Featured Story December 2007
The Genie in Your Genes
An Interview with Dawson Church
by Sydney Murray
Best-selling author Dawson Church has written and edited over 200 books in the fields of health, spirituality and psychology. In his latest book, Genie in Your Genes (Author’s Publishing Cooperative, 2007), he presents a new way of looking at the factors that affect human DNA. Vision Magazine spoke with Church recently about a new terminology for physical and psychological healing.
Vision Magazine: What is epigenetic healing? Also, what is energy psychology?
Dawson Church: The field of epigenetics really got going in the late 1990s. Researchers began to accumulate data that showing that genes were affected by factors outside the cell. Before that [and unfortunately today] there was still the [belief] that whatever information you have imbedded in your DNA is the way you are. We are discovering instead that [DNA] is like a piece of potential. Whether or not that potential manifests is largely due to factors outside the cell and the genome. This is the field of epigenetics, or influences on the gene from outside the cell. Energetic Medicine is the use of this phenomenon to consciously affect health. Now that we know we can affect our genome from outside of the cell and outside of the body by means of the communications we supply to the genes, we are in a position to actually take advantage of this phenomenon by generating signals that support health and discourage the development of disease.
VM: So energy psychology is basically working with the mind to affect the body?
DC: Energy psychology is a very interesting, new field. It is roughly the same age as epigenetics. In fact, I think that Dr. Fred Gallows [the psychologist] coined this term the same year that epigenetics got its start. It is the idea that if you affect the energy field of the body, you can release stored emotional, psychological trauma. The conventional psychological model holds that it takes sometimes years of therapy to have an affect on certain conditions. What energy psychology has discovered is that you can take a patient who is depressed, who is anxious, who has [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder], who has a variety of physical or psychological problems, and just by changing their electrical energy field, the psychological problem can shift very rapidly. One particular woman had eight years of psychotherapy for [sexual molestation issues]—largely unsuccessfully. Within a few minutes of energy psychology, these traumatic memories and the emotional charge behind them began to lift. That is the potential we are seeing. Even these long-standing, entrenched patterns, if you work at the energy level, can shift.
VM: What would be an example of a technique that would change energy levels?
DC: There are various ways to affect the energy system of the human body. In the book, and also on the website, I have this illustration from the University of Sheffield in England showing what the electrical field of a human being looks like. You can [shift these fields] through breathing or meditation. The specific therapies in energy psychology are ones like the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). Another one that is emerging is called WHEE (Whole Healing Easily and Effectively). There are various therapies like this that have been developing over the last ten years. [Therapists will] have people touch, tap or rub parts of their body and this tapping or rubbing generates very small electrical currents. [These techniques] are based on the discovery that our tissue has what is called a “piezo-electric” quality. When you tap on a piece of tissue like a joint or a bone or when you press it, it emits a small electrical charge and that charge travels through your body. When you do this in conjunction with recalling a specific emotional trauma, quite remarkably, that change in electrical charge discharges the electrical energy that accompanies that trauma.
VM: If someone is trying to get over the death of a loved one, can you still keep the good feelings but get rid of the ones that bring you down?
DC: Yes. The emotional charge behind the memories disappears while the memories remain. For example, I am doing one project now with Iraq [war] veterans. After treatment, they still will remember the horrible things they saw or were a part of in Iraq, but the crippling emotional charge will be removed.
I was working at a conference earlier this year. I asked for a volunteer and this woman stood up and told a heart-wrenching story. Her physical problem was that the whole left side of her body was immobilized. She had very little movement on the left side of her face. Her left shoulder was pretty much frozen with very little range of motion. I asked her about the underlying emotional stuff behind her physical condition. She told me that her son had been kidnapped and held for many months. Eventually, he was killed. The day that I was working with her was the seventh anniversary of his death. So she had severe physical trauma and severe emotional trauma with which it was associated. I worked with her on releasing one part of the emotional trauma. The particular point [in time] we worked on was the phone call from the State Department official telling her that her son was dead. That…was the main emotional trigger in this whole set of horrible circumstances. I worked with her in releasing it through EFT. [The procedure] took about forty seconds. After that, her face lit up and she was able to swing her arm in circles. It was an enormous physiological change from a small psychological and energy shift. A physical therapist could have worked with her on the shoulder for a long time without seeing those effects.
VM: If a person uses some of these techniques, do you believe that it will affect them in longevity and overall well being?
DC: Dramatically. There have been a number of studies showing the link between unresolved emotional trauma and disease. In fact, the biggest study [the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE)] involves 17,400 adults. It was done by Kaiser-Permanente, which is a local health care chain. [The study was done] in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control. They found a striking correlation between unresolved emotional trauma in childhood and heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, bone fractures, depression, hypertension and a host of other diseases. I think that there has been enough research with enough people over the years that we can say with conviction that [regarding] those psychological issues and stressors, unless you find a way to pull the plug on their emotional charge, you will definitely suffer from it later on in your life.
VM: You say that “evolution through experience and imitation can occur within minutes and can be passed down to the next generation.” Can you explain this?
DC: I think that when these papers were first published, many people in the research community were absolutely astounded. What this means is that…the effects of health and longevity can be very different for people with the same genes. This was first discovered in animal studies when a group of researchers looked at the habits of rats and the way they treated their offspring. Some rat mothers are very nurturing and will keep their offspring huddled in the nest. They will lick and groom them. They found that the baby rats that had been nurtured by their mothers had a much better ability to handle stress than those that weren’t nurtured by their mothers and that this nurturing was passed on to the next generation. This is, again, called an epigenetic effect. There are suggestions that this applies to humans as well. Certain genes are changed in a part of the brain called the epicathis, which is responsible for the stress dampening response. If we are adept at [this] response, then [it] is then transferred to our children without any sequence of change in the genes. This is one of those phenomenal findings that is forcing us to rethink the central dogma of molecular biology. This [dogma] states that DNA produces RNA which produces proteins which have an effect on the body. We use to think that it all began with DNA. We are now realizing that it all begins epigenetically with these signals from the outside, whether it is maternal nurturing, energy psychology, meditation, prayer or belief. All of these things are…changing which genes are being utilized by the body and which genes aren’t.
VM: Where would be a good place for someone who is new to these techniques to start in order to maintain their health and well being?
DC: I would say that, whatever your age, whatever your health, there are many things that are under your control and which you can do to modify your response to stress. These include changing your beliefs. One study found that the beliefs of certain people with certain diseases had a huge correlation with their health outcomes. Those with certain negative beliefs had very rapid drops in their immune system and those who had certain positive beliefs had marked rises in their immune system and in their immune markers. Things like the quality of your relationships [is a factor as well]. A study at Ohio State University by Richard Glazer and his wife, Elizabeth Kiecole-Glazer, found that the quality of marital relationships had a significant effect on immune system function. Wherever you are in your life, the quality of your relationships is affecting your health, your stress response, your longevity and your general wellness. Your beliefs are affecting it. The quality of nurturing in your life is affecting it. Meditation, prayer, your religious life are affecting it to a large degree. Just meditating for half an hour, morning or evening, and then, when you get stressed during the course of the day, having some way to quickly return to a healthy baseline—these two things alone should be tools in everyone’s personal toolkit.
VM: How do you see all of these new applications affecting our medical system?
DC: I have a wonderful physician friend who wrote a book called Alternative Medicine for Dummies, Dr. Jay Dillard. He once had a man in his office who had suffered a heart attack and he was also suffering from depression. Dr. Dillard pulled out his prescription pad and wrote a prescription: “Long talks with your rabbi twice a week!” Another study found that if patients had a part of their medical visit with their doctor devoted to a discussion of their spiritual well being, then other markers of their health went up significantly. Those discussions being studied in that particular research paper only lasted five to seven minutes. So, a [short] discussion of the spiritual aspect of life showed a marked improvement in the patient’s well being. I think that in the future we will see those kinds of discussions by doctors more and more. Also, I think that we will recognize the underlying emotional factors that are there for most conditions and we will develop ways of treating them. For example, Kaiser-Permanente, which I mentioned with the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, is now intensively studying energy psychology. A recent paper published about energy psychology and weight loss showed that [energy psychology] worked much better for this than behavioral therapy. Kaiser may introduce it into more and more of their hospitals in the next couple of years.
Concern for the patient’s spiritual well-being, for their belief structure, for their ability to handle stress—all of these things will become embedded in the medical system because they are cheap, they are safe, they are cost-effective and they really help people in a variety of ways, whether they are sick or whether they are well. I think that medicine and psychology will change dramatically in the next ten years to less reliance on drugs and interventions from the outside and much more of a focus on what people can do for themselves. We now know that all of these intangible things work out epigenetically to produce dramatic effects on our health. I don’t think that kind of knowledge is going to stay locked away in medical journals and obscure publications. I think that it will very soon move into the mainstream and [will] effect conventional medical practice in a big way.
For more information, visit www.dawsonchurch.com. Sydney Murray is publisher and owner of Vision Magazine.