La herencia genética del ADN determina también las conductas repetidas, los patrones del inconsciente que heredamos de nuestros ancestros. Pero en este caso la información se localiza en el ADN basura, lo que nos permite cambiar las pautas de esa herencia de forma consciente. Este eterno dilema entre Darwin y Freud, acaba de ser despejado a favor de Jung, o lo que es lo mismo, ambos tenían razón.
La clave está en la herencia genética de patrones de conducta, emociones y programas heredados de nuestros ancestros, que se transmite através del ADN denominado (basura), es decir que no pertenece a la parte estática de nuestro ADN, sino a la parte dinámica, los denominados intrones y exones, que son capaces de compilar y materializar las proteínas que sintetizan nuestros receptores AMPA.
Este estudio reciente que acaba de ser presentado por Michael Meaney y Moshe Szyf y publicado en Mayo de 2013, al que ha dado amplia difusión la revista científica Discovermagazine , acaba de dar sin apenas ruido ni aplausos un giro importante al estudio de la epigenética, en la medida en que se establecen las vinculaciones entre los ancestros y nuestras conductas psicológicas, que todos tendemos a repetir.
La clave está en la forma en la que nuestros patrones de datos se generan en el RNA, en los transcriptores dinámicos de las secuencias cromosómicas del ADN.
Si la clave está en el ARN, esta parte es dinámica, y por tanto a diferencia de otros patrones físicos que heredamos como el color de los ojos o el color del pelo o la apariencia física, las tendencias de conducta que también heredamos de nuestros ancestros podrían modificarse cuando somos conscientes de que son programas.
La cuestión es clave porque distingue entre la herencia genética clásica (La herencia biofísica) y la herencia genética tendencial o conductual, de ahí que aquellas tendencias o conductas heredadas inducen a pensar que repetiremos “por defecto” los patrones de conducta de nuestros ancestros, lo que se produce a nivel del inconsciente.
Dejamos aquí el artículo original (en Inglés) en el que Michael Meaney y Moshe Szyf explican de forma sencilla y detallada cómo se operan estos mecanismos de transmisión genética hereditarios.
De alguna forma la interacción entre los procesos genéticos que heredamos en el inconsciente y los estímulos dirigidos de nuestro consciente nos permiten cambiar esas pautas de conducta que a diferencia del color de los ojos o del cabello, no podríamos cambiar. Las emociones forman parte de todo ese proceso, ya que los receptores encargados de procesar la síntesis de las proteínas que pasan al ARN son los mismos que tienen la función de activar el aprendizaje, la atención, la creatividad y las emociones.
Esta equivalencia hace que se abra todo un campo de investigación en el campo de la epigenética. De alguna forma, Meaney y Szyf abren la puerta para comprender científicamente los mecanismos de la herencia genética de los programas y nuestra capacidad de poderlos cambiar.
Por poner un símil, podríamos cambiar los programas de nuestro ordenador, porque formarían parte de una herencia genética dinámica (ARN) frente al hardware (ADN) que es estático. Dicho de otra forma, no podemos cambiar el color de nuestros ojos ni nuestra altura o el color de nuestra piel, pero si podríamos cambiar nuestras conductas repetitivas inconscientes que nos llevan a repetir comportamientos y experiencias de nuestros antepasados.
Your ancestors’ lousy childhoods or excellent adventures might change your personality, bequeathing anxiety or resilience by altering the epigenetic expressions of genes in the brain.
[This article originally appeared in print as «Trait vs. Fate»]
Darwin and Freud walk into a bar. Two alcoholic mice — a mother and her son — sit on two bar stools, lapping gin from two thimbles.
The mother mouse looks up and says, “Hey, geniuses, tell me how my son got into this sorry state.”
“Bad inheritance,” says Darwin.
“Bad mothering,” says Freud.
For over a hundred years, those two views — nature or nurture, biology or psychology — offered opposing explanations for how behaviors develop and persist, not only within a single individual but across generations.
And then, in 1992, two young scientists following in Freud’s and Darwin’s footsteps actually did walk into a bar. And by the time they walked out, a few beers later, they had begun to forge a revolutionary new synthesis of how life experiences could directly affect your genes — and not only your own life experiences, but those of your mother’s, grandmother’s and beyond.
The bar was in Madrid, where the Cajal Institute, Spain’s oldest academic center for the study of neurobiology, was holding an international meeting. Moshe Szyf, a molecular biologist and geneticist at McGill University in Montreal, had never studied psychology or neurology, but he had been talked into attending by a colleague who thought his work might have some application. Likewise, Michael Meaney, a McGill neurobiologist, had been talked into attending by the same colleague, who thought Meaney’s research into animal models of maternal neglect might benefit from Szyf’s perspective.
Michael Meaney, neurobiologist.
Owen Egan/McGill University
“I can still visualize the place — it was a corner bar that specialized in pizza,” Meaney says. “Moshe, being kosher, was interested in kosher calories. Beer is kosher. Moshe can drink beer anywhere. And I’m Irish. So it was perfect.”
The two engaged in animated conversation about a hot new line of research in genetics. Since the 1970s, researchers had known that the tightly wound spools of DNA inside each cell’s nucleus require something extra to tell them exactly which genes to transcribe, whether for a heart cell, a liver cell or a brain cell.
One such extra element is the methyl group, a common structural component of organic molecules. The methyl group works like a placeholder in a cookbook, attaching to the DNA within each cell to select only those recipes — er, genes — necessary for that particular cell’s proteins. Because methyl groups are attached to the genes, residing beside but separate from the double-helix DNA code, the field was dubbed epigenetics, from the prefix epi (Greek for over, outer, above).
Originally these epigenetic changes were believed to occur only during fetal development. But pioneering studies showed that molecular bric-a-brac could be added to DNA in adulthood, setting off a cascade of cellular changes resulting in cancer. Sometimes methyl groups attached to DNA thanks to changes in diet; other times, exposure to certain chemicals appeared to be the cause. Szyf showed that correcting epigenetic changes with drugs could cure certain cancers in animals.
Geneticists were especially surprised to find that epigenetic change could be passed down from parent to child, one generation after the next. A study from Randy Jirtle of Duke University showed that when female mice are fed a diet rich in methyl groups, the fur pigment of subsequent offspring is permanently altered. Without any change to DNA at all, methyl groups could be added or subtracted, and the changes were inherited much like a mutation in a gene.
Moshe Szyf, molecular biologist and geneticist.
McGill University
Now, at the bar in Madrid, Szyf and Meaney considered a hypothesis as improbable as it was profound: If diet and chemicals can cause epigenetic changes, could certain experiences — child neglect, drug abuse or other severe stresses — also set off epigenetic changes to the DNA inside the neurons of a person’s brain? That question turned out to be the basis of a new field, behavioral epigenetics, now so vibrant it has spawned dozens of studies and suggested profound new treatments to heal the brain.
According to the new insights of behavioral epigenetics, traumatic experiences in our past, or in our recent ancestors’ past, leave molecular scars adhering to our DNA. Jews whose great-grandparents were chased from their Russian shtetls; Chinese whose grandparents lived through the ravages of the Cultural Revolution; young immigrants from Africa whose parents survived massacres; adults of every ethnicity who grew up with alcoholic or abusive parents — all carry with them more than just memories.
Like silt deposited on the cogs of a finely tuned machine after the seawater of a tsunami recedes, our experiences, and those of our forebears, 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 behavioral tendencies are inherited. You might have inherited not just your grandmother’s knobby knees, but also her predisposition toward depression caused by the neglect she suffered as a newborn.
Or not. If your grandmother was adopted by nurturing parents, you might be enjoying the boost she received thanks to their love and support. The mechanisms of behavioral epigenetics underlie not only deficits and weaknesses but strengths and resiliencies, too. And for those unlucky enough to descend from miserable or withholding grandparents, emerging drug treatments could reset not just mood, but the epigenetic changes themselves. Like grandmother’s vintage dress, you could wear it or have it altered. The genome has long been known as the blueprint of life, but the epigenome is life’s Etch A Sketch: Shake it hard enough, and you can wipe clean the family curse.
Voodoo Genetics
Twenty years after helping to set off a revolution, Meaney sits behind a wide walnut table that serves as his desk. A January storm has deposited half a foot of snow outside the picture windows lining his fourth-floor corner office at the Douglas Institute, a mental health affiliate of McGill. He has the rugged good looks and tousled salt-and-pepper hair of someone found on a ski slope — precisely where he plans to go this weekend. On the floor lays an arrangement of helium balloons in various stages of deflation. “Happy 60th!” one announces.
“I’ve always been interested in what makes people different from each other,” he says. “The way we act, the way we behave — some people are optimistic, some are pessimistic. What produces that variation? Evolution selects the variance that is most successful, but what produces the grist for the mill?”
Meaney pursued the question of individual differences by studying how the rearing habits of mother rats caused lifelong changes in their offspring. Research dating back to the 1950s had shown that rats handled by humans for as little as five to 15 minutes per day during their first three weeks of life grew up to be calmer and less reactive to stressful environments compared with their non-handled littermates. Seeking to tease out the mechanism behind such an enduring effect, Meaney and others established that the benefit was not actually conveyed by the human handling. Rather, the handling simply provoked the rats’ mothers to lick and groom their pups more, and to engage more often in a behavior called arched-back nursing, in which the mother gives the pups extra room to suckle against her underside.
“It’s all about the tactile stimulation,” Meaney says.
In a landmark 1997 paper in Science, he showed that natural variations in the amount of licking and grooming received during infancy had a direct effect on how stress hormones, including corticosterone, were expressed in adulthood. The more licking as babies, the lower the stress hormones as grown-ups. It was almost as if the mother rats were licking away at a genetic dimmer switch. What the paper didn’t explain was how such a thing could be possible.
«What we had done up to that point in time was to identify maternal care and its influence on specific genes,” Meaney says. “But epigenetics wasn’t a topic I knew very much about.”
And then he met Szyf.
Postnatal Inheritance
“I was going to be a dentist,” Szyf says with a laugh. Slight, pale and balding, he sits in a small office at the back of his bustling laboratory — a room so Spartan, it contains just a single picture, a photograph of two embryos in a womb.
Needing to write a thesis in the late 1970s for his doctorate in dentistry at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Szyf approached a young biochemistry professor named Aharon Razin, who had recently made a splash by publishing his first few studies in some of the world’s top scientific journals. The studies were the first to show that the action of genes could be modulated by structures called methyl groups, a subject about which Szyf knew precisely nothing. But he needed a thesis adviser, and Razin was there. Szyf found himself swept up to the forefront of the hot new field of epigenetics and never looked back.
Until researchers like Razin came along, the basic story line on how genes get transcribed in a cell was neat and simple. DNA is the master code, residing inside the nucleus of every cell; RNA transcribes the code to build whatever proteins the cell needs. Then some of Razin’s colleagues showed that methyl groups could attach to cytosine, one of the chemical bases in DNA and RNA.
It was Razin, working with fellow biochemist Howard Cedar, who showed these attachments weren’t just brief, meaningless affairs. The methyl groups could become married permanently to the DNA, getting replicated right along with it through a hundred generations. As in any good marriage, moreover, the attachment of the methyl groups significantly altered the behavior of whichever gene they wed, inhibiting its transcription, much like a jealous spouse. It did so, Razin and Cedar showed, by tightening the thread of DNA as it wrapped around a molecular spool, called a histone, inside the nucleus. The tighter it is wrapped, the harder to produce proteins from the gene.
Consider what that means: Without a mutation to the DNA code itself, the attached methyl groups cause long-term, heritable change in gene function. Other molecules, called acetyl groups, were found to play the opposite role, unwinding DNA around the histone spool, and so making it easier for RNA to transcribe a given gene.
By the time Szyf arrived at McGill in the late 1980s, he had become an expert in the mechanics of epigenetic change. But until meeting Meaney, he had never heard anyone suggest that such changes could occur in the brain, simply due to maternal care.
“It sounded like voodoo at first,” Szyf admits. “For a molecular biologist, anything that didn’t have a clear molecular pathway was not serious science. But the longer we talked, the more I realized that maternal care just might be capable of causing changes in DNA methylation, as crazy as that sounded. So Michael and I decided we’d have to do the experiment to find out.”
Actually, they ended up doing a series of elaborate experiments. With the assistance of postdoctoral researchers, they began by selecting mother rats who were either highly attentive or highly inattentive. Once a pup had grown up into adulthood, the team examined its hippocampus, a brain region essential for regulating the stress response. In the pups of inattentive mothers, they found that genes regulating the production of glucocorticoid receptors, which regulate sensitivity to stress hormones, were highly methylated; in the pups of conscientious moms, the genes for the glucocorticoid receptors were rarely methylated.
Methylation just gums up the works. So the less the better when it comes to transcribing the affected gene. In this case, methylation associated with miserable mothering prevented the normal number of glucocorticoid receptors from being transcribed in the baby’s hippocampus. And so for want of sufficient glucocorticoid receptors, the rats grew up to be nervous wrecks.
To demonstrate that the effects were purely due to the mother’s behavior and not her genes, Meaney and colleagues performed a second experiment. They took rat pups born to inattentive mothers and gave them to attentive ones, and vice versa. As they predicted, the rats born to attentive mothers but raised by inattentive ones grew up to have low levels of glucocorticoid receptors in their hippocampus and behaved skittishly. Likewise, those born to bad mothers but raised by good ones grew up to be calm and brave and had high levels of glucocorticoid receptors.
Before publishing their findings, Meaney and Szyf conducted a third crucial experiment, hoping to overwhelm the inevitable skeptics who would rise up to question their results. After all, it could be argued, what if the epigenetic changes observed in the rats’ brains were not directly causing the behavioral changes in the adults, but were merely co-occurring? Freud certainly knew the enduring power of bad mothers to screw up people’s lives. Maybe the emotional effects were unrelated to the epigenetic change.
To test that possibility, Meaney and Szyf took yet another litter of rats raised by rotten mothers. This time, after the usual damage had been done, they infused their brains with trichostatin A, a drug that can remove methyl groups. These animals showed none of the behavioral deficits usually seen in such offspring, and their brains showed none of the epigenetic changes.
“It was crazy to think that injecting it straight into the brain would work,” says Szyf. “But it did. It was like rebooting a computer.
Despite such seemingly overwhelming evidence, when the pair wrote it all up in a paper, one of the reviewers at a top science journal refused to believe it, stating he had never before seen evidence that a mother’s behavior could cause epigenetic change.
“Of course he hadn’t,” Szyf says. “We wouldn’t have bothered to report the study if it had already been proved.”
In the end, their landmark paper, “Epigenetic programming by maternal behavior,” was published in June 2004 in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Meaney and Szyf had proved something incredible. Call it postnatal inheritance: With no changes to their genetic code, the baby rats nonetheless gained genetic attachments due solely to their upbringing — epigenetic additions of methyl groups sticking like umbrellas out the elevator doors of their histones, gumming up the works and altering the function of the brain.
The Beat Goes On
Together, Meaney and Szyf have gone on to publish some two-dozen papers, finding evidence along the way of epigenetic changes to many other genes active in the brain. Perhaps most significantly, in a study led by Frances Champagne — then a graduate student in Meaney’s lab, now an associate professor with her own lab at Columbia University in New York — they found that inattentive mothering in rodents causes methylation of the genes for estrogen receptors in the brain. When those babies grow up, the resulting decrease of estrogen receptors makes them less attentive to their babies. And so the beat goes on.
As animal experiments continue apace, Szyf and Meaney have entered into the next great step in the study of behavioral epigenetics: human studies. In a 2008 paper, they compared the brains of people who had committed suicide with the brains of people who had died suddenly of factors other than suicide. They found excess methylation of genes in the suicide brains’ hippocampus, a region critical to memory acquisition and stress response. If the suicide victims had been abused as children, they found, their brains were more methylated.
Why can’t your friend “just get over” her upbringing by an angry, distant mother? Why can’t she “just snap out of it”? The reason may well be due to methyl groups that were added in childhood to genes in her brain, thereby handcuffing her mood to feelings of fear and despair.
Of course, it is generally not possible to sample the brains of living people. But examining blood samples in humans is routine, and Szyf has gone searching there for markers of epigenetic methylation. Sure enough, in 2011 he reported on a genome-wide analysis of blood samples taken from 40 men who participated in a British study of people born in England in 1958.
All the men had been at a socioeconomic extreme, either very rich or very poor, at some point in their lives ranging from early childhood to mid-adulthood. In all, Szyf analyzed the methylation state of about 20,000 genes. Of these, 6,176 genes varied significantly based on poverty or wealth. Most striking, however, was the finding that genes were more than twice as likely to show methylation changes based on family income during early childhood versus economic status as adults.
Timing, in other words, matters. Your parents winning the lottery or going bankrupt when you’re 2 years old will likely affect the epigenome of your brain, and your resulting emotional tendencies, far more strongly than whatever fortune finds you in middle age.
Last year, Szyf and researchers from Yale University published another study of human blood samples, comparing 14 children raised in Russian orphanages with 14 other Russian children raised by their biological parents. They found far more methylation in the orphans’ genes, including many that play an important role in neural communication and brain development and function.
“Our study shows that the early stress of separation from a biological parent impacts long-term programming of genome function; this might explain why adopted children may be particularly vulnerable to harsh parenting in terms of their physical and mental health,” said Szyf’s co-author, psychologist Elena Grigorenko of the Child Study Center at Yale. “Parenting adopted children might require much more nurturing care to reverse these changes in genome regulation.”
A case study in the epigenetic effects of upbringing in humans can be seen in the life of Szyf’s and Meaney’s onetime collaborator, Frances Champagne. “My mom studied prolactin, a hormone involved in maternal behavior. She was a driving force in encouraging me to go into science,” she recalls. Now a leading figure in the study of maternal influence, Champagne just had her first child, a daughter. And epigenetic research has taught her something not found in the What to Expect books or even her mother’s former lab.
“The thing I’ve gained from the work I do is that stress is a big suppressor of maternal behavior,” she says. “We see it in the animal studies, and it’s true in humans. So the best thing you can do is not to worry all the time about whether you’re doing the right thing. Keeping the stress level down is the most important thing. And tactile interaction — that’s certainly what the good mother rats are doing with their babies. That sensory input, the touching, is so important for the developing brain.”
The Mark Of Cain
The message that a mother’s love can make all the difference in a child’s life is nothing new. But the ability of epigenetic change to persist across generations remains the subject of debate. Is methylation transmitted directly through the fertilized egg, or is each infant born pure, a methylated virgin, with the attachments of methyl groups slathered on solely by parents after birth?
Neuroscientist Eric Nestler of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York has been seeking an answer for years. In one study, he exposed male mice to 10 days of bullying by larger, more aggressive mice. At the end of the experiment, the bullied mice were socially withdrawn.
To test whether such effects could be transmitted to the next generation, Nestler took another group of bullied mice and bred them with females, but kept them from ever meeting their offspring.
Despite having no contact with their depressed fathers, the offspring grew up to be hypersensitive to stress. “It was not a subtle effect; the offspring were dramatically more susceptible to developing signs of depression,” he says.
In further testing, Nestler took sperm from defeated males and impregnated females through in vitro fertilization. The offspring did not show most of the behavioral abnormalities, suggesting that epigenetic transmission may not be at the root. Instead, Nestler proposes, “the female might know she had sex with a loser. She knows it’s a tainted male she had sex with, so she cares for her pups differently,” accounting for the results.
Despite his findings, no consensus has yet emerged. The latest evidence, published in the Jan. 25 issue of the journal Science, suggests that epigenetic changes in mice are usually erased, but not always. The erasure is imperfect, and sometimes the affected genes may make it through to the next generation, setting the stage for transmission of the altered traits in descendants as well.
What’s Next?
The studies keep piling on. One line of research traces memory loss in old age to epigenetic alterations in brain neurons. Another connects post-traumatic stress disorder to methylation of the gene coding for neurotrophic factor, a protein that regulates the growth of neurons in the brain.
If it is true that epigenetic changes to genes active in certain regions of the brain underlie our emotional and intellectual intelligence — our tendency to be calm or fearful, our ability to learn or to forget — then the question arises: Why can’t we just take a drug to rinse away the unwanted methyl groups like a bar of epigenetic Irish Spring?
The hunt is on. Giant pharmaceutical and smaller biotech firms are searching for epigenetic compounds to boost learning and memory. It has been lost on no one that epigenetic medications might succeed in treating depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder where today’s psychiatric drugs have failed.
But it is going to be a leap. How could we be sure that epigenetic drugs would scrub clean only the dangerous marks, leaving beneficial — perhaps essential — methyl groups intact? And what if we could create a pill potent enough to wipe clean the epigenetic slate of all that history wrote? If such a pill could free the genes within your brain of the epigenetic detritus left by all the wars, the rapes, the abandonments and cheated childhoods of your ancestors, would you take it?
En la sociedad de hoy en día, especialmente en el mundo occidental, si se le preguntara a alguien para que apunte al lugar en su cuerpo donde se encuentra su conciencia y sus decisiones se toman, que lo más probable es punto a su cabeza.
Nuestros antepasados indígenas, sin embargo, responderían a la misma pregunta, señalando a sus corazones.Ellos entendieron la capacidad del corazón para percibir de manera inteligente y descifrar el mundo que les rodea, y reconocieron las limitaciones y naturaleza reduccionista de vivir de una manera en la que uno se basa principalmente en la mente.
Ellos fueron más allá de los pensamientos en la cabeza, con el corazón como un órgano de percepción de conectar con los campos de energía de otros organismos – no sólo a otros seres humanos, pero la tierra, así – con el fin de sumergirse completamente en los significados más profundos que incorpora su pensamientos.
Participar en este tipo de percepción basada en el corazón y la comunicación con el mundo tiende a hacer lo que antes parecía importante como relativamente sin sentido, y lo que parecía sin sentido como algo significativo.Cuando una persona inhala el significado de otro organismo utilizando su campo del corazón, un sutil cambio se produce en el interior, ya sea sutil o mayor, que siempre les cambia.Los antiguos griegos se referían a este tipo de comunicación silenciosa, invisible basada en el corazón como aesthesis, que significa «respirar».
La conexión de corazón-cerebro
Aunque muchos de nosotros nos han enseñado que el corazón responde a las órdenes del cerebro, enviado en forma de nerviosredes, la verdad es que el corazón realmente envíamás órdenes al cerebro a través de las señales neuronales que el cerebro hace al corazón.Debido a esto, el corazón se refiere a veces como el «cerebro del corazón» y nuestra mente se conoce como el «cerebro craneal.» Las señales nerviosas enviadas al cerebro, del cráneo al corazón impactan significativamente la función del cerebro y afectan los procesos emocionales y cognitivos tales como la atención, la percepción, la memoria y la resolución de problemas.
Los diferentes patrones de actividad cardiaca tienen diferentes efectos sobre el cerebro.Por ejemplo.los patrones erráticos, inestables de la actividad del corazón experimentaron cuando el estrés y / o sentimientos negativos están presentes enviar correspondientes señales neuronales desde el corazón hasta el cerebro craneal que inhiben las facultades cognitivas.Como resultado, la capacidad de razonar y pensar con claridad se ve afectada, lo cual puede ser la razón por la cual muchos actúan impulsivamente y tomar malas decisiones en situaciones de estrés.Por otra parte, los patrones estables, ordenadas de la actividad del corazón durante situaciones agradables y en presencia de sentimientos positivos resultan en señales neuronales correspondientes enviados desde el corazón hasta el cerebro que mejoran las funciones cognitivas y fomentar la estabilidad mental.Así, haciendo un esfuerzo para manifestar una vida que evoca sentimientos positivos pueden aumentar en gran medida la capacidad cognitiva y la estabilidad emocional.
La conexión de cerebro y corazón en respuesta a estímulos
Un estudio encontró que el corazón recibe y reacciona a los estímulos antes de que ocurra, la formulación de una respuesta a la entrada entrante antes que el cerebro incluso tiene la oportunidad de procesarlo.Los investigadores se refieren a este fenómeno como una «premonición cuerpo.» Esto fomenta aún más la idea de que la implementación del corazón como órgano de percepción puede ser mucho más sabio que el aislamiento del cerebro como el centro principal de la percepción y la conciencia.
Los Campos Corazón y Energía
El corazón, que ostenta el título como el órgano con el campo electromagnético más potente en el cuerpo, puede sentir el corazón de otra persona hasta diez metros de distancia.Dado que el cerebro es muy sensible a las reacciones del corazón, que es capaz de recoger este tipo de electromagnética «detección corazón» y esencialmente alterar las ondas cerebrales de otro individuo, así como a sí mismos, y / o en realidad sincronizar sus ondas cerebrales con de la otra persona.La mayoría de nosotros hemos conocido a una personacuya presencia, sin razón aparente, causó una sensación de incomodidad – si era la tristeza, la ira, la ansiedad, o cualquier otra sensación incómoda – que justifica la decisión de no forjar una conexión más profunda con ellos.Así como no podemos saber por qué nos sentimos de esta manera a su alrededor, como decían las palabras correctas y se presentaron de una manera «socialmente aceptable», a menudo no pueden recoger en el hecho de que esto está ocurriendo a causa de la otra persona energía y que es, en realidad, no personal en absoluto.De esta manera, el electromagnetismo de la formas de corazón en gran medida nuestras relaciones, guiándonos por lo que parece ser una gravitación casi sin esfuerzo para conectar con los campos del corazón de algunas personas que se convierten en amigos y / o compañeros sentimentales, y dirigiéndonos lejos de la gente cuyas energías del corazón chocan con los nuestros.
Este tipo de detección de energía también se produce con lugares, objetos, y así sucesivamente.Por ejemplo, cuando vas a un restaurante y la anfitriona le dice que usted puede sentarse donde usted lo desea, es muy probable que no elige cualquier tabla dada.Usted es mucho más probable que observar la habitación, revisando varias opciones de asientos, aunque su consideración de cada uno es fugaz.Luego de elegir una mesa, a menudo de numerosos otros iguales, pero ¿por qué?Claro, hay factores como el ruido y con ganas de sentarse junto a una ventana – pero no siempre.Creo que cada uno de nosotros puede admitir al menos una vez en la vida la elección para sentarse en algún lugar porque nos sentimos atraídos a ella, o para no sentarse en algún lugar, porque por alguna razón no se «siente» tan bueno como en otro lugar en la habitación.Rara vez nos detenemos a preguntarnos por qué nos intuitivamente tomar decisiones como esta.
Teniendo en cuenta la capacidad del corazón para recoger las energías de las personas, lugares y cosas, y de manera intuitiva descifrar lo que se siente «bien» y lo que por alguna razón no se «siente bien», junto con la sensibilidad del cerebro para detectar incluso los cambios más sutiles en campo de energía del corazón y su capacidad para luego modificar sus propios mecanismos de respuesta y cambiar nuestras ondas cerebrales, los patrones de pensamiento, etc., parece bastante inapropiado para prestar atención al consejo de pesimistas eternas que aconsejan en contra de seguir el corazón.Te dicen que le llevará en problemas, pero que muy manera de vivir, de la colocación de la conciencia exclusivamente en la mente y designándolo como el único órgano de la percepción inteligente en nuestros cuerpos, es quizás por qué esas personas son tan pesimistas en el primer lugar .Para poner los pensamientos sobre los sentimientos al tomar decisiones grandes en la vida, las decisiones especialmente grandes, puede ser peligroso – no de la manera sociedad define peligro, pero por la forma en que el espíritu define el peligro, como confinar cualquier parte de su verdadera esencia interior, que está en muchos aspectos, un despertar de la muerte.Discutiblemente igualmente peligroso sin embargo, y sin duda igualmente importante, es no poner los sentimientos más pensamientos completamente al tomar decisiones bien.Sí, sobre todo las grandes decisiones.El truco para la solución de este problema realmente no es mucho de un truco, sino que es más de un antiguo camino, en el olvido de la vida en el que usted mantiene algo de un equilibrio energético entre el corazón y el cerebro – y todas las partes de uno mismo para que materia.
Aprender a sintonizar con los cambios sutiles en la energía y distinguir sus orígenes, y aprender la diferencia entre «yo» y el «no yo» con el fin de ser capaz de decir si la negatividad que estás sintiendo es su propio o de otra persona, ayuda a prevenir la energías negativas abrumadoras inevitables que ocurren a menudo cuando usted es susceptible a recoger la energía del otro y tomar en como propio.Haciendo un esfuerzo mental para silenciar los pensamientos y escuchar sus sentimientos, y darse cuenta de cómo los sentimientos alteran cuando las personas o las cosas que te rodea se alteran, permite a la conciencia del cráneo y de la conciencia del corazón para trabajar productivamente juntos sin que uno domina al otro.
Usando el corazón, el cerebro puede distinguir lo que realmente quiere de lo que estaba condicionado a querer, pero ha arraigado no profunda pasión por el.De todos modos, el corazón puede sintonizar en el cerebro y sentir sus pensamientos, combinando así los dos órganos de percepción.Jugando con lo diferentes pensamientos hará sentir, sin luego adjuntar más pensamientos a esos sentimientos o historias para ellos, y en lugar de limitarse a dejar que ellos se sientan allí mientras conscientemente reconoce que están ahí, también es crucial para encontrar un equilibrio en el trabajo con los dos órganos de percepción.Al escuchar cómo el corazón se siente sin añadir pensamientos mentales y las historias de esos sentimientos, a continuación, puede optar por colocar sus pensamientos hacia lo que se siente más bien a usted al tomar decisiones.
«El estrés constante crea un ambiente energético, afectando a la ciudad y el país, la difusión de nación en nación, causando desarmonía, enfermedades, tormentas y guerras.La inteligencia del corazón puede ayudar a disipar estas energías negativas, dando a la gente un nuevo comienzo en el aprendizaje de cómo llevarse bien.Como suficientes personas a aprender acerca de la aptitud emocional, causará un cambio global en la nueva conciencia de que muchos están hablando, y luego la calidad de vida tiene la oportunidad de convertirse en mejor para el todo. «- Doc Childre
Of the many blessings that have come my way since discovering the teachings of Eckhart Tolle, and later participating in Michael Jeffreys’ Santa Monica groupdevoted to his work, perhaps none is more significant than the experiential recognition of the limitations of my “formative mind” – or what Eckhart calls the “ego.”
Michael refers to this as the “boss hammer,” because when it is recognized it actually allows one to drop all conceptual belief systems. As they begin to fall away, as Eckhart says, “You can [begin to] notice a dimension within yourself that is far deeper than the movement of thought.”
Why is this so difficult to acknowledge?
As Eckhart tells us, the voice that is the formative mind or Ego is programmed and deeply conditioned habitual chatter.
The Ego is persistent in its need for attention. This ever-present clamor for recognition and validation convinces the person who is listening to it to give it more and more attention, until through conditioning you eventually accept it as “your self.” And in our social conditioning this is powerfully reinforced, and we are led to believe that this voice in the head is our identity.
As Eckhart says, this misapprehension is what is symbolized in the story of the Garden of Eden, symbolized as the apple and knowledge of good and evil. It is the evolutionary ability of the mind to make distinctions, starting with good and bad (good=berry – bad=poison), which enabled the “smart” ones among us to survive.
But the fallacy of this identification with the “voice in the head” is the basis for the world’s very oldest teachings and traditions; I believe that it is the foundation of all of the world’s religions but was then distorted for various reasons by the priesthood and the power structures which then emerged.
Sources of Wisdom
This “esoteric” basic teaching, the recognition of which Jesus referred to as the “Kingdom of Heaven,” has been lost amidst the apparent “success” of scientific thought and achievement. You can find out more in a wonderful book on the subject by Jacob Needleman – “Lost Christianity.”
Traces of the actual root texts have been recently found in lost “gospels” of the gnostics.
Another teacher whom Needleman admires was Gurdjieff, who wrote that “our mind is like a cabby who sits in a pub and drives passengers to different places in his dreams. Trying to work with the mind alone will lead nowhere. The power of changing oneself lies not in the mind but in the body and feelings.” – G.I Gurdjieff, “Views from the Real World“
So what do we do to access this “higher” Mind – to transform ourselves? Do we somehow rid ourselves of the “scourge” of the Ego – if we can even do so – with meditation or drugs or yoga?
Eckhart’s Wisdom
In his Hawaiian retreat – which is available on a DVD set entitled “Deepening the Dimension of Stillness,” Eckhart suggests to those in attendance that his message cannot be understood “from [only] the neck up.”
Indeed, he suggests that a major part of the practice of presence involves feeling the aliveness – the energy within the body – and that a good place to start is in your hands. This does not always work for everyone; many of us are disconnected from that “vast intelligence” that Eckhart says runs your circulation, breath, and digestion, and harmoniously interacts with the environment.
With this recognition and the practices of stillness and connection to the body comes the experiential discovery that: “Who you are and Stillness are one and the same.”
Through these practices the formative mind is not defeated or eliminated, instead it harmoniously becomes what it was meant to be, part of the fuller process of Life.
As we discussed in Michael’s meetings, your mind and what you thought was “you” begins to trust life. Each moment becomes an experiment rather than a quest for control. Wonder replaces stress and, paradoxically, life unfolds and often seems to “work out.” As Michael says, “The party doesn’t start until you leave.”
Until the bearer of the apple, the serpent, relents and quiets the need to control, judge, and identify what is “good” and what is “bad,” you will suffer.
So what about when bad or unfortunate things occur? There is disease, war, famine, cruelty to be sure. What is to be our response?
Eckhart suggests a very deep mantra: Can I create a space for this? (Do not mistake this for passivity, however. It is actually a new active frequency of aliveness and intelligence.) Eckhart writes:
“Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness.”
And remember, the formative mind cannot create space – it cannot do anything except raise objections and seek explanations.
Since the formative mind uses thought and language to attempt to establish control and gain attention, separation is guaranteed, because the very structure of language – as teachers like Rupert Spira have pointed out – is subject/object.
Inquiring deeply, can you find a subject and object anywhere in your direct experience?
Life’s Wisdom
So where or how does one connect to this higher “Mind” that the formative mind cannot know?
The truth is that you’ve never been separated from it. You are it. As Eckhart says, you don’t have a life, you ARE Life. Death is not the opposite of Life – Life has no opposite because it is Existence or Being “it”self. The opposite of death is birth.
Finally, one of Eckhart’s other important teachings is that one can live or be “above” and “below” thought. The space of silence from which the formative mind is observed is “above” thought. The result of numbing the mind with drugs, sex, distraction, violence, and so on is “below” thought.
The choice as to where you will rest or live, above or below thought, is truly yours, only in the present moment. The gap between your conditioned habitual thoughts (silence) is literally who you are. Try to sense it from the neck down, and then invite what is above your neck along for the ride.
Robert Burton said, “A quiet mind cureth all.” Being able to find inner peace is one of the greatest skills anyone can acquire. A tranquil mind helps us to appreciate the good times, weather the bad, and be present for every moment in between. But on some days… it’s tough. The car doesn’t start, your kids are screaming for your attention, there isn’t enough money in the bank, your boss is hounding you and your work is piling up. When you find yourself in those situations it’s more important than ever to find that calm center within so that you can come out stronger and better on the other side. When you’re finding it impossible to keep your cool, try to remember these 3 things:
1. Experience Does Not Create Peace, You Do
I find that a lot of us wait for an excuse to be peaceful. We expect it to come when we book a day at the spa or take a bath or go for a walk outside. Activities can absolutely assist us in feeling calm and relaxed but they cannot create peace for us. Peace comes from within. Think of the last time you felt relaxed. Where were you? What were you doing? If you can’t remember a time where you last felt relaxed, imagine yourself sitting on a sandy beach, listening to the soothing sounds of the ocean, breathing in the salty air. Imagine yourself on this beach for ten seconds. Go ahead and give it an honest effort.
Can you feel the calmness? Did you feel the relaxation radiating through you? You’re feeling it because you created it! You did not need an actual beach or a massage or a salty breeze to take you to that state of peace. You called it forth in your mind and experienced it right here and now. That is the power that you have over your inner world. Use it wisely.
2. Give Yourself Permission To Feel Peace
The reason we typically feel so relaxed on the beach, in nature, or at a spa is because we’ve given ourselves permission to let go for a little while. Vacations and spa days are just excuses for many of us to relax. It’s incredible that so many of us think that we need to go somewhere or spend money on an activity in order for us to be “allowed” to relax.
Learn to let yourself off the hook. Relax. Visualize yourself on a beautiful beach. Let go of the need to control. You’ll be surprised at how many of the petty things we worry endlessly about resolve themselves when we resolve to let go.
3. Make Peace A Priority
You and only you are in charge of your schedule every day. As much as the outer world has its demands, you decide what is going to take priority every day in your actions and thoughts. If your intention is to create more peace in your life, I recommend starting or ending your day off with a technique to help you relax your mind and body. A peaceful practice doesn’t need to take more than a few minutes. In some cases as little as thirty seconds is enough to bring your mind back into the present moment. If you’re interested in learning a technique that you can employ easily every day, you can sign up for my free “5 Day De Stress Challenge,”where you’ll learn 5 powerful techniques that can be used to create a calmer mind, discover what areas of your life are creating the most stress, and create lasting peace in your life.
4. Practice!
Staying peaceful in the midst of drama or conflict can be difficult but not impossible.If you’ve decided to use a peaceful technique for a few minutes every day, it becomes easier to tap into that inner calm during stressful times. If it’s helpful, imagine your peace as a white light in the center of your chest. Every time you need to access it, all you need to do is recall the image of the light in your mind and it flows to you. The more often you tap into this inner peace, the more powerful it becomes. Use it as often as you need.
NEURÓLOGO YREHABILITADOR. Tras ver cómo dos pacientes a los que daban meses llegaron a vivir 8 años, empezó a investigar terapias complementarias.
Médico, hijo de médico, Francisco Barnosell empezó hace una década a preguntarse por qué algunos pacientes desahuciados escapaban de la muerte. Este neurólogo y rehabilitador experto en la electromiografía, una técnica de diagnóstico neuromuscular, comenzó a investigar sobre terapias complementarias e impulsó la Asociación de Médicos, Terapeutas y Sanadores (AMYS), que el año que viene celebrará su cuarto congreso en el campus de la UPV/EHU de Donostia. Barnosell, autor de un blog bajo el seudónimo Paco Lacueva y del libro ‘Entre dos aguas’ (Luciérnaga), visita este fin de semana San Sebastián para participar en el comité organizador del encuentro.
¿Cómo surge su interés por investigar las terapias complementarias?
Tras ver cómo unos pacientes se habían curado por medios no médicos, casos graves de personas desahuciadas. En dos enfermos concretos vi como médico que iban a durar poco, entre tres y seis meses, y vivieron entre 7 y 8 años. Luego murieron. Pero de 6 meses a 8 años hay un abismo. Casos muy muy graves que se hayan escapado he visto muy pocos, pero sí he visto esa demora en casos no tan graves. Empecé a investigar y me encontré con que había un par de sanadores por un lado, un curandero por el otro… Y lo plasmé en un libro escrito desde el punto de vista notarial: soy un notario que se pasea por mil sitios y escribo lo que veo.
¿Alguna vez le han reprochado haber dejado de ser un médico ‘serio’ o convencional?
No, en absoluto. Lo que pasa es que en Cataluña es diferente a otros lugares, aquí estamos quizás más avanzados en esto e incluso muchos hospitales públicos hace 2-3 años empezaron a hacer tratamientos energéticos tipo reiki o magnetismo, algo que jamás hubiese dicho que fuese posible.
¿Y hace 15 años se imaginaba que estudiaría estas terapias?
¡Qué va! Hace 15 años me reía de estas situaciones, pero poco después entré de golpe y empecé a ver que funcionan.
Pero muchas de estas terapias no se pueden probar empíricamente…
Ese es el problema. Yo he contado 187 técnicas, aunque hay hasta 300 pero el resto son mezclas, y la mayoría no son demostrables. Se demuestran con resultados en pacientes, con su mejoría, pero no hay una prueba que lo corrobore. Es el problema que nos encontramos, porque el médico quiere pruebas: resonancias, analíticas, radiografías… Y muchas veces esto no se ve, pero otras sí. Por ejemplo, en el mejor hospital del mundo en oncología, el Anderson en Estados Unidos, usan una docena de técnicas comprobadas, como musicoterapia, meditación, nutrición, alguna energética… En España ahora estamos en plena revolución, hay médicos que trabajan en la medicina alternativa, el nombre que se emplea para unir la medicina convencional con las terapias. En Cataluña hay un espíritu de colaboración y aquí un médico no tiene inconveniente en enviar al paciente al terapeuta.
Así que no reniega de la medicina tradicional o convencional.
Sigo trabajando en la medicina convencional, lo que hago es utilizar herramientas de terapias complementarias para hacer mi labor. Lo primero es la medicina, eso ha de quedar clarísimo.
¿Ha habido un ‘boom’ de estas terapias complementarias?
El pasado fin de semana se creó en Madrid la Sociedad Española de Medicina Alternativa. Ha habido un crecimiento exponencial brutal de muchos terapeutas, no médicos, haciendo todo tipo de terapias. La parte buena es que se ha investigado mucho y se ha relacionado mucha gente de la medicina, y la mala es que como en otros lados hay mangantes que quieren vivir del sistema sin estar preparados. Para esto estamos los colegios de médicos, para ejercer cierto rigor y control.
¿Le escriben muchos colegas?
Cada semana recibo más de cien correos electrónicos y la mitad son de médicos, enfermeras, farmacéuticos, fisioterapeutas y psicólogos.
¿Cómo trata a un paciente que entra por primera vez en consulta?
Tratas de que en cinco minutos se rompan esas barreras de intimidad y puedas entrar dentro de él con empatía. Sobre todo se trata de escucharle y entender, explicar el cómo, el cuándo y el por qué de esa enfermedad. Por ejemplo, un paciente con un problema en la espalda, en una vértebra. El tratamiento básico y clásico sería pedir una resonancia, una radiografía, un tratamiento de rehabilitación o una operación. Yo quizás pregunto más allá: ¿Y desde cuándo lo tiene? Hace un año. ¿Y qué le pasó hace un año?, y no me refiero a que cogiese un peso… ¿Se separó, hubo un ‘crack’ en su familia, en su trabajo, para que yo pueda entender esa carga que lleva en esa espalda?
¿Y qué tratamiento plantea?
Sigo con las pautas clásicas: primero medicina, rehabilitación y, al mismo tiempo, en función de caso, hay más de cien terapias que podemos usar. Sobre todo desde el punto de vista emocional.
¿Cuáles son las terapias más empleadas?
El abanico es enorme y hemos de acotarlo un poco. Hemos hecho seis grupos: las terapias integrales, las terapias mente y cuerpo, las biológicas, las de manipulación del cuerpo, las energéticas y vibracionales y las ambientales del bienestar y de vida sana. Ahí se incluyen las 187 terapias. Las que están en algunos hospitales, digamos que aprobadas, son: arteterapia, reiki, terapia lumínica, musicoterapia, acupuntura, fisioterapia, nutrición, ejercicio físico, yoga, tai chi, psico-oncología, gestión de emociones, relajación, meditación guiada… Las que más en boga están son las energéticas, como la magnetoterapia, reiki, sanación energética, y luego hay otras muchas, como sofrología, constelaciones, genograma, descodificación… Lo que sucede es que algunas de estas terapias se incorporan pero los estamentos médicos oficiales no tienen ni idea que está pasando. Lo que se trata es de hacer un estudio firme y serio par ver de todas estas cuáles podemos incorporar en la medicina. Por eso se me ocurrió crear un espacio común para médicos, terapeutas y sanadores, que es como un sacrilegio, y he conseguido que salgan a la luz tanto médicos como terapeutas.
Estas terapias complementarias, ¿curan o ayudan?
Depende de los casos y de la profesionalidad de quien lo hace. Empezaron los terapeutas y los médicos han cogido la batuta. Pero no nos engañemos: normalmente no verá a un médico que haga más de 2 ó 3 terapias. Un terapeuta podrá hacer 15 ó 20, y necesitamos que esos terapeutas nos ayuden. En eso estamos trabajando en AMYS y hemos conseguido que haya un seguro de responsabilidad civil y que tengan un título universitario: a partir del año que viene habrá un espacio universitario para convalidar títulos y hacer cursos de medicina alternativa. Así se pueden integrar en el sistema de salud, primero en la red privada y luego en la pública.
¿Hasta qué punto el interés o la convicción personal influye en la curación o en la evolución de un paciente?
Es vital, el paciente que entiende el alcance de su enfermedad se cura antes y mejor. No hay que esconderle nada al paciente y hay que conseguir esa complicidad. Pero mi labor, al menos en el futuro cercano, es establecer unas pautas de rigor científico para determinar cuáles de estas ciento y pico terapias funcionan empíricamente, porque funcionar funcionan muchas, pero a los médicos no nos sirven si no hay una demostración detrás. También hay que trabajar un código ético, tanto profesional como económico. Y luego abrir espacios profesionales, desde el punto de vista de colegios de médicos y médicos asociados, para establecer un punto común para poder desarrollar estas técnicas. En hospitales americanos lo han estudiado y tenemos 15 técnicas pero yo creo que algunas más se pueden incorporar.
CranioSacral Therapy, created by Dr. John Upledger, is a manual and subtle technique to help detect and correct imbalances in the craniosacral that may be the cause of sensory, motor or neurological dysfunction system. Cranio Sacral Therapy is related to the health and welfare of the whole body.
The cranial sacral system is comprised of the membranes and the liquid brain medulla, which surround and protect the brain and spinal cord, extending from the cranial bones to the sacrum and coccyx.
This therapy increases the body functioning and helps alleviate various kinds of pains.
Is particularly effective for the treatment of headaches, migraines, headaches, bruxism, insomnia, spinal problems, motor coordination difficulties, neurological problems, vertigo, Parkinson, stress, anxiety, chronic fatigue, endogenous depression, eye problems, hyperactivity, disorders of the central nervous system, autism, learning difficulties many other diagnostics … and for those who still enjoy good health, wanting to relax and re-establish harmony in your body.
It’s currently being widely used and reported in European medical centers, with its twinned with osteopathy origin, kineseologia and alternative therapies or holistic, is currently in vogue within the natural therapies.
Shanti by Samantha Basso 