 Welcome. Thank you all for coming. My name is Alexa Gilmore. I practice acupuncture and Chinese medicine in South Portland Today y'all are here because we're going to talk about worry Which from a Chinese medicine perspective is the emotional spleen So we're going to talk about the spleen energetic in Chinese medicine How that fits in with your digestion quite a bit and then how it fits in with this idea of worry and worry as an emotion Have any of you been to hear me talk here before? I feel like I want to be on this side. Can I move over here? So what I like to do is I'll give you a little intro. I'm going to run through a little bit of Chinese medicine theory and the thinking behind this just so you have a bit of a framework to work from any experience with acupuncture Chinese medicine Tai Chi. Yeah quite a bit like receiving or Giving receiving. Okay, and you enjoy it. Hopefully. Yeah, it's been good Okay, others have any baseline familiarity with Chinese medicine a little bit anyone like totally brand new Not so much. Okay, so that's good So the theme is basically going to be that there is a Distinct and very strong connection between worry and your digestion We have to digest the information that comes through us in our lives the same way that we have to digest food So taking it in Processing it breaking it down into its parts assimilating it and then getting rid of what we don't need We have to do that with the information that comes at us the same way that we have to do that with the food That we eat. So it's a new way of thinking about Taking in information from our environment and as this picture depicts for the most part in our culture We're overwhelmed with information We're having to process a lot of things mentally more than we ever have before and that's really doing a number welcome on Our spleen energetic which we'll talk about more our ability to digest our food And our ability our ability to digest our lives and our thoughts and our emotions well So it's a two-way street I want you to get familiar with the idea that our quality the quality of our thoughts is going to impact the quality of our digestion and Likewise the quality of our jet of our digestion can impact the quality of our thoughts It's a little bit of a chicken or the egg We don't always know which one comes first when I'm working with patients sometimes we tease that out and it Becomes clear, but it's a communication that's happening all the time that one is affecting the other somebody might have a constitutional Deficiency in their ability to digest food well and that might lead to certain thought patterns that have been with them their whole life as We ramp up their digestion and make it stronger those thought patterns can improve Similarly if people get stuck in patterns of thought because of stressful situations because of stressful relationships Maybe they've been a student forever Overthinking constantly ruminating over time can ultimately go inside an impact or digestion and now you're stuck in this battle Whether just feeding off of each other Hmm So as I mentioned our lifestyles a detriment to both we have information overload. There's a bunch of statistics about this but We are exposed to the equivalent of a hundred and seventy four newspapers of data a day The amount of information I've heard that we were exposed to today is more than most people a couple hundred years ago We're exposed to in a lifetime of just facts and figures and this is not wisdom It's right. It's one thing if this we're making us more wise But it's just stuff that we have to process and digest and it's overwhelming our systems all the time And then of course we're inundated with food for the most part. We don't live we have lots of people who are Calorie rich, but nutrition deficient. We have this overabundance of food most of us That's not really giving us good. It's not really wise food, right? It's sort of this information that comes in but it's not serving as well And then we're doing a lot of this at the same time. So we're sitting at our computer while we're eating We're on the phone while we're eating. We're driving while we're eating So if you think about it being a two-way street, we cannot do both of these things well at the same time So when you're at your computer, and I'm guilty of this too on busy days But when you're at your computer and you're eating at your computer You're not digesting your food well, and you're not processing that information well when people come to me for digestive issues We had this conversation. I tell them don't take my word for it Just try for a month. What would it be like if you always sat down and mindfully ate your food and didn't try to think and digest at The same time give it a month see what happens and I guarantee you're going to feel differently And when you go back to trying to eat while you work, you'll see that it's not actually working for you It's not successful This is sort of the General thinking about Chinese medicine that I want to share In terms of how to understand how we're working people think that it's kind of magic Probably not y'all because you're here and so you have an interest in it But people think that it's magic that it's hippie-dippy. It's kind of wackadoo And I'll put needles and then people think that they really will call me a magician like it's amazing that I feel better And it's actually not it's actually a science It's been developed over millennia by people who were paying close attention observing the body and how we can put Points in certain places and affect change in the system So I encourage you to think about it the way that we do Western medicine Which is that there are certain conditions for which blood work can tell us a lot of information, right? We get information about your hormones about your levels of specific nutrients in your body and x-ray gives us a really good picture of your bones We don't discount the value of an x-ray because it doesn't give us the soft tissue information that an MRI does right We don't discount an MRI because it's not telling us about the electricity running through your heart the way that an EKG does There are all these different lenses we can put on to give us information. That's relevant figure out how to best treat you and match The information that we get to tools that are going to help you feel better So I encourage you to think about Chinese medicine as another version of that We have a different kind of lens that we can put on to make sense of your symptoms to make sense of Your suffering and then through that lens we have all of these tools that we can use to help make you feel better It's not always a Better lens to look through than an x-ray or an MRI, but it has something different to offer And is no better or worse than an x-ray MRI depending on what you're dealing with And so then in the context of Chinese medicine, there's all these different ways that I might be looking at the body We're going to be talking a lot today about five phase theory or five element theory because that's where this The connection between digestion and spleen and worry which is why we're here all come together But there is a yin-yang theory. There's long foo theory. There's channel theory all related all share a language But all give me as someone who specializes in Chinese medicine a little bit of a different way of understanding What's going on with someone similar to all the ways that we can access understanding in Western medicine So the basics maybe some of maybe all of you are familiar with this But foundationally we talk about this idea of Chi and that Chi is a thing it travels through our channel system provides nourishment for every cell tissue muscle gland organ provides vitality for the body it doesn't mean that you're You know that your circulation doesn't do that or your nervous system doesn't do that or your lymphatic system doesn't do that it's something that includes all of those but is also somewhat separate has a It can be more specific than all those things and also broader, but it it it infiltrates our whole system and gives us vitality When she becomes blocked pain and disease results. That's the simple premise it gets a lot more complicated than that But that's the simple premise And you can imagine it like water flows through rivers on the earth We've got Chi flowing through our channels in our body And so on the earth a happy healthy ecosystem is going to have more water in one place and less water in another place That's true in our bodies as well Maybe these look familiar to you pictures of channels on some little statuettes More pictures so I don't can't tell probably don't come out very well But they run you know down the front and the back of the body down the arms and the legs and the channels if you're familiar with These images and the points on them where we actually put the needles Those are the superficial pathways of these channels They all dive deep and they really create a web within our whole system the superficial channels in the acupuncture points are places Where as an acupuncturist I can needle and effect change on the system as a whole because they do dive deep and communicate internally as well Channels are a two-way street So in a couple ways they act as mediators between the external environments and our internal environment They have to the external world kind of moves through us and internally or can They also relay information from just the exterior of our body itself to the interior of our body itself So if you've got something wrong with an internal organ It's two-way street if there's something wrong with an internal organ it can show up in your channels There's lots of ways that I'm making sense of somebody's symptoms to figure out what's going on internally But it can show up in your channels. So an example of that There are certain styles of acupuncture that do a lot of actual palpation of the channels And we know that along the lung channel, which runs up your forearm this way Around about here people who have a long history of lung problems Maybe lots of pneumonia or bronchitis as a kid Maybe lots and lots of grief in their life Which is the emotion associated with the lung that hasn't been processed well But things either physically or emotionally related to the lung can develop nodules in the channel So when people come in for complaints that may not seem specifically lung related We can find a nodule there and as a clinician go hmm I wonder if there's something in that lung energetic that would help this person feel better Similarly or oppositely relatedly Trauma or dysfunction at the surface of the body can ultimately impact the internal organs via the channels So an example of that this is an example from a great book that I use for sports medicine A physician in New York who was treating a Chinese medicine wise treating a patient for heel pain and the bladder channel and the kitty The kidney runs on the inside of the ankle the bladder runs on the outside So her heel her Calcanias was out and he was trying to get that back into place as he did so and her heel pain went away She came back in and reported. Yeah, and I've had this really funky bladder Problem, I don't know what it was incontinence and you know getting up at night much more urgently than she had been accustomed to and it You know from her perspective it spontaneously resolved But that's an example of the bladder channel was out because her heel was out But as we got that the integrity of that channel back into alignment it created alignment in her internal system And that's what makes this medicine really fun Another way to think about it It's like traffic management. So none of these are good. This is an excess So we talk a lot in Chinese medicine about excess too much of something or deficiency and wanting there to be the right Healthy amount in every given place. So obviously all of these are excess. We've got traffic jams But we also don't want this we don't want a deserted street either. This would be a deficiency. There's not enough there So how can I as an acupuncturist help guide things so that we've got a bustling street? That's full of commerce and culture and people enjoying life in the day And not have the traffic jam and not have the empty street now that being said an Empty street like this. It's deserted. This may be as normal in the middle of the night So it's it's all about context and if you think about that in terms of the physiology of the body There are areas where it's okay. If there's not that much going on depending on the situation But during the day on like a Saturday. That's not a happy street same thing with water so if you think of traffic as movement of energy and then Flooding or drought as a movement of water We need water. We need it to stay where it belongs in streams and lakes and ponds and reservoirs We can create canals and things for it to help move it around But there's too much water in both of these places obviously and There's too little in these so with the needles and with herbs we can help direct things where they need to go So we have a healthy dryness where it needs to be dry and a healthy wetness where it needs to be wet So why are we talking about the spleen mentioned this at the beginning and digestion when you're here for worry? It's because they're all part of the same energetic and we don't think of worry as someone here practices Chinese medicine I don't think of worry outside of the context of the spleen So this is one of the theories I mentioned five element theory Fire earth metal water wood all interact in the body in many ways They generate one another so you can think about wood Generating fire that you can see how that makes sense you have to burn wood to make fire fire generates earth also makes sense We burn something down it becomes char and goes back into the ground Water generating wood you need water to help things grow so they generate each other They also keep each other in check. We know that fire and water keep each other in check Just we know that naturally right we need water to put it out Wooden metal keep each other in check think about a metal axe and how you need something like an axe to actually you know Cut down a tree or something like that so they have all these Relationships in terms of generation, but also keeping each other in check in the system and You can't read this slide at all, but we'll go into the important part in more detail with each one So this is the same as the last slide fire earth metal water wood and it breaks down So you can see some of the arrows lots of arrows depicting all the different relationships and Underneath is a list of all of their correspondences the one that we care about is earth Because earth is the element that corresponds to the spleen and to digestion and if you look all the way down the bottom of the list to worry So because it might be interesting the internal organs of earth are the spleen and the stomach So some people often have a question you talk a lot about spleen and digestion in Western medicine spleen and digestion Why aren't you talking about stomach spleen isn't really a digestive organ true Spleen and stomach work together almost inseparably in Chinese medicine to govern your digestion We tend to name it spleen because it is more of the kind of overarching Energetic of the system where the stomach is more just the place where your food we call it rots and ripens your food Just kind of goes through your stomach It doesn't actually have quite the same Breath of actions on the body as a spleen does so we tend to refer to the spleen the spleen also in Chinese medicine works with the blood in a way that might be more familiar if you come from a western background And we won't go into that for the purposes of this talk But the spleen does control the blood in lots of ways and work with the blood in lots of ways Sensor organs are the mouth that makes sense because we eat with our mouth the tissue is the muscle So if you think about somebody kind of you know wasting away or being larger That often has a lot to do with food ability to eat or not eat The taste is sweet Classically speaking When we're talking about herbal formulations and people would be recovering from a really long illness Or childbirth maybe or coming back from war and being totally depleted the kind of formulas We'd give them to just Fatten them up really had lots of sweet flavors in them. We know in our culture. We're inundated with sweet We have too many sweets and so it doesn't make quite as much sense in the modern day But this idea of sweet being really important to kind of build Tissue and build mass when people were truly depleted The season is late summer That becomes relevant because we'll talk about digestion as a Moment of transition so the spleen is a lot about moments of transition of Thinking and ruminating but not having it turned to worry thinking and ruminating and digesting on things so that it can transform Into whatever give birth to the next phase of things so earth is This in between In between element at these points of transition and then the emotion is worry and I can talk more on some of those if It's interesting to you So what is spleen? These are some of the ways that that we talk about spleen in the context of the medicine So it rules transformation and transportation. What does that mean translation? It's the primary organ of digestion We talked about that a healthy spleen good vitality Someone's just they've got bright eyes They've they've got strong in their body and they've got good strong digestion no complaints no gas bloating nausea They got a good appetite their bowels move. They're just have a good strong constitution and unhealthy spleen These people might have they might tend to Abdominal distention or pain like they eat food and they blow it out really fast They may tend to have loose stools. They may have appetite disorders most often. They don't have an appetite Or they feel nauseous The spleen stores the consciousness of potentials. What the heck does that mean? So every organ has an emotional or spiritual component to it So this is where the worry comes in the translation being spleen is responsible for the consideration of options For pondering possibilities and for making final decisions So I really like to think about that in terms of digestion What are we doing when we take food in but our body is physically sorting things out? What of this is useful for me? What of this do I need to get rid of and that's That's that's related to the spleen in the mind as well in our thinking So somebody the thought patterns of somebody with a healthy spleen They have clear thoughts Decisions are relatively easy to make. There are other Other organs that play into this as well but For the most part their thoughts ease and decisions they have good insights They want to support other people in situations are sort of happy to be really helpful and to nourish others They're a nurturer and archetype would be earth mother just sort of like the mother who gathers everybody in question. Yeah That's a good question and I need to read up that I was just reading a conversation recently on that Not necessarily so Obviously, there's not the spleen. They're doing the physical functions But there is a sense that that energetic can be there without the physical organ and certainly the channels are still there So I don't know how to answer that I think it's a great question And now I have to go and figure it out if you email me out like do some research and get back to you and see What people think about yeah because your channels exist and I think that there's ways to If we're talking architects to think about this I mean it is the actual physical spleen that matters There are the actual spleen channels that matters But there's also this sense of what the spleen means in the body just as a human in the world And so ways to if you feel like any of this speaks to you and we'll get more to like the earth archetype later There's ways to cultivate that energy. I think even in the absence of the organ itself If it seems like that's out of balance It's a great question though And then an unhealthy spleen so these people worry easily Have difficulty making decisions. So that's the ruminating of worry is just the going and going and going and you're just so stuck You can't just move on and make it make a decision Mentally unclear and confused Excessively helpful. So not helping out of the goodness of your heart from your clear boundary healthy space I want to help you and that's all that there is but people who are almost helping out of a sense of needing to help because they they need the attention they need the Feedback they need the accolades. So there's I think we all are familiar with those kinds of people that have there's a neediness to it Where it feels sticky and cloying like eating something that's too sweet So you see how all these things kind of circle back around on each other sweetness is a delicious flavor But we've all had desserts where you're just it's too much So that that helpfulness in the same kind of a way so far so good Interesting hopefully, okay So worry is transformed by the consciousness of potentials and to creativity and faithful support so the idea is that worry and It's a virtue a state is actually the basis for Envisioning new possibilities because it's that taking everything in churning it up and spitting out something new If we don't have that virtue to come in and match with worry if it's a if it's an unhealthy unbalanced system Then it's just worry and it becomes excessive pondering and you're distressed and then it's a problem So a clinical set this is from a great book. It's called the web that has no weaver It's supposedly technically an introduction to Chinese medicine for the layperson. It's really Dense for the layperson, but it's a if you're interested. It might be a good read I still get interesting clinical I don't know what that is. I probably press something on here and now we have a Pointer oh wait, that's because I pressed pointer. That's fun. Does it move around? No, okay So clinical sketch nobody ever comes in this obvious or my job would be really easy But you get the idea so somebody comes in he's got chronic digestive problems It's textbook. He's got loose stools. He's got abdominal distension He can't control his appetite. So he suffers from cravings a lot and that's rampant in our culture sweet sugar addiction sweet cravings He's slightly overweight. He's unable to care for himself outside the realm of food. So it's something that comes up when people are Kind of really obsessed regardless of anything else when they're organizing their lives around food to an unhealthy way Sometimes you can think about there being a larger spleen issue Obsesses about eating ruminates about menus. We see this in a lot of people who are fit according to Western standards Obviously enjoys the physician sympathy so somebody who is needing to be nurtured like it's not able to generate that nutrition from within and kind of needing it from other people and Then in inquiry concerning there was a series of treatments So acupuncture herbs and then an inquiry concerning other ways to nourish himself so we'll talk more about this but Often earth archetypes and therefore people who might be prone to this kind of worrying don't have a Aren't in touch with how they feel nourished outside from food So food becomes the only vehicle by which they can nourish themselves So sometimes just taking a step back and thinking like what fills me up what nourishes me what makes me feel good How can I make room for more of that in my life can help to bring this system back into balance? I'm sorry. The typing is so small The handout you have is from this book another fantastic book called the power of the five elements It's written by a Chinese a classical Chinese acupuncturist who used to be a medical doctor And so he he really goes into great detail And I think there's quizzes in there that break down what archetype are you so are you more an earth person? liver a Wood person a fire person metal person So again the mother provider that is earth In a healthy way would be the unconditional love of a healthy mother that a healthy mother gives or the nourishing qualities of every person Somebody who provides or even just the existence of a safe secure and nourishing environment So somebody's who's had that throughout their life is more likely to have a stable earth element Someone who freely gives loving touch encouraging words studying hands. So again that gives support to others without needing something back so Healthy earth would be not self-absorption, but rather empathy and caring It would be not Ruminating thoughts and pensiveness, but taking action which we'll talk about it's another way to kind of break out of the worrying cycle to just Stop with the worrying and make a choice in that moment because that's the problem is the difficulty making a choice the neediness Would become loyalty fidelity and dependability And then that this person is able to be content and to be satisfied So something that we see a lot in earth types is that they just nothing's ever good enough and never satisfied They always need more Which we can relate back to for example the sweet Taste and sugar cravings and how when you're if any of you suffer from a sugar addiction Which I do if you're if you're on the sugar wagon, you just can't get enough. It's not actually Nourishing for you and yet you want more of it. You're never satisfied. Whereas if you gave yourself something deeply nourishing You you would be satisfied Yeah Identify the year and you were born according to the elements. I'm sure there is I don't know anything about it Okay, secondly what this looks like to me is a lot of Issues, and so I'm wondering if it also makes those connections I think there's I think that there's connections to be there's so many systems that that are looking at these sorts of things So I would say yes to all of that and then the usefulness becomes for me as a practitioner How I organize this sense that I'm making of someone with tools to help them So that's where the usefulness comes in so if you're so if you're talking chakras And it's somebody who's working maybe from an Ayurvedic perspective and treating that way I Know chakras in the context of yoga, but haven't studied them professionally So for me speaking that way doesn't give me as many tools to help someone But they're they can integrate very well people who do both and I know there's people who do both Vedic astrology and Chinese astrology and integrate a lot of that with this I could give you some context if you're interested I think it's fascinating. I just don't know anything about it We've kind of it's so funny when you make PowerPoint and I go back over it like I'm beating a dead horse here We've gone over this already, but you know repetition, right? So a maladapted earth We've talked about the neediness. We've talked about a Little bit about the anxiety but sort of like stomach issues the worry the rumination the feeling misunderstood Needing attention Unhealthy eating behaviors, maybe weight issues. So we've talked about all of these things. I Thought there was an adapted earth one. Oh We skip this one So this person yeah, it's the opposite they can understand other people's needs they can experience contentment and fulfillment They're able to be thoughtful and reflective and open to new ideas for some people that the idea Having a new idea come in that they have to process is just can't do it. So if you're able to actually process information Theoretically you're more open to new information because you can take in what you need and let go what you don't There's a stability and an adapted earth person and a security Getting their own essentials met so people who are well adapted aren't afraid to say no They're not afraid of taking care of themselves first and knowing that that's gonna actually let them serve others better Things we know about worry itself And this again, this is a lot of this is excerpted from the book that I think is really helpful But this particular physicians take on worry and Chinese medicines are rooted in early experiences of feeling inadequate Unsupported so not having that deep sense of nourishment and safety as a kid It's difficult to step out of ourselves when we're worried because you get stuck in that cycle of neediness So it's hard to be compassionate or of service because you're sort of needing everybody else to be in your own service and He had some really interesting studies that again I can get people if they're interested but the chronic warriors spend up to half of their time worrying So then if you go back to the beginning and think about how what that generates then so you're worrying worrying worrying Then that's impacting your digestion which is impacting your whole energetic Which is impacting your channels which then feed back in more to make your organs not happy So it's just this cycle and our job my job is always to find it's sometimes just this big mess of stuff And my job is to just find the what is the one way in what's the one thing that we can do? And that's different for every person even coming in with the same set of symptoms What's the one thing that we can do to just start to tease this open? so mindfulness is a Great antidote to the chatter of the mind the monkey mind It's a term obviously that we throw around all the time And I think lots of people take it on and do a lot of it And it's also really easy to dismiss because it's it's become sort of trendy to be mindful They're selling mindfulness all over the place, right? But this idea that sitting quietly lets you observe your thoughts and recognize them as only thoughts when we're Out in our day doing things we can actually feel like our thoughts are real that have to be tended to and when your only job is to sit Quiet you can almost sit and laugh at how what your mind is doing Does there does anyone do y'all have experience with mindfulness practices anybody not have experiences? There's no shame in that Everyone's done it so you're all familiar and then maybe y'all have heard this I've loved it since the first time I heard it you should sit in meditation for 20 minutes every day unless you're too busy And then you should sit for an hour Which I think is great And what I try to work with a lot with my patients in general anything that's mindfulness based is my opinion but keep hitting the microphone is One part about the actual 20 minutes you're spending sitting But more importantly it's about stepping out into the world and what that means When you're at the grocery store and your mind is racing or you're picking your kid up from school And your mind is racing and what tools do you have to stop it in the moment? It's not really about the 20 minutes on the mat It's about generating tools there that you take into your whole day. So helping people figure out What how they can turn their triggers around how they can catch themselves in habitual worrying or habitual thought patterns and Try to reroute those pathways in their brain Breathing being one of the best ways to do it for sure turning worry into action So we talked we mentioned this a little bit. It's this ruminating spinning spinning spinning spinning spinning Recognize that all of that worrying it's an opportunity To generate something you there's a lot of creativity in that again You're taking in all this information and you get to birth something new out of it So think about if you're suffering with a lot of worry What about reframing that and thinking of it as a springboard thinking of that worry as a gift Maybe not calling it worry, but like you're you know, you're digesting things And then using it as a as a springboard to make some decisions This fellow dr. Moss recommends to stay focused on a single issue And then as a practice to not let yourself move on to the next issue until some sort of resolution has been made with the First because we tend to jump like there's this problem in that one They just keep going you're not allowed to move on to solving the next problem until you've done something little with the first one So the friend and then the first step people get so stuck when you're ruminating and where do I even start? So the first step is just to make that first plan to change something to make a decision We all know this concentrate on being in the moment Not what have not what might happen in the future easier said than done But finding those triggers in our day well triggers where we're actually getting triggered But also just do you have routines of things that you always do throughout your day? maybe it's brushing your teeth or You know when you leave your house first thing in the morning that can become a moment to take a deep breath Have a little moment of gratitude To get grounded and focus on being in the moment Could set a time limit for thinking about every problem. So What if you just let yourself worry? What if you just set aside 30 minutes and called it your worry time? so that you could just Put some boundaries around it and then move on with the rest of your day and know that if something comes up Like it's okay. I'll get there tomorrow You can put it on a worry list and tuck it somewhere away But so it doesn't have to be this thing that's going all the time and worry free zone notes around the house No worrying. I know there's I don't know whether this resonates with any of your all's worldviews But I know some people who have like a God box And so when they have things that come up that just feel outside of their control They write it down and put it in the God box like it's not mine to worry about so that works If that's your worldview for some people Similar idea for my worry time. Oh We're not there yet. So those are some some basic worry stuff and then you've got handouts Well any questions so far I wanted to have a balance of like explaining the Chinese medicine piece But also giving you some tools that maybe are tools you've heard before it's not rocket science But it's always helpful to hear again Any questions about the Chinese medicine piece Any new connections made some of this new and interesting old news heard it all before It depends a little bit so the knee and the low back are governed by the kidney energetic But I always caution it's really easy to jump to conclusions with this stuff So it's all it's all about the context. So that is specifically when there's like a weakness to them not necessarily if there's Like a back spasm or something more acute it's sort of a sense of yeah Just chronically my low my low back of my knees are weak And you can see that like as we get as we age those things tend to get weak in us in the kidney energetic governs birth growth maturation and and a happy healthy aging process So yeah, but then there's other there's other ways to answer that question Some people would talk about there's different channels that run through your knees So the stomach channel don't mean they all do stomach well half of them. So stomach spleen gallbladder urinary bladder kidney liver all of those run through your knee so depending on where the pain is and The whole other constellation of symptoms there might be a different answer to your question There are also Okay, and there's also ways that again This isn't my area of expertise, but people will talk about particular muscles Representing particular emotions or ways that you might be stuck in life. So then those can be relevant It's all about the context Okay, so if we look at our ten keys for adaptation for the earth type The double page This is working on the Assumption that if you're worrying in general that maybe some of these other earth Issues are out of balance and by correcting any part of it You can bring the rest of it back together We talked about number one replace worry with reflection and action and some ideas there for what you might do Number two would be to practice empathy and compassion. So if this doesn't come easily or Yeah to listen attentively and to seek Comfort when it's appropriate for you, but to somehow leave the neediness out of it if possible Find situations other than family and friends to help others in need we'll talk about that and to practice it If it's not something that comes easily so for the earth person Some of these people are overly helpful and some of them could really use to be more helpful and that would help them get more balanced Seeking out satisfaction and contentment. So I mentioned this that earth types often don't know what brings them contentment and they're seeking Pathologically That contentment to come from food or from aggressively helping others or from like the character who Really liked the physician's attention. There's people who will you know jump around and around and around to different practitioners sort of meeting their empathy So figuring out what are other things that maybe your healthier choices that can bring me satisfaction and how can I bring more of that into my life? Altruism and service being number four So how can you this is the empathy and compassion that's reaching beyond just personal relationships? This again comes from research that the beneficial effects appear to depend on and this is no surprise Just being actively involved so writing a check to a charity is not the same as going and volunteering And connecting and being of service in that way Practicing gratitude so this sense that The feeling that earth people might have that they never have enough that everything is empty again because you're not getting nourished And if you're not getting nourished in Food or in life, you're it's never gonna feel like enough So to cultivate a practice of gratitude a lot of people talk about this attitude of gratitude It's very hip lately But taking a walk and just on the walk Practicing gratitude and it can be if y'all haven't tried this it can be very simple, you know just thankful for the sneakers that I have they're taking me on the walk thankful that I could put on my pants this morning thankful that You know, I have a roof over my head that I'm walking out of if it's a rainy morning It can be the most basic stuff. It's actually another really fun exercise to Which I've done in the past to have 30 10 to 30 minutes every morning where you just write all the things you're grateful for in a book So you start being grateful for like the tiniest things like your duvet cover And really being grateful for those things Practicing good self-care so recognizing that taking care of yourself needs to come first if you're gonna be able to take care of others well This feeds back into understanding What brings you nourishment and then doing those things and making time for those things fits into self-care Common Poor self-care habits for this particular person is going to be poor eating habits not moving their body. Remember how Muscles were associated with the earth element So a lack of exercise overextending or too many commitments not being able to say no So again the earth mother that wants to do everything for everybody It's one thing if you have the capacity to do that There's lots of people doing that who don't actually have the capacity But they don't have the capacity to say no either Yeah, learning how to stop being the person that everyone turns to you for help and support if this tends to be you And carving out time for yourself So think about affiliating and joint again, just if these resonate with you and if you feel like you are this earth type resonates with you that Earth people like to be the center of a village So if you're struggling, what if you can commit to being part of a group are you too isolated? And is there something in being part of a group that could help bring all this back into balance for you? Number eight Good nutrition and eating habits because we know how closely connected this is to your digestion So as we've mentioned earth types are more likely to use food to achieve satisfaction So how do we find nourishment other than food? Um Nourishment satisfaction comfort security. How do we have other sources for those? And then I stay down there ideas around eating This is a handout that I give to a lot of my patients that runs through from a Chinese medicine perspective What good eating habits look like? I usually talk through i'm not going to go through it all Um, I usually talk through it in the context of what a healthy metabolism looks like because I think a lot of us are really We've been told our whole lives what to eat how to eat. What's healthy. What's not healthy. It's changing all the time We've really become detached from how our body actually feels So a lot of this is just again eating mindfully Taking the time to Pay attention to what you're eating We have strong feelings about eating just three meals a day and not snacking that having some space In between meals allows your body to build up that digestive fire It allows your body some time to not be digesting your body, you know We're always digesting these thoughts if we're digesting our food too. It's hard to do both Other tips in here that I could I could talk about more if you're interested Um I hand this out a lot and I talk with people a lot about this particular handout in my practice So there's a lot of given for there Um Taking care of your digestive system so, uh Digestion is highly coordinated and involves a lot of different activities of hormones and enzymes and Parastalsis and we dampen it down quite a bit by Commonly taking over the counter of medication and prescriptions often for gastric issues that are that don't necessarily require them So to really think a little bit more deeply before taking those kinds of things and encouraging your loved ones to do the same Um That you know, so for example, I've got lots of people that will come in on acid blockers for acid reflux And they've been on them for years and we know that that significantly impacts your body's ability to absorb nutrients Their doctors haven't told them that so but they don't want to suffer with the reflux So let's get to the root of it, right? So not to say that these medications are bad But we we use them a lot when there are a lot of other alternatives that we might want to try first to protect our digestive system Keep it intact Of course antibiotics kill everything in our guts. Most of us are familiar with that now They're not just killing the bad bugs. We can be so happy that we have them But they kill everything and we really need to have the good bugs in there as well Oh, and that's a whole other talk Which is coming out in the news that we could go off on at some point Um, just that western medicine is now making this connection, right between the bugs in our gut and our mood And people in my field are like great, you've known that for a while now So it's becoming more specific the the the mechanism by which that's the case Is becoming more specific from a western science perspective But eastern science has known this out of the gate and it's no less true for talking about it in more general terms As long as we have the tools to treat it and help people get better Um So yeah, use this pharmaceutical sparingly and ask people about alternatives And then we can be so grateful that we have these really, you know in strong medications when they're truly needed But often there's so many other things we can do before we bring them in And then number 10 commitment and security big for the earth element. So, um If there's not security in your life in terms of home or finances or whatever might make one feel secure Is there a commitment to something larger that can bring some sense of existential security in some way? That can help this particular element sometimes feel A little more balanced and therefore help all of the the rest of the picture And now I think if I were to click the slide it would say thank you