“We quite literally have less ability to digest food when our mind is improperly digesting life’s experiences.”

Institute for the Psychology of Eating
Overview of This Page:

From the perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine thoughts and emotions that are not “digested” or “integrated” through the power of the self-aware brain can contribute to dis-ease of the mind and body. This is a common belief held in many types of yoga, energy healing, and even in western healthcare (although to a less detailed degree.)

What I hope to share with you today is a deeper understanding of what this process is, how it works, and how to avoid perhaps the most common pitfall I see in private practice.

The basics for emotional digestion were covered in the main page for this section found here.

The basics for the 3 “organs of the Mind” were covered in here.

The basics for the Mind in general were covered here.

Please go back and revisit any of them if you need to before reading on.

The Process of “Digestion”
All 3 major Organs of The Mind are involved in the process of emotional digestion, let’s look at how it works.
The body brain
  1. The somatic feeling created by the body brain. (Po)
    1. The body brain is responsible for triggering the physical body to respond in a specific way in response to a stimulus. This stimulus could be a thought such as “this is a good place to be” or this stimulus could be something you percieve through your 5 senses such as a sunset.
    2. The body brain responds to this stimulus based on prior conditioning/programming from life experiences. In the case of the above examples the body response is likely one related to joy, calmness, relaxation etc.
    3. Notice that the body response is at this point nothing but energy or sensation, perhaps a feeling of “opening” in the chest or “unwinding” in the stomach area.
the thinking/emotional brain
  1. The identification of that feeling as grief/joy/etc. by the thinking/emotional brain (Hun)
    1. The thinking/emotional brain attaches significance to the somatic feeling of the body brain based on prior conditioning/programming primarily through the use of “stories.” For example when you feel “unwinding” in the stomach in response to a sunset the thinking/emotional brain tells the story based on past experiences “I am relaxed” and labels the feeling something like “joy”.
    2. The significance or label the thinking/emotional brain creates is based on the “story” it tells itself. If the story is different such as if the story above changes to “I am hungry” then the label of the feeling becomes something like “sign of hunger” rather than “joy.”
    3. Notice that the story and the label of the feeling as a specific emotion are inter-related and both of them occur here in the thinking/emotional brain. (This becomes important soon)
the self-aware/conscious brain
  1. The conscious recognition of this combined experience as a manifestation of the body brain and thinking/emotional brain (Po and Hun) in the self-aware/conscious brain (Shen)
    1. When you become aware of the thought “I am relaxed” and experience the feeling of “unwinding” in the stomach then the self-aware/conscious brain has connected with the thinking/emotional brain and body brain.
    2. This is where things become really interesting and important in the case of “digesting” or “integrating” an emotion. The self-aware/conscious brain is in charge of “integrating” the information provided from the other parts and bringing harmony and balance to the whole process. This is where for most of us the entire process breaks down and is the subject of the next page!

Up Next: Mistaken Identity, The Most Common Cause of Emotional “Indigestion” (The Pitfall)

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