Epigenetics and Yoga: Part Two
I seem to have lost part one
A few days ago, I wrote a piece about epigenetics and yoga. Since then, I’ve listened to a podcast, read various things, reminded myself that I wrote about this nearly fifteen years ago, and had a request from two sources to write more fully on this.
Epigenetics is the idea that our genetic expression (the way our genes express themselves through our physical and mental characteristics) is significantly shaped not just by the genes but by the events we go through. And not just by the events we go through but by the environmental conditions of our parents, grandparents and older ancestors. This means that if there were significantly traumatic cultural events, like war, famine, etc (and most of us have ancestors who experienced these things) then our current genetic expression will be shaped by these.
We might be hyper-alert (ADHD is a version of this), or prone to addiction (90 percent of us take some kind of mind-altering drug - from alcohol to cigarettes to sleep aids to illegal substances - these are ALL DRUGS!) or to harmful habits (over-eating, gambling, shopping as a past-time - these are all harmful habits!). We can trace many of these habitual, harmful patterns back to a time in our ancestral history where there was trauma (hyper-alertness is a form of PTSD, and many with PTSD self-medicate), or extreme hardship like famine or war (obesity and over-consumption is linked to attempts to “store” in expectation of future “lack”).
We can also connect our current ecological emergency - climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, attitude polarisation and personal addiction or depression - with epigenetic influences that spiral us into patterns of exploitation and abuse
There is, of course, a lot of pseudoscience mixed up in the reality of what is going on. We cannot change our eye colour, for instance, and if we have a strong propensity towards developing a particular cancer, adding the idea that we are somehow responsible for this, or can change it, is not only false, but cruel.
However, there is some sense in which we definitely do contain all the epigenetic outcomes of those who came before us, as Judith Pence puts it. And such established and well respected voices as Gabor Mate echo this.
There are a number of studies to suggest that practices like meditation, visualisation, harm reduction and breath control, along with diet and exercise, alter our immune systems.
Richard Davidson, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) at UMass, showed that people’s immune systems responded better to the flu vaccine after people did an eight-week course of MBSR. More recent work has generally confirmed the connection. But what was interesting about the current study was that the inflammatory benefits seem to stretch across different methods, from MBSR to yoga to pranayama to Qigong.
We need to move away from blame and towards understanding of harmful habits and addictions that cause overconsumption and consequent global damage, like addictions to oil-based products, or our almost insatiable curiosity and desire for new experiences, which costs other species and peoples dearly.
We need to realise how vital it is that we address these as a part of our whole existential crisis. We need to make peace with it. How?
I mentioned visualisation.
Imagine being able to see the journey of your own DNA, back through billions of years. Imagine contemplating this ancient and sometimes shifting spiral of information, and knowing that it has been pushed to reveal patterns appropriate to dealing with trauma and pain over and over again, and that the default way to deal with this is almost always to defend ourselves, at whatever cost, relying on the notion that the world is hostile.
But imagine that the world itself is not separable from us. That the boundary, particularly in the form of perception, shifts depending on what we expect to see. Each contemplation of this kind is an opportunity to reset how we see, to shift from a stance of self defence to one that at least contemplates the possibility that there are cooperative and constructive processes at work just as relevant to our survival as the competitive, which we perceive largely as the sense that the world is out to kill us.
Yes, of course we have to be aware that competition is deep rooted in how evolution explores the possibilities of best fit. But it’s not the only process. And our survival cannot be successful if we are so focused on our individual defence that we treat the world, consciously or unconsciously, as the enemy.
Like the perception of photons, wave-particle emissions of light, there is more than one way to see things. Genes don’t tell cells what to do. They provide a map but the storms and calms create conditions for our progress.
The second method I’ve used (and I’m presenting these in no particular order) is breath control.
Creating the conditions for calm involves regular practice of yoga and meditation or other forms of contemplative practice. Almost all involve consciously focusing on the breath, and in my own case, in lengthening and deepening the duration of the breath, and then watching for a moment the after effects of the practice. All in all, the practice might take twenty minutes.
If you could take a pill to reduce anxiety, slow ageing, increase resilience, regulate hormonal balance, reduce inflammation, and benefit you in multiple additional ways, including in your relationships with yourself and others, and in how effective your actions are, politically, environmentally, but you also had to sit for 20 minutes a day and watch your breathing, or watch your thoughts, would you take it?
What if there was no pill, but just the practice. Would you do it?
In particular, NF-κB, a compound that’s activated during times of stress and controls the expression of inflammation-related genes, was reduced across multiple studies.
We say we want health and better relationships, and to deal with the ecological emergency and to live in societies that are more peaceful and that value altruism, cooperation, and kindness. But 20 minutes a day is hard to find.
And yet that may be all it would take to address stress-related ‘reading’ of genes by the body. So many diseases, personal and social, could be treated by this simple methodology, shifting the expression of genes.
In my own case, a daily breathing exercise - thirty long, slow, deep breaths - is helping me to control my blood pressure, to the degree that I have reduced my reliance on medication from taking 20mg olmesartan medoxomil and 5mg amlodipine to taking 20mg olmesartan on its own. I’m looking at reducing this to 10mg if I can continue to reduce my blood pressure which has come down from 150/90 in the last two months (I’ve been playing around with techniques to reduce blood pressure on and off for years but this is my first really consistent attempt).
Since almost all conventional medical advice suggests that by the time you are in your late fifties and have an established reliance on medication (as I have had for the last five years or so) based on family history (my father, paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather all died of cardiovascular-related disease), you are condemned to taking medication for the rest of your life. My mission is to show that at the very least, this is open to question.
The third focus for me is harm reduction. Breathing exercises, and of course lifestyle choices, including in my case managing alcohol consumption/ addiction to the point of being able to drink at least some of the time without overdoing it has made a huge difference. As has meditating while visualising the epigenetic conditions shifting, and the genes responding to these shifts.
I already exercise extensively and eat a very healthy, largely vegan diet. So the breathing exercises, visualisation and harm reduction are the next obvious steps.
Harm reduction is really a form of mindfulness practice. I am very much aware of the desire to drink, and I explore where that desire comes from. Sometimes I allow myself to get drunk. Sometimes I explore abstinence. I’m gentle with myself. I’m not judgemental if I fail. I know this is a pattern that took a long time, perhaps many generations, to establish itself. I see the value in drinking as a coping mechanism. I also see the huge benefits in sobriety.
It might be a bit strange to hear about a yoga teacher who has a drinking problem. Welcome to the real world.
This process has been a real revelation in the practical effects of taking philosophy into practice. I hope some others will take heart. The surface of exploring what we can do to transform ourselves has barely been scratched. I hope to be able to give you some good news in part three. In the meantime, do some of your own research. It’s a fascinating area. And given that my work requires dealing with the biggest existential threat our species faces - the ecological emergency - being able to face that in peak health is obviously crucial to my own chances of achieving worthwhile results. My personal odyssey from the shame and despair and harm caused by habits of consumption that have affected my health and relationships, and my realisation that there’s a connection between those personal habits and the global experience of overconsumption and the ecological emergency, is still ongoing. If I resolve my personal issues, I don’t necessarily expect the world to shift on its axis, and the extreme weather, pollution and extinction crises to calm into insignificance, though that would be good too. But I do think that each individual resolution has an impact, however tiny, on the whole, and that the epigenetic shifts we can cause individually are not unconnected with the way we conduct relationships, and the way cultures develop and which ones thrive.
Here are some links for the researchers among you. Thanks for reading, and do let me know about your own explorations of this topic.
Molecules of Silence: Effects of Meditation on Gene Expression and Epigenetics
How Meditation And Yoga Can Alter The Expression Of Our Genes
Mind-body practices can significantly shift how stress and inflammatory genes are expressed.
This is beautifully written, Lucy 🩷
Thank you! I'll see if you've got stuff up here and read it if you do.