Balanced Emotions; the fringe benefits of acupuncture

Written by Eeka King B.H.Sc (Acup)

A lot of people do not realise that acupuncture can help with issues of our mind and emotions. Most people know that acupuncture can treat conditions of the body, pain and a sore back. However, acupuncture can also help with other aspects of our well being, outlook on life and how we cope with stress. I was inspired to write this article as a man came barging in our clinic the other day, demanding “Is there an acupuncture point that will stop my wife from being a moody b***h?” David looked up calmly from the desk and chuckled, “well yes sir, there just so happens to be a point prescription just for that”.  

Acupuncture can actually balance your moods, put the fire out of your anger, lift sadness, ease grief, abate fear and conquer the feeling of panic. It can pull you out from a lost dead-end street and put you back on the right path. It is amazing how you can be stuck in an emotion of frustration with everything in your life and after 30 minutes of acupuncture the world has changed. Many people feel a warm fuzzy sensation all over, as if they are about to float off the table. They walk out of the clinic like they have just had a heavy duty pain killer. They’re on cloud 9, asking themselves, “What was that feeling I was having before?”

In Chinese medicine, mental activity has always been considered to be inseparable from bodily functions, and mental diseases were generally not treated differently from any other disorder. Mental energy is simply regarded as a more refined form of physical energy. More ‘refined’ just means another level of vibration or another plane of our being. Our thoughts are simply energy vibrations that trigger our nervous system to release chemicals in the brain which are then felt in the body as emotions. Quantum physics has been exploring this phenomenon for some time and now science is just beginning to understand the implications of what the wise ancient Chinese inherently knew.

In TCM each emotion has its own vibration and each vibration affects specific organs.

Anger affects the Liver

Joy affects the Heart

Worry affects the Spleen      

Sadness affects the Lungs and Heart

Fear affects the Kidneys

Pensiveness affects the Spleen

Shock affects the Kidneys and Heart   

Emotions become causes of disease only when they are excessive or prolonged or both. You cannot avoid being angry and a temporary state of anger does not lead to disease. Sometimes anger is beneficial in life to create change. However, if a person is constantly angry about a certain situation in life for many months or years, this emotion will definitely alter the balance of the internal organs and the harmony of our ‘yin and yang’ and ‘Qi and blood’. Emotional stress is an internal cause of disease which injures the internal organs directly. On the other hand, the unbalanced condition of our internal organs due to other causes will also in turn affect our emotional state.

For example, in Chinese medicine, anger affects our liver energy. The liver is responsible for the free flow of ‘Qi’ within our body and anger therefore will cause the Qi to get stuck. This could result in something like gall stones, polycystic ovaries or liver disease. A lighter manifestation may be irregular periods, tight neck and shoulders and migraine headache. However, the balance of the liver energy may also be affected by eating a diet which is too heating. Consuming large amounts of deep fried fatty foods, cigarettes, coffee and alcohol will definitely heat up the liver. The liver doesn’t like to be hot. A hot liver will surely make a person frustrated and angry without even knowing why. Someone who is frustrated and angry will find that nothing in life is going their way. Their ‘Qi’ is not flowing.

This example clearly shows that on the one hand, emotional stress injures the internal organs and, on the other hand, disharmony of the internal organs causes emotional imbalance.

When you come for an acupuncture treatment it is our job to uncover any imbalances in the body’s energy. We do this through reading your pulse and tongue and checking with you of any signs and symptoms you may be experiencing. If it so happens that you are having digestive issues, a course of acupuncture will also help clear away emotions of worry, confusion, obsession and poor memory and focus.

In China, Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine has had a long history of treating people with mental emotional disturbances such as clinical depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. It is nonexistent that you will come across someone experiencing these mind disorders to have complete vital and vigorous health in the rest of their bodily systems. They may show signs of low energy; excessive perspiration, dizziness, palpitations and of dampness; loose stools, diarrhea, heaviness and a foggy head. Acupuncture and Chinese herbal prescriptions may need to be performed for some time to remove these imbalances in the organs and ultimately calm the mind so that new healthy thoughts of life and emotional outlooks will begin to emerge. Changing our Qi changes our emotions.

Generally, it is important to have treatments on a regular basis as a form of preventative medicine. Just like you would service your car and insure your house. You can then keep your emotional state in check and ensure your body is providing you with enough energy and that you are vital and full of life. When you do this and you do happen to go out of balance a little bit in your emotional state- life throws something at you, or you get lazy with your diet, it may only take a couple of treatments for you to be feeling happier again and peaceful in your mind. Don’t leave it until you are so deep in depression that you will not even be able to see past the fog to know that there is a way out of it.

©Eeka King 2010 for Bayside acupuncture & Herbal Medicine Clinic