What is ancestral healing? How inherited trauma could affect your health and useful tips
Experts say inherited trauma – passed down through generations – can be helped through ancestral healing practices to improve well-being now
Could the reason for your irrational anxiety, depression or chronic fatigue lie not in your life, but in the traumas experienced by your great-great-grandparents?
Once dismissed as pseudoscience, the field of ancestral healing has moved beyond the fringe and is trending on social media, such as on the Instagram account @sacredancestry, which has 165,000 followers.
It is also gaining mainstream traction, thanks in part to the science of epigenetics – the study of how environmental influences, such as stress and trauma, leave molecular marks on our genome, potentially influencing the health of future generations.
This can manifest physically, as shown in a landmark 2015 study led by Dr Rachel Yehuda. The study found epigenetic changes in a stress-related gene, FKBP5, in Holocaust survivors and their offspring, suggesting that extreme stress could alter the body’s stress-response system and that these alterations could be passed down from parents to their children.
Other research has considered how this type of intergenerational stress could be addressed.
A 2021 study, Epigenetics of Stress and Stress Management, published in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, highlighted growing evidence that stressful life events could physically alter the way our genes function – like flipping a switch on our DNA. This genetic change was long-lasting and was linked to chronic diseases and mental health conditions.
This underscores the extent to which practising stress management is powerful enough to influence our genes, helping to reverse the negative effects that stress leaves on our DNA. Meditation, mindfulness, yoga, tai chi and breathwork are methods that can help achieve this.