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Coping with our own anxiety, grief or longing is not easy for many of us. It is worth trying to learn how to manage your negative emotions with the help of the age-old wisdom of qigong.
No one can completely get rid of negative emotions. The main thing is not to let them completely absorb us, damage our health and relationships with others. We cannot simply stop feeling anger or sadness, but by resorting to energy exercises, we can influence the intensity and quality of these experiences.
According to qigong theory, the link between the soul and the body is energy. It has a strong influence on our emotions, at the same time, the emotional state affects our energy, its level. Qigong views human health as an abundance of freely circulating qi. A clear sign of freely circulating qi is a sense of purpose, a desire to wake up in the morning and take an active part in life. When qi circulation is disturbed, we feel tired, irritable, apathetic, angry.
“The qigong system is a complex relationship of physical, mental, energy exercises with its own logic, requiring full involvement. People prone to emotional extremes are unlikely to delve into the systematic study of qigong, says qigong master Dashi Chu Kochik. “However, even performing individual exercises gives a positive effect. And it helps to make life more harmonious, and the body – healthy.
To master the simplest qigong techniques, you need to start with basic techniques: relaxing the body, directing attention inward, and observing your own breathing.
Learn to relax
Both the tides of negative emotions and our attempts to “control ourselves” lead to tension in certain areas in the body – and disruption of the qi flow. The ability to relax the body is the first step to the harmony of qi. To master the Obedient Body exercise, try it for a few days before bed.
Master the breath
Air is the element that helps us to feel the relationship with everything that exists – people, animals, plants, to feel unity with the Universe. Exercise “Baby’s Breath” helps to get rid of cramps in the lower abdomen, in the stomach and gallbladder.
Get rid of bad qi
When oppressive emotions overwhelm, the first thing to do is to try to get rid of bad qi. Try the Balloon Displacement of Bad Qi exercise.
Balance the yin
Negative emotions can be conditionally divided into “active” and “passive”. In the first case, emotions literally burst a person – we say about such a person that he is “overwhelmed with anger”, “ready to burst with anger (envy)”. In the second case, on the contrary, they deprive a person of strength, feeling like apathy, sadness, depression.
In ancient Chinese philosophy, each emotion is associated with the energy of a certain element (see box below), but, simplifying, each state can be thought of as a yin-yang imbalance. If you are overexcited or agitated, the predominant emotion is active, “aggressive” coloring, this is due to an excess of yang. For harmonization, you can take Yin energy (energy of the moon or water).
balance yang
If emotions do not burst, but cause depression, they are felt as a lack of desires, a lack of energy, when a person hardly forces himself to start doing ordinary things, most likely this is due to a lack of yang. In this case, you need to receive the light and heat of the sun.
Emotions and diseases
According to the ancient Chinese theory of wu-xing, each of the internal organs of our body corresponds to a certain sense organ, its own emotion and its own element. Excess or deficiency of any of the elements in the human body leads to dysfunction of organs. Thus, for example, fear strikes the kidney channel; anger, anger – channel of the liver; excessive joy, euphoria – the channel of the heart; grief, sadness – the channel of the spleen; sadness, melancholy, melancholy – the channel of the lungs.
From the point of view of qigong, any emotional overstrain leads to spasm of the energy channels that connect the surface of the body with the internal organs, or even completely blocks them. There is a blockage of the channel, creating an obstacle to the circulation of qi, and disease occurs. Qi stagnation is formed in this area, which, in turn, leads to blood stagnation. The body does not receive enough energy, nutrients. There are functional changes in the body, and then organic.
The movement of qi and blood can be compared to the movement of water in a river. With stagnation, the quality of water deteriorates, it has a bad smell. In addition, at temperatures of 20 degrees and above, this environment is suitable for bacteria. Similarly, in humans, the cause of many diseases is not viruses and bacteria (they appear there later), but qi stagnation.