visionaire is nice if we shared our christian studies suggest it's not only our life experiences that help shape who we are but also those leave before us how is it possible we'll ask mark wall and the leading expert in it inherited family trauma director of the family. mark foley and a leading expert in the field of inherited family drama and director of the family constellation is bestselling author really great to have you with us today. thank you sophie i'm glad to be here. thank so much do you see trauma as our ancestors

might have gone through are passed on to find generations and if our lives how exactly does that work and are these traumas passed as part of our genetic memory. actually they they are when a trauma happens it changes us literally it causes a chemical change in our d.n.a. and this changes the way or genes function sometimes for generations technically a chemical attack were attached to our d.n.a. and tell the cells because of this terrible thing that just happens trauma it will tell the cells to use or ignore these genes so we have a better chance of dealing with or surviving what happened but then the way our genes are affected chain can change how we act or how we feel for example we can become sensitive or reactive to situations that are similar to a trauma even if that trauma occurred 2 or 3 generations ago if our

grandparents experienced a war trauma fan killing people being lined up in the street shot bullets bombs they would epigenetic lee adap to chemically change a molecular change they they would. adapt a skill set maybe sharper reflexes quicker reaction times reactions to the violence that they experience and that would be what's passed down however their reactions their literally the stress response or the gene changes then the way our genes. we as children will receive their experience through this chemical change this gene change but the problem is we can't. inherit a stress response with the dials set to 10 and here we are waiting for this

war to happen in our bodies 2 generations later were born more in a peaceful time so. exactly where sound always thought that in a gene scary heritage or information that manifest physically like. hate or no wait. something entirely the theory of time to the subjective perception of consciousness which scientists can't really define properly so how can genes pass on something as in centuries as memories now i'll give some of the studies that are so interesting. so it starts with a woman named rachel you who about 15 years ago she is working with trauma survivors holocaust survivors and she's realizing that the trauma symptoms exist in the children as similarly as in the parents but the children didn't go

through the war and it's not a taught or a learned experience because then the scientists decide well let's see let's to remove some of the barriers the factors that can influence this so one of the most interesting studies comes out of. emory medical university in atlanta this is probably 10 years ago where they take mice and they make them fear a trauma like a cherry blossom like scent the way they do that is the mice breathe in the scent and then they're shocked and every time the mice breathe this scent they shot the mice and in the very 1st generation of the shock mice they already see that the brains of change that there are in large the areas where there are a greater amount of smell. receptor is. so the mice can detect the scent at lesser

concentrations thereby protecting themselves right in that 1st generation their brains had at epigenetic lee adapted to protect not so the researchers have this idea they say well wait a minute let's let's see what happens in the next couple of generations they take the sperm from the shock mice and they impregnate women mice female mice and were not shocked and then they separate the parent from the child and the amazing thing is what happens in the 2nd and 3rd generations the mice just by smelling the smell become became jumpy and jittery we're talking about the pups and the grandpa they had inherited the stress response without directly experience from the trauma this is just one of hundreds and hundreds of studies that i list in my book. there are numerous studies where they take

the mother the female mys away from their children for just even a very short time in fact one of the most replicated. studies in all of epigenetics is taking baby mice away from the mothers and observing the effect for 3 generations. it's amazing how little the trauma has to be to affect the subsequent generations. how do healing the trauma through therapy actually change my genetic makeup in this area to me through trauma genes go away. no no what what it what it does is it can change that mechanism so when we do the healing work which i'm happy to talk about it can change the epigenetic signature which passes from parent to child.

i'll give you an example one of the ways in which we heal we've got to have a positive experience strong enough to change our brain and then we need to practice the new sensations and the new feelings from these positive experiences and we do this we not only create new neural pathways in our brain which is one of the things i talk about neuroplastic change but also we stimulate the release of feel good general transmitters like soap like dope and mean sarah tone and jab in our brain we stimulate the release of feel good hormones like. estrogen oxytocin but the very genes themselves also can begin to function in a new improved way we can literally change the way our d.n.a. express us. when we do we actually know what kind of gene is responsible for traumatic memories is it possible to identify. there's one. researchers

focus on called the f k b p 5 gene there's about $100.00 or so genes but this is a gene involved in stress regulation and depressive disorders it's one that's well studied but there are many they've begun to isolate particular genes in fact just a couple of years ago going back to the work of rachel you heard from mount sinai medical. found the exact same in this particular gene the exact same gene changes in the very same region of the very same gene generation to generation. oh it's so you're saying actually that we're not born blank slates with an off ears prejudices from previous generations how can one break this battle of this hereditary drove x. is it a mass of heal from transgenerational wounds all together for once and for allah

absolutely that's you know what i'm here to tell people that we're not you know we may be born with a certain destiny certain and heritance a biological inheritance for example our parents our grandparents had these traumas that happen and we're born with these abundance of micro r.n.a.'s or this change in his tone or d.n.a. modifications and all of a sudden when we out of the gate are born with fears and feelings that don't always belong to us but we can change this through experiences of. compassion receiving comfort receiving support experiences of having a gratitude practice would be a way to change it experiences of even a generosity practice where we're doing something loving each day loving kindness practice mindfulness practice ultimately anything that allows us to feel

strength or peace or joy inside these types of experiences feed the prefrontal cortex and can help us reframe that stress response that we've inherited so it has a chance to calm down as a chance down regulate the ideas to pull traction pull energy away from the limbic system where. the are over active and a mid july in a trauma which can be twice its normal size and to bring in gage meant to the fore brains specifically our prefrontal cortex where we can integrate. these new experiences and our our brains can change really we know we know from mindfulness studies the practicing mindfulness actually shrinks the image to law and thickens the prefrontal prefrontal cortex more who can take a short break right now we'll come back we'll continue talking to mark wally later an expert in this field of the heritage family trauma talking about how our

ancestors trauma shapes us as shields stay with us. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to us of the world of politics or business i'm show business i'll see you then. the british and american governments have often been accused of destroying lives in their own interests what you see in this these techniques is the state devising

methods to him to essentially destroy the personality of an individual. by scientific means this is how one doctor's theories were allegedly used in psychological warfare against prisoners deemed a danger to the state that was the foundation for the method of psychological interrogation psychological torture of the cia disseminated from within the us intelligence community and worldwide among our allies for the next 30 years and how the victims say they still live with the consequences today. and we're back with mark wallenda live next where it needs 11 heritage family trauma director and a 7 it's also a she says bestselling author mark for instance i have bad things happen

to me in my country of birth and i have to flee then i have to america and a little store and a happy life gave birth to 7 case they're in a very happy state well they still inherit the trauma see they could that's that's exactly what you're describing right here is perfect we we have a trauma we move from that country can be very true traumatic just like you said we had to flee and all of a sudden our children are born with this fear of not belonging or or not feeling their home or feeling terrified over this they see a policeman a man in uniform because they've inherited aspects of the trauma you or your parents experienced and that's just it we don't we don't even make the connection we just think we're wired this way here we are born with

a fear of men in uniform. a feeling of not belonging a feeling of missing our home a feeling that will never fit in all the things that you're talking about potentially that children could experience and yet they don't make the link to look back at your experience your parents' experience and that's what i'm trying to teach people when we have a fear and anxiety depression. some stress response it may not do you know like the title of the book it didn't start with you it may not have started with us this could be just like you said the experience of the parents or the grandparents and here we are not born as a blank slate and fact is already this operating system. the stats to use a computer analogy already running in the background so the idea again basically to

put it in the nut show we need to practice being with these uncomfortable sensations in our body so the 1st thing i have people do in the book is to become a detective of what i call their trauma language so i ask people certain questions so we can get these fears and feelings out one of the questions i ask in the book is. sophie what's your worst fear if the worst thing happened to you if they went terribly wrong if things suddenly fell apart what's the worst thing that could happen to you and the answer to that could be one of 2 directions it could be attachment language. i'll be all alone will be no one there i have no support i'll be left out be rejected i'll be abandoned that goes in one direction which talks about breaks and the attachment with our mother which are heritable or the generational direction i'm nother generational direction is hurt somebody harm

a child i'll go to jail i'll do something terrible be hate it i'll be locked up i'll do something terrible i won't deserve to live and you can hear the difference different quality of the language that is generational language and those events who did something terrible who felt they didn't deserve to live who harmed a child accidentally or or through war or purposely because it's this type of trauma language that i found when a trauma happens not only does our d.n.a. change the way to express us but literally it leads clues clues in the form of of fears and feelings and language. in our in and our psyche for example we will have charged. emotionally charged words and sentences that form a breadcrumb trail so i teach the reader when they read the book how to listen for

this trauma language because as we know from trauma theory when a traumatic event happens to us significant information bypasses the frontal lobes so we can't really process the experience of what happened we can't process. because exactly what happened is is it can't be named or ordered through words because our friends our language centers have been compromised in a trauma so without language our experiences get stored as fragments fragments of memory fragments of body sensation fragments of emotions fragment fragments of images language which i'll get to in a minute. and we the remember too much or too little from the trunk it's like the mind disperses and essential elements get separated. to say it briefly you know we lose the story and never complete the healing about the problem

but these pieces are lost they've simply been rerouted in our verbal or non-verbal trauma language when it's verbal it's like the sentences i told you. i'll be alone . hurt somebody when it's non-verbal we have to look in. at our symptoms our physical and emotional symptoms particularly the symptoms that show up after something unsettling happens to us so for example we look for the fears anxieties maybe that strikes suddenly when we reach a certain age age 25 as when our grandmother became a widow she lost our grandfather and she and she never marries again and here we are 25 and we pull away from our partner without realizing work. connected to our grandmother's experience. or you know we have a depression. that is begins after this event

and this event is similar to an event in a previous generation non-verbal trauma language it's also in our relationship struggles who we choose the type of person that we choose the way we're treated it's also in our the way we do with money or success or yeah so. when you mention some of the means that could come that this genetic traumas mindfulness a positive experience that replaces. the negative memory heritage very memory could something like i mean i think if you could nashua us again with a scientific approach that could something like i know he notices or passed last transgression where to to feel something like this so any no down let me really that has as focusing on what's positive because the brain is designed to

focus on what's negative we have a negativity bias in the brain 2 thirds of our middle is scanning for threats so it's very easy to remember and focus on the negative things to happen that happen to us it's not so easy to focus on the positive things and that's again where healing lens practicing what's positive so so again you know when i was talking about healing earlier we 1st we uncover or focus on what it feels frightening in our body 1st we we focus on what may feel uncomfortable until we saw it just so it's just it's really more about this insatiable step we need to focus on in our bodies and sort of wake and bottling them rather than getting to the bottom on. the genetic memory of what happened because you know they say once you get to the to the bottom of the story it sort of loses its magic it

has no more power over you so you're saying that's not the important part important part is to really work through the bodily sensations of where the spheres are kind of saying 2 things as yes absolutely and it is important to know that it's not our story that is key so for example through our trauma language through our looking inside ourselves we just cover on the god these are my feelings this this is what happened to my grandmother this is what happened with my mom when you know my mom gave away her 1st baby i aborted my 1st baby my dad failed at age 40 i start to shoot myself in the foot at age 40 and i failed to my grandmother and grandfather lost everything after they had children and i've lost everything after i had lost you know it's important also to be able to look at these experience to get some freedom from the term as the come before us but as you put it absolutely it's

extremely important to focus on the life giving sensations in our body like for example paul saying tingling softening expanding our blood flowing our heart beating waves of energy or warmth holding what's positive in our body not just what's frightening in our body but going beneath that until we reach life giving sensations and then being being able to hold the experience of what's positive for at least a minute and then do that 6 times a day that can be enough to change our brain to calm down our stress response it's essential that we take time to have these positive experiences and then to let the sensations of these positive experiences affect us physically affect us viscerally and then trust the feelings of it in our body. also i want to look at this whole

thing on a larger scale way and eve we count not just our parents put a few generations bag which would be wall war great depression and we see that they we get mad again harry harrington's from them as well then if you think about it everyone in this world almost without exception has trauma it turns out are. all damaged in one way or another because like if that's the logic that we carried you know trauma not only from our parents but maybe grandparents and wear red herrings and show you one person. who who hasn't had his genealogical tree say i think is the doorway through great to the doorway to greatness so when we look at what's uncomfortable and we heal what's uncomfortable we something in us rises to a more. calm peaceful connected state where

a lot of good can happen in the world because we've looked at what's uncomfortable we've dealt with it we've we've used our traumas productively but to the 1st part of your point absolutely all of us going back far enough i mean you know that they show a 3 general generation link 3 generation link in the trauma research so our parents our great grandparents our pegram parents and our parents we can be affected by their traumas but then because the traumas often don't heal you might as well go back 3 more and 3 more so all of us yes can be affected with with fears and feelings and depressions and anxieties and stressors they do not belong to us but again that other thing that i was saying that's the gateway that's the gateway to surmounting was difficult some mounting what feels impossible we all know that

when we reach a good plateau in our lives a good place in our lives we say we think what was difficult we say if it wasn't for that cancer i wouldn't have my heart open or if it wasn't for that difficult experience i wouldn't be the person i am today so the way i look at terms of these are our opportunities our door was danny based and stay well out of the collective trauma of living a through this. do for us solomon are we doomed for i don't know 3 to 5 generations of people who have p.t.s.d. because i mean most of us have probably been traumatized by a colleague in some way or another. it depends on exactly what personally we experienced during the pandemic you know yeah we're all disconnected from other people that's true. but also the their parents listen children children losing parents. did we lose our income and our ability to provide for our family

during this pandemic how successfully are we navigating through the feelings of this pandemic because it stirring up a lot of helplessness isolation. that for sure is true but then again it's a an opportunity to go inside because the pen demick what it's doing to us it's making us feel as i said helpless isolated scared lonely and that's bringing up a deeper well of personal trauma again for me more doorways that we can walk through a doorway of looking so for me you know i say that this pandemic is a place where we can focus on personal trauma and that's where we can heal you know because our children our grandchildren as we talked about there and heritage molecular changes gene expressions from the experience as our experiences our parents experiences our grandparents experience and one of the ways we heal

collective trauma other we're all experiencing is to heal our own personal trauma got into our own work sophie we've got to heal what's in shadow we've got to integrate what has been fragmented in us how we numb doubt how we shut down how we split off how we tightened not to feel something then from a place of more clarity once we've done this work once we've learned to self regulate our limited brain we can take action we can do meaningful things in the world we can create a meaningful impact in the world when we're clear. can focus on what we're meant to to in life and do we enjoy you know what energizes us. again the pandemic is another doorway to which we can look at our isolation our aloneness our pain and start healing. that positive note i want to thank you for this wonderful and

uncensored pleasure talking to you i could go on for hours you know it's a it's a big meaty topic we can certainly go on a long time and i don't want to do this again so we can hire a little more of this amazing subject that could actually be the magic pill to solving a lot of our problems so thanks a lot for this insight and good luck with everything marc thank you for having me so. being with us.

it's been decades since the fall of spain's fascist regime but old wounds still haven't healed. me from your view of. the past at the. same cause which we know. of newborn babies were torn from their mothers and given away and forced adoption. to this day mothers still search for grown children. for their birth parents.

and headlines this friday a mass rally by the i mean opposition is expected to start near the parliament after they besieged the building last night political divisions in the country. faces calls to step following his firing of the head of the armed forces saying he thought he was part of an attempted coup correspondents going to bring us the latest right from the site in just a few moments from now. of course this friday you come out against plans to make coronavirus shots obligatory for work. and the chief counters open conflict with the head of the biggest men.