|
Positive Emotions | Negative Emotions | Balance | |
Liver | Exercise effective control over the events in our life and we respond to sudden changes in a considered and flexible manner. | Become over-controlling, rigid, and inflexible, or to become under-controlling, which may lead to outbursts of Anger and irrational emotional reaction. | Anger or Flexible |
Heart | Heart is the house of the spirit. Joy and its nature is that of fire, spreads its joy like a steadily burning flame rather than a forest fire. |
If the heart suffers shock, great joy or sorrow then restlessness (of spirit) sleeplessness or worse can result. The memory can suffer and agitation becomes the norm. | Sorrow or Joy |
Spleen | The spleen has the role of sending clear energy to the head and brain. This results in clarity of thought that can give the sense of lightness and well-being. Thus the ability to think clearly and concentrate well is dependent on a healthy spleen function. | When the spleen is impaired there will be a deficiency of clear energy reaching the head, which can result in muzzy and, at times, disordered thinking. This can lead to a form of psychological block, where it becomes difficult to make decisions and move on in any facet of life. In the same way, excess of concentration and thinking causes damage to the spleen, leading to fatigue and lethargy. | Worry Disordered thinking or Clarity of thinking Lightless and Well – being |
Lung | The theory of Chinese medicine sees the lungs as being responsible for the extent to which we make healthy and constructive connections with the world we live in. With healthy lung function we are able to maintain structures in our dealing with others. Impaired lung function can lead to sense of alienation. | In particular, the emotion associated with the lungs is grief. When we deal with loss and change is a healthy way, our sense and experience of grief can be controlled and helpful. If the lung are impaired we may find it very difficult to cope with grief and change. | Sense of alienation and grief or sense of connection of the world. |
Kidney | The connection between will power and the emotion of fear is seen in the kidneys. The sense of personal power and will to succeed in life are rooted in healthy kidney functioning. | Fear is the kidney’s emotion: simple, basic, animal fear. At its most extreme, this kind of fear can cause an immediate loss of waste. It is a survival technique, linked to the unknown, to the dark night and coldest winter. It is on the one hand an instinctive, uncontrollable urge, and on the other it is the base from which we become worldly wise. Poor kidney functioning will lead to feeling of weakness and timidity – of being unable to face the demands made by life itself. | Fear or will power |