Mental and Emotional Blockages to Healing

Just about everyone is aware that emotions play a part in the disease process. I bet if you thought about it, you could think of a time when you got really angry, upset, or stressed out about something, and then the next day you came down with a cold or the flu. A good friend of mine once told me that she can always tell when her husband is about to get sick, because he will inevitably get completely bent out of shape—yelling and screaming about something that at any other time might only elicit a grumpy response—about something, only to become completely bedridden with some respiratory or digestive “bug” the next day!

In Chinese Medicine, each emotion—anger, sadness, depression, grief, and fear—is associated with a particular organ of the body. This becomes interesting when you think about what organ might be out of balance enough to bring about illness.

The most obvious example is anger, and its associated emotions of rage, frustration, and feeling “stressed out.” All these emotions correspond to the Liver, a “Yin” organ, and its corresponding “Yang” organ, the Gall Bladder. The Liver is associated with the “smooth flow of Qi,” or energy, through the body. When the Liver gets out of whack, energy gets stagnated, stuck, or deficient.

One thing I’ve noticed about people in general is that when it comes to health and wellness, sometimes our health patterns reflect emotional issues. It’s almost like we take a certain issue we’re grappling with—like problems with a co-worker, feeling disconnected from our spouse or lover, or dissatisfaction with our career—and we wrap it in a little ball and stick it somewhere in our body! There it creates “illness.”

In BodyTalk, we talk about emotions being stored in the Diaphragm. As the Diaphragm gets “full,” it sends these unprocessed emotions to the Liver. The Liver, in turn, sends the emotions to an organ, endocrine, or body part, where they manifest as disease.

I recently read a newsletter from Marga Laube, a Vedic Astrologer, who wrote an article called “The Power to Heal.” In this article, she talks about the upcoming full moon on September 4, 2009, which she describes as a particularly good time to reflect on our own disease process and release emotional and mental blockages to healing. She writes: “The full moon in this lunar sign is asking us to let go of the mental and emotional blockages that can be a breeding ground for disease.” She then gives some examples of how to do this. (Click here to read the full article)

This is a great contemplation for all of us who know in our hearts that we have the answers to our health issues inside, if we’re willing to ask the question and listen to our inner voice as it answers us.

www.quantumlinkwellness.com

When A Cold Is Not A Cold

Recently a friend of mine told me that her daughter had been sick with a cold for two months.
“That's not a cold,” I told her. “It's an allergy.”
“Ridiculous!” my friend responded. “She doesn't have allergies.”
“If it was a cold,” I went on, “it would have been over and done with in a week, max.”
“Is that why she's not responding to the antibiotics?” my friend asked.

Here's two important facts you need to know about colds:
If it's a cold, it is caused by a virus, not a bacteria. Therefore, antibiotics will be useless.
Colds only last about a week. If it lasts longer, it's not a cold.
So how do you tell if it's a cold or an allergy?
First of all, if you have nasal stuffiness, sneezing, or runny nose for longer than a week, start to look at patterns. Do you notice it at a certain time of day? Do you notice that you get a runny nose after eating a particular thing? Is it possible that this happened the last time you ate it?
I had a friend several years ago whose daughter's nose would run every morning after breakfast. She called it “The Breakfast Cold.” Basically, the child was reacting to the food she ate every morning.
Secondly, does your runny nose or sneezing happen at a certain time of year? Do you have what seems to be a month-long cold every March? If so, chances are it's allergies and not a cold. Environmental allergies often mimic colds in their symptoms. The only difference is the duration.
Third, do not underestimate the effect of emotions. If you find yourself in the midst of a month-long cold after the death of a loved one, it's probably your body trying to work out the grief you still feel.
And emotions can be tricky, too! I was treating a patient once for his mold allergies. “My mold allergy is always the strongest in the fall,” he told me. Interesting, I thought; in California, the fall is the dryest time of year, and mold is usually at an all-time low in the fall. I tested him, and found that he wasn't allergic to mold at all. So when I tested again to find out what it was that was triggering his allergy each fall, it turned out to be an emotion...and, long story short, it was in the fall that his father had died several years earlier. After clearing the emotion, his autumn allergy disappeared.

www.quantumlinkwellness.com