Anxiety

[GOLDEN ARMOR]

How is anxiety treated in TCM?

I recently posted what happened on the 2nd page of the anxiety thread in the chi gong forum. Please read this post to see how this problem started.

If acupuncture is used, where would the needles be inserted?

Also what other methods will be used?

peace
Rob

[couch]

How is anxiety treated in TCM?

I recently posted what happened on the 2nd page of the anxiety thread in the chi gong forum. Please read this post to see how this problem started.

If acupuncture is used, where would the needles be inserted?

Also what other methods will be used?

peace
Rob

I'm only in my first year of a total of three, so I explain the fundamentals for you. As far as an actual treatment, I feel that you can't just base a treatment on telling me that you have anxiety. In TCM, the root of the problem is the symptom...not the western way of symptom.

Anxiety is though to resonate with the Liver. The liver is responsible for storing your blood. In the five elements theory and what we often see in clinic is that Wood(Liver) is overacting on Earth(Spleen - as your spleen is responsible for digestion). Therefore we can have a few different cases with this model.

If the Liver overacts on the Spleen, you could have diarrhea, distention/bloating, poor digestion, etc. Also, Liver Yang or you can think of anger/anxiety as heat - will rise. This can result in headaches, dizziness, and other symptoms.

What you talked about in the other thread - fast heart beat - is waht we would call heart palpitations. This is related to the Heart. The Heart govers blood but is the monarch of all emotions. I honestly would have to take your pulse, look at your tongue, ask about your urine, stool, digestion, energy, sleep - to get a better picture of what might be going on. The Whole Body theory, yah know?

Do I think that qigong can help with your anxiety...yes...but at the same time...if you can't get your mind and heart to shut down...when you're performing the exercises, you'll be daydreaming/worrying. It will take lots of patience and practise, though.

If you're thinking about fixing this problem and don't want anti-depressants to eat, maybe you could go see an acupuncturist/herbalist. There are many points and herbs that can ease the burden of your mind or whatever is affecting you.

If you have anymore questions or anything, post here or PM for my e-mail.

Sincerely,
Kenton Sefcik

[imperialtaichi]

How is anxiety treated in TCM?

If acupuncture is used, where would the needles be inserted?

peace
Rob

I'm generalizing here....

Try needling Yin Tang to calm the spirit;
Wrist Shenmen to pacify the heart;

and ear magnets/beads for ear Shenmen.

Cheers,
John

p.s. oh, sometimes Baihue too.

[vikinggoddess]

Hello,

I don't mean to be corrective here, but Anxiety is really the emotion of the Heart from the perspective of Chinese medicine. The Liver's emotion is anger. Is there another school of thought on this. I am not aware if so. I think this is classic zang fu theory.

I have found the Chinese herb wu wei zi, or schisandra, useful for treating anxiety attack. http://www.chinesetherapeutics.org/wuweizi.html An herbalist may find other herbs for you to help with your anxiety.

If you are drinking coffee, you should stop, because it will only worsen the anxiety.

[Repulsive Monkey]

Vikingoddess is correct here disturbance of the Shen i.e. the heart qi is what is usually the root of anxiety, next many would say is Kidney Xu, but not as much.

Liver indirectly can cause emotional imbalance only through Liver qi stagnation, and even that is more to do with mood swings, and irritability of its root emotion namely Anger.

Anxiety is a heart thang.

[couch]

What I have been taught is that all organs have an emotion or emotional state that resonates with them.

The heart is the monarch of all emotions, as the heart will eventually be effected and can cause problems with the Shen or Spirit.

The only concern I have with the prescribed points like Yin Tang, is that you can calm the mind, but what about if there is an underlying problem if imbalance?

The person in question needs to see an acupuncturist/herbalist...not ask about complicated whole-body therapies on the internet.

Good discussion and points brought up, though.

[Happeh]

Did Golden Armor leave?

Anxiety can be caused by trapped energy in the body putting pressure on the Heart. Acupuncture etc can help of course. I think it is better to cure the cause, whatever is making the energy get trapped.

Body posture can cause energy to be trapped. The type of kung fu you do and the way you do it can cause energy to be trapped.

You really need to describe you situation more than you have. In spite of your stated need for privacy. People need to know how you workout, what style, how often for how much time, diet and that kind of stuff.

There are some personal type ideas that can contribute to Anxiety also. Those you probably would want to keep private. People have all different kinds of ideas about what is acceptable to talk about openly. I talked openly about a subject once to an Arab guy and he never talked to me again. In his culture what I was talking about was about the rudest thing imaginable. ;(

[frog]

almost anything can cause anxiety. yeah it's nearly always heat (but there are also yang deficiancy patterns of anxiety) and the heat can come from ANYWHERE and disturb the shen. The source can be internal, external or neither (i.e. all sources of disease in TCM) It can be heat in any organ, in a channel, in any of the four levels, in one of the six channels of the shang han lun, in the diaphragm, anywhere. True, the branch is nearly always in the heart but the root can be anywhere. I see a lot of anxiety patients and it's nearly always tricky. Of course, if someone's into qigong, it's usually the qigong causing it.

[vikinggoddess]

Can you please explain how Qi Gong can lead to anxiety?

Do you use raw herbs to successfully treat anxiety in your practice?

[frog]

vikinggoddess,

first off i should say that INCORRECT qigong practice often causes anxiety/shen disorder. obviously, correct practice would cure it. there is actually a disease pattern in TCM called qigong psychosis. in general i believe what happens is that incorrect or overly intense concentration leads to qi stagnation, which generates heat and disturbs the shen. usually the practitioner is convinced that they just aren't practicing hard enough or that it's a "healing crisis" or something, so they just keep on it and keep getting worse. there are also people with pre-existing blockages and when they start building qi it just gets more stuck and generates more heat. there are other scenarios, but i'm not a qigong instructor, so it's not really my place to worry about the mechanism too much.

and yes, i do use raw herbs to successfully treat anxiety.

[Happeh]

Can you please explain how Qi Gong can lead to anxiety?

Do you use raw herbs to successfully treat anxiety in your practice?

I am not a dr. I like to use simple and familiar ideas to get things across because when I hear shen and stagnation and psychosis my head starts to spin. More than it usually does.

I like to think of chi as a water faucet. If you do Qi Gong, you are trying to turn your faucet on more so that more water and higher water pressure comes out of the hose. Instead of just one hose, there are lots of hoses inside of your body. To your arms and legs and head and traveling around your organs.

To my way of thinking, Anxiety comes from one of those hoses being blocked off. You know how when you water the lawn the hose bends on itself and no water comes out? And how, if you leave the hose bent like that, after awhile the hose gets a bubble where the bend is because the water pressure is trapped their.

That is what I think Anxiety is. One of the hoses that travels by your heart has got a kink in it. That kink swells up from the water pressure and that puts pressure on the heart.

It can also go the other way. If the kink in the hose is, just for the heck of it, lets say by your knee. That is far away from the heart right? So whatever water/qi gets past the kink that is by your knee? It is not enough. Only a very little of the Qi that the heart needs gets thrun the bent hose so the heart feels bad. People don't know what that feeling is. When they describe it to someone and that person says "That is anxiety", they say "Oh yeah, that is what I feel so I have anxiety".

If someone sat down and ran thru the description I just provided, then the person would say "Oh yeah, I have some kinda heart chi situation because I feel just like you described".

[frog]

that's cool if that's your opinion, happeh. just know that it's your own personal theory and not TCM.

as for the terminology, i think it's tricky to know what level to speak at in this forum. as with any specialty, the more technical the language, the more clear and useful the language is to someone who knows the lingo, and the more confusing it is to someone who doesn't.