An opportunity to discuss this fascinating topic again and how it can relate to our wellness and wellbeing.
What Epigenetics Means for Inheritance: The Science Behind Whakapapa
Our tūpuna (ancestors) have always known something that Western science is only now beginning to confirm, that we carry our lineage within us in ways far deeper than physical resemblance. The concept of whakapapa—the interconnected threads that link us to those who came before—finds remarkable validation in the field of epigenetics.
Beyond the Genetic Code
Traditional genetics focuses on the DNA code inherited from our parents—the fixed blueprint passed down through generations. Epigenetics reveals another layer: our inheritance is actively shaped by environment, lifestyle, and experiences. This isn’t just about what genes we receive, but how those genes express themselves in our lives.
What makes this profound is the recognition that factors like diet, stress, trauma, or even exposure to toxins in one generation can influence the health, behaviours, and traits of future generations. Our ancestors’ experiences quite literally live within our cells.
Wellness Model Connection
For some time now I have been working through a wellness model (Te Poutama o te Ora) designed to harness ancient wisdom into the present to improve how we manage the challenges we face each day. When we approach life from a position of wellness, we are more resilient and able to flex and move with whatever comes our way.
Practical Applications for Healing
Understanding epigenetics offers transformative ways to approach family health history and personal wellness:
Health Patterns Reflect Ancestral Experience: Conditions like diabetes, heart disease, or mental illness aren’t just “in your genes”—they may reflect your ancestors’ lived experiences. This knowledge removes shame and adds context to personal health challenges.
Lifestyle Choices Create New Patterns: Recognising that parents’ diet, stress levels, and environmental exposures before conception can impact their children’s health empowers us to make conscious choices. We’re not just living for ourselves; we’re creating conditions for future generations.
Healing Can Reverse Patterns: Perhaps most importantly, epigenetic changes can be further influenced. The biological memory carried in bloodlines isn’t fixed—through conscious practices in diet, stress management, trauma healing, and environmental care, we can shift the patterns we pass forward
A Return to Ancient Wisdom
What makes epigenetics particularly significant is how it validates what indigenous cultures have always known. The Māori concept of whakapapa doesn’t just mean genealogy—it recognizes that we carry our ancestors’ experiences, that healing ourselves heals the line, and that our choices today shape our descendants’ lives.
When we consider current approaches it matters that wellness models provide a framework for working with these inherited memories across all dimensions of wellness. Reminding us that true healing isn’t individual—it’s relational, extending backward to honour what we’ve inherited and forward to tend what we’ll pass on.
We are not separate from our bloodlines. We are their living expression, carrying both their burdens and their gifts, with the power to transform what flows through us.
Mapping Epigenetics to Te Poutama o te Ora
When we examine epigenetic inheritance through this lens there are five dimensions of wellness, where we can see how ancestral patterns manifest across our entire being:
Whakapapa (Relationships): The quality of relationships in previous generations influences how we form connections. Patterns of attachment, trust, and relational behaviour carry forward epigenetically, affecting our capacity for healthy relationships today.
Tinana (Body): Physical health responses—from metabolism to immune function to stress responses—reflect our ancestors’ experiences. Understanding this helps explain why certain health conditions cluster in families beyond simple genetic risk.
Hinengaro (Thoughts): Mental health patterns, our responses to stress, and emotional regulation capacities are influenced by ancestral experiences. Depression, anxiety, and resilience all have epigenetic components that link us to our lineage.
Wairua (Spiritual): Ancestral trauma or resilience shapes our spiritual wellbeing. The capacity to connect with meaning, purpose, and something greater than us reflects not just personal experience but inherited patterns of spiritual expression or disconnection.
Tuakiri (Identity): How we understand ourselves—our sense of belonging, worth, and place in the world—is influenced by generational patterns. Identity struggles often have roots in ancestral experiences of displacement, colonisation, or cultural disconnection. For Māori the Renaissance in the 1980’s is a significant turning point, however generations born from the late 1940’s to 1980’s are still impacted by those experiences, being denied their language, and struggle to try to close the gap today.
You are not solely responsible for the patterns you carry: When you observe the same behaviours in your parents or across generations, this isn’t personal failure. There are biological influences passed down that require conscious investigation and interruption.
Nine-day cycles create new epigenetic expressions: Just as epigenetic patterns develop over time through repeated exposures, they can be shifted through sustained new patterns. The nine-day transformation cycles in Te Poutama o te Ora align with the body’s capacity to begin establishing new cellular responses—creating biological shifts that can influence not just your wellbeing but the inheritance you pass forward by ‘training your brain’ to respond in healthier ways.
The Challenges We Face
While epigenetics offers profound insights, questions remain:
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How stable are epigenetic marks across generations? Some changes fade after a few generations; others persist longer. We’re still learning which patterns are most enduring.
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Which changes are harmful or beneficial? Not all epigenetic modifications have clear effects, and some may be protective responses to environmental challenges.
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How do we measure and interpret this data? The field is developing tools and standards, but much remains to be understood about how to apply these insights practically.
A Dynamic View of Inheritance
For those of us exploring our whakapapa and seeking to understand our place in the ancestral line, epigenetics confirms what indigenous wisdom has long known: inheritance is dynamic. We are shaped by genetics and by the lived experiences of those who came before us. The environment our ancestors navigated, the challenges they faced, the trauma they survived, and the resilience they built—all these live within us.
This understanding transforms how we approach wellness. We’re not just caring for ourselves; we’re honouring our ancestors by healing the patterns that harmed them, and we’re serving our descendants by establishing healthier expressions to pass forward.
Where This Leads
Understanding epigenetics isn’t about adding more information to carry—it’s about recognising the depth of our interconnection across time. When we commit to breaking unhealthy patterns, we’re engaging in work that echoes both backwards and forwards through our bloodline.
The Te Poutama o te Ora framework seeks to provide a tool for this transformation. By working systematically through the five dimensions of wellness across nine-day cycles, we create the sustained new patterns necessary for epigenetic shifts. We become conscious participants in our lineage, not passive recipients of inherited patterns.
This is the foundation for the deeper transformation work—understanding that we carry more than we realised, but also that we have more power to shape the inheritance we pass forward than we ever imagined.
This exploration of epigenetics and ancestral inheritance forms part of the Nine-Cycle Life Realignment Series, which integrates ancient wellness wisdom with practical transformation methodologies.