Acupuncture and Your Emotions

Liver & Anger

by

Ramsay Falcove,LMT

Traditional Chinese Medicine has provided the Western Community with a clear, concise definition of how the mind, body and spirit interact and communicate with each other. They provide evidence and demonstration of how there is no separation of the mind, the body and the spirit. It provides explanations based on 5000 years of empirical observations. In this article and following articles I will explore this connection and try to explain in plain language and experience how these processes work and how they relate to you and your health.

Pop psychology, the 12 steps, and the self improvement programs over the last 25 years have provided for us the four basic emotions that we all posses. They are Mad, Sad, Glad, Fear. TCM gives us one more emotion, that is , pensiveness.

Mad is of course Anger. Sad can be equated to Grief. Glad is Joy and Fear is fear. Pensiveness as defined by the dictionary is “engaged in , involving, or reflecting deep or serious thought. “ In pensiveness  you can be involved in deep or serious thought which can be healthy. However “worry” can be a form of pensiveness which leads to pathology. I am redefining these terms to fit the literature of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Each  main vital organ that we have in our bodies is affected by our experience of these five  emotions. The extent to which we experience these  emotions can have a profound  effect on our health and experience of life. They are categorized as follows:

Mad (Anger)  = Liver

Sad (Grief)= Lung

Glad (Joy)= Heart

Fear= Kidney

Pensiveness= Spleen

    (Worry)

These five main vital organs, Liver , Lung, Heart, Kidney, Spleen provide us with the foundation of life energy that we experience on a daily basis. The Liver stores our life energy in the form of blood. The Lung provides us with life energy in the form of the air we breath. The Heart moves our life energy around with its pumping action. The Kidney stores life energy in the form of essence that can be transformed. The Spleen provides us with life energy by extracting it from the food and drink we take in everyday. All of these functions can be affected by our experience or our perception of our experience of daily life.  Our perception of life is our experience of life until we gain greater insight as to the nature of the mind and the universe. Perception is another topic altogether but for the purposes of this article, our perception of life is our experience and that experience affects our vital organs. 

I will begin with the liver. If you have ever been to an acupuncturist you may have heard the term Liver Wind or Liver Stagnation. Wind is a chinese term relating to the 5 elements. Stagnation is a term that we can more closely associate with our emotions. In the case of the Liver it is Anger. When the emotion (energy in motion) of Anger becomes too intense or is blocked, this causes the action and function of the liver to slow down or stagnate.

How does this happen? Let us take for example the process of Divorce. People usually don’t get divorced because they are happy with each other, they usually get divorced because they are angry with each other and that anger cannot be resolved through any other means than by divorce. If you have ever been married you know that “Married people fight. “ It s just a rule. It is inevitable. If a couple is well versed in conflict resolution they usually get through the  tiffs and go on. If they are not, then the conflict “stagnates” and there is limited or no resolution. Time marches on and the conflicts are either released through a person’s own spirituality  or they hit a wall and you have divorce. If the conflict stagnates and the anger  is intensified and prolonged then this will eventually have an adverse effect on the liver.  This is an example of conscious ongoing anger.

There is also the example of unconscious ongoing anger. Many times there are normal people that participate in a normal healthy lifestyle that still have problems with “stagnation”. This comes  as a result of unresolved conflicts that we experienced  in our younger years.  Conflicts that were unresolved and as life marched on we forgot about it.  If it is an incident of abuse, maybe it was so painful that we dissociated and denied it even happened, just so we could survive 'til the next day.  These incidents, even though we deny  or forget them, have a continuing effect or our liver and  our life experience.

Alcoholics, worst case scenario, who are masters of denial, continue to drink so as not to experience the pain of these unresolved conflicts. That leads to cirrhosis and other liver problems.

What happens in Liver Stagnation? The liver will start to heat up and you will get restless. You may not sleep. You get moody, worry too much. Sigh a lot. Headaches, Dream too much. You may have a subtle ongoing depression or a full blown depression. Exasperation& Agitation. The mind may become deranged and you might want to shoot the other person.If these are signs are not resolved they will lead to physical disease,loss of appetite, nausea & vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, low blood sugar, muscle aches and pains,yellowing of the skin,loss of sex drive, eventually to edema and permanent damage to the liver. From the mind, to the emotions, to the material, to the disease. . . this is a continuum that is expressed in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

These are just a few examples of how the liver becomes stagnated and cause us ill effects. Fortunately through acupuncture and traditional chinese medicine we can treat these problems on a continous basis. Hopefully, before they become so severe as to cause permanent damage. Even then Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture can help a person lead a well functioning life.

Ramsay Falcove became an acupuncturist through apprenticeship with a well known Licensced Acupuncturist in Birmingham Al. He studied alongside Dr. Zhao for 5 years and has been in practice on his own for 2 years.  He is eligible to take the licensure exam through NCCAOM. My next article, I will discuss the Lung and Grief.  These articles will be posted on my web site at www.ramsayfalcove.com.