 Now, there's a really different view of how emotions arise where they go and what they are in traditional Chinese medicine versus conventional medicine. In Western society, we are indoctrinated by this idea that emotions, number one, they only exist really in your head. They come from your brain, right? We think of neurotransmitters, we think of like antidepressants being SSRIs. We think of all these processes not only related to diagnosis, experience, like subjective experience as well as treatment relating to the neck up for emotions. Now, in this video, I want to share why I think that's only a piece of the puzzle and in many cases wrong as well as what one of the Chinese medicine views of emotions and emotional healing is. Hey, it's Dr. Alex Hine, Chinese medicine doctor, author of the health book, Master the Day. Now, I've included a very important link below this video, which is for a free download for you, which is for daily rituals that can help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. You can check it out right below this video. So let's say you feel a bit anxious or you feel a bit depressed or you feel sad, right? In the West, and well, this is worldwide now, but historically, there's this view that, you know, if you have an emotion, it's somewhere in your head. The problem with that, though, is that number one, if you say, where do you feel sad? Someone will point to their chest or their lungs or where do you feel anxious? People point to their heart, they point to their throat, they point to their stomach. But in the West, you know, this, the main paradigm of medicine and of science right now, you either basically go two ways. You go to your physician and your psychiatrist or you go to a therapist. Both of them are designed to view and treat emotions as primarily psychological in your head. The physician or psychiatrist will, for example, give you SSRIs, right, designed to affect neurotransmitters in the brain. And you're a therapist, you'll speak to them. And it may be cognitive behavioral therapy or talk therapy or narrative therapy. But all of these are cognitive, i.e., in your brain based therapies. But the funny thing is emotions just are not in your brain. One of the most effective ways to not only recognize, but treat and heal emotions is not through the brain, but it's through the body. Now a lot of new research is coming out now that suggests and supports this. And one of the main reasons why Bessel Vendorkoch, whose bestselling book, The Body Keeps the Score, one of the reasons that it is a bestseller is because it is challenging the dominant paradigm that you need to address emotions through talking or antidepressants or other medications for whether it's anxiety, whether it's PTSD, whether it's trauma, but that actually treating those through the body, through somatic exercises are proving to be some of the most effective at really resolving these issues. So just the fundamental paradigm shift that I feel anxious or I feel depressed or I feel sad and that not that it's neurotransmitters that need to be corrected, but rather that there's something right now that is maybe not flowing in the way it should. It's almost like the door hinge has been rusted shut on a door and something needs to move that and that maybe it's yoga or it's exercise or it's something else somatic in nature like going for an hour walk or calving or getting a dog that those will be valuable foundational healing practices. Now, I'm not saying don't see your physician. I'm not saying don't take antidepressants. I'm not saying don't see a therapist. Do all those things. If you feel like that is what's going to be the most effective for you. But there is also another view. There is an alternative to that and there is another way. And the thing that I've seen to be most profound is when people shift from understanding that these emotions are just cognitive in the brain, but they're really in the body and I guess the brain you could say you could say the body brain, the body, mind, whatever word you want to use, you treat that as the cause and the solution. And then you can not only work with whatever practitioner you're working with, but using somatic therapies can also provide a really, really intense resolution. So the Chinese medicine approach to emotions is interesting. There are critics that have said that Chinese medicine has no approach to psychology, right? That there is no psychology or psychiatry in Chinese medicine and on some level that is true because we treat the emotions through the body, right? So for example, you have the kidneys, which may be associated with the emotion of fear or anxiety. And one way that manifests clinically is that people that are exposed to prolonged fear or anxiety can have, you know, damage to their adrenals. They'll have that adrenal kind of burnout response. Now, another thing is that you look at like the overworked or stressed out executive or CEO, who's putting in 70 hour weeks since they're 22 years old. And by the time they're 40, half their hair is thinned and it's gray. And so there's this kind of premature aging, this kind of cellular oxidative stress that in Chinese medicine, the kidney is associated with willpower. So you overuse your will, you damage that specific organ. But the reason why practices like Qigong, which literally mean Qi work or breath work, why it's so important in daily life is because it moves all of those things that are stuck emotions and trauma being just one of them. So I'll never forget in China, we were doing these Qigong and Tai Chi exercises and you'd have to stand there like the post for hours, basically until you cried or until you just literally broke down. And my seafood then was saying that if you keep doing this long enough, it will actually remove trauma and will remove when those emotions come up and that trembling happens, it will purge that stuff and help it move. You know, it's funny because in the West, I just see so many people when they have negative emotions, they go to these cognitive exercises like to journal or let me think it through. And in my mind, clinically, I find what's 10 times more effective is go exercise for an hour. Go for a run, go walk the dog in the woods, do something that changes your physiology and you'll see those emotions change as well. Because it's not just your mind. It is your body and your mind and they're not separate things. They are one thing. So I don't know. This is as all my videos are, half rant, half educational. But I hope it helps like the next time you're experiencing an uncomfortable emotion, do some physical movement, do a somatic exercise. Rather than getting stuck in your head about what to do and how to approach it and talking about it for hours. Just go get a one hour workout in because your emotion may not be in your mind. It may be stuck in your body. All right. Hope that helps. Again, if you want to stay in touch, you can download the free guide below this video, which is four daily rituals that can help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And if you'd like to become a patient as well, you can find out how when you subscribe for that in my email series, it'll give you that info. All right. Before you go, I have two more related videos for you here.