Epigenetics: 3 Rounds to Prepare for The Fight of Your Life

Random Acts of Vulnerability Blog: Volume 1, August 2020

“Life is a fight for territory and once you stop fighting for what you want, what you don’t want will automatically take over.” –Les Brown

For virtually my entire life I’ve received countless messages that have implied things like you are what you eat, you are who you hang around, you are what you think and the list goes on. As I grow on my journey of emotional awareness, intellectual insight and energetic flow I am learning that in fact, it is my perception of my environment that ultimately regulates my responses to my experiences.

I have believed and told a story about my life for nearly thirty years that was only rooted in some of the facts. Whenever I asked, “What was I like as a kid?” Everyone in my family always used words like focused, smart, athletic, shy, gifted and countless others to describe me. But one day I stumbled into my own holistic truth about an inconvenient part of my childhood through an interaction with a mentee who shared a traumatic story with me.

Please click on the picture above to review resources on how to support students with Trauma.

As he explained each layer of his pain and the specific experiences that made him feel unprotected, I sat on the edge of my chair digesting every word. Suddenly, as he described an account of an experience in preschool, I was flooded with raw deep emotions rooted in debilitating fear, abandonment, isolation and mistrust of virtually every adult that wasn’t my mother. The emotions led me down a rollercoaster of images where I could see my mother attempting to leave me in my preschool classroom day after day, but to no avail. As you can imagine, this was a lot to process in a conversation where I was supposed to be entrenched in providing support to my mentee.

After we wrapped up the discussion, I took the long scenic route home and I leaned into that experience. I realized, for the first time, that my seemingly picture perfect educational journey was in fact imperfect, as I accepted that I repeated preschool as a direct result of my inability to cope with my childhood trauma. For at least a year, my amygdala (fear center of the brain) was activated each time I attempted to come to school. Everyone in the outside world was perceived as a threat to me including my teacher, and rather than fight each day I needed to take flight. While inconvenient, there was a sense of peace that came over me in that moment of recognition and clarity as I made headway down Lakeshore Drive. I looked up at the skyline in the distance; I was relieved to find another raw layer of me through the acceptance of my truth.

Dr. Bruce Lipton wrote a compelling book titled The Biology of Belief. He defined "epigenetics" as the study of the human mind’s ability to communicate with the cells in our bodies through environmental factors that turn our genes on and off. Simply put, “perception controls behavior...life isn’t controlled by genes. It’s controlled by the signals in the environment.”

His groundbreaking research found that it isn’t our genes inherited from our parents that control our biology but in fact, it is our response to our perceptions of the environment that controls our lives. How you see life is actually how your biology will respond.

Even though epigenetics didn’t hit the scene until the 1990s, Dr. Lipton did a study in the 1970s where he had three identical cells in three separate Petri dishes. He created a different environmental condition for each cell and observed them. What he found out is that each cell’s gene activity was directly connected to the environment. In fact, the first cell formed a muscle, the second formed a bone and the third formed fat, all as a direct result of the variations in the specific conditions of their environment.

The takeaway was that epigenetics is the mechanism that allows for the control of genes. It is the equivalent of a second primary genetic code. This means that it can literally change the read out of any particular gene.

In other words, you can literally change yourself not through trying to alter your genes or your physical self, but by shifting your perception of your environment. How you see the world aids in your ability to alter the read out of your genes.

It is important to note that misperceptions have the ability to “mis-run” our genes. These, in essence, are our interpretations of the world that are inaccurate. Whether they are true or not doesn’t change the impact on our biology.

3 Types of Perceptions

1. Growth perceptions, often connected to love, allow us to move toward positive things and be open in the process.

2. Protective perceptions, usually connected to fear, cause us to move away from things in order to protect ourselves. In these situations, our growth abilities are shut off because we are using all of the energy for protection.

3. Neutral perceptions cause no response at all to the body. They don’t lead to growth but they don’t necessarily restrict it either.

Your background can prohibit you from seeing certain things because your perception has direct implications on how you will interact with your environment. In essence, whoever and whatever controls the mind also controls the body.

The powerful point here is that if you don’t truly experience love, it is virtually impossible to open yourself up to the outside world. If you recall my first pass at preschool, this is what was going on with me. There were some foundational voids that I was encountering at that phase of life that created a blockage with respect to my ability to open myself up to the outside world.

Click on the picture above to hear India Arie's hit song "Get It Together."

The great news is that you can conquer your fears through love. The only thing that is higher than love from a “vibrational” perspective is peace. For virtually every second of the time that I spent at home with my mom during that year she poured pure love and verbal affirmations into me, and that became my air. I was able to gradually breathe in that positive energy that allowed me to override my body’s response to the perceived threats.

As I reflect on that experience, while I was barely in my formative years, I believe that the path to real success and peace is through conquering you. Your long-term goal must to be to thrive not survive.

If you really want to control your biology, specifically your interior health as well as your exterior reality, you have to recognize the power of your perceptions in shaping both your physiology and your life experiences.

Practice Understanding the Two Parts of Your Mind

In order to prepare for the mental fight that you will encounter each day as you seek to live your best life, you must understand how two important parts of your mind work.

Click on the picture above to hear Dr. Lipton's thoughts on the subconscious and conscious minds.

1. Subconscious Mind – This portion of the mind stores thoughts that are often directly connected to experiences that we have been exposed to in life. These specific experiences and thoughts are stored in the subconscious mind like a tape player. These perceptions are recorded. The subconscious mind literally interprets a past behavior and replicates it in future new situations.

2. Conscious Mind - Despite what you may naturally suspect, the conscious mind is often the spiritual, creative, or free will inside of you. It is important to understand that it is a limited processor, and it is not as powerful as the subconscious mind. Whatever the conscious mind is not focusing on will be managed by the subconscious mind.

While they are highlighted separately, your subconscious and conscious minds work in tandem with each other. Your conscious mind may have great intentions, but your subconscious is usually running the show.

The point to drive home here is that with consciousness, you can override nature and nurture.

Are you ready to actively fight to establish balance between your subconscious and conscious mind?

Let's go...

Round One

Read - I lovingly urge you to strategically increase the positive energy that you need in your conscious mind through reading self-help books, articles, lectures or other motivational resources.

Round Two

Upgrade your circle -To address the first layer of the subconscious mind, you have to surround yourself with or increase the time you spend around positive people who will help push you to your highest level.

Round Three

Focus on the background noise - To reset the “tape player” in your subconscious mind; I encourage you to listen to affirmations with positive words. This can be positive music, recordings or even videos that you have playing as the background noise when you are relaxing, walking, cleaning or driving to work.

As I started to emotionally heal, I realized that lashing out at other people was rooted in lack of love, dignity and respect for myself. The moment that I accepted that I am lovable I began to see, hold space for and protect all parts of humanity.

As Dr. Lipton explained, “The extinction that we are facing in the world right now is not due to anything else other than our human behavior. For us to survive we have to change our behavior.” It is belief that is powerful. You can renew your life with your beliefs. Recognize this, the world fully supports who you are. If there are any problems, they are usually acquired from other people who put you down and took power from you. You are fully powerful to do miracles, but you have to believe so.

The key to overriding the portions of you that are not allowing you to get to your highest level is through healing, and your journey begins with understanding the way your mind works. As highlighted in the Beyonce’s new movie Black is King, you have to remember that you are a part of something way bigger and you are welcome to come home to yourself. But you have to be brave enough to answer the questions that lie in your soul while being mindful of the fact that your greatest thoughts will come from the purest parts of your heart. The most powerful three words from the movie were, “Who are you?” History is your future, and one day you will meet right back where you started, only this time, stronger. The truth is that the battle in your mind has to shift to a loving and patient conversation so that you can hold space for and accept the duality. You have to take what’s yours, not just for selfish reasons, but to build up the community. “The royalty in you is there for you...to leave a legacy that others can look to in order to find hope and find strength and healing as well...you have to step outside of those barriers that they put you in for the next generation.”