In the Taoist tradition, it is believed that diseases occur against the background of one or another emotional imbalance. Emotions and the body are indivisible: if there is a disease, then there is an emotion that “helps” it develop. How exactly does it work?
From the point of view of traditional Chinese medicine, our health depends on two main factors:
- the amount of Qi — vital energy that works as «fuel» for our body;
- and the quality of Qi circulation — the freedom of its movement in the body.
With the first factor, everything is more or less clear: if a person has a lot of vitality, then they are abundantly enough to maintain the health of the body, as well as for social accomplishments, good mood and any activity.
Someone is given such a resource from birth — these people are called «blood with milk»: they are always ruddy, fit, perky, everyone has time and laughs out loud. And someone has to work on not wasting the last and getting additional energy.
Another thing is the quality of circulation. What it is? What is the difference between «good» and «bad» energy circulation?
What does energy circulation depend on?
The free flow of Qi is what qigong practitioners aim at, and what acupuncturists “tune” with needles, warm-ups, and other instruments. Why can the free flow of energy be disturbed? One reason is emotional.
Imagine that you are experiencing some kind of bright negative emotion. If you are emotionally free, then the emotion literally «passes» through your body, leaving no traces in it. An emotionally significant event is lived in full, after which it dissolves, reborn into experience. If you don’t have the strength to qualitatively “live” the emotion, then you can’t let go of the event, and it “gets stuck” in the body in the form of one or another tension.
For example, if we are frightened, we pull our heads into our shoulders. This is a reflex formed in us by nature. Feel the danger — be ready to fight and protect the most fragile places. In particular, do not expose your neck to the bite of a saber-toothed tiger and any other enemy from ancient times, when these reflexes were formed.
In modern times, we rarely fall prey to predators, but our fear of talking to the boss, showdown at home, or any other «dangers» is still expressed through the tension of the neck and shoulders. An emotionally free, liberated, full of energy person gets frightened, tenses, relaxes and … returns to normal.
If it is not possible to survive and let go of fear, then it remains in the body, “living” in our constantly tense shoulders and neck. “If suddenly some kind of danger meets again, we are already ready!”, the body seems to say with this tension.
Where does this lead? Constant tension in the neck blocks the proper circulation of energy in this area. The neck begins to ache, tension rises, and against the background of this energy stagnation, we develop regular headaches.
How to restore energy circulation
Above, I gave the most obvious option for stagnation of energy circulation: acupuncturists and qigong practitioners know dozens and hundreds of different options for how emotions block the flow of Qi. How to deal with diseases that are supported by our emotional background?
You can enter from two sides:
- Psychological correction — contact a psychologist and work out the usual reactions to a particular stressful situation;
- Work with the body is to relax the habitual tensions that have been formed due to unlived emotions.
As a qigong teacher, I recommend the second method or a combination of both. My personal practice shows that the “dense” (body) is stronger than the “loose” (psychological reactions).
A person can find and realize his own response pattern — «in such situations, I get scared and I should stop.» But the body is already accustomed to living in a tense state, and it is not so easy to rebuild it, working only with emotions. A person “sets up” the emotional background, and the body continues to maintain the usual tension. And as a result, negative emotions return.
Therefore, I insist: if you are working with a psychologist and see results, be sure to work on the body in parallel. This requires relaxation practices (such as Qigong Xing Shen Juang) that will «drive» the emotions out of the body and ease the tensions that hold them. Due to this, an adequate circulation of energy in the body will be established, and your health will return to normal.