Epigenetics, ayurveda, and the mind
Your beliefs become your thoughts.
Your thoughts become your words.
Your words become your actions.
Your actions become your habits.
Your habits become your values.
Your values become your destiny.
— Mahatma Gandhi
The emerging science of epigenetics gives life and reason to the notion that our thoughts affect us on our most basic, cellular levels. The congruency between the health of our bodies and the health of our minds has become animate in this field. Epigenetics is the study of how behavior and environment can cause changes in our DNA which affect how our genes work and what they express in our psycho-somatic biology. Plainly said, our consciousness, which includes our beliefs and is shaped by our learned behaviors and environment, affects our genetic code. If we shift our consciousness, we can generate the capacity to shift our genetic expression and thus heal not only ourselves but shift the genetic expression which we are passing down to the next generation. In essence, it is a scientific nod towards the notion of ancestral healing.
There is none better to discuss epigenetics than cellular biologist Bruce Lipton in his book The Biology of Belief, an illuminating work which pioneered the science of epigenetics. One of the main arguments of his work is that the quality of our mind and the content of our thoughts affects our health. To add, he postulates that our ability to interpret the world, and our experiences, colors how our cells function in the body. If we have an experience and store it negatively in the body, it is remembered on a cellular level. This is a profound and highly controversial notion, as many of our life experiences, especially early childhood traumas, are out of our control. This is where Ayurveda intervenes to weave its wisdom of karma and the karmic code.
“If we shift our consciousness, we can generate the capacity to shift our genetic expression and thus heal not only ourselves but shift the genetic expression which we are passing down to the next generation.”
According to Ayurveda, our genetic code and code of karma are inherently linked. Karmas are passed down both spiritually and physically. On the physical level, we can see this in our genetics in that we inherit our baseline constitutions (prakruti) via our parents. On the spiritual level, we enter this world with certain contracts, or karmas, which are intended for us to learn and grow from. This opens up the conversation to will and destiny.
For the sake of this writing, we will assume that life is a divine intersection of both will and destiny. What I mean by that is there are certain events which happen to us which are out of our control (destiny) and there are choices that we can make (will) which can alter our course and/or the effect of those events upon us. For example, one cannot help the loss of a parent in early childhood. However, as that child grows into adulthood, if they have access to the financial and educational resources, they have the choice to address their issues through various modalities of therapy in order to unpattern certain traits of behavior and release limiting beliefs for a more balanced state of being. The unwinding of patterned traits, behaviors and beliefs gives us the ability to affect our karmic code, whereby we have the ability to cease passing down ancestral traumas.
One can argue that through our conscious awareness lies the key to our liberation, both mentally and on a soul-level. We can allow our consciousness to ride in autopilot, allowing us to coast through life in a more primal state or, alternatively, seek more. Gabrielle Roth, the somatic visionary who brought forth the 5Rhythms dance form speaks to this inquiry:
“The mind is the bridge between the higher and lower dimensions of ourselves. It leads toward unconsciousness or toward enlightenment, living in the dark or in the light. We can use the mind to recognize and to heal our own psychic wounds. Or we can allow it to go on automatic pilot and drift across the surface of reality… To be wise we have to know just how our psyches were formed, how they were wounded, how they were blessed… Our wounds and our blessings are the raw material of our enlightenment. The more consciously we process them, the closer we move to fulfilling our psychic potential.”
Gabrielle Roth
Of the many facets of our mind, the most powerful and influential is our subconscious mind, where much of our memories and experiences, and the interpretation of those memories and experiences, are stored. The subconscious mind is incomparably more powerful than our conscious mind. Neuroscience has established that the conscious mind is online and interpreting the world around us about 5% of the time — the other 95% are programs which have been acquired by the subconscious mind and shape the lens of our life experiences.
These subconscious programs are a compilation of memories and experiences acquired by parents, family and community before the age of 6 years old. Between the ages 2 and 6 our brains were predominantly operating in theta waves, a super-learning state which is highly open to suggestion and takes in information of the surrounding environment as being literal and true.
Our lives are essentially a printout of this very vulnerable time in our lives. As many psychologists have researched, a majority of these developmental programs of the subconscious are limiting and disempowering. However, as Lipton points out, these programs can be quickly rewritten using meditation, affirmations and body-centered therapies.
