All of the emotions play a necessary role in our life, and our challenge is to learn to express all of them well. Imbalanced emotional expression is one of the primary causes of both physical and psychological disease in Chinese Medicine, and much of my clinical practice revolves around limiting beliefs about the role of emotions in our life. A very common belief is that having anger is bad, or that anger isn't spiritual. This leads to an inability to express anger in a productive way and ultimately leads to an imbalance in the Liver and Liver energy. Once the Liver energy is disturbed we are more prone to anger and if we don't know how to effectively express it we just accumulate anger and imbalances in the Liver as opposed to using anger as a way to grow spiritually.

How do you know if you have trouble expressing anger or are expressing it inappropriately? Many people are so accustomed to suppressing "bad" anger that they are unaware of how much unexpressed anger they have stored. Since unexpressed anger leads to Liver imbalance, signs of Liver imbalance are one sign of issues around expressing anger. Some of  symptoms of Liver imbalance are indigestion, headaches, hiccups and burping, pain or stiffness in the right shoulder or right side of the back, menstrual cramps or other abdominal cramps, abdominal bloating, all kinds of vision problems, soft or brittle nails, high or low blood pressure, dizziness, frequent sighing, chest tightness and difficulty swallowing. Of course, many of these symptoms will make you irritable, which further imbalances the Liver. So once you are out of balance you tend to stay there unless you are able to shift your perspective in a powerful way.

The first step towards transforming this pattern of physical and psychological "stuckness" is to understand that anger is literally the energy of growth, and that learning to understand and express anger appropriately is crucial to developing a benevolent and compassionate attitude towards ourselves and others. Then we can start to understand what keeps us from embracing anger as a necessary aspect of our personal and spiritual growth.  This is a big shift in perspective from most people's upbringing.   I've highlighted in depth each of the emotions, the consciousness of the organs and spiritual growth in my e-course "Your 5 Faces of God."  You can find out more about this by clicking here or reading below.

 Ask Dr. Ka'imi

Ginnaya Turner from New Zealand, asks "I understand from your TCM course that the Kidney meridian connects us with Earth energy. Yet it is Water element not Earth. How can it connect us with Earth energy but not be Earth element in the body?"

The first part of the answer is that the Kidney meridian is the only meridian with a point on the sole of the foot (Kidney 1, is also called Earth Surge). So the natural pathway for energy from the earth to enter the body is through the Kidney meridian.

The second part of the answer is that the Kidney's are the storehouse of our Original Qi/energy that is inherited at birth, and represents the connection with our ancestral roots. The Kidneys are in charge of preserving this Original Qi in order to maintain life.  Earth, Stomach and Spleen make all energy/Qi during our life, which then gets stored in the kidneys. 

Amy Freund, a CBI from Florida, passed on a question from a student asking why the lower chakras are referred to as Yang chakras, even though in many ways they represent feminine energy, and in the case of the base chakra, the ability connect to the Yin Earth energy.

In general the lower chakras regulate digestion and the generation of Qi, which is a Yang activity. Psychologically the lower chakras contribute logic, reason, survival instincts, materialism, competitiveness, and sexuality, all masculine or Yang attributes. Another way to understand the Yang nature to the lower chakras is by the colors associated with them. All of the lower chakras have a warm color and Yang is warming. All of the upper chakras have a cool color and Yin is cooling.

"Although I have an acute sense of hearing, I also get overwhelmed with too many sounds going on at once and find it hard to concentrate at work.  Can BodyTalk help this?"  Anonymous, London, UK

Yes, BodyTalk works fabulously with helping to integrate sensory input and processing.  Having an acute sense of hearing can be very usefull but it is good to be able to filter out the non essential sounds otherwise life can get overwhelming.  This over sensativity is quite a common part of many learning challenges.