English
As responses to external stimuli, emotions affect not only your psychological state, but your physiological functions, and can play a role in disease development. TCM regards emotions as manifestations of physiological functions in the organs, mainly the heart, liver, spleen, lung, and kidneys. Emotions are adjustments the body makes to accommodate the external environment.
Essence and chi (vital energy) are present in all organs and constitute the material basis for emotional activities. From long-term observation, Chinese medicine physicians concluded that anger, anxiety, fright, grief, over-joy, over-thinking and terror, known as the ‘seven emotions” are the most common experienced.
Within normal limits, these emotions cause no harm. However, when they become uncontrollable, outbursts can cause damage to specific organs. For example: anger impairs the liver, over-joy impairs the heart, grief and anxiety impair the lings, over-thinking impairs the spleen and fright and terror impair the kidneys.
Because extreme emotional frustrations exhaust the essence of the organs, especially their chi, they can cause damage that’s beyond the ability of the body to repair. Physical signs that these emotions may be causing harm are as follows:
- Anger makes the liver’s chi ascend, which sends the blood upward. Individuals may experience symptoms of dizziness, a full and heavy feeling in the head and weakness in the lower limbs.
- Over-joy scatters heart chi, which is largely responsible for regulating brain functions; so individuals may experience difficulty concentrating, be absent-minded and feel disorientated. In extreme cases, mania may develop.
- Grief and anxiety consume lung chi and individuals may feel low-spirited, have difficulty breathing and feel weary.
- Over-thinking stagnates spleen chi. Since the spleen in TCM is largely responsible for digestive functions, symptoms are likely to appear such as a poor appetite, gastric distress, belching and acid reflux.
- Terror and fright cause kidney chi to decline and disturb general chi flow. Individuals may suffer panic, heart palpitations and restlessness. There may be incontinence of urine or stool, which is due to a decline in kidney chi.
The idea of emotions corresponding to specific organs provides guidelines for clinical applications in TCM. A frenzied delight for no reason can be due to too much essence in the heart. So, we can treat the heart with herbs to reduce the amount of heart essence.
Constant sadness may be due to inadequate lung chi, which may be treated with a decoction to replace lung chi. Irritability and easy provocation can be due to hyperactivity of the liver chi, so depressing liver function can reduce the hyperactivity.
Over-concentration and increased stress cause spleen dysfunction, so fortifying the digestive system is essential. Timidness is a sign of kidney essence deficiency and may be helped by replenishing it and enhancing kidney functions.
Rose Tse and Angela Collingwood are editors for Shen-Nong, a subsidiary of Integrated Chinese Medicine. Before taking any medicine, consult your TCM or general practitioner
Rose Tse and Angela Collingwood
info@shen-nong.com
Edited by Suzanne Harrison suzanne.harrison@scmp.com
Published: May 23, 2005
Source: South China Morning Post
