Are your emotions making you sick?

How to Transform Emotional Stress

Do you sometimes wake up feeling down or depressed for no apparent reason? Or perhaps you frequently feel cranky or frustrated and can’t work out why. Do you tend to hang on to past experiences, the good and the bad, preventing you from living fully in the present? Are you a worrier? Do you easily become impatient or intolerant? Do you have irrational fears that seem to control your ability to have harmonious relationships? These may all be the result of energetic imbalances that affect one or more of your internal organs. This article will give you insight into the energetic nature of emotions as well as some means of regulating imbalances.

In my own search for self fulfilment and happy relationships I have tried many different things, from counselling and psychotherapy to various meditation practices. All of which helped release some old emotional patterns but didn’t necessarily stop me from repeatedly feeling emotionally off balance for no particular reason. Chinese herbs, acupuncture and massage all helped restore balance but I wanted something I could do myself to prevent my downward spirals. I was beginning to have more emotionally stable periods because of the therapy work but then sometimes a mood would overtake me and once again I’d be an emotional nightmare.

It wasn’t until I discovered some ancient Taoist energy practices that I found I could take control of my feelings and come out of the many downward emotional spirals that I had come to think were “just who I was”. I would often wake up feeling down and assume “I had just gotten out of the wrong side of bed” that day, believing that I had no control over these feelings. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

I wish to point out here that there are certain types of emotional states that are the result of particular chemical imbalances of the brain and there are those deep seated emotions which are the result of severe early childhood or past life trauma. These patterns may also require the services of experienced counsellors or psychologists and/or medication in order to reach a point where the methods presented here can help restore balance on a day-to-day basis.

Generally speaking modern society creates large amounts of emotional stress each day. Such as the need to meet deadlines; deal with traffic or transport chaos; eating on the run or eating out too often; the stress of home life versus work, etc. These all take their toll. They drain our life force and can cause us to become undernourished physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. This then provides a perfect framework for illness.

Ancient wisdom – modern application

Taoism is the underlying philosophy of energy medicine of the Orient and it has long recognised the impact of emotions on the physical body. It understands that all emotions are regulated by the life force energy or Chi via the meridian network. This is a network of invisible energetic pathways that connect all aspects of the physical body. The main systems of this network associated with emotional energy are those connected to the major organs.

In traditional Chinese medicine it is known that Emotions of any kind are the result of Energy being in Motion [or not in motion, as the case may be!], hence E-motion. When your Emotional Energy is happy, loving, at peace, content, yet continually motivated to grow, your life flows harmoniously. You have less or no dramas and you are generally healthy.

Emotions are intimately connected with Chi and directly influence its ability to function correctly. Positive emotions are integral to the overall health of the body and are classified as generating ‘high-grade energy’. Negative emotions, on the other hand, damage different aspects of bodily functions via their Chi connections and are classified as generating ‘low-grade energy’.

For example, did you know that anger and depression can damage your liver; fear can harm your kidneys; worry and anxiety can harm your spleen and pancreas; hate, sadness and despair can hurt your heart and injure your spirit; and hanging onto past hurts and injustices can impair your lungs and large intestine?

When all things are in balance and harmony within, Chi flows smoothly and evenly, unimpeded to all parts of the body. Negative emotions, however, can cause the Chi to misbehave in a variety of different ways. Disordered Chi may become stagnant; it may move erratically; it may disperse or disappear ; or it may move in the wrong direction. Any of these dysfunctions of Chi have the potential to cause illness.

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