The Locations of Pathogenic Emotions
Have you ever had an unexplainable pain? A seemingly random pain that has no obvious cause? Oftentimes it is quite clear what has caused us a pain, be it a hammer on a thumb or maybe a repetitive tennis stroke, but sometimes the cause is not at first so apparent. In Western medicine this is not usually a problem because the actual cause of a pain is not that important. The treatment is usually the same – relieve the pain with painkillers. However this masking of the symptoms will not address any underlying issues, meaning that the pain is more than likely to come back. In Chinese medicine however, pain can be seen as the body trying to tell you that something at a deeper level is out of balance. When a pain is chronic and long-term and there is no obvious physical cause, then more often than not it stems from our emotional state.
The human meridian system can be seen as a giant storehouse of information. Our energy body is like a living library of everything that we have ever done. In a similar way that the mind is supposed to store memories, every experience that we have ever had is energetically imprinted into our meridian system. Our emotions exist on this energetic level. In fact an emotion can be seen as the experiential feeling of a certain frequency of vibration. For example, the feeling of anger, is us experiencing the vibration of restrained Wood energy.
In Chinese medical theory each meridian pertains to a different organ, and each organ is associated with a different emotion. As the meridians have been very kindly mapped out for us by these ancient Chinese people, we are therefore able to determine whereabouts an unreleased emotion maybe stored within the body. Emotions tend to only become a problem when they are not expressed or released. This therefore is one of the most important jobs of the meridian system. They literally take the emotions from our minds and release them out of the body, almost like complicated exhaust system. If these channels become blocked, because we can’t let go of a particular emotion, then we may experience this blockage as pain. If the pain is not addressed then the blockage may become a physical one.
Some of the locations and their associated emotions can be quite obvious to understand, even for the Western mind. For example, pain of the lower back may be due to a collapse of support. If extreme emotional difficulty has attacked us for too long then the supporting function of the Kidney can be weakened and cause the lower spine to hurt. Another good example is when we are weighed down by too many external pressures, which can manifest as tightness along the Gallbladder channel resulting in sore shoulders and neck. Metaphorically carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders.
Other pathways may be less obvious but by no means less relevant. For example at the wrists we find many important acupuncture points that relate to the Heart, the Pericardium and the Lungs. Pain or swelling at this junction can indicate that we have a low emotional threshold and may become emotionally hurt very easily. Sometimes this pain would be diagnosed by Western medics as carpal-tunnel syndrome and slicing the wrist tendons at this point, as they do at the hospital, may give some initial relief but it clearly won’t help with the causative factors.
Thankfully however Western medicine is beginning to slowly come round to the idea that our emotional state can affect our physical well-being. At the moment this will probably only manifest in the term ‘stress related’ but at least it is a start. It would probably be a good idea to study these ancient maps of the human energy system if you wish to gain a greater depth of understanding how the mind, the emotions and the body are all inter-related. It really has all been worked out before.