Mental-emotional imbalances

This is a huge subject and I am not planning on covering everything here. I am going to give an outline of the role acupuncture can have in the treatment of mental & emotional imbalances.

Within Chinese medicine, the different organs have different emotions and mental abilities associated with them and I have listed the main ones below.

Liver (Gan) - anger, frustration, resentment, bitterness, and stress
Spleen (Pi) - worry, over thinking
Lung (Fei) - sadness, grieving
Heart (Xin) - joy, sadness, grief
Kidneys (Shen) - fear

Within our society there are a lot of problems relating to Liver and Spleen imbalances. We live in a stressful society and almost everyone will display some kind of Liver imbalance. The beauty of acupuncture and Chinese medicine is that it can identify these imbalances long before they become problematic from a Western medicine point of view and you can take steps to avoid serious illness.

To give an example, the main function of the Liver is to ensure the smooth circulation of Qi (energy) throughout the body and by doing this it aids all the other organs in carrying out their tasks. Long-term stress impedes the circulation of Qi and this will affect different individuals in different ways.

Chest pain can occur if the Qi circulating in the chest becomes obstructed. If this is left untreated then the Lung and Heart energy becomes obstructed. Since Qi (energy) moves Blood then long term Qi stagnation will cause blood stagnation. Stagnation of Heart Blood is a cause of heart disease. In this case acupuncture can help move Qi stagnation in the chest long before any visible Heart symptoms appear. Of course, this is not the only cause of chest pain and Western medicine investigations & treatment are very valuable and sometimes essential.

The Spleen is the read more