Rethink Major Depression

The Oriental approach

The Oriental approach to major depression is different from that of conventional Western medicine.

Western medicine attributes emotional disorders exclusively to the mind. According to Sigmund Freud, mental disturbances are a result of deep-seated emotional and psychological trauma in the mind. Modern Western medicine focuses on psychological and psychiatric treatments with medications playing a major role.

Hippocrates (460 BC), the father of medicine, believed that mental diseases and abnormal behavior were often caused by a malfunction of the metabolism, and not by a sick mind, or unbalanced personality.

The Oriental approach is closer to that of famous doctors of antiquity, such as Hippocrates, than to that of contemporary Western psychiatrists.

Like Hippocrates, the Oriental approach does not separate the mind from the body. Quite the contrary, the body plays a more pivotal role in major depression because the mind mirrors the body - a healthy body produces a healthy mind.

Chinese medicine treats emotional disorders and problems (major depression) primarily as pathological phenomena with physiological causes and effects.

Mental energy and the human body

Major depression is associated with emotions - the emotional well-being of an individual.

Like all forms of human energy, your emotions have a significant impact on your internal organs, glands, and bodily fluids, through which your emotional energy channels. As a result, each emotion triggers psychological reactions throughout your whole body, thereby affecting secretions of hormones, and the release of neurotransmitters in your brain and thoughts in your nervous system.

The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine says:

Anger causes energy to rise, joy causes energy to slow down, grief causes energy to dissipate, fear causes energy to descend, fright causes energy to scatter, exhaustion causes energy to scatter, worry causes energy to stagnate.

Emotions play a significant role in generating energy that affects the body as well as the mind.

The Seven Emotions

According to the Chinese medicine, the Seven Emotions are responsible for major depression:

Anger

Anger is associated with your liver, which controls your blood, bile and other bodily fluids. The dominant liver’s yang energy weakens your liver’s yin energy. (To understand more about the balance of yin and yang, go to my website The Pillar of Balance and Harmony.) As a result of the imbalance between the yin and the yang in your liver, this ascending liver’s yang energy begins to affect your heart and brain, causing headaches, insomnia, and mental confusion.

Anger can damage your liver, which in turn causes more anger, and thus creating a self-perpetuating cycle of destructive emotional energy, which is the root cause of major depression.

Anger Management shows you how to manage your anger, which is the most damaging emotion to your vital organs, in particular your liver and your heart.

Anxiety

Anxiety blocks energy and injures your lungs. Shallow breathing and shortness of breath are some of the symptoms of anxiety.

In addition, anxiety affects your large intestine, causing constipation. Chronic anxiety may further damage the functions of your spleen, pancreas, and stomach. The resultant indigestion further lowers your body’s immunity.

Concentration (Compulsion)

Over concentration or compulsion disrupts energy in your spleen, pancreas, and stomach.

Mental fixation in the form of addictive behaviors impairs your digestive system, leading to loss of appetite and poor nutrients.

Fear

Fear damages your kidney energy, causing it to descend to affect your bladder as well. Panic attacks and chronic fear can cause renal failure and permanent kidney damage.

Fright

Due to its sudden and shocking nature, fright scatters and dissipates energy from your heart.

If fright persist, it become chronic fear, which may also damage your kidneys

Grief

Extreme grief injures energy in both your heart and lungs, making you more susceptible to grief and pessimism, which in turn further weakens your heart - a continuous psychophysiological circle.

Joy

Too much joy, such as mania in bipolar depression, slows down your heart energy, damaging the heart as it loses its control over your body. Over joy can cause heart attacks.

Emotional disturbances, due to imbalance and lack of harmony in the yin and the yang are injurious and disruptive to your vital organs, especially the heart, which houses your spirit and consciousness.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture is the Oriental medical practice of “needle piercing” into the skin to stimulate specific anatomic points in the body (known as acupoints or acupuncture points) for therapeutic purposes. Along with the application of fine needles, acupuncture may also use heat, pressure, friction, suction, or impulses of electromagnetic energy to stimulate the points.

Acupuncture stimulates acupuncture points to balance the flow of energy (qi) in the body to restore health.

Acupuncture is based on the principles of the Chinese philosophy of healing:

·   Taoism of moderation, living in harmony with nature and striving for balance

·   Balance and harmony of the yin and yang, affecting the body, mind and emotions (for more information on the yin and yang, go to my website The Pillar of Balance and Harmony)

·   Microcosm of the body in relation to daily and seasonal changes of nature expressed in the Five Elements (for more information on the Five Elements, go to my website The Pillar of Balance and Harmony)

·   The Three Treasures

The flow of qi (internal energy) must be constant and continuous; any excess or blockage will result in disharmony, which affects different organs, which in turn affects different emotions, resulting in depression.

The objective of acupuncture is to stimulate your acupuncture points to ensure the smooth flow of qi throughout your entire body. (For more information on qi, visit my website Natural Healing.)

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

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