Internal energy

Don't be irritated, upset or depressed. Or too stressed-out for too long, or seethe with anger. If these moods become habits of mind, they will affect your health, add wrinkles to your face and make you age prematurely.Maintain a good mood and even spirits for good health is common traditional advice to Chinese women for beauty and health - the same goes for men.Life has ups and downs, and being happy or sad doesn't undermine your health.Sudden and sharp mood changes or prolonged bad or blue moods, however, can disorder the flow of internal energy and damage the organs.Control your mood, says traditional Chinese medicine, though it's often not easy. Life is stressful and complicated.Western medicine, too, knows that long-term stress and exposure to cortisol, the "stress hormone" can cause cardiac, immune, nervous, metabolic, cognitive and other problems.TCM identifies seven emotions or feelings: happiness, anger, worry, thought, sorrow, fear and shock.They are, of course, not so simply detectable as facial expressions.TCM believes our psychology is closely related to certain organs and energy flows.The energy in wu zang (the five internal organs) supports the changes of mood, according to "Huang Di Nei Jing"("Medical Classic of Yellow Emperor"), the fundamental classic of…

The ancients believed that dreams could predict our future. Today, most people discount that, though our dreams do tell us about our desires, fears and emotional states.Traditional Chinese medicine has been studying dreams for more than 2,000 years and holds that recurring dreams can give strong indicators of our health, even pinpoint an organ that's out of whack.In TCM, internal energy balance is everything, but most of us don't notice a slight imbalance if we don't have symptoms. The five major internal organs (liver, heart, spleen, lungs and kidneys) may, however, give us warnings in our dreams that all is not well ?? if we remember them.If that happens repeatedly and there's a pattern, pay attention and check it out.Generally, happy and pleasant dreams ?? and no surprise here ?? indicate that qi (energy) is flowing well and there's no major problem.Recurrent nightmares and troubled dreams ?? when we are angry, agitated, terrified, sad ?? usually mean there's trouble with the flow of qi.Interestingly, if there's an invasion of "pathogenic energy" in the genital organs, people may dream of sex (though they may dream about it other times as well)."In traditional Chinese culture, dreams are connected to the five internal…