The Root of Obesity

All addictions, whether it is food, drugs, alcohol, overworking, overshopping, or over-anything, often arise from feelings of incompleteness and trying to fill a need. Regarding obesity, the high availability of calorie-dense foods and poor exercise habits created by the modern age have added fuel to this fire.

We all eat at times when we are not hungry. This can temporarily satisfy emotional needs such as anger, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, depression, and boredom. Simple carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, rice, cakes, cookies, and candy are all particularly good at medicating these feelings.

And negative emotion by itself can make us hold onto calories also, meaning we don't have to overeat to be overweight. Nature has conspired to make us hold onto weight when we're stressed.

In an unending cycle, negative emotions produce cortisol, the stress hormone, which increases appetite, increases abdominal fat, decreases the muscle mass needed for burning calories, and creates poor sleep. It is almost impossible to lose weight when stressed.

While most people adopt restrictive diets to reduce weight, this does not get to the root of the problem and history has shown these diets to have a failure rate of approximately 95%.

A mechanism for addressing negative emotions, since this is what we are trying to feed, is a more fruitful approach. A methodical way for doing this is addressed in another article on this website entitled "The Root of Disease."

This method is reprinted here, followed by a section on actions that can be taken to assist the elimination of negative emotion.

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, depressing our very experience of life.

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 often be accessed, faced, and resolved in the following way:
(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?

Self Investigation

It is no wonder that obesity has become such a problem. Balancing each of these centers is a lifetime pursuit.

It is important that, like detectives, we regularly investigate the negative emotions arising out of these centers and fully experience them, rather than medicating them with food. Often, becoming aware of them is all it takes.

Meditation is a tremendous benefit. Gently bringing your attention to these questions and sitting in quiet contemplation often brings negative emotions to the surface. Fully experiencing these feelings allows them to be dissipated.

Actions

Still, the elimination of some emotions may require real-world action. Actions that would correspond to these centers include the following:

1st Emotional Center - Take steps to heal your support systems so you feel you belong and that you are safe. If dysfunctional family relationships cannot be resolved, build new relationships with church, business, or other groups that make you feel secure.

2nd Emotional Center - Take steps to heal emotions such as anger, bitterness, and frustration with partners. This may require seeing a counselor or even changing relationships.

3rd Emotional Center - Take steps to heal emotions within you regarding your work. Are you living up to your capabilities? Make changes within the existing work environment to fit your needs and investigate other careers. Address esteem issues associated with physical appearance.

4th Emotional Center - Take time to experience all the emotions you are feeling with your partner. Be willing to express them. Are others nurturing you as much as you are nurturing them? Are you self-nurturing as well, setting aside time for your own pleasure?

5th Emotional Center - Learn to express your views appropriately rather than suppressing them. Make your voice heard. Speak your truth.

6th Emotional Center - Build intellectual capacity and flexibility. Consider more schooling, reading, or traveling. Learn to meditate and be with nature. Enjoy genuine reflection.

7th Emotional Center - Ask the big question. Does the universe have a life purpose for me that I am following? Am I aligned with it? Listen to your intuition.

(Note: A complementary approach to addressing the weight issues associated with stress and negative emotions is the regular practice of the DVD entitled "A Guided Visualization to Weight Loss and Healthy Digestion"), located on this website.

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