Biogenealogy: Why Do We Get Sick?

Why do we get sick? From a cold to a more chronic condition, is it germs or genetics? Is it bad food or a toxic environment? What if we’ve got it all wrong? What if all these are just part of what’s going on? Could there be a purpose to an illness? Patrick Obissier, author of Biogenealogy: Decoding the Psychic Roots of Illness, thinks so. He offers that “if illness were truly useless, it would not exist, for one of life’s most stringent laws is that anything that serves no purpose disappears.” By purpose, he does not mean punishment or even interestingly enough, a natural population balancer.

The primary thesis of Biogenealogy is that illness is a response to an emotional trauma or shock experienced in a person’s life or in the life of an ancestor. What we call illness is actually a biological response to resolve a conflict. Why do we get sick? Simply put, it allows us to look at something that isn’t working for us. It’s an opportunity to change it.

First a functional change occurs physically or behaviorally as the body’s resolution. Then the reparative stage restores “normal” functions. These are the two phases of illness.

It is not only illness; it’s also the choices we make, how we feel, and even our life paths. The author of Biogenealogy posits that all are responses to patterns in our family trees. The saying about a father’s sins actually makes sense. Sin, meaning “to miss the mark”. If our ancestors experienced a conflict that could not be resolved, it gets passed down so that it can be. This is essentially why we get sick. We get sick to resolve a conflict no matter its spatial or temporal origin within our family tree.

This is not to blame our ancestors; rather it is showing us a way to heal ourselves and our lineage. “Every time a person is able to consciously resolve the problem of his or her tree, that person helps it to grow.”

In Patrick Obissier’s words, “it’s not new remedies that people need, but gaining awareness of new aptitudes…We need new habits, and we need to make those new habits a part of our consciousness.” An important new habit is letting go of beliefs that keep us trapped in the past, rather than living in the present.

In the 1980s Dr Ryke Geerd Hamer discovered something rather interesting using CT scans. He found localized changes in the brain that corresponded with changes in specific organs. Based on thousands of scans and x-rays, Dr Hamer created a cerebral map that shows the types of conflicts and their associated organs. He also found that his patients experienced an emotional conflict when their illness appeared. The distress or shock experience manifests as a “biological conflict”. This means some vital need is threatened or there is a clash between the organism and an external factor such as a toxin.

The Four Families of Biological Conflicts

Vital Conflicts: The organs affected are those that are responsible for an organism’s primary needs. The pulmonary alveoli relating to oxygenation is connected to the fear of suffocation. Heptic cells are affected when there is a fear of not having enough – enough food, money, or respect, for example. The affected tissues will get extra help to meet the organism’s needs by forming additional masses of cells.

Protection Conflicts: These conflicts relate to security which includes a person’s ability to take care of their young. The organs concerned are the enveloping ones such as the pericardium and those providing nourishment such as breasts. Warts, for example, may form to provide additional protection.

Self-depreciation Conflicts: The organs here are those of structure, within an entity. If a person feels devalued, for example, then bones and muscles may lose mass. Within a clan or a cluster, if a member feels unable to achieve its goal or fulfill its role, then energy and nutrients are diverted to support other resources. In this way, the entity is better served.

Relationship and Territorial Conflicts: The organs affected by this type of conflict include the vessels, channels, and nerves. They allow better communication of information and help create volume. The conflicts are triggered by what an individual considers their territory. Illness includes bladder and stomach ulcers.

The Two Phases of Illness: The “Cold Phase”
There are two phases in illness – a “cold phase” and a “hot phase”. Emotional distress triggers the first phase, the “cold phase”. This biological conflict is maintained in the absence of a resolution and the “cold illness” persists.

The purpose of the cold illness is to protect the organism – animal, plant, and human – from immediate death. Essentially a survival mechanism, the body offers an unconscious solution, in absence of a conscious resolution. The biological changes in the “cold phase” are usually hidden as they do not cause pain. They can, however, be detected in checkups and tests.

Among the many examples in Biogenealogy, a simple one is about the concept of “nest” and mammary glands. If a woman feels her nest is threatened, and if she has the programming, her mammary glands may grow, to offer more nourishment. This could be being betrayed by her husband, losing a child, or becoming homeless. Humans, unlike wild plants and animals, can also aggravate or complicate illness with beliefs, fears, taboos, and repressions.

Depending on the person and the conflict, resolution may occur rather rapidly. This could be a temporary situation causing anxiety. A change in the situation may also be its resolution. Major conflicts, on the other hand, are more difficult to resolve. They may also be reactivated. The “cold phase” then continues. For conflicts caused by unique and extraordinary events, an automatic activation of the second phase occurs. The book provides several examples such as feeling powerless to pull someone out of a fire.

The “Hot Phase”
The second part of an illness – the “hot phase” – occurs when the brain sees that the “cold phase” action is no longer purposeful. This phase can manifest on the mental, neurovegetative brain function, and organ levels. The person may realize that the situation is resolved and subsiding, the brain relays are repaired with an edema (sometimes the person gets a headache), or the organ resumes its normal function after being repaired.

If additional tissue was formed in the “cold phase” the tumor may be eliminated by germs, calcification, or virus. “Hot disorders” include pains, infections, inflammations, and colds. Examples of the reparative phase from the book include a cold to reconstruct the nasal mucous membrane after the ulceration of the “cold phase”. Tendonitis rebuilds a tendon. Eczema is the “hot phase” of the conflict of separation.

The “hot phase” can take time to repair the organ and cerebral relays. It depends on what the cold illness was and its extent. The “biological destiny” of a “hot illness” is to disappear in its own time.
why do we get sick sands of time

Factors in Healing
Healing, however, can be delayed for various reasons. It may be obstructed by a reactivation of the conflict, making it a chronic condition. Medicine aimed at the bacterial or viral action or other symptoms can also impede this natural process of healing.

Sometimes a person wants an illness to continue for a variety of reasons. Perhaps it’s the only way this person can see his/her family or have any attention. Or they are simply not ready to let go of what they perceive to be the only beautiful story in their life. A person’s fears and negative beliefs about illness can also have an impact. A person’s fear that the illness is fatal can (re)activate the fear-of-death conflict and a new “cold phase” illness begins.

This perspective of the mechanisms of illness explains the on-and-off, chronic, and remission aspects of being sick. The importance of resolving the underlying biological conflict cannot be underscored. When the “cold phase” of an illness is prolonged, the ensuing “hot phase” reparative infection may not be enough to reduce the tumor. The excess of the “cold illness” and the related exhaustion, malnutrition, pain, and suffering all contribute to the fatality of the condition.

The concept of ancestral inheritance has recently become more well-known. Thanks to social media many people now understand that females are born with her eggs. Something we may have forgotten or did not learn in school. Perhaps a rather mind-blowing idea is that the egg that would go on to become me was already inside my mom while she was in my grandmother’s womb! So the idea that we can and do inherit from our ancestors, including stress responses, makes sense. We inherit genetics and epigenetic from our ancestors through various channels.

Illness therefore does not only manifest as a result of a “biological conflict” in a person’s own life. Rather, a person experiences a “programming conflict” earlier in their life or an ancestor’s life. At some point, an event that resonates with this conflict occurs. Illness is then triggered.

Because we each inherit different sensitivities, our genes and epigenetics act as a prism for what may manifest. This explains why not everyone gets sick even though the cold or the stomach flu is “going around”. We also do not get sick every time we experience stress.

It is interesting to read that what we label as a pathological condition or a handicap is an organic solution to a situation that may have become obsolete or to a situation that has been obscured by time and space. One example offered by the book is that a tic may be a response that could have prevented sexual abuse in the life of the person’s ancestor.

In the book, the author offers scores of examples of how ancestral or early life seeds can create a “programming conflict”. He also shares the dynamics of an epidemic, allergies, a common cold, psychiatric conditions, and cancer through this paradigm. Basically, illness “are programmed by excessive stress and triggered later by spatio-temporal stimuli that bring these feelings of great stress ‘back to mind’.”

The way Patrick Obissier, a therapist who specializes in biodecoding, lays out how BioGenealogy works, it makes sense. For someone new to this construct, it may take time to understand. It may mean changing longstanding and likely robust beliefs around what is the cause of illness and how to get better. The action of illness, in all cases, is to maximize an organism’s chances of survival. This could be a plant growing tendrils to get sunlight. It could be a woman becoming paralyzed to get herself out of danger, out of reach of an abusive spouse. The onset of paralysis flags medical attention. This can mean moving a person into the hospital or a care facility, and hopefully out of reach of the abuser.

This way of understanding illness also means we have to look at our current medical and healing practices. It will no longer be removing the “deficient” organs, eradicating symptoms, or fighting germs. Healing depends on the decisions the patient makes, the patient’s wisdom and silliness to accept help, and the patient’s ability to abandon the outdated beliefs of those around him or her and to live in the here and now.3

Dr Hamer’s findings, which remain controversial and also disruptive to mainstream medicine, are worthy of consideration in the least. His work, as well as that of other biogenealogy and biodecoding pioneers, has helped many people recover.

The body and mind are one. If we cannot find a resolution consciously, our biology will, through organic changes. This may be producing additional or less tissue, changing the thickness of a duct, or increased motor activity. We classify these changes as illness in current mainstream thinking. In biogenealogy, however, they are logical solutions that provide the organism time to find a true resolution. At that time, the changes will be “reversed” through, for example, microbial action.

What is the takeaway? Understand that the original seed of your present illness or pathology can reach back into time and even ancient realities. In any case, illness stems from an emotional distress. Having self-awareness of our emotional state helps us relieve a “biological conflict” before it becomes a programming for ourselves and our progeny. The book The Language of Emotions and the work of Caroline Myss can be of tremendous help.

Every family tree has suffered massive emotional distress. Imagine all the secrets and lies in each, because of taboos and social conventions. The pride, guilt, and shame. Every family tree and all the branches and leaves (aka the individuals) retain this memory. What we call pathological and a handicap may manifest in a descendant’s life to resolve a conflict an ancestor could not. Perhaps we can all be more compassionate and kind, with the understanding that we are no different.

Why do we get sick? Perhaps we’ve got it wrong, this whole idea of what an illness. We have the choice to think differently, more consciously, with less judgement. Only when we are free of programming can we truly exercise true free will and fulfill our own destiny.