What Do Organs & Emotions Have In Common?
I have asked every patient that has walked into my office how they are feeling right now with everything going on. A typical response is that ‘I am fine’ or ‘It's not really affecting me anymore.’ Then I proceed to hear about headaches or gut issues or flared up chronic pain that has crept back up over the last several weeks without much (known) cause. What if the chaos of the world is bringing up something for us that we have pushed away or thought we have dealt with? The brain and emotions are a complicated thing and we sometimes don’t give that enough credit on how much it can affect our physical body.
In Chinese Medicine, every major organ or meridian system has emotions that they process. These organs help the body handle and process the stress of these emotions. Let’s take the liver for example. The liver in this system is where we process ANGER and frustration. When we have anger or frustration over something in the present and we might have some unresolved anger from our past, our liver is where it will land to help our body deal with this emotion. Let us also remember that our liver is one of our major detoxifying organs in our body. So, if we add any other stressor to that process (i.e. unbalanced diet, environmental toxins, EMF’s, heavy metal toxins, etc.) our liver gets congested and can’t work properly. We might see this show up in bloodwork with elevated liver enzymes or high homocysteine levels because we can’t break down the heavy toxin load in our system but what is it truly coming from? My favorite saying in the office is, ‘Is it the chicken or the egg?’ The human body is amazing and will adapt to a heavier stress load put on that part of the body and I don’t care what kind of stress it is. Whether it is a physical pain stress, a chemical imbalance brought on by sensitivities or heavy toxin load, or an emotional trauma that we haven’t dealt with. If we don’t look at all three aspects of the human body, the physical, chemical and emotional, we could be missing it. When we say we want to find the source of what is going on, we have to look at all aspects of the human experience.
Here are some of the other major organs and their associations with the emotions that they process. This can be a guide on something that we need to work on to get the results that we want. As always, these are just a guide and we strongly encourage all to find a practitioner to work with when doing anything with their health.
Liver: anger
Large intestine: control, feeling stuck
Small intestine: feeling lost or vulnerable
Lung: grief, sadness, crying
Stomach: nervous, over sympathetic
Gallbladder: resentment
Bladder: paralyzed will,
Thyroid/Adrenals: overwhelmed, up and down
Kidney: fear, worry
Reproductive hormones: apathy, resign
Spleen/Pancreas: low self-esteem or self-worth
Heart: frightfully overjoyed, depleted
CV/GV: shame, guilt, false pride
(overall balance of organ meridian)
So, if you are having some symptoms that have not changed or gone away with conventional means, you might be looking at the wrong thing. Find a practitioner (chiro, counselor, therapist, etc.) who can help you look at the emotional component of the body. It is one more way that you can Live Free!
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