We ourselves inspire joy, sadness, fear, self-confidence, says Anna Vladimirova, an expert in Chinese medicine. She told how the body helps us experience emotions and how to get rid of negative experiences with it.
If we were incorporeal beings, this would greatly facilitate our life: nothing hurts, and most importantly, there is nothing to experience emotions with. After all, the body is, among other things, a means for the realization of experiences. Anger, sadness or joy – to put it very roughly, a set of hormones and muscle tension. And this is good news: if the body is the implementer of emotions, then by working with it, you can cope with these emotions.
First, let’s decide why you need to deal with emotions at all – they also add bright colors to life. Chinese medicine is based on the concept of “qi” – energy, or, to put it simply, the amount of strength. Western diagnostic systems are not yet able to measure the amount of strength in the body, but we ourselves, listening to ourselves, can easily determine our potential for today. Sometimes energy overflows, and there are days when it is at zero.
According to Chinese medicine, we lose most of our strength against the background of strong emotional experiences – both good and bad: if the fun was on the verge of hysteria or a person plunged into deep sadness, he will need some time to regain his strength, restore the spent resource . And if such emotional swings become habitual, then there is no question of restoring strength.
Undoubtedly, emotions are an important component of our life, but it is equally important to be able to maintain balance: not to allow too “deep dives” into one or another emotional state.
sad chest
One of the debilitating emotional states is sadness, and “sticking” in it is fraught with the development of clinical depression. We all, one way or another, are sad: but only some people get out of this state as soon as the reason to be sad disappears, while others can remain in it indefinitely. Why this happens – I do not undertake to discuss, but what to do?
We saw how sad people are depicted in cartoons: they stoop, their head hangs, their shoulders tend forward
A few years ago, I was seriously interested in this issue, and I did a little research on the basis of my WuMingDao school. We recruited a group of people who at that time were in a depressed state. Performing the exercises of the course “Youth and health of the spine” with them, we found that they have a common characteristic muscle tension in the chest area.
We saw how sad people are depicted in cartoons: they stoop, their heads hang, their shoulders tend forward. This is an exaggerated depiction of the very tension that we have identified – tension in the sternum and collarbones, which seems to “pull” the shoulders forward.
Experiment on yourself
To verify the correctness of the observation, I propose to test it for yourself. Sit on a chair, lean back, lean back with your head slightly thrown back, and spread your arms to the sides. In this position, the sternum area opens, a slight tension can be felt.
Now remember something sad that has been troubling you for the past few days. I strongly recommend doing this, because I know that it is almost impossible to keep the state of sadness in this position. It vanishes in seconds. It is impossible to strain the chest area in such a position, which means that there is no form that could “hold” the state of sadness, realize it at the physical level.
victory over sadness
Further work with the group described above showed that regular exercises, in which a person works on relaxing the chest, give excellent results in correcting the emotional state.
Six months after the seminar, I called all the wards who continued to do the exercises at home, and most of them did not even remember that they were in a depressed state (this is a fantastic feature of the brain – we forget the bad very quickly).
If the form of the body that holds sadness is “destroyed”, the usual tensions are removed, then this emotion dissolves – of course, provided that there are no new reasons to be sad.
A relaxed, mobile, breathing chest is a guarantee that negative experiences can come if there is a reason for them, and easily leave when the reason disappears. This is called emotional health, against which a person can accumulate strength, charisma, work on self-realization.
Exercise “Crane Wings”
This exercise from the “Youth and Health of the Spine” complex is aimed at relaxing the chest area, searching for its new opening. This is one of the exercises that people in our “experimental” group paid special attention to, and it gave excellent results in restoring emotional balance.
Step 1. Stand up straight, knees soft, slightly bent, back straight. The arms are bent at the elbows.
Step 2. Light hands seem to float up by themselves.
Step 3. Spread your arms to the sides.
Step 4. Expand your palms. The palms move down and it is as if you are resting your hands on invisible pillows: your shoulders are relaxed – imagine that your hands are resting on an invisible support.
Step 5. Elbows seem to flow down, turn your shoulders, elbows, palms – they look up. Pause.
Imagine that someone is supporting your hands, and ask yourself the question: what else can I relax in order to completely trust this support?
Bring your attention to the center of the chest, watch how with each breath this space expands, the sternum area opens, the space between the shoulder blades increases. Stay in this position for as long as you are comfortable.
Please note that there should not be a backward deflection in the position: the back remains straight, the lower back and pelvic area are relaxed, the stomach breathes.
Let your hands rest and repeat the exercise 3-4 more times.