The Root of Disease

The following conditions all have something in common--inflammation. For example, only half of heart disease patients have high cholesterol or high blood pressure. One hundred percent of them have high inflammation.

The most common sources of inflammation are 1) diet 2) physical trauma 3) genetics 4) environmental toxins 5) electromagnetic radiation 6) allergies 7) infection and 8) negative emotion.

Among them, negative emotion is often given the least attention. It is naive to think our emotional life does not impact our health. When symptoms appear, it is the body's way of saying that something, somewhere, needs attention.

Negative emotions include many feelings such as anger, rage, sadness, loneliness, boredom, anxiety—or even lack of love. It is estimated that as many as 60,000 thoughts and images pass through the human mind every day, each with emotional content. At different times in our lives, a very high proportion can be negative. This results in a cascade of undesirable biochemicals to all the cells of the body, impacting our health.

The health effects can include the illnesses identified in the table above. Even when negative emotion is not the primary cause of disease, it becomes a major factor when managing it.

So while we should all eat properly, exercise, avoid injury and environmental toxins, the real work is in the psyche where our thoughts and emotions exist.

EXPERIENCING YOUR EMOTIONS

All human emotions must be fully experienced, faced, and accepted for us to be healthy. Unfortunately, we are often unaware of our own feelings, suppressing them into our psyche where they cannot be accessed. It is crucial to our psychological and physical health that we regularly access and cycle through our feelings; if they are suppressed, they become baggage that we carry around, eventually causing physical symptoms.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has identified seven major emotions from which they believe all other emotions are derived. They are joy, anger, anxiety, pensiveness, grief, fear, and fright. Other sources have pared that list down, but the essential emotions of fear, anger, sadness, joy, and love remain.

TCM believes that unbalanced or uncycled emotions disrupt energy pathways around the body called meridians. When these pathways are disrupted, physical illness can result.

Another tradition suggests there are seven emotional centers in the body where we actually store our feelings. Accordingly, chronic, long-term unbalanced emotions would disrupt our psychological life and eventually result in physical disease.

These emotions are often suppressed and below conscious awareness. They can be accessed, faced, and resolved by asking the following questions:
(Note: This exercise can bring emotions to the surface that are best experienced with the aid of a professional therapist. Please proceed accordingly.)

SEVEN EMOTIONAL CENTERS

The 1st Emotional Center

The 1st Emotional Center is associated with our sense of safety in the world and our sense of belonging. As an infant this sense is determined by how well we are welcomed into the family and nurtured. It is believed by many that this actually starts in the womb where the fetus starts to recognize the toxicity, or lack thereof, of the coming environment. As we age, this sense of “fitting in” continues through our support groups and the organizations we become a part of. Our older years bring the insecurities regarding the diminished capacities we experience with aging.

The primary emotion of this center is fear—the fear of not fitting in, the fear of losing our job, the fear of losing a relationship, the fear of having no support group and losing our physical abilities as we age.

To access the emotions that are stored in the 1st emotional center, the following questions should be asked, and the resulting feelings should be faced, accepted, and released by intensely experiencing their full impact:

• Do I feel safe in the world?
• Do I feel like I belong?
• Do I feel secure in my job?
• Do I feel secure in my relationships?
• Do I feel I have a support system when needed?
• Or, am I alone with nowhere to turn?

The 2nd Emotional Center

As infants, the second emotional center to develop regards relationships. As relationships develop, we wish to maintain our own individuality, and at the same time experience partnerships.

There are several currencies in relationships including appreciation, money, and sex. It is necessary that we feel appreciated for who we are and what we bring to the relationship. We don’t want to be taken for granted. Whether we are compensated with appreciation, money, or some other token of gratitude, it is necessary that we feel rewarded. Whether the relationship is sexual or non-sexual, it is important that interests be similar.

The emotions that must be faced, accepted, and released are raised by asking the following questions:

• Am I appreciated for what I bring to my relationship and compensated with gratitude?
• Are my mate and I equally available emotionally and sexually?
• Do my mate and I have roughly the same power, money and status?
• Does money come easily to me, freeing me from financial worry?
• Or, do I tolerate financial concerns and dysfunctional relationships to my own detriment?

The 3rd Emotional Center

Following the development of relationships, we go out into the world to “make our mark.” This is our expression of individuality, and this is where we develop career and sense of self-esteem. This center encompasses our physical self-image (or lack thereof), and whether we are meeting our self-expectations in the world.

The emotions that arise from this center that must be faced, accepted, and resolved can be assessed through the following questions:

• Am I meeting career expectations that use all of my ability on a daily basis?
• Do I enjoy what I am doing?
• Am I able to meet obligations and take responsibility?
• What emotions do I experience regarding my physical appearance?

The 4th Emotional Center

Eventually we reach a point in our lives where we want a partnership where we want to be, or act, as one. Love is the guiding principle, one of life's deepest human needs. This is different from the 2nd emotional center where individuality and autonomy is maintained. This center emphasizes togetherness, or oneness.

The emotions of this center are accessed through the following questions:

• Do my partner and I have the same passions?
• Can I skillfully express my emotions in a variety of relationships?
• Can I fully express my emotions to my partner?
• Do others nurture me as much as I nurture them?
• Do I take time for self-nurture despite my concerns and responsibilities for others?

The 5th Emotional Center

The 5th emotional center is associated with our ability to express ourselves and speak our truth. When emotions arise, the option is to express them or suppress them. But they must be expressed appropriately—at the right time, at the right place, and with the right individual or group.

The following questions often access emotions that must be faced and resolved:

• Can I fully express my views to others?
• Am I afraid my views will not be well regarded?
• Can I make well-crafted observations as appropriate?
• Do I have the courage to speak my truth?

The 6th Emotional Center

The 6th emotional center regards the mind. The mind is very similar to a muscle that must be regularly exercised and stretched. There is much scientific evidence that unstimulated minds, like unstimulated bodies, get sick. Health practitioners who study aging now recommend that seniors learn foreign languages, or play with cross-word puzzles to build new circuits in the brain. More than that, the mind needs to be flexible (just like the human body) and be open to new viewpoints. It needs to be truly reflective.

The following questions access emotions that must be faced, experienced, and resolved regarding the mind:

• Am I confident in my own beliefs, yet open to the views of others?
• Am I defensive when my opinions are challenged?
• Am I happy with my intellectual accomplishments? (academics, for example)
• Can I listen to and trust my intuition?
• Am I more interested in being right than knowing the truth?

The 7th Emotional Center

The 7th emotional center is associated with our sense of purpose in life. Our sense of purpose is often given to us in our younger years. We chase careers and money, seek romance, and raise children. These all leave us in our later years and a sense of purpose, a reason to live, often evades us.
A sense of purpose must also be maintained with the universe. What would the universe have for us? Are we here alone or is there some driving force, or purpose, behind it all. We must be aligned with it.

The following questions access emotions that must be faced and resolved:

• Do I have a life purpose beyond my career, friends, and family?
• Do I know what the universe wants for me?
• Can I still my mind and listen for divine guidance without interference from my own beliefs and what I want to hear?

I find that the questions in this emotional inventory must be regularly asked of oneself. I personally do it to some degree almost daily. I am often shocked at the emotions that arise, even when my life seems to be going very well. It is sad how much emotional baggage we unknowingly carry. Facing, accepting, and resolving this baggage frees us to more directly and joyously experience life, instead of through the filters of suppressed feelings.

Negative emotions are a part of being human. Many circumstances in life that give rise to them cannot be changed. We can still live life healthily though, if we face our feelings and don’t suppress them. Unfortunately, this suppression often happens without our knowledge.

Many scientific investigations have now connected negative emotion to chronic disease. Regular use of this emotional inventory can help prevent that possibility, or mitigate symptoms if illness is already present in your life.

Initially, this work is often arduous and unpleasant, and explains why we would rather seek out physicians and prescription medicine. Eventually, this work can be joyous and reap great rewards.

While physicians and prescription medicine have their place, our best physician resides within. Unfortunately, the medicine of the inner physician can be painful to swallow, but is more likely to get to the "Root of Disease."

Top of Page