Epigenetics: how to reconnect with the best version of ourselves

The Origins

I was raised in Croatia, on my grandparents' farm, surrounded by unspoiled surroundings. Animals, plants, and other natural elements were primal forces in forming my character at a young age. This early exposure to such an unadulterated world, the world where not only physical and material but the interplay and energetic interactions between species and terrestrial elements were visible to me, charted my career in biology. At college, I majored in Molecular Biology and subsequently obtained a doctorate in the US in the field of Quantum biophysics. After two postdoctorate positions, I shifted from academia to the corporate world and expanded into the areas of bioinformatics and high-throughput genomics.

The Awakening

Back in the day, I worked for a company on the effects of consuming food produced from gene-modified organisms. During that research, I came to understand that western civilization's legacy is fundamentally flawed from a biological standpoint. We were very effective at depleting the finite resources we were living off. A characteristic of non-intelligent species working against its primary evolutionary force: a survival of itself. I decided to put up a fight. But my approach to solving the non-working model is not protesting against it. To paraphrase Buckminster Fuller:

"it is rather in creating an alternative, one that is sustainable and operational".

The Journey

Equipped with academic knowledge of life science and with a keen interest in human psychology, sociology, and anthropology, I started a 3-year long journey that led me around the globe. I traveled with a mission to understand the inner workings of human society, looking for that common denominator regardless of our skin color, names of our gods, food we ate, or way of life. As my travels were nearing the end, I was deeply convinced that the wiring of a natural human being is predictable, reproducible, accountable, and sustainable. It is when we take that human outside its natural evolutionary environment that it starts behaving in harmful ways both to itself, its species, and members of other species.

The wiring of a natural human being is predictable, reproducible, accountable, and sustainable.*

As disconcerting as it sounds, I also discovered that the behaviour is reversible and that once that same human is placed back in the natural environment (which are not limited to life in the countryside but can be created in metropolitan areas as well), it starts behaving in that predictable manner, caring for itself, for the members of its own and the members of other species in sustainable ways.

The Ranch

Inspired by these findings, it was in 2008 that I returned to Croatia and founded Linden Tree Retreat & Ranch, a place where a conducive environment assists guests in reconnecting with the best version of themselves. Everything we do at the Ranch is laser-focused on that mission. You can not just go online and book your vacation with us. There is an established protocol that involves directly speaking to a client or client’s agent, as we must find out first-hand about the finesses, needs, wants, and aspirations of our guests. Only then we can fine-tune their itinerary and say they will have a truly bespoke and custom-tailored experience, helping them to re-establish their inner natural environment and vibrational frequency.

The Experience

Human gene expression, as well as that of a human gut biome (a community of microorganisms that are living in the human body), is affected by the food we eat, the people we surround ourselves with, and the environment we live in. We take this knowledge into creating guests’ experiences at the Ranch: food in the kitchen is prepared to assist biochemical processes in the body; accommodation units are built with the understanding of what makes a person rest well and sleep at the cellular level; activities are created to engage the brain in creating new neural pathways, enabling the guest to experience the world in a new way, one that is more in alignment with our evolutionary meaningful living.

We can even sequence your gut biome before you arrive at the Ranch, to create a fully customizable diet for your and send you home with a diet plan that reflects your biochemical needs and addresses your nutritional shortfalls (in the age of industrial food we all have them).

Food in the kitchen is prepared to assist biochemical processes in the body

The whole experience at the Ranch is aimed at empowering the guest to take full control over their lives and health, both physical, mental, and energetic. And that is very powerful, that is Epigenetics*.

Footnote

Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way our genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your DNA sequence, but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence.

Bruce Yerkovich is the owner of Linden Tree Retreat & Ranch, a trusted partner of Earthtones in Croatia.