Opening Exercise: Body Scan
Begin by scanning through your body; see if there is any tension, frustration, anger- anything that feels a little bit stuck or pent up (especially in your shoulders and your neck).
After you scan for a little bit take a nice deep breath in- then I want you to sigh out loud and notice: what do you feel?
Take two more deep breaths and sigh out loud two more times. Notice how you feel.
Keep in mind what you noticed as I tell you a little bit more about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and anger and frustration.
The Wood Element and Anger
Anger and frustration are the emotions associated with the Wood element in TCM. The Wood element is not an element that we think of in the Western Traditions; so the Wood element might need more explanation than the Air, Earth, and Water elements. Wood energy is the energy of plant life. Think about the amazing amount of strength and energy that is required for a plant to burst out of a seed and push its way up through the dirt towards the surface in order to reach the light of the sun! This is the power of the Wood element. When you think about the energy that allows trees to move all the way up into the sky to get as tall and strong as they do helps give a little sense of what Wood energy is all about.
The Wood element is the energy of forward growth, expansion, progress, and newness (creating things). There is a sense of striving or pushing forward; so it should come as no surprise that this is the element that I would assign to the United States of America (if I had to assign an element to diagnose the culture as a whole). I would say that this is a Wood culture that I live in- it is very different than cultures that emphasize values other than always striving, growing, and moving forward like pushing into a frontier. And just as for Wood people, some of the most admirable and most problematic features of American culture emanate from these Wood-like characteristics.
I think as a result many people (whether or not you are a Wood type person) can be affected by this very strong Wood energy that pervades our culture- not in any woo woo sense; but in the sense that the cultural values really emphasize achievement and put a lot of pressure on people. When we emphasize achievement, striving, and pushing forward to the exclusion of other values, we can start to get pretty irritable, frustrated, and even angry.
Energy Traffic Jams
Stagnation of the Liver Qi, associated with the Wood element, is one of the most common patterns of imbalance in modern life. When the energy (qi) gets stuck it’s almost like a traffic jam with all of the anger and frustration that sitting in traffic entails.
Another way to think about anger is to think of it as a sign- almost like an internal red light that turns on to tell you that you have to stop, turn around, and do something different. Anger can be a sign that a situation that you are in, or an action that someone else has taken has crossed your boundary. Listening to the anger and responding appropriately can help you to regulate the way you are behaving and being in the world and help get you into a state of balance.
The problem is that in many situations, especially as women, we are taught not to express our anger. Some of us are taught that it is not nice to even feel angry, let alone express it! A lot of times we don’t know the productive ways to work with anger; so we either stuff it down, swallow it- continue to feel it but try to pretend that we don’t which creates even more stagnation of the energy in the body. Or, we act on the feeling in ways that are a little out of control: horn honking, name calling, yelling, or writing nasty things on Facebook. None of these ways is a skillful path for dealing with the emotion of anger.
Anger Feeds Joy?
If we look at the Creation Cycle, which describes some of the relationships between the elements, Wood feeds the Fire element. The emotion associated with the Fire element is Joy. What I think this could suggest is that if we work with anger and frustration in an optimal way what it can do is lead us straight into a life that is more joyful, more harmonious, and a whole lot better. The rewards for working on and dealing with our anger are potentially very great; so I encourage you to experiment with this a little bit this week.
If you listen to your anger and hold your boundaries, what new joy might open up for you?
TCM signs of Liver* Stagnation?
In TCM, the Wood element is associated with the organ of the Liver. In TCM we see the Liver as not just the physical organ on the right side of the ribcage but also as a whole set of functions that have to do with keeping your body, keeping your qi (energy) that circulates through your body smooth and flowing. Whenever that qi gets backed up or stuck in an energy traffic jam that is going to lead to symptoms that can include anger and frustration. Some of the other symptoms that can come up include: tight neck, shoulders, and hips (which are the places where frustrations comes to rest). Premenstrual syndrome is a very common sign of Liver qi stagnation, so it digestive upset especially constipation or what we would call deer pellet stools- so you might not be completely constipated in that you are having tiny bowel movements but they are not full bowel movements and kind of look like rabbit droppings.
*Liver is capitalized here to denote the TCM interpretation of the organ: not just the physical liver itself, but the functional system it represents.
Diet, movement to help support your Liver:
While there are a lot of great herbal therapies that you can use to help support the Liver the place to start if you are having Liver qi stagnation is with your diet, movement and a little bit of emotional work.
- Diet
First thing to remember when dealing with Liver qi stagnation is to note that it is not going to do well if we pile on a lot of heavy, fatty, fried, or super syrupy sugary foods into our diet. We want to focus on whole grains, beans, lentils, legumes, and green vegetables- lightly prepared vegetables (lightly steamed and lightly sautéed). See if you can incorporate that kind of food in your diet for a couple of days and take it easy with the heavy food: the ice-cream, chocolate bars, cheese, red meat, anything fried, chips- cutting back on all the heavy food should really help the Liver.
- Movement
The next thing is to incorporate movement and breathing into your day; sitting at a desk for most of the day (which so many of us have to do for our jobs) really increases the likelihood that the energy is going to stagnate. Walking is considered one of the best exercises to move the qi– walking is particularly helpful because unlike strenuous exercise it does not deplete you. Other movement practices like yoga, qigong, and swimming are also helpful. Avoid exercising to the point of exhaustion and instead, stop when you feel energized.
Starting with that slightly lighter diet and a little bit of movement is going to go a long way in helping the Liver.
- Bitter and Sour Foods
The taste associated with the Wood element is the sour taste. One little herbal thing that you can do is to add just a little bit of fresh lemon or lime juice to some water- hot water if you like and sip that in the morning.
Or you can add a little of that sour flavor to your food so I like to encourage people to have some sauerkraut, or some naturally fermented foods, and squeeze a little bit of lemon juice on our greens to get that sour flavor in- it is really helpful to get that Wood energy flowing and feeling really happy.
In the Western herbal tradition, we associate the bitter flavor with the liver and gallbladder, as does the modern science that has demonstrated the effect of bitters on bile secretion and digestion. I also like to encourage people to include bitter foods in their diet to help clear the liver. Greens and dandelion root tea make a big difference!
When You’re Angry, Do This:
Many years ago there was a fad about venting your anger and expressing it. What we have learned now through neuroscientific research is that you don’t want to get into going off on angry rants to purge the emotion. In fact, giving into your urge to yell, scream, or act out reinforces those neural pathways and makes it easier for you to get angry in the future. The more you engage in that kind of angry outburst the less it helps you work with your anger effectively in the long run.
Similarly it is not helpful to ignore or blunt your anger and deny that you feel it. It’s impossible to selectively numb our emotions. If you start trying to numb your anger you’re also going to numb your love, your joy, your curiosity, your affection….
Overexpressing or under expressing your anger means you’re missing the opportunity to harness anger’s wisdom and the gift that it is trying to give you.
So, when you start to feel angry or feel frustration start to come up I want you to ask yourself first: is there something that I need that I am not getting?
And if so, let’s try to find a way to give yourself that thing. Sometimes it could be a physical thing like you might need a walk, you might need some food, or you might need to change what is happening in your environment a little bit.
Play with this a little bit this week and see if you can notice when you feel angry or frustrated- or feel tension in your upper back and neck- and let’s see if we can start to harness the gifts that anger is trying to offer us. Remember: all anger is trying to do is point us towards things that will feel more joyful and sustainable and lead us to towards that Fire element that we are going to talk about next time.
