Our Emotions Affect Our Organs and Our Health

Emotions stem from the body's experiences and its mental interpretation. As a result, emotions are closely related to our body of which they are an extension. This notion is increasingly accepted by a growing part of the medical community. All emotions, pain in particular, are recorded at the cellular level. There is also evidence that mental pain and anguish have an impact on the body as if it were a bodily pain. Many massage therapists have experienced how their work might trigger an involuntary emotional reaction on the part of their customer such as unexplainable cries and sorrow revealed. This occurs as there is a release of some painful events stored in the body that has created a number of emotional and physical blockages.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), there is an ancestral knowledge that each major emotion has a seat with in an organ. For example, anger is an emotion linked to liver. A chronically angry person will not, as a result, have a healthy liver even if their diet is otherwise perfect. Consequently, they may display the physical symptoms of a Wood or Spring season energetic in balance. (Please see previous posts and/or our website to better understand achieving balance in the energetic seasons.)

In his book, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, Deepak Chopra, MD tells us that it is increasingly recognized that beliefs and emotions affect the cells of specific organs, even of the entire body.

Balance when there is coherence between what we believe, what we think, and what we do. That is why there is a difference between various types of exercises based on the intense and focused given them during our practice. Certain exercises such as tai chi and yoga engage intent and breathing to direct energy throughout the body. At the beginning, practicing with an instructor helps to focus on the breath and every part of the body engage in the specific position or asana. It develops intent in a conscious action. It focuses mind over body. This model can be opposed to the more traditional mode of exercising in popular health clubs where music is blasting in one's ears, not to simply provide rhythm but to get the mind off the unpleasantness of physical effort. There is voluntary disconnection between mind and body and a lost opportunity to have one exert control over the other.