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Gilbert Martina is an ancestral health educator and former healthcare executive who was deeply affected by Curaçao and St. Maarten’s ENNIA crisis. This sparked his search for deeper healing through shamanic practices, nervous system regulation, and ancestral teachings, and his mission to help people reconnect with ancient wisdom in order to heal physically, emotionally, and culturally.
We are living in an age of great turbulence, noise, and distraction. Every day we are flooded with information, yet somehow we seem to be losing connection to ourselves, to one another, and to the deeper roots that hold us together as Caribbean people. When I look at the social and emotional challenges our region faces today, such as violence, stress, inequality, depression, and chronic disease, I cannot help but wonder what lies beneath the surface. For me, the answer begins in a place both ancient and intimate: the wounds carried by our ancestors.
Modern science is finally beginning to catch up with what many traditional societies have always known. Traumas are not only emotional; they can become biological. Studies on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) show that early trauma affects the body’s stress systems for a lifetime. It changes how our brains process fear and memory and how our immune systems respond to the world. Chronic stress floods the body with hormones like cortisol, creating inflammation that has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer.
Neuroscientists have identified the pathways between the brain and body that make this possible, showing that emotional pain can be felt as real, physical suffering. We know from science that the mind can create psychosomatic disease — there is an immense amount of scientific research about the mind and body connection — and we also know from recent scientific research that the mind can create psychosomatic health.
These findings mirror what Caribbean elders have long said in simpler words: when the mind is not at peace, the body cannot be well. The Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius once wrote, “The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.” Science now agrees. Practices that calm the mind, such as meditation, mindfulness, and time in nature, help to regulate stress and restore balance to the nervous system. What our grandparents practised instinctively through prayer, song, and time spent in the natural world, neuroscience is now validating with brain scans and data.
As someone who once worked in the healthcare and financial sectors, I was trained to look at problems logically and systematically. But when I went through a personal crisis years ago, no spreadsheet or medical treatment could explain why I felt such deep pain in my body. It was only when I turned inward, through meditation, shamanic wisdom and ancestral practice, that I began to see how unhealed experiences, both my own and those carried by generations before me, were shaping my sense of safety, identity, and belonging.
Across the Caribbean, I see signs of this same inheritance. Colonisation, slavery, displacement, and social inequality have left marks not only on our economies and institutions but also on our collective psyche. Many of us carry inherited fears, anger, or survival patterns that were once necessary but no longer serve us. This is ancestral trauma, and it shows up in everything from how we relate to authority to how we handle conflict or trust. Pain is inevitable; all of us will be exposed to some kind of pain during our lifetime. Most times, traumatic events happen beyond our circle of influence or power, but they often lead us to the key for spiritual growth — we have to embrace our pain and ask ourselves what we can learn out of it.
Across the region, communities are finding ways to reconnect with ancestral wisdom as a path to healing. The Caribbean Reparations Commission has sparked a wider conversation about historical accountability and emotional repair. The Bocas Lit Fest, the Calabash International Literary Festival, and other events are reclaiming storytelling as a way to process pain and reimagine who we can be. In Curaçao, community projects are using drumming, dance, and ritual to restore a sense of shared identity. Across the diaspora, younger generations are returning to traditional herbs, music, and ceremonies to ground themselves in culture and memory.
Modern research supports these approaches. A 2022 study in Alzheimer’s & Dementia found that among Indigenous Amazonian communities in Bolivia, dementia rates are less than one percent in adults over 60, compared to eight to eleven percent in Western countries. These communities live with strong social ties, unprocessed diets, daily physical activity, and a deep connection to nature. Their way of life protects the brain not only through lifestyle but through belonging and meaning. These findings are not a call to romanticise the past, but to remember that emotional, physical, and social health are inseparable.
For centuries, Western medicine has separated the mind from the body, the spiritual from the scientific. In truth, there is no such division. The brain communicates with the immune system, the gut, and the heart through constant chemical conversation. When trauma disrupts that harmony, illness follows. Healing must involve more than medicine; it must involve memory. Ancestral healing helps us make peace with the past by acknowledging what came before us — grief, loss, courage, resilience — and integrating it into the present. In essence, ancestral healing is about making peace with the past to free the present and future.
When I work with people or speak to audiences about this, I often ask a simple question: “What story do you carry that is not yours, yet still lives in you?” Sometimes the answer comes in tears, sometimes in silence. But once that story is named, it can be transformed. Through rituals, guided reflection, or community work, ancestral healing allows people to release inherited pain and access inherited strength. It is not about worshipping the past, but about freeing the future.
If we want to build healthier Caribbean societies, we must move beyond treating symptoms and start healing the root cause of these symptoms. This means teaching children emotional intelligence as much as academic success, giving communities access to mental health care that honours culture, and creating spaces where elders can share wisdom before it disappears. It also means recognising that the same scientific discoveries now being made in universities and laboratories have long existed in our oral traditions, our songs, and our ceremonies.
Our ancestors survived the unimaginable. They left us not only their scars but also their strength. By understanding the biology of trauma and the wisdom of ancestral healing, we have a chance to bring those two worlds together. In doing so, we can restore something that has been missing for far too long: a sense of belonging to ourselves, to our communities, and to the generations yet to come.
