How Your Emotions Effect Your Health
Did you know that your emotions have a lot to do with your health? If you have ever dealt with confusing physical symptoms that seem not to respond to anything you do, you might want to think about your emotions as part of the connection. In today’s blog I’m going to focus on the Chinese medicine approach to the relationship between emotions and health. As you know, I love Chinese medicine because it makes so much sense.
What Chinese medicine says about illness and emotion
In Chinese medicine, it is said that illnesses come from either inside your body or outside your body. Anything that comes from outside your body is generally like an infection. It could be bacteria, parasites, viruses or any kind of thing that comes from the outside environment. Illness that comes from inside is all caused by emotional imbalance.
According to the teachings of Chinese medicine, all of your organs work differently than they do in western medicine. Each organ has an emotion that goes along with it. Knowing this is vital to understanding why emotions play a significant role in your health and in your healing. For example, your liver rules the smooth flow of energy in your whole body, it regulates your menstrual cycles, supports your ligaments and tendons, supports your eyes, and deals with the emotion of anger. So, when you have a liver imbalance, you may have migraines, neck pain, heavy painful menstrual cycles or you may have a sprained ligament of your knee or ankle. Anger is also connected to the liver – so it’s possible that your anger has allowed these imbalances to occur. You don’t necessarily have to solve all your emotional stresses in order to heal your illnesses. You do want to recognize the role that emotions play and the toll that they take on your mind and body over time.
Why acupuncture is so important to healing
I believe acupuncture is a great way to heal – from the physical to the emotional layers – This is because it addresses every layer of the organ system. Let’s continue with the liver example – If you have migraines or problems with your periods AND you have anger – all of those things can be dealt with in the same treatment because they are all intertwined.
What you can do today to deal with emotional stress
Preventing emotional stress is an important part of staying healthy. If you can deal with emotions as they arise, you will be able to keep yourself from storing them in your body. I’ve written this section to help you figure out what might be upsetting you and provide you with tools to deal when someone has triggered you.
When you start to feel anger towards another person and you can’t quite pinpoint what it was that they did or said, start asking yourself what triggered that anger. Dig a little deeper inside your thoughts to find where that anger is coming from inside of you. It might not even be caused by the person in front of you.
Often times, when a person that we don’t know very well triggers an emotion like anger, they may actually be reminding us of something that happened to us in the past. By thinking of what could have happened in the past to trigger an emotional response to this person, you can turn your focus away from the person who angered you and more onto yourself. Focusing inward to see why you are reacting the way you are will bring you closer to healing. This is so important when you want to get past seemingly inexplicable emotions and have better relationships with yourself and other people.
The connection between your emotional and physical health is real and important so don’t neglect it!
Inexplicable ailments, chronic pain and other mystery issues with your body do not have to be a forever thing. You can heal! Pick up a copy of my book – Healing When It Seems Impossible: 7 Keys To Defy The Odds.
