“Cry. Forgive. Learn. Move on. Let your tears water the seeds of your future happiness.”
Steve Maraboli
Specific Therapies And Their Uses:
All 3 of the therapies described below are great ways to get the stuck energy moving and keep it moving 🙂
Self Inquiry:
This is the art of seeing through a thought or emotion and overtime learning to let go of holding onto it. Primarily it is questioning your thoughts and beliefs in a very direct way and seeing if your assumptions about your experience actually match what you are directly experiencing.
This is covered in detail in “self-inquiry” and “de-storying”
In short (and related to todays topic) we can simply say that one of the most common ways to create these blockages of energy is to believe something that is directly at odds with your direct experience.
These beliefs are often subconscious and SEEM very true until you start to really question them. For this reason it is often very helpful to have someone help point them out and guide you through them since you may not find them or be able to see through them easily on your own.
Traditional Chinese Herbal Therapy:
These blockages of energy (samskāras) can get stored anywhere in your body. They can be stored in the skin, muscles, joints, organs…really anywhere. Traditional Chinese Medicine has over many years mapped out where certain blockages TEND to get stuck and what dis-eases they TEND to cause.
This knowledge helps tremendously in directing self-inquiry AND it allows us to use herbal formulas to “purge” the stuck energy and get it moving again.
Bodywork, Massage, and Corrective Exercises:
Many people who have experienced chronic pain for a long time often have these blockages of energy in the same areas as they experience the pain.
This fits in very clearly with the TCM model which understands pain as being caused by “blocked energy” and doesn’t make a distinction between mental/emotional energy (what we are discussing today) and physical/body energy which would be a side effect from say carpal tunnel syndrome or a fall on your back.
When using bodywork or exercises to heal the physical trauma of the body (muscle sprain, bulging disc, etc.) it is very common to come across these mental/emotional blockages which need to be resolved in order for healing to be effective and long lasting.
Up Last: Practice and Where To Next