“Our ancestors are totally essential to our every waking moment, although most of us don’t even have the faintest idea about their lives, their trials, their hardships or challenges.” –Annie Lennox
Our Being Set Free Group on Facebook has been a great venue for personal discovery. As I work through creating imagery around my own physical/emotional healing process, things have evolved in dramatic ways. I have now discovered something rather unexpected. 
Last month I began incorporating an old photograph of one of my ancestors I saw at my mother’s funeral four years ago. When rummaging through the 10,000 images on my phone, I came across it and began using her in my Retablo Series posted last month.
I know that sometimes our dis-ease comes not only from what we’ve created during this lifetime but from what has manifested in the DNA of our ancestors and, once discovered, we must take ownership of it as if it were ours. If we do, we can change these patterns and create a more positive evolution for ourselves and our children.
I also believe that my current somatic meditation practice has brought this imagery and awareness to me.
“Behavioral epigenetics says that the experiences of our ancestors can impact upon gene expression in our bodies and brain and affect the way we experience the world. This fascinating article on the topic refers to it as the ‘molecular residue’ from the emotional patterns of our ancestors. That means that the anxiety and stress, or the resilience and resourcefulness, of your grandparents and great-grandparents may be alive and well within you. It’s like an inherited pattern of gene expression.”
“And this is where contemplative practices play an important role. Science has come to embrace the theory of plasticity; the theory that our brains’ wiring – at least with respect to emotion, thought, and behavior – can be altered based on our practices and habits. The most exciting idea to come out of the plasticity model is that if our brains are alterable then there must be practices we can do to direct our thought and emotion into more helpful patterns. Indeed, a recent study out of Wisconsin, France and Spain, revealed that meditation altered certain molecules that impacted gene expression. In this study, they found meditation to effect gene expression along inflammatory pathways.
That means that that our 20 minutes a day of mindfulness meditation could be impacting inflammation levels in the body.” http://www.the-mindful-life.com/single-post/2016/09/05/Meditation-emotions-stress-and-our-genetic-inheritance-the-fascinating-link-between-the-practice-of-meditation-and-gene-expression
I personally think 20 minutes a day of meditation will affect much more than inflammatory pathways. It can bring a greater awareness to influences that began long ago.
If you are interested in creating work around a personal “Being Set Free” project, send us a request on Facebook Group: Being Set Free.
