Dr. Nicole LePera

If it's quick, can I slow it down?

That's going to impact the rate of our heart.

Can I notice the tension in my muscles?

And if I'm feeling a lot of tension, can I release it?

Or if I'm feeling on that numb kind of end of the spectrum where I don't even feel like I have muscles or energy, can I stimulate my body's energy system?

So we can start now at any time.

But quickly, I just want to speak to it is very confusing because a lot of us do see these patterns, myself included.

I would have said, right, I am anxious.

Why?

Because my whole family is right.

It's just genetically passed on to us.

So what I hope is a takeaway is not regardless of what we know happened in childhood or not, understanding that, you know, family from the early family environment to even ancestrally environments that are passed on epigenetically to us or how our body stress system functions can often then be the answer to why these all just seem like.

And this was a running motto in my family.

This is how we are as leperas.

We're always like this.

And so my hope is to counter, not only with the possibility of change in any moment, to maybe even wonder if maybe we've just become who we needed to be, maybe to question that running narrative that it might not just be because genetically we're all just like this.

It might be because we've shared the same environment or we've came from the same ancestors whose stress systems had to adapt in the same way, becoming so hypervigilant because they were under overwhelming stress or trauma.

And now we all share the same coping mechanism.

Is that right?

Epigenetics, kind of shifting science into that awareness that we are beyond just the DNA that doesn't control us.