Balancing The 5 Spirits and 7 Emotions

Have You Ever Had To Cry On The Subway?

New Yorkers, we are too often, too busy to properly express our emotions. We don’t want to disturb our neighbors or roommates by venting our anger or make subway rides weird for others by crying. Some of us work or go to school in environments where it is not necessarily safe to express yourself or be yourself. In clinical practice, I meet so many people who are seeking a place to release pent up feelings and a way to balance their emotions going forward. We live a life that is especially divorced from what is natural, and oftentimes it makes us forget to take care of emotional selves and remember that there are forces bigger and greater than us and that we should connect to them on a regular basis. We don’t always have time or access to attending to our emotions living in a big city. This can contribute to us feeling excessively frustrated, easily agitated or angered, depressed, unmotivated, lost, creatively blocked or just out of wack. It is through balancing the Five Spirits and Seven Emotions that we can get back to who we are and what we are supposed to be doing in this life.

Wu Shen 五神 5 Spirits

The 5 Spirits are associated with the 5 Phases and their associated organs. They exist in all of us.

Photo by Deden Dicky Ramdhani from PEXELS

The Hun is the ethereal soul. It is the aspects that are eternal and transcendent. (Liver/Wood)

The Shen is the flower of the spirit, how all parts come together. The metaphysical you. The shen maintains balance among the other spirits/elements. (Heart/Fire)

The Yi is intention. Your ability to rationalize and organize. (Spleen/Earth)

The Po is the corporeal soul. It comes from the expectations of society that you’re born into. The material self that is never requited. (Lung/Metal)

The Zhi is your will. The inborn need that is to be fulfilled through action and industry. It is the person you should become. (Kidney/Water)

The Mind, in TCM is the manifestation of the blood from the heart. It is all of the internal and external inputs that allow you to navigate the world. These are general descriptions that required deeper study for context and understanding.

7 Emotions

Five of the seven emotions in TCM correlate to the 5 phases, their associated organs and meridian complexes. These five emotions are neutral when in balance and when they occur at appropriate times. Yu, constraint and Jing, fright are emotions that do not have a normal or balanced state and are only pathological.

Motivation / Anger / Uprushing Qi - Wood, Liver. Anger can create hardness or tightness in the body because it is like a shield or a weapon depending on the situation. It can affect the body by concentrating in a specific location —commonly the gut, shoulders or jaw. If experienced too often, it can weaken overused muscles, the digestive system and eventually cause toxicity in the liver. When anger is in balance it will result in motivation and creativity. The wood element should not get too hard or brittle but instead maintain flexibility and continue to grow up and out.

Joy / Excitement / Expanding Qi - Fire, Heart. In Western culture, it might seem that it can only be positive to be in constant joy and excitement, but in actuality, too much excitement will deplete your Qi. All emotions should be experienced in moderation and balance. Excitement is wonderful in the short-term but when it becomes long-term you begin having to pull energy from adrenals and will become exhausting. Being too expressive does not allow time for reflection, rest and replenishing of yourself. It is like experiencing the roller coaster of an adrenaline rush, followed quickly by an adrenaline dump —an overabundance of joy/excitement that is followed by an extreme period of sudden sadness. Excess heart fire can manifest as frenzy or mania. This can lead to inflammation, becoming easily over stimulated and hard to focus, neurological conditions. When in balance, fire burns steadily, controlled and will last a long time.

Planning / Worry / Stagnates Qi - Earth, Spleen. Worry is an emotion that often involves other people and has no resolution. Worry has a tendency to be repetitive and will eventually stagnate qi. It can get stuck in the digestive system and the brain causing feelings to be stuck and unexpressed. Digestion can become weak and problems with transformation and absorption can occur like diarrhea, constipation, bloating. It will impact your ability to absorb and retain leading to problems like memory issues, difficulty taking in new ideas. Too much chronic worrying can make people feel lost, and indecisive, they begin looking for others for authority instead of themself. When Earth is in balance, worrying can still occur but in moderation and emotions will be in a state of planning and cultivating instead. Earth in balance is stable, centered, grounded and secure.

Compassion / Grief / Descending Qi - Metal, Lung. Grief impacts the immune system very quickly and easily. It is often noticed when someone grieves a loss, a major life change or a break up and also catches a cold. Grief can cause the eyes or Shen to be dull. When there is loss it is a normal to grieve, but in American culture it is often thought of as a weakness or something that should not be expressed. This is unfortunate because it does cause people to suppress their grieving process. Grief exhausts the Qi and makes it harder to breathe and/or expel toxins. Holding grief in can also cause constipation or incontinence. When metal is in balance the grief you feel for your loss will lessen over time, you will learn to live without what you are grieving and you will find compassion for yourself and others.

Caution / Fear / Condensing Qi -Water, Kidney. Fear is a primal emotion. It can freeze or condense the qi. Overuse of fear can deplete your kidneys, adrenals and nervous system. When fear is experienced too often, over time it will deplete your jing, affect the strength of your bones and cause premature aging. It can also affect the functioning of your bladder. Fear is an emotion that can protect you from danger and help you get out of unsafe situations. When water is balanced, you are cautious when appropriate. This caution allows your fire element to not only be in control but to also flourish into whatever it is you want to make in this world and in your life.

Yu and Jing are emotional states that are purely pathological.

Repression and Depression

Yu - constraint, repression / feedback of qi - impacts Liver

What most of us experience when it comes to emotional imbalance, can fall under the category of Yu Syndrome. It is the byproduct of muffling normal emotional responses. When there is an interference of normal emotional expression it confounds the Liver’s ability to communicate with the other organs as well as summate the emotions of the mind. This leaves emotions unprocessed and unexpressed which can eventually lead you to acting a way that is outside of yourself. This can look like: snapping at people, feeling easily angered, crying at times you might not normally do so, constantly feeling irritable or on edge. It can also look like any emotions that feel too overwhelming or out of control. The emotion that was originally repressed or muffled can also express itself physically in ways such as: hairloss, skin rash, pain, bowel irregularities, menstrual irregularities. This can be prevented by making sure you are expressing emotions when needed. Milder imbalances can be treated with acupuncture but in longer standing or more severe cases, treatment should include talk therapy from a licensed psychotherapist.

Trauma, Shock

Jing - fright, shock / extreme stasis of qi - impacts Kidney. Trauma is not something we can control. It is something that occurs unexpectedly. Trauma can be a traumatic accident or an emotionally traumatic situation - in either case it will cause an extreme amount of qi and bloodstasis that most often manifests as pain and any combination of emotional imbalances. It will often affect multiple organs/element systems. Though these imbalances can also be addressed with acupuncture and herbal medicine it should always be concurrently addressed with talk therapy by a licensed psychotherapist.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture is a great tool because it doesn’t add anything chemically into your system. This is ideal for those on multiple medications or those who want to avoid taking medications or herbs. Because it is so physical, yet gentle, it helps the body come to the present moment. It gives you time to notice your body, allow what you’re feeling to integrate and at the same time deeply rest. I often seen people’s eyes (Shen) change at the end of a visit. Ultimately, when your immune system is activated in this way, your innate ability to thrive is also activated. Acupuncture for emotional distress and imbalances is not meant to replace psychotherapy.

Find a licensed psychotherapist at SteadyNYC

Written by Dr. Emily Siy, DACM, L.Ac. on 11/26/22

Use the code ‘BLOG’ for $25 off on an initial acupuncture visit.

Sources:

Bridges, Lillian (2012) Face Reading In Chinese Medicine Churchill Livingstone pp 230-235

Teachings of Dr. Stephen Jackowicz, Institute of Classical Asian Studies (ICAS)

Health CMI https://www.healthcmi.com/Acupuncture-Blog/2020-seven-emotions