention of supporting the person’s body to heal and rebalance itself.
In modern times, we can seek help from healers who specialise in particular areas of health (eg nutrition, the musculo-skeletal system, mental/emotional wellbeing or energy healing) or those who are trained to look at the overall picture, such as a naturopath or functional medicine practitioner. Self-healing is also quite possible if we can employ honest self-appraisal and reflection. Which parts of yourself and your life are in need of greater balance, healing or a change? Deep down, we often know the answer. Change must always come from within – healers are simply there to show us our blind spots, guide us or point us in the right direction.
Of course, there are some genetic illnesses inherited from birth that we are not (yet?) able to heal on a physical level, where life-long medication and support are often required. In these instances, the healing may need to be focused more the mental/emotional levels. Certainly some of us do have physical constraints that we have to work within.
Bruce Lipton PhD, a cell biologist involved in the emerging field of epigenetics also explains that less than 1% of disease is associated with our genes. Epigenetics is “the study of how your behaviors and environment cause changes that affect the way your genes work…affect gene expression to turn genes on and off.” ** Lipton explains how genetically identical cells in a laboratory grow into completely different tissue types depending on the environment in which they are placed. In the same way, our diet, lifestyle, thoughts and beliefs (the environment we create for our bodies) profoundly affect the 50 trillion cells in our bodies, our biology and gene expression.
Lipton elaborates that our thoughts, perceptions and beliefs have the most powerful influence over us of all: “over 90% of disease is a…reflection of environment and especially our programming: the disempowering, self-sabotaging behaviors that we acquired in the first 7 years (of our lives).” Whilst positive thoughts result in the release of elements such as dopamine, oxytocin and growth hormone, which help to enhance the health and vitality of our cells, repeated fearful or negative thoughts create stress hormones and an inflammatory response throughout the body, which over time suppress our immune systems and manifest as illness.
“We are capable of changing the environment we live in and we are capable of changing our perceptions. Therefore we are not victims but we are actually masters of our genetic activity… A change of perception can change our biology, virtually immediately…There are studies that showed the genetic readout of some inflammatory genes in a group of people who went through a meditation process. After 8 hours of meditation, the activity of the genes changed.”
With this in mind, where will we choose to place our focus?…
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You may also be interested in my blog ‘Simple Tips for Health and Wellbeing‘. To discuss how distance energy healing could help you, please feel free to get in touch for a free 15 minute consultation.
Silvie Hylton-Potts
“Specialising in energy healing for physical, mental and emotional wellbeing”
*World Health Organization (1948)
** CDC – Centre for Disease Control and Prevention
*** Bruce Lipton article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6438088/
