Heaven and earth last forever.
Why do heaven and earth last forever?
They are unborn, So ever living.
The sage stays behind, thus he is ahead.
He is detached, thus at one with all.
Through sel¶ess action, he attains ful¤lment.
—Laozi, Daodejing
e can now see just how much TCM accurately fore-casts what modern science is demonstrating in the lab-oratory. The fundamental principle can be summed up as follows: avoiding emotional stress gives peace of mind. Peaceful mind strengthens body-qi. Strong qi protects the organs of the body against pathogenic qi, ensuring health and natural longevity.
In the ancient Daoist medical tradition, we are warned of the converse principle, with an image of terrible destruction from within. The person who shirks moderation and instead indulges in emotional excess falls victim to greed, jealousy, and stupidity. It is said that within the body three worms begin to grow. Too much mental strain causes a worm inside the head to start growing; too much emotional turmoil feeds a worm in the chest; and vanity, lust, and greed give rise to a worm in the stomach region. Unless the
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76 Learning to Trust the Wisdom of Your Body situation is corrected, these three worms will rot the body from within!
This powerful image of internal corruption is not con¤ned to Daoist texts, as shown by a dream recently reported by a patient seeking advice for migraines and fatigue. The TCM diagnosis was spleen de¤ciency caused by mental exhaustion and chronic anxiety.
After acupuncture, the patient was able to relax and look calmly for the ¤rst time at the problems facing him and his wife. To his great relief, they were able to talk together constructively. Then he dreamed that he was picking at his body and pulling worms out from under the skin. When he described the dream at the next TCM consultation, he was reassured that the dream was a sign of progress. His symptoms had gone and so had his spleen de¤ciency.
It has already been noted that pathogenic environment-qi can attack the body if body-qi is already weak. The danger comes from outside, and according to TCM the invasion ¤rst has to penetrate the skin, then the muscles and the meridians. The internal organs are af-fected when pathogenic qi enters the meridians and is carried deep into the body. But the danger is greater still when the disturbance of qi arises from within, which is why we now need to consider the part played by emotions in causing illness.
According to TCM, excessive emotions, especially when they are dammed up, act directly and immediately on the internal organs.
There is no ¤lter to damp down their impact on the body, which can take place without any conscious awareness of the harm that is going on. The ¤ve internal organs are linked with the emotions as follows:
• liver — anger
• lung — grief
• heart — unbearable joy
• kidney — sudden fear
• spleen — worry
Any excessive emotion will target the related organ. The mecha-nisms by which the internal organs are affected can be complex, but to single out just one, let us look at how anger damages the liver.
Ancient Medicine 77 When anger is sparked off, there is an immediate surge of qi that brings a rush of blood to the head. This leaves the liver drained of blood, seriously depleting it of yin and causing immediate dam-age to the organ. To avoid this, from the TCM perspective it is best to have attained a state of mind in which all situations can be faced without anger. Failing this, if anger should be kindled, it must be acknowledged, for if suppressed, the qi is left churning around in the stomach and chest regions. All the meridians are liable to be af-fected by this turmoil as the qi tries to ¤nd a way out. For example, the natural ¶ow of the gallbladder meridian, which runs from the head down to the feet, can be thrown into reverse by the agitation of qi, resulting in a severe headache or even a migraine.
Daoist sages teach that anger can damage yin but also that ex-cessive joy can damage yang. A balance is required which calls for moderation in all things. Too much of any one thought, emotion, or action will disturb the circulation of the qi and blood of both yin and yang and their regulation will suffer accordingly. The effects can be summarized as follows:
• Excess anger, through its effect on the liver, upsets the qi and the blood of the whole body.
• Excess grief, through its action on the lung, causes pain in the region of the chest, respiratory illnesses, and skin disorders.
• Excess joy weakens heart yang qi, causing heart disease.
• Excess fear harms kidney qi, with the result that willpower is drained, the spine is weakened, and the bowels, urinary sys-tem, and sexual organs are affected.
• Excess worry exhausts heart and spleen qi with resulting lack of energy and concentration.
• Excess thinking causes loss of mental clarity.
• Excess talk wastes your qi and leaves you feeling worn out.
• Excess dwelling on the past, especially nostalgia, drains vitality.
78 Learning to Trust the Wisdom of Your Body
• Excess rushing about wears down the physical body.
• Excess criticism of others makes you become sour in both temperament and appearance.
• Excess leisure dissipates the will.
• Excess attachment to any one thing becomes an addiction.
• Excess desire, including too much sex, results in mental tur-moil and spiritual decline.
As the taiji makes clear, too much of any one thing leads to an imbalance which goes against nature. Ancient wisdom tells us that if instead we curb excesses, we experience all the beauty and richness of life revealed in the eternal play of yin and yang. The daily round is one of in¤nite variety and discovery when we are masters, not slaves, of the world of the ¤ve senses. Peace of mind and a healthy body are the two most precious assets in which we can invest.
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