Part#2 Alkaline & Acidic Emotions-The Impact on our Bodies
*If you haven’t read the first article:Alkaline & Acidic Emotions I’d encourage reading it first.
I’d like to propose a simplified way of understanding how our emotional states can impact our physical bodies. If you think about emotions as a substance, not just a “feeling” or an “idea”, but a physical substance; (and, in fact we now know that emotions are chemistry in our bodies-so it’s more than an idea…emotions are in fact substance, as we recognize that the hormonal chemistry that makes up our complex emotions is substance.)
Now imagine taking the chemistry that is produced in your body if for example you choose to express gratitude. I invite you to take just a quick 30 seconds to say out loud, write, meditate or perhaps think or give thanks out loud for something you’re grateful for, or something you have been grateful for in the past, and feel what that gratitude feels like. Allow your face to feel what gratitude feels like. You may notice your mind becomes a bit lighter, maybe your forehead a little less tense, maybe your shoulders relax a bit, you may feel some warmth in your chest, you may notice a smile come to your lips, as you engage in feeling what it is to truly feel and express how grateful you are for something.
If you’ve taken a few moments to do this, this brief exercise has literally now created healing chemistry that is now flowing in your body—YES! This quickly! Imagine this in the form of a pill for the sake of a simplified illustration; you’ve now taken a “gratitude pill”, and swallowed it. Your stomach, digestive track will now begin to process this “gratitude pill” and this is going to be absorbed and transported to nourish each and every cell of your body! How does that feel to bring the chemistry of gratitude to every cell that makes up who you are in your physical body?
How might this “gratitude pill” affect your limbs, organs, brain, your heart, systems and cells in your body? Imagine every cell of your physical body being surrounded by gratitude…what a thought! We can often literally feel how good gratitude makes us feel…and to imagine that chemistry as a pill that’s transporting all that good feeling chemistry to every limb, organ, tissue and cell of our being is quite a beautiful thought!
Now let’s look at the flip side of the equation. I’m not going to ask you to engage in meditating on any of the “acidic emotions” but imagine if you were to do this same exercise with an “acidic emotion”….indulging/fixating your thoughts and emotions on self pity, bitterness, anger or worry for example. This is also creating chemistry….imagine a pill FILLED with the substance of bitterness or anger…is this a supplement anyone would pay money for, and willingly swallow, knowing the contents of it?? I think most of us can agree if we saw a pill of bitterness or anger, we’d recognize that capsule would be straight toxic poison! It congers an image for me of a skull and cross bones! Nobody in their right mind would buy a supplement at a store that said,”Toxic self-pity take 3 times daily”, “Bitterness–Bomb-take on an empty stomach before meals for full effect”, let alone swallow it!
Gah! What an awful thought!
Imagine what a capsule filled with unforgiveness, anger, or worry would do as it gets transported and absorbed into every cell of your body. How would that impact the function of cellular energy? Cellular waste disposal? How might it clog cellular detoxification processes? Cellular function? The aging process of that cell? The complex communication system between cells, if it was bathing in self pity…anger….bitterness all around it? The vitality of every cell of your body? What might that do if you imagine a cell under a microscope swimming in a pool of chemical anger? Scary, right?
You get the point!
The challenge is, we’re not usually thinking very level headed when we’re hurting-we’re feeling what we’re feeling and we all have a story of why we’re feeling what we’re feeling–and feeling “bad emotions” for a while, as we’re working through them isn’t necessarily wrong–it’s the long term indulging in them that really creates issues for us, not in facing difficulties and being willing to work through them. It’s the gap from where we are, to finding a way to work through them that we often need to find a way to shorten, as to minimize unnecessary suffering. (*and yes, I am notorious at run on sentences, because I get to talking or writing passionately about something, and punctuation sometimes, well….feels like it gets in the way. So allow me to officially apologize to anyone who really needed to see more punctuation, or more periods in there, if, by chance, that created an acidic emotion for you!) 😉 Moving right along…
The challenge is….the emotions we generate aren’t merely a pill from the outside we can choose to take and ingest or not…they are produced inside of us–we produce them, so even this metaphor truly limits our understanding of just how powerful it is for us to give thought to and begin to train ourselves in the use of our physiology and in working through our emotions and life’s challenges.
Then there is the reality that difficulties and grief and losses happen, and life isn’t always easy, and I’m not suggesting we live afraid of facing the difficult emotions, or fear feeling them….on the contrary, I propose that we MUST face difficulties and grief and losses, and that there is a place for shedding tears, working through fears, betrayals, difficulties, losses and life’s pains, releasing toxic acidic emotions, because if we do not, that is when we can get stuck, and that is where the acidic emotions have the greater risk of creating longer term challenges also to our physical bodies as well as our emotions. Ignoring is not the answer. Facing them with the appropriate support to our physical, emotional and spiritual sense of well being in mind is important…and this too isn’t intended to sound like an over simplified answer, because how many of us know “exactly what we need” in terms of treatments, supplements, spiritual guidance and talking/counselling especially as we’re dealing with something tough?
When we are willing to face difficulties, and choose to work through them, we are able to begin to release the toxic emotional load; whereas if we choose to retain the acidic emotions/offences, we also force our physical bodies to bear the load of these acidic emotions with their chemical substance potentially also getting lodged in our physical bodies, as well as potentially getting emotionally stuck. (This isn’t intended to be a comprehensive look at how to work through our emotions, rather a brief, simplified suggested way of understand that our emotions impact our physical bodies & sense of well being.)
Life is complicated. Life is tough. I’ve been reminded that when life’s challenges are hitting full force, let’s be honest, sometimes we don’t want some other annoying sounding “answer”, and we certainly don’t want to be given what feels like another “to do” on our already too long list, in order to fix how we’re feeling…we just want a way to get what feels “bad”, out of our system sometimes….I think there’s a reason we have sayings like,”I feel like I’m going to explode!”
“I really need to blow off some steam!”
“I’m going to blow a gasket!”
“I’m about to flip my lid!”
“I’m about to lose it!”
Most of us have said or felt this way at times…notice all the sayings are expressing getting a sense of overloaded (“bad”/acidic) feelings out, and there’s some form of substance or “thing”….an explosion, steam, a gasket, lid flipping off…or about to lose something…something has to get “released.” I don’t think sayings like these are accidental, rather an inbuilt understanding that we have to find ways to release the build up of difficult emotions that otherwise can lead to toxicity being stored in the body if we don’t process life’s challenges, that started from an emotional state.
Sometimes the starting point is asking someone we trust who we believe has our best interest in mind, who can help guide us in the right direction with some practical help/suggestions, as we willingly begin to process life’s challenges with the help and support of others who care for us.
…More on this to come.
With care,
Katarina