what just happened how did that make you
feel I invite you all to make a mental
note what just happened your body while
we take the next few 10 minutes we’ll
say we’re exploring this idea that what
the erotic experience could have been
encoded in your subconscious might have
been determined by your early childhood
or even your ancestral lineage but first
time is really super stressful so you
wouldn’t mind joining me in taking a
nice long deep inhale so this my dear
that we can inherit learn behavior it’s
actually really fascinating to me and
really trained pilot scientists back in
Emory University for people that first
set me on fire in this idea they’ve been
working in inner-city communities and
they they wondered what was going on
here they saw these children
perpetuating these cycles and it just
seemed to them that there was so much
more going on than just their mimicking
their parents behavior so they went back
to the lab and they thought let’s study
this phenomenon in the lab and so they
did a mouse model so they took these
mice and they exposed them to this sweet
like cherry almond like scent and at the
same time apologized but they gave them
a small electric shock so some of you
might be familiar with Pavlov’s famous
dog experiments and may be recognized
that over time these mice become
conditioned to fear this smell so every
time they smell this smell they get this
electric shock and over time all they
need to do is
well this scent and all of a sudden
their body goes into this shock response
but what was really really fascinating
about this study is that the offspring
of these mice also inherited this
response despite never ever having
previously been exposed to an electric
shock the grandchildren inherited this
response as did mice conceived through
in vitro fertilization with sperm from
the original condition mice so let’s
just take one moment to think about the
implications of this work these animals
they exhibit an irrational and visceral
response to stimuli which they can have
no conscious memory of how is that
possible and what does it mean for our
experience of the human condition so
what they observed in this study were
actual structural changes to the brain
physiology of these mice what’s more
they linked these changes to DNA
methylation they called it a reversible
epigenetic chemical modification to the
primary DNA sequence I remembered
reading that sentence when I first saw
this study and that word this one word
reversible just jumped out at me and
said my imagination on fire when I first
started learning about this concept at
the dynamic genome I was amazed my
career had begun when the first draft of
the human sequence was being published
and I’d always understood genetics to be
the code that gets passed down from our
mom and dad and it determines our
physical form but even in my early
career I was somewhat confused and
perplexed as to how the only part that
mattered of this 3 billion unit genome
that encodes our DNA was this 10% that
gives us our skin color or our eye color
or determines whether or not we can roll
our tongue mmm I won the runt enrolling
lottery left to see if we have any other
tongue rollers out here there’s a cool
my personal obsession was with this 90%
it was the space between the
protein-coding genes and it had been
designated as junk DNA so imagine my
delight when I started reading about
epigenetics which predominately works in
this junk and I found the questions on
the answers and many many more questions
than answers but all of the answers to
these questions that I’d been curious
about my whole life this nature versus
nurture debate or life at the interface
of environment versus parental lineage
so I like to think of epigenetic
modification as the dimmer switches of
the genome or sometimes if I’m feeling
particularly out there I like to think
of them as the genomes DJ’s they light
up genes which need to express
themselves in a given moment or down
regulate genes that aren’t needed at a
moment in time one of my absolute
favorite favorite experiences which just
showed me the magnitude of this
incredible technology that we have
within us was on a recent visit to a lab
and so this lab that was a lab that
specialized in transplantation genetics
and they had taken some skin cells from
a human being and grown them up in a
petri dish and so some of you may
already be aware that skin cells look
like skin cells and not heart cells or
liver cells or toenail cells because all
of the genes that tell them you’re a
skin cell are switched on and all of the
genes that tells them that you’re any
other kind of cell are switched off and
epigenetics determines that so I’m
looking down this petri dish down the
microscope into the petri dish and these
skin cells that they’ve taken they’ve
switched off all of the genes that tell
this skin cell it’s a skin cell and
they’ve switched on genes to tell it
it’s a heart cell so here I am in the
lab just wondering what I’m gonna see
kind of trying to look clever and
thinking oh my goodness what if I don’t
see anything and then all of a sudden
the cells in this petri dish go boom
mm-hmm these skin cells had transformed
into heart cells which were beating of
their own accord
like epigenetic alchemy and we’ve only
just begun to scratch the surface of
what this could mean for us and our
experience as human beings one of my
absolute favorite studies that have
really started to look into this came
out of the NIH NIH last year and what
they discovered was truly remarkable
they found an epigenetic biomarker that
was a biomarker for cancer it was and
for multiple cancers so oftentimes we
think of there being a breast cancer
gene or a pancreatic cancer gene this
was a biomarker that encoded multiple
different types of cancers and what they
found was the decreased activity through
methylation of a gene called said an f15
for so the name of the gene isn’t that
interesting to me but the function of
this gene really is fascinating it is a
tumor suppressor gene and the
methylation of this gene decreased its
function and that correspond did with
the presence of cancer and the people in
this study and you know this is where
the idea of dynamic and reversible can
really get as excited so one great study
which demonstrates just how dynamic and
reversible this these technology can be
was came out of them a lab in
Massachusetts just recently and it was a
study that took some participants and
they told them to sit down for 15
minutes and deep breathe and repeat
mantra and meditate and then they
analyzed how their genes responded and
the results were truly remarkable after
just 15 minutes the genes linked to
inflammatory response in stress-related
pathways got switched off or dimmed down
and genes associated with energy
metabolism a mitochondrial function and
maintaining the telomeres bits at the
end of our chromosomes that make us
youthful
we’re switched on so how does this
relate to us as we sit here right now
well one of my favorite toys right now
is something called a molecular clock
and it recognizes how epigenetic
signatures are related to the health of
a cell by evaluating which genes are
switched on and which genes are switched
off at a given moment in time so what if
we could observe the impact of our
environments and our activities on our
molecular clocks how might we respond or
how might we move through life
differently some pretty interesting
experiences since I became interested in
this field of work so there was this one
time at band camp it’s cute but I wasn’t
a bang camp I was out dancing with a
dear friend and I was really excited I
was wearing this cool leather jacket had
this flowerpower bandana mara was in my
car we pull up to the venue walk into
the parking space and I see but there’s
an amazing parking space just available
right at the entrance of the venue so I
backed my car in and I’m feeling really
pumped it was a bit of princess parking
spot and so excited and I look up and
there’s this gentleman standing kind of
in front of my car and his face is sort
of red with rage and he’s got like
spittle coming out of his mouth and he
just looks so furious we’re both
confused because we’ve just been in this
state of fun and bliss as to what’s
going on and it took us a while to
discern what was happening but we
finally managed to establish that I’d
taken this parking spot that he’d been
waiting for so naturally I’m super
embarrassed and apologetic and I Drive
out and go off and find the next parking
spot but as I’m driving away it took
every single fiber of my being to not
stop my car get out walk over to this
car tap on his window
say excuse me sir would you please give
me a urine specimen what I wanted more
than anything else in that moment was to
see whether I might be able to detect a
really I do I just wonder was his
irrational response was it programmed
from a space of ancestral lack or maybe
was his anger from childhood neglect and
I wondered maybe just maybe might have
modulated his response had he known how
much damage he was causing to his cells
in that moment he was accelerating his
molecular clock but really I just wonder
how we might move through the world
differently if we had a better
understanding of both our own
subconscious programming and the
subconscious programming of those with
whom we share this earth so my dream is
to offer these tools as a means to
empower individuals to know where their
blocks lie and feel into what
environments and activities are really
serving them as they move through life
my personal favorite expression of self
love is through yoga and meditation but
I strongly believe in the power of
anything that can take us away from this
idea of our small finite limited self to
bring ourselves back into a place of
balance like music just last month I was
at this festival and there was this
moment at the end of pink set and the
harness falls from the sky and we all
know what’s about to happen and the two
girls in front of me they just turn
around and look at me and they say it’s
really no it was so exciting as I’m
looking around at the audience and
Pink’s flying through the air
and singing and flipping and dancing and
I just couldn’t help but wonder in that
moment what was happening to the
molecular clocks of those people in
these expressions of fun then of joy and
of love being fully immersed in a given
moment in time using the gift of our
five senses to be fully present or
nature I’ve just come back from Zion
National Park this past weekend and I
can still feel in my body the majesty of
those gorgeous red rocks and see that
Sun peeping over as it rose in the
morning lit up before colors making the
river glisten every day as we drove into
the canyon and out of the canyon there
was this little poster on the bus and
that was a quote by a guy called Edmond
up Edward Abbey and it said wilderness
is not a luxury but a necessity of the
human spirit so what is the necessity of
your spirit and can we use the tools of
genetics to help us discern them because
the tools of genetics are powerful they
make me feel powerful they give this
Welsh British Indian Asian scientist
yogi procrastinator millennia a sense of
right own personal identity in a sense
of my belonging a sense that can
transcend any label and any
international border and tell me the
full story of my personal connection to
every single being that ever was every
single being that ever will be and every
single being that is it
literal common thread through the ages
we have scientifically corroborated
evidence of the interconnectivity of
every single organism on this planet and
the tools of genetics make me feel like
I have a say in my journey they give me
insight into where I can focus my
intentions for shifting my personal
physiology to create the life that I
want to live so as we close I’d like to
invite you to imagine this is one of my
absolute favorite quotes ever
imagination is more important than
knowledge for knowledge is limited to
all we know and understand while the
imagination embraces the entire world
and everything there ever will be to
know and understand so let’s imagine
let’s imagine that we can see where our
ancestral programming or early childhood
experience is encoded in our cells let’s
imagine that in any given moment we can
imagine that we have the genetic tools
to enable us to discern which of our
environments and our activities
contribute to our greatness imagine that
we can see the molecular imbalances of
individuals whose irrational and
subconscious behaviors are contrary to
their greatness imagine how we might
react differently the next time we’re
Road raged or hey even stage freighted
as we gather here today in a city
recognized as a model of progress and
growth
in a world which is in such desperate
need of progress and growth I invite you
to imagine a future where these ideas
hold true a future where each and every
one of us is empowered to remember our
own sovereignty and each and every one
of us is empowered to remember the
sovereignty of every single person with
whom we share this earth and each and
every one of us is empowered to remember
the infinite magnitude our innate
healing capacity it’s our birthright for
we can be the change we wish to see in
ourselves and my feeling is that the
world will follow thank you so much
you
[Applause] [Music]
feel I invite you all to make a mental
note what just happened your body while
we take the next few 10 minutes we’ll
say we’re exploring this idea that what
the erotic experience could have been
encoded in your subconscious might have
been determined by your early childhood
or even your ancestral lineage but first
time is really super stressful so you
wouldn’t mind joining me in taking a
nice long deep inhale so this my dear
that we can inherit learn behavior it’s
actually really fascinating to me and
really trained pilot scientists back in
Emory University for people that first
set me on fire in this idea they’ve been
working in inner-city communities and
they they wondered what was going on
here they saw these children
perpetuating these cycles and it just
seemed to them that there was so much
more going on than just their mimicking
their parents behavior so they went back
to the lab and they thought let’s study
this phenomenon in the lab and so they
did a mouse model so they took these
mice and they exposed them to this sweet
like cherry almond like scent and at the
same time apologized but they gave them
a small electric shock so some of you
might be familiar with Pavlov’s famous
dog experiments and may be recognized
that over time these mice become
conditioned to fear this smell so every
time they smell this smell they get this
electric shock and over time all they
need to do is
well this scent and all of a sudden
their body goes into this shock response
but what was really really fascinating
about this study is that the offspring
of these mice also inherited this
response despite never ever having
previously been exposed to an electric
shock the grandchildren inherited this
response as did mice conceived through
in vitro fertilization with sperm from
the original condition mice so let’s
just take one moment to think about the
implications of this work these animals
they exhibit an irrational and visceral
response to stimuli which they can have
no conscious memory of how is that
possible and what does it mean for our
experience of the human condition so
what they observed in this study were
actual structural changes to the brain
physiology of these mice what’s more
they linked these changes to DNA
methylation they called it a reversible
epigenetic chemical modification to the
primary DNA sequence I remembered
reading that sentence when I first saw
this study and that word this one word
reversible just jumped out at me and
said my imagination on fire when I first
started learning about this concept at
the dynamic genome I was amazed my
career had begun when the first draft of
the human sequence was being published
and I’d always understood genetics to be
the code that gets passed down from our
mom and dad and it determines our
physical form but even in my early
career I was somewhat confused and
perplexed as to how the only part that
mattered of this 3 billion unit genome
that encodes our DNA was this 10% that
gives us our skin color or our eye color
or determines whether or not we can roll
our tongue mmm I won the runt enrolling
lottery left to see if we have any other
tongue rollers out here there’s a cool
my personal obsession was with this 90%
it was the space between the
protein-coding genes and it had been
designated as junk DNA so imagine my
delight when I started reading about
epigenetics which predominately works in
this junk and I found the questions on
the answers and many many more questions
than answers but all of the answers to
these questions that I’d been curious
about my whole life this nature versus
nurture debate or life at the interface
of environment versus parental lineage
so I like to think of epigenetic
modification as the dimmer switches of
the genome or sometimes if I’m feeling
particularly out there I like to think
of them as the genomes DJ’s they light
up genes which need to express
themselves in a given moment or down
regulate genes that aren’t needed at a
moment in time one of my absolute
favorite favorite experiences which just
showed me the magnitude of this
incredible technology that we have
within us was on a recent visit to a lab
and so this lab that was a lab that
specialized in transplantation genetics
and they had taken some skin cells from
a human being and grown them up in a
petri dish and so some of you may
already be aware that skin cells look
like skin cells and not heart cells or
liver cells or toenail cells because all
of the genes that tell them you’re a
skin cell are switched on and all of the
genes that tells them that you’re any
other kind of cell are switched off and
epigenetics determines that so I’m
looking down this petri dish down the
microscope into the petri dish and these
skin cells that they’ve taken they’ve
switched off all of the genes that tell
this skin cell it’s a skin cell and
they’ve switched on genes to tell it
it’s a heart cell so here I am in the
lab just wondering what I’m gonna see
kind of trying to look clever and
thinking oh my goodness what if I don’t
see anything and then all of a sudden
the cells in this petri dish go boom
mm-hmm these skin cells had transformed
into heart cells which were beating of
their own accord
like epigenetic alchemy and we’ve only
just begun to scratch the surface of
what this could mean for us and our
experience as human beings one of my
absolute favorite studies that have
really started to look into this came
out of the NIH NIH last year and what
they discovered was truly remarkable
they found an epigenetic biomarker that
was a biomarker for cancer it was and
for multiple cancers so oftentimes we
think of there being a breast cancer
gene or a pancreatic cancer gene this
was a biomarker that encoded multiple
different types of cancers and what they
found was the decreased activity through
methylation of a gene called said an f15
for so the name of the gene isn’t that
interesting to me but the function of
this gene really is fascinating it is a
tumor suppressor gene and the
methylation of this gene decreased its
function and that correspond did with
the presence of cancer and the people in
this study and you know this is where
the idea of dynamic and reversible can
really get as excited so one great study
which demonstrates just how dynamic and
reversible this these technology can be
was came out of them a lab in
Massachusetts just recently and it was a
study that took some participants and
they told them to sit down for 15
minutes and deep breathe and repeat
mantra and meditate and then they
analyzed how their genes responded and
the results were truly remarkable after
just 15 minutes the genes linked to
inflammatory response in stress-related
pathways got switched off or dimmed down
and genes associated with energy
metabolism a mitochondrial function and
maintaining the telomeres bits at the
end of our chromosomes that make us
youthful
we’re switched on so how does this
relate to us as we sit here right now
well one of my favorite toys right now
is something called a molecular clock
and it recognizes how epigenetic
signatures are related to the health of
a cell by evaluating which genes are
switched on and which genes are switched
off at a given moment in time so what if
we could observe the impact of our
environments and our activities on our
molecular clocks how might we respond or
how might we move through life
differently some pretty interesting
experiences since I became interested in
this field of work so there was this one
time at band camp it’s cute but I wasn’t
a bang camp I was out dancing with a
dear friend and I was really excited I
was wearing this cool leather jacket had
this flowerpower bandana mara was in my
car we pull up to the venue walk into
the parking space and I see but there’s
an amazing parking space just available
right at the entrance of the venue so I
backed my car in and I’m feeling really
pumped it was a bit of princess parking
spot and so excited and I look up and
there’s this gentleman standing kind of
in front of my car and his face is sort
of red with rage and he’s got like
spittle coming out of his mouth and he
just looks so furious we’re both
confused because we’ve just been in this
state of fun and bliss as to what’s
going on and it took us a while to
discern what was happening but we
finally managed to establish that I’d
taken this parking spot that he’d been
waiting for so naturally I’m super
embarrassed and apologetic and I Drive
out and go off and find the next parking
spot but as I’m driving away it took
every single fiber of my being to not
stop my car get out walk over to this
car tap on his window
say excuse me sir would you please give
me a urine specimen what I wanted more
than anything else in that moment was to
see whether I might be able to detect a
really I do I just wonder was his
irrational response was it programmed
from a space of ancestral lack or maybe
was his anger from childhood neglect and
I wondered maybe just maybe might have
modulated his response had he known how
much damage he was causing to his cells
in that moment he was accelerating his
molecular clock but really I just wonder
how we might move through the world
differently if we had a better
understanding of both our own
subconscious programming and the
subconscious programming of those with
whom we share this earth so my dream is
to offer these tools as a means to
empower individuals to know where their
blocks lie and feel into what
environments and activities are really
serving them as they move through life
my personal favorite expression of self
love is through yoga and meditation but
I strongly believe in the power of
anything that can take us away from this
idea of our small finite limited self to
bring ourselves back into a place of
balance like music just last month I was
at this festival and there was this
moment at the end of pink set and the
harness falls from the sky and we all
know what’s about to happen and the two
girls in front of me they just turn
around and look at me and they say it’s
really no it was so exciting as I’m
looking around at the audience and
Pink’s flying through the air
and singing and flipping and dancing and
I just couldn’t help but wonder in that
moment what was happening to the
molecular clocks of those people in
these expressions of fun then of joy and
of love being fully immersed in a given
moment in time using the gift of our
five senses to be fully present or
nature I’ve just come back from Zion
National Park this past weekend and I
can still feel in my body the majesty of
those gorgeous red rocks and see that
Sun peeping over as it rose in the
morning lit up before colors making the
river glisten every day as we drove into
the canyon and out of the canyon there
was this little poster on the bus and
that was a quote by a guy called Edmond
up Edward Abbey and it said wilderness
is not a luxury but a necessity of the
human spirit so what is the necessity of
your spirit and can we use the tools of
genetics to help us discern them because
the tools of genetics are powerful they
make me feel powerful they give this
Welsh British Indian Asian scientist
yogi procrastinator millennia a sense of
right own personal identity in a sense
of my belonging a sense that can
transcend any label and any
international border and tell me the
full story of my personal connection to
every single being that ever was every
single being that ever will be and every
single being that is it
literal common thread through the ages
we have scientifically corroborated
evidence of the interconnectivity of
every single organism on this planet and
the tools of genetics make me feel like
I have a say in my journey they give me
insight into where I can focus my
intentions for shifting my personal
physiology to create the life that I
want to live so as we close I’d like to
invite you to imagine this is one of my
absolute favorite quotes ever
imagination is more important than
knowledge for knowledge is limited to
all we know and understand while the
imagination embraces the entire world
and everything there ever will be to
know and understand so let’s imagine
let’s imagine that we can see where our
ancestral programming or early childhood
experience is encoded in our cells let’s
imagine that in any given moment we can
imagine that we have the genetic tools
to enable us to discern which of our
environments and our activities
contribute to our greatness imagine that
we can see the molecular imbalances of
individuals whose irrational and
subconscious behaviors are contrary to
their greatness imagine how we might
react differently the next time we’re
Road raged or hey even stage freighted
as we gather here today in a city
recognized as a model of progress and
growth
in a world which is in such desperate
need of progress and growth I invite you
to imagine a future where these ideas
hold true a future where each and every
one of us is empowered to remember our
own sovereignty and each and every one
of us is empowered to remember the
sovereignty of every single person with
whom we share this earth and each and
every one of us is empowered to remember
the infinite magnitude our innate
healing capacity it’s our birthright for
we can be the change we wish to see in
ourselves and my feeling is that the
world will follow thank you so much
you
[Applause] [Music]
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