Do you have chronic pain in your body that just won’t go away? Or is your body prone to acute painful accidents? Have you considered that this is a physical manifestation of emotional pain? Let’s talk about the causes of pain from the perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and why you should consider intense emotions to be the likely cause. Better yet, I have a suggestion for the best therapy to process the emotional root of your pain so you experience it less often.
Before we get into it, you may want to pause and download this free guide that contains my favorite acupressure points to relieve stress. If done consistently, this could be another way to relieve or even prevent pain. Get it now, you’ll love it!
Then, either watch the video or read the article below to learn more about how to recognize when physical pain has an emotional root, and my suggestions on how to release it.
Causes Of Pain
Pain can obviously be caused by outside influences such as getting in an accident, or someone hurting you. Most people also recognize that pain can have an internal cause – lack of activity, too much work, and most importantly (because it’s often overlooked) is intense emotions showing up as pain.
In Chinese Medicine, we acknowledge that pain is the sensation we feel when the body is telling us that our Qi – or vital energy – is blocked, stagnant, or deficient in an area. The quality of the pain can indicate an acute or chronic condition, and whether it’s just energy involved or also affecting blood circulation.
How Emotions Cause Physical Pain
It’s not necessary to know exactly which emotions are causing an energetic imbalance and why before you can release the emotions & pain. But it is interesting to note how our Qi is affected by certain emotions, especially if this is a habitual way of being for you. In Chinese Medicine, this is also related to the Yin Organs of the body, which we can then target with acupuncture, acupressure, Qigong energetics, and Yin Yoga.
The 5 Emotions and Their Energetic Imbalances:
- Anger: Liver (Wood Element) – Causes Qi to rise
- Excitement: Heart (Fire Element) – Slows down and relaxes Qi
- Worry: Spleen (Earth Element) – Causes Qi to stagnate
- Grief/Sorry: Lungs (Metal Element) – Obstructs the flow of Qi
- Fear: Kidneys (Water Element) – Causes Qi to descend
There are clues to the physical manifestation of these imbalances that are more obvious with some more than others. For example, Qi rising from Liver/Wood anger causes obvious headaches, red race, and neck tension. Also, certain emotions get held in the body along the organ channels. Like with Fear, this can cause Qi to become imbalanced in the Kidney channel, causing low back pain.
Having this knowledge is helpful, especially for TCM practitioner. But we can still release emotional and physical pain ourselves simply by being present in our bodies. My favorite way to do this is with Yin Yoga.
Yin Yoga For Physical and Emotional Pain
With Yin Yoga, we use long-held postures, breath, and intention to stimulate Qi flow. We’re not able to experience this depth of flow with other types of Yoga or movement practices. It’s basically like a self-administered acupuncture practice. But Yin Yoga weaves in mindfulness meditation that can completely alter the way we view ourselves and the world.
When spending time in the Yin shapes and encountering discomfort, I suggest you go through these steps. Do them over an over again until you can completely let go of the held physical and emotional tension:
- Recognize the emotion is coming from inside you (stop blaming others and take responsibility)
- Name the emotion
- Release it with the exhalation
- Infuse the space with more Qi as you inhale, bringing in more love and acceptance
You can seek out a Yin Yoga teacher in your area so help you move through this process. You can learn from me through my online courses. Or consider my 1:1 Holistic Health Coaching, where we can break down negative beliefs that may be contributing to your emotional and physical pain.
In Conclusion
I hope this gives you more to think about! You’re more in control that you may realize with the chronic or acute pain you’re experiencing. Hopefully you’re now determined to get to the root of it and seek help if needed to fully let it go.
Let me know if you have any questions in the comments! I would also love to hear if you’ve been able to release pain consciously, what that was like for you. Well wishes friend…
