Anxiety, depression, worry, anger, irritability, sadness, grief ... Nowadays, we meet them at every step we make. Or rather at every misstep. How to get out of this mess?
All these "negative emotions" are regarded by Chinese medicine as stagnation of life-giving energy of qi. According to the TCM, the spirit resides in the liver and its correct functionality gives us mental strength - inspiration, ideas, plans, creativity, determination, and courage to realize our dreams. However, if the mind residing in the heart is blocked due to stagnant qi, our zest for life will also helplessly stand still. Emptying the soul, burnout, and frustration then will not be long in coming. At the imaginary intersection of troubles, we do not know "where to go". We do not know how to tackle our health, work, relationships, where to direct our lives.
BACKWATER
Moreover, mental health problems go hand in hand with physical difficulties.
Therefore, during stagnation of qi energy of the lungs you feel chest discomfort, lump in the throat, your breathing is shallow, and frequently your airways get inflamed. Gradually you experience feeling hot, facial flushing, and thirst.
Heart qi stagnation manifests itself by weakness and coldness of extremities, palpitations, anorexia, and pale appearance.
Liver qi stagnation is the cause of constipation or irregular stools, headaches, neck, and neck muscles, dryness and bitterness in the mouth, abdominal stress, irregular menstruation in women, or premenstrual syndrome.
Finally, spleen and stomach qi stagnation brings about indigestion, you feel sick and you may suffer from chronic inflammation of the pharynx.
WHERE THE SHOE PINCHES
Chinese medicine does not want just to correct the superficial symptoms (headache, cold feet, reflux of gastric juices ...), but to heal the cause of the illness from scratch. In the case of blocked qi, we can imagine the root cause so that life-giving water is not flowing properly. It got into a blind stream branch, where it is standing, rotting, and is getting smelly.
If we do not restore the flow of the stream properly (do not remove stagnation from the body), it is futile to try to churn the surface of the blind branch (tackle just a headache), or try to refill a few buckets of "pure water" (to warm feet), or to remove surface dirt (gastric juices).
Priorities of a classical Chinese medicine physician are therefore:
- EMOTIONS – Healing the spirit.
- REGIMEN – Knowing how to nourish body well.
- HERBS – Knowing the proper balance of herbal treatments.
- ACUPUNCTURE – Work with large and small needle types.
- DIAGNOSIS – Knowing how to diagnose properly the condition of qi and blood in organs.
After all, as early as in the 6th century we could have read the following words of the doctor Liu Zhou: "If the spirit is in peace, the heart is in harmony; if the heart is in harmony, the body is complete; when the spirit gets angry, the heart becomes indecisive and if the heart trembles, it hurts the spirit; if someone wants to heal the physical body, must therefore start giving the spirit the right direction."
MIRROR OF THE SOUL
Treatment of emotions (and heart) therefore plays a paramount role in Chinese medicine. If we want to approach the main principles of "Chinese traditional psychotherapy" for us today, we can just go to the roots of our Western civilization as well. All our behaviour is reflected in our lives. Unlike animals, however, we can feel our emotions, we have the mental ability to comprehend and freely choose our behaviour. Whether we are virtuous or vicious - this we have only and merely in our own hands:
7 VIRTUES
Humility, Charity, Kindness, Patience, Chastity, Temperance, Diligence
7 VICES
Pride, Greed, Envy, Wrath, Perversion, Gluttony, Sloth
Hand on heart – everyone must put it on their own.
A load off your mind, however, may also be taken here.
Let the awareness be energizing us that even when the sun goes down unexpectedly, the next morning it comes again.
So GOOD LUCK with everything you do and what you are planning!
