by Angela Lattimore

Head
The communication centre, where we connect outer world to inner world.

The control centre where information is received and processed, through this centre we can connect upwards to the heavens and downwards to the physical. Upward moving energy in this area is associated with abstract wisdom and spiritual awakening. Downward moving energy is associated with exploring the realm of the individual. Our heads are often considered the centre of our being, but it is our bodies and specifically our hearts that carry our deepest emotions. Think how we tend to leave the head bare, while we cover our bodies, so below the neck becomes private and hidden, where we keep those feelings that we wish to remain secret. The body therefore contains all our repressed issues that are too unpleasant to be shown in public, while the head shows the stress of separation from the heart.

Eyes
Through the eyes we see or sense others, and where we are seen and known, think how much we read about a client through watching their eyes. Clear sight does not happen at the eyes of course but within the brain, the visual cortex is found in the occipital lobe, at the back of your brain. If we are not comfortable with what we are seeing our vision may become distorted to make it more acceptable, we ‘blind’ ourselves to that we wish not to see.

Ears
This is where we hear what is going on around us, both pleasant and unpleasant; the inner ears are also associated with our sense of balance. This is also about hearing our inner voice and responding to it to meet our own needs and feelings. Again how often do we ‘turn a deaf ear’?

Heart
The heart above all is about movement, it is the pump that propels our life blood around the body, the heart has for centuries been associated with love, so as blood gives life so love gives life meaning, but with love also comes it’s opposites; fear and death. Love is expansive and all embracing, fear is restrictive and isolating. Without love, fear becomes hate. The heart contains pure, innocent love like that of a carefree child, but years of conflicting or hurtful experiences lead us to repress or deny our love, creating a heart that is locked away, unreachable. We hide our feelings behind embarrassment or fear of rejection. Disconnected from the power of love, life becomes superficial, uncaring and lonely. We need to be connected to the love that is within us, as a closed heart sees a world full of imperfection, mistrust and abuse.

Lungs
To breathe is to take in and to give out. The lungs are symbolic of independence, strongly associated with our sense of self and the need for flow of air/energy for life. Breathing exercises have long been known to positively affect mental states. Think how we tend to say ‘I can’t breathe’ when feeling smothered by someone. Problems that arise in this area are associated with these emotions, what is it you need to ‘get off your chest’?

Liver
The liver is closely associated with the energies of the third chakra, the solar plexus which focuses on power and self identity, this is often an area of conflict as it is hard to transcend these energies to move up to the higher levels and we often become a victim of our own frustration. The liver then reflects the anger and confusion experienced in trying to find ourselves and our purpose. The liver is where we detoxify both physically and emotionally and is traditionally associated with anger, and if not recognised and released it can become stuck, repressed emotion becomes depressed. I always liked the phrase ‘depression is anger without enthusiasm’!

Stomach
The stomach is the first part of the intestine, where we begin to digest what we have swallowed, where we might feel empty or nauseous or uncomfortably full. It is associated with affection, security, survival and reward, our relationship with food will often indicate what is going on emotionally, obesity and anorexia are different ways of expressing a similar state; that of self loathing that makes them crave affection from others that will never be enough to fill the ‘black hole’ inside. Over feeding is an attempt to fill it, starving is an attempt to shrink it. Longings and unfulfilled desires are also linked to the stomach. Tension in this area can be linked to a resistance to let things pass through, holding onto reality in an attempt to prevent inevitable moves and changes.

What is it that you just can’t stomach?

Spleen
The spleen has traditionally been considered the seat of our emotions, a word associated with moroseness. It is where we filter blood and produce important cells for our immune system, again associated with repressed emotions especially anger and rage hence the saying ‘vent your spleen’.

Kidneys and Bladder
The kidneys filter our blood, removing toxins and therefore are associated with removing negative emotions from our system. The bladder is a collecting bag for waste disposal. This area is associated with repressed emotion again, this time primarily fear, especially fear connected with relationships. Problems in this area suggest that there is a build up of negative emotions that need to be released. I was fascinated to learn that when the bladder becomes obstructed and needs to be catheterised (a tube inserted into the bladder to drain it) medically, the urine has to be released slowly, as if it is released too quickly the kidneys would fail, I was immediately struck by the emotional similarity and the feeling I had when I was struggling with repressed emotions, that if they were released too quickly, my mind would fail!

Bowel
This area is associated with being able to let go of unwanted, toxic substances, either physically or emotionally. Problems in this area are linked to an inability to trust that all will be well. Again the area becomes contracted as we try to ‘hold on’ not allowing the natural changes of life to take place, or letting go in a sudden rush to avoid feeling the possible pain of ‘letting go’. A favourite phrase of mine for people who have bowel/trust issues is ‘Things are always alright in the end so if it’s not alright then it isn’t the end’.

Proprioception (my opinion)

The word literally means receiving information from one’s self or about one’s self, again an invitation to equate it emotionally that was just too good to pass up!

Proprioceptors are specialised nerves that are found in muscles and joints, the inner ear and the chest, their function is to give information to the brain about the position of the body so you don’t have to look at your body to know if you are sitting or standing, they are essential for physical balance, maybe essential for emotional balance too? Could it be these that are responsible for our ‘gut feeling’ about certain things. Problems with proprioception physically will tend to cause muscle tremors, nausea due to balance being compromised and headaches as the brain tries to make sense of it all, much the same symptoms as motion sickness and emotion sickness in fact.

I would like to equate proprioception with our sense of self and where we are in relation to our fellow human, our position in life.

I came across another phrase that leapt out at me while researching this; ‘When muscle weakness or deficiencies are detected, proprioceptors send information to the motor cortex of the brain, triggering automatic protective mechanisms to prevent injury’, again I think similar things happen emotionally.

E-motion Sickness?

The intention of this paper is to use the human body and its experience of motion sickness as an analogy for emotion sickness experienced as a result of the speed of change in our society compared to the lack of evolution physically.

Let us begin by looking at the way the body works and how this might be influenced by our emotions. This is an area of on-going research referred to as psychoneuroimmunology, although this may take a couple of attempts to get your tongue round, when you break it down into its component parts psycho for mind, neuro for nerves and immunology for our ability to maintain health, it becomes a bit easier to understand.

Many scientific papers have shown the link between the thoughts we think and the effect on parts of our body, in technical terms the work focuses on minute chemicals called neurotransmitters that constantly ferry information between the brain and every part of our body, but in everyday terms we only need to recall our most embarrassing moment to feel the flushing of our cheeks to know that thought can very easily affect physiology.

Generally it is considered that whatever a particular part of the body does physically it will also do emotionally. For example the role of the kidneys is to maintain balance within the body by filtering out and excreting toxic waste and recycling what is useful. If we use that analogy psychologically we would look at our ability to filter out and let go of (excrete) toxic feelings, and learn from (recycle) thoughts that are useful to us.

Therefore it is increasingly important that we as psychotherapists have an understanding of how the body works physically and to consider whether psychological influences are at work with our client’s physical health as well as their mental health. For example if a client suffers repeatedly from a physical ailment that does not respond to conventional treatment, it is useful to look at the thought processes associated with that part of the body or the particular symptom and treat them psychologically and see what effect that has on their physical problem.

This is not the place to go into detail of every area of the body and what the psychological influences are and I have listed relevant books in the bibliography for those of you who are interested in further study. However I intend to go into some detail, especially in regard to the areas of the body relevant to the rest of this paper. These will be the chest, stomach, spleen, liver, intestine, bowel and urinary system, the eyes, ears, and muscles, and particularly proprioceptors.

Motion sickness is defined as feelings of nausea, headache, visual disturbances and muscle tremors caused by land, air or sea travel. It is caused by the brain receiving conflicting messages from it’s senses, firstly our eyes tell the brain that we are moving at speed, the fluid in the semi-circular canals in the inner ear tell the brain that we are moving up and down or round corners depending on the road surface, state of the sea or turbulence. Then the proprioceptors (specialised nerve fibres found in muscles and joints) tell the brain that we are sitting still! You can’t blame it for getting confused.

The human body has not evolved physically in the last hundred thousand years; therefore moving at speed only occurred when we were falling, this would have posed a serious threat to our safety.

It almost goes without saying that our way of life has evolved rather more dramatically and seems to be picking up speed all the time.

This brings me to my theory of emotion sickness, I believe that one of the reasons we become emotionally ‘sick’ is because of conflicting signals, from our various senses. This theory was inspired by an experience I had recently at a Higher Diploma training session; I was partnered with a colleague that I have known and worked with for over three years, we were instructed to stand face to face, maintain eye contact while he voiced his needs; what he said was ‘I want to be accepted’ what happened next was quite extraordinary, this person is my friend of course I accept him, but in that situation, standing that close, maintaining eye contact when I was asked to voice my feelings the only honest reply I could give was ‘I feel rejected’. Even though I wanted to believe what my ears were telling me, my eyes and my proprioceptors were telling me differently. So I began to doubt myself, was it my fear of intimacy that I was projecting onto him? Or were my senses telling me the truth, that although he spoke of wanting acceptance, it would only be on his terms and only on a fairly superficial level, I instinctively knew that he did not want me to ‘know all of him’ so I felt rejected.

In order to overcome motion sickness the brain has to learn to ignore the messages from at least one of its senses, car sickness is reduced if you sit in the front staring straight ahead, balancing vision and inner ear but ignoring proprioception. The word proprioceptor comes from the Latin for ‘one’s self’ + ‘receptor’ and means receiving information about oneself.

If we have learnt to do the same thing emotionally then it might help to explain why we tend to have problems with our sense of self in the greater scheme of things. That is; we accept that what we see and hear has greater truth or value than what we feel.

I believe we have an inherent need to know our place within our social context, I’m not talking class here, but where we fit in, am I liked? Am I good enough? Will I fit in? Does he/she love me? Am I loveable? As a social animal we have a need for the company of our fellow human being, we were not designed to exist all alone. Therefore our fear of rejection is entirely understandable as a gut instinct.

We constantly put out markers to judge ‘where we are’, using our various senses; Vision, are they thinner/fatter/prettier/uglier than me?

Hearing, are they more intelligent/in tune/better/worse than me?

I believe using our senses in this way is inevitably going to lead to e-motion sickness as these thoughts tend to be born out of a poor sense of self and the input will be constantly changing depending on who it is that you are comparing yourself to. In the words of the Desiderata ‘If you compare yourself to others, you may become bitter or vain, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself’. For clients with this particular bad habit I encourage them to look at their fellow human and think ‘not better, not worse, just different’.

This brings us on to the subject of relationships, in all senses of the word, with a poor sense of self (proprioception) we depend on how we look (vision) and how we sound (hearing) to attract a mate/friend, becoming certain that our lack of emotional contentment is because we are ‘ugly’ or ‘stupid’ how often do we berate ourselves; ‘why did I say THAT’ when recalling a conversation with a potential loved one, or ‘what on earth made me wear THAT’ convinced that we would have been loved and accepted if we had not uttered that sentence, or if we had chosen a different outfit.

In terms of therapy I have often had clients present with relationship issues; central to the theme seems to be a poor sense of self and a belief that they were ‘lucky’ to get this one and if they stand up to their partners they will be ‘rejected’ and therefore ‘all alone’. A recurring phrase that I hear is ‘I just want to know where I stand’. Here is a person wanting to maintain the status quo, they don’t say ‘ I just want to know where I’m moving to’ That is too scary, they are already suffering from emotion sickness so movement must be avoided if possible (the other way of dealing with motion sickness.) However when movement is avoided this doesn’t work for us either, again how often do we hear people asking in relationships ‘where is this going?’ Usually at a time when it is going nowhere! 

However we have to accept that movement or change is an inevitable part of life and to, figuratively, ‘stand still’ is not an option for very long. For me, nothing will bring me to a standstill faster than self-doubt, usually because I’m receiving mixed messages about something or from someone that I have given power to, and I become e-motionally sick as a result, when I remind myself of the healthier ways of looking at life, usually with the help of a combination of therapies, my sense of self returns and I’m up and running again. It reminds me of surfing, you are never really in control, sometimes you are riding the waves of life, sometimes you are underneath them, and if you try to stay there you will drown!

Let us next consider the fact that emotional problems can ‘somatocise’ that is, they can become physical, and anyway it’s better than saying the problem is psychosomatic as that tends to be equated with ‘and therefore doesn’t exist’. There is a growing wealth of evidence that proves certain areas of the body are associated with specific repressed emotions and then think of the senses involved in (e) motion sickness; we see that vision and hearing involve the head whereas proprioception involves the body.

The head is associated with control, communication and the face we ‘chose’ to show to the world, but it is the body that carries all our repressed emotions, those feelings that are too unpleasant to be shown to the world and so we get a mind body split. Clients suffering from this will present in two different ways; either living in their head or living in their body but not both.

Those that live in their head will intellectualise everything, justifying behaviour, if you offer any alternative it will wash over them as they reply ‘yes, but….’ They tend to want guaranteed outcomes, times, dates and precise explanation of what will happen.

Those that live in their bodies tend to present as a victim, they feel everything so intensely, they ‘can’t understand why this happens to me’ They will take ages over their replies usually missing the point and not answering the question, they are the one’s that give you the feeling that they are ‘not all there’! As our head is our communication centre, these people appear dreamy, as the therapist you need to be able to connect with your body to connect with where they are coming from.

Obviously neither of these options is entirely healthy; the ideal is to achieve an even flow of energy around our head and bodies, as illustrated in the chakra system. These ancient principles upon which many holistic therapies are based appeal to our innate wisdom, they help us to connect with our sense of self. Isn’t it interesting that as the rate of change gathered speed, there was resurgence in these ancient therapies, we have a need to believe in something bigger and better than ourselves, to trust that all will be well eventually no matter what happens to us.

I believe the future is in combination therapy, combining psychotherapies with touch; reiki, reflexology, aromatherapy, massage, and even more powerful, the somato-emotional release therapies.

In a world that sneers at a need to belong and to believe in a higher power it takes a strong sense of self to stand up for what we believe in, to avoid being sucked in by advertising and believing that we would be happy if only we had a different/better…..partner/house/car/job/face/body/life etc, etc; delete as applicable. If we can learn to connect with the true essence of who we are, and believe that that person has value and worth and beauty that is more unique than any magazine could come up with and if any person fails to recognise that, then it is their perception that is at fault.

Bibliography

For Psychoneuroimmunology

The Molecules of Emotion Candace B Pert Simon and Schuster

The Bodymind Workbook Debbie Shapiro Element

Your Body Speaks Your Mind Debbie Shapiro Piatkus 

Thoughts that Harm, Thoughts that Heal Keith Mason Piatkus

The Healing Mind Dr Paul Martin Thomas Dunne Books

Anatomy of the Spirit Caroline Myss Bantam Books

For Kinesiology

Your Body Doesn’t Lie John Diamond Eden Grove Editions

Your Body Can Talk Susan L Levy & Carol Lehr Hohm Press

Kinesiology for Balanced Health Brian H Butler T.A.S.K. Books

For the Scientific Bit

Human Anatomy and Physiology McGraw Hill Donna Van Wynsberghe, Charles Noback, Robert Carola

Neuroanatomy Basic and Clinical MTF Fitzgerald Saunders

Websites

MedicineNet.com – Motion Sickness

Additional

The Desiderata Max Ehrmann 1927