In Traditional Asian Healing, the body is not separate from the mind or from emotions. In fact, both mind and emotion are essential aspects of the same thing. What that means is that when there are disharmonies in one it will influence the others, because they are inseparable.
The history of Chinese medicine is recorded in various texts written over the past 5000 years, so you might say that nothing about being human today is different from the past. People are constitutionally the same. Then as now, emotional States are given labels. These refer to our familiar subjective experience of Emotion, and to the organs of the body that are connected to the meridian system. These emotions are to be thought of as passions, and there are many variations of them. But we know them in Traditional Chinese Medicine because they are related to the Five Elements of Chinese Medine as follows:
Anger-Wood: Impacting the Liver and Gallbladder
Joy/Excitement-Fire: Impacting the Heart and Small Intestine.
Pensiveness-Earth: Impacting the Spleen/Pancreas and Stomach
Sadness-Metal: Impacting the Lungs and Large Intestine.
Fear-Water: Impacting the Kidneys and Bladder
The key thing to understand about Shiatsu is that when treating the organ meridians of the body we are influencing the emotional states that are associated with them. This is why when we talk at the beginning of a course of treatment, and then before each treatment, it is important to share what is happening in your life and in your emotional experience. It may come out in stories, but by listening carefully, the emotional state or chronic mood is revealed. This can establish a priority of treatment. In this way, we can focus on what is really important at that moment, especially when disharmony is really present.
Let’s understand a bit more about how emotions are encoded to the meridians. According to Giovani Maciocia, the renowned author of the ‘Psyche in Chinese Medicine,’ these are the basic patterns we are listening for:
1. Anger, which includes frustration and resentment affects the Liver.
2. Joy, or excessive excitement or overstimulation affects the Heart.
3. Worry, or anticipation about the future will affect the Lungs and Spleen
4. Pensiveness, or obsessive thinking affects the Spleen.
5. Sadness or grief will affect the Lungs and Heart.
6. Fear or Fright affects the Kidneys.
7. Shock will affect the Kidneys and the Heart.
8. Love affects the Heart.
9. Craving affects the Heart.
10. Guilt will affect the Kidneys and the Heart
11. Shame will affect the Heart and the Spleen
The traditional Chinese understanding of these relations can be very detailed, beyond what I can address in a short Blog, but when you know what you feel and can bring words to it, even in the telling of a story about what happened, it can inform a practitioner about how they can treat you at that moment with respect to either your current feeling or the chronic moods that you experience all the time and that give an emotional flavor to your life.
In a treatment for example a client might share 'that they are worried about events in their life, that they are afraid about what might happen, and feeling sad that things did not work out how they wanted'. Maybe they are often depressed, and anxious. That would suggest a focus on meridians affecting Earth Water, Metal, and Fire. The treatment would then be focused on the Spleen, Kidneys, Lungs, and Heart.
In another case, a client might share that 'they are furious at their boss, worried that they might lose their job, indecisive about what to do, and you can tell that they are obsessing and can’t let go and relax.' The treatment suggested might look like a focus on Wood, Earth, Metal, and Fire. In this case, the treatment might focus on the Liver, Spleen, Gall Bladder, Large Intestine, and Heart.
For different circumstances in life, having different emotional charges, there can be very different treatments. In this way, a shiatsu practitioner can listen carefully and observe the way the client speaks. Not everyone is willing or able to say what they are feeling, but an empathic listener will often understand anyway from what is said, and from what they observe. Most importantly, the client will usually experience a dramatic shift in energy and awareness following treatment, and this is because the treatment itself is moving stuck energy and supporting areas where there are energy deficiencies, and this produces dramatic shifts that over time will create transformation. This is particularly so if the client is reflective and pays more attention to their thoughts and feelings in processing their experience over the course of treatment. Transformation of the body causes transformation in mental and emotional states and the same is true when the thinking and feeling begin to shift with regard to the body.
The great takeaway here is that suffering can be transformed, and Shiatsu, though it is not psychotherapy, can improve one’s emotional state and sense of well-being.
Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash
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