| DNA is frequently in the news at the moment amid reports of cloning and the genetic modification of foods. But while all of this research has been going on, a new area of DNA research, called psychosocial genomics, has emerged. A blend of psychology and genomics, its essence is that your DNA is influenced by how you think and feel. Identical genes
Bet you didn't know that approximately 99.9 percent of genes are the same for every person on Earth. In other words, you and I have almost identical genes. Most people are under the impression that your genes are very different and having, say, brown hair means that a person must have the brown hair gene and having green eyes means having the green eyes gene. This makes logical sense but it is not entirely correct. Many of the differences between people at birth actually have little to do with whether they have specific genes or not, given that we all have almost the same genes. The differences are mostly due to tiny variations in single genes. These variations are called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and about three million are believed to exist. However this is only part of the story, because after birth, differences begin to emerge due to specific genes switching on in some people and off in others. Imagine a row of 10 light bulbs. I might have bulbs 2, 4, 6 and 7 switched on and the rest off, while you might have bulbs 4 and 6 switched off but bulb 8 switched on. In the human genome it is a little more complicated, with around 25,000 genes, but the light-bulb analogy is a good one. There are a number of factors that cause genes to switch on and off, including the normal workings of the body, diet and even exercise, but throughout life our numerous experiences and, more importantly, how we think and feel about these experiences, also cause genes to switch on and off. Say you have a meeting with someone. How you feel about them and what you think about them afterwards will determine whether certain genes switch on or off. So our thoughts and feelings produce significant biological differences between us. Learning has been proven to do this too. Differences in what each person learns lead to differences in which genes are on and which are off, which in turn lead to differences in the growth of the brain and differences in the body due to the bodymind connection. Genes and visualization
In a 1998 scientific paper Professor Eric Kandel, year 2000 Nobel Prizewinner in Medicine, pointed out that all bodily functions are susceptible to how we interact with life. His research focused upon how memories are stored in the brain. When you experience something – say, meeting a new person or even something as simple as enjoying a meal – it is stored in the brain as a memory, forming neural connections or, depending upon the intensity of the experience, forming brain cells (neurons) in a process known as neurogenesis. Intense experiences like those of an artistic or spiritual nature, or ones accompanied by a high emotional charge like excitement, fascination, wonder, awe or enthusiasm, produce neurons, whereas normal everyday experiences produce simple neural connections. You could picture it as intense experiences producing balls and normal experiences producing thin fibres. But in each case it is not so much the experience itself but our thoughts and feelings about the experience that cause this. So when something significant happens, our thoughts and feelings about it switch on genes that construct whatever proteins or cellular components are required for its storage as a memory in the brain, biologically encoding it so to speak. (I personally believe that memories are not just stored in the brain but that they have an equivalent all throughout the body, since the entire body is hardwired to feel every emotion. It's just that science hasn't looked anywhere else yet.) Any experience that is mentally and emotionally significant forms a strong, long-lasting memory because it is played over and over in the mind. As it is replayed, the genes repeatedly express their information, building up an indelibly etched memory, or biological equivalent, which can be a neuron if the experience is significant enough. Think of a time when you had a powerful experience – a first date for instance. Did you think about it for hours afterwards, even days? Did you daydream about it, even make up extra stuff in your mind? Of course you did. It is this creative replaying, or daydreaming, that causes the repetitive gene expression (the switching on of the light bulb over and over again) that eventually produces neurons and neural connections. And if you think about it, replaying, or daydreaming, is visualization. So in other words visualization (including the feelings associated with the images) inspires genes to switch on, causing the growth of proteins and cells. The more you visualize, and the stronger the emotional charge accompanying the images, the brighter the light bulb becomes and the more proteins and cells you construct. In fact our intentional and unintentional visualization inspires DNA 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We are simply unaware of the process. So we continually affect our genetic code and the nature of the effect is largely down to the nature of our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs and intentions. Put this into perspective in relation to health. When we are ill we tend to dwell on the illness, which is normal because illness is usually unpleasant and difficult to forget about. But in thinking about it, it is likely that we are actually helping to build new cells with a memory of disease. Our mental images and their associated feelings of gloom will switch on specific genes that build up diseased cells in our bodies. On the other hand, if we release our emotional pain through talking with someone or having some sort of therapy, then begin to dwell on positive, appreciative thoughts and feelings, we will encourage the growth of healthy cells. This is why hypnosis has been shown to be a powerful tool in the healing arts and it is possibly also why releasing suppressed negative emotion can send cancer into regression. If a person inherits an SNP (a tiny variation in a gene) that produces a disease, I believe that it is possible that, with willpower and faith, they can create a new ‘program’ to switch genes on and off and cancel it out. This is not to say that it would be easy to do so. It simply means that it is possible. Our current understanding of this process is primitive, but it does suggest that such things are possible, and that there is probably a way to perform such miracles at will. From It's the Thought That Counts, © 2005, 2006 by David R Hamilton PhD, published by Hay House. Visit David Hamilton's website: www.drdavidhamilton.com | 
