Читать книгу THE CONSTELLATION APPROACH - Jamy Faust - Страница 17

Part of who we are is genetic, but there is increasing evidence that our present behaviors stem from our ancestors’ experiences. The science of behavioral epigenetics can shed light on our nuanced nature and prime us for the experience of a Constellation. Current scientific research on DNA transmission strongly suggests that our parents’ and even grandparents’ experiences influence the behavior of their offspring.

For instance, how might experiences such as abuse, trauma, or addiction affect the genetics of future offspring? Interestingly, traumatic experiences do leave molecular scars that adhere to our DNA—as cellular memories of our ancestors’ lives. These scars mark the history of their lives but they also provide information about our own behavior—past, present, and future. What our parents, grandparents, and distant ancestors experienced in their lives literally creates an overlay on our DNA.

The Greek prefix epi means “over” or “outer.” Behavioral epigenetics is beginning to prove that our behavioral traits—both our weaknesses, and our strengths—have their origins in our ancestral past. According to a recent article in Discover Magazine¹,

Like silt deposited on the cogs of a finely tuned machine after the seawater of a tsunami recedes, our experiences, and those of our forbearers, are never gone, even if they have been forgotten. They become a part of us, a molecular residue holding fast to our genetic scaffolding. The DNA remains the same, but psychological and behavior tendencies are inherited. The mechanisms of behavioral epigenetics underlie not only deficits and weaknesses but the strengths and resilience that we inherit too.

We know that our DNA is the biological basis for our physical being, and that DNA testing now allows us to trace the migration of where we originated to who we are today. The Constellation Approach explores the possibility that these epi-overlays are, in part, our emotional inheritance from our ancestors.

Our life is like a grain of sand

Blowing among others—

Touching and resting for a while

Moving through this universe

Exposed for all to see.

Take me, Oh great sea!

Carry me to some foreign land

Deposit me on a shore far away.

Let me have a taste of other earth,

Feel the wind of distant places

And the scent of tropic soil.

I face the fullness of this life

Yet forever will remain

Just a humble grain

From the beach where I was born.

—Jamy and Peter