Happy New Year to you and your loved ones! 2020 is finally coming to an end. A lot has happened during this past year. It’s time for all of us to move on.

Here’s my gift to you, a 6-minute video with energy movements that can create calm, joy, and laughter for you and your family.

Let me know what you find by leaving me a comment below.

Wishing you a wonderful 2021 filled with love, peace, and prosperity!
Dan Zhou, Ph.D.

A popular way to relieve neck tension is to massage the 7th point on the Lung meridian, Lie Que (列缺), commonly know as LU-7.

LU-7 is one of the four Command Points in acupressure/acupuncture. It influences the neck and throat area.

Here are a few benefits from massaging this point:

• Reducing neck tension
• Relieving sore throat
• Soothing cough and asthma.

Let me know what you find by leaving me a comment below.

General guide for acupressure:

• Use firm pressure when you massage a point, unless it’s too painful. If it is, then use lighter pressure.
• If the point is painful to massage, it means that there is energy congestion and it’s in need of massage.
• If it’s not painful, you’ll want to dig around. You may find a spot that’s tender.

A Happy Client

There I was in my office. My client, John (not his real name), a retired attorney, walked in and said: “I can’t stand those reckless drivers!”

John’s statement took me by surprise. Here in South Florida, people are more erratic on the road than in other parts of the country. However, John’s a gentle, kind and intelligent person. Seething with frustration seemed to be out of his character.

Melanie, his wife, saw my response and chuckled: “That’s the only time John gets mad. Any suggestions?”

“Yes! When you drive on the road, make the hush sound, ‘shh’. That’ll help balance the liver system, which governs frustration and anger,” I told them.

The next time they came in, John was elated. “I no longer get mad at other drivers,” he exclaimed!

Anatomy of Emotions

It may sound like magic that John was able to get rid of a mild case of road rage with a simple sound. That’s because most of us haven’t been introduced to what I call the “anatomy of emotions”, the mechanism through which a human emotion works.

Once you know the anatomy of emotions, it becomes straightforward to manage your challenging emotions. Here, I present you a simplified model.

In the Five-Element Theory of Chinese Medicine, there are 5 buckets of emotions: fright, anger, panic, anxiety and grief. Each set of emotions is an attribute of the physical state of a particular visceral organ.

Think of emotions and organs as scents and fruits. Each type of fruit gives off a particular range of scents.
A healthy apple emits a pleasant smell. An overripe, bruised apple emits a rotten smell.

Liver System

Take your liver as an example. Let’s use the term “liver system” to represent your liver and its related energetic system. The set of emotions ‘emitted’ by the liver system includes anger, frustration, judgment, vision, forgiveness and assertiveness. They’re the same for you as they are for me.

When your liver system is healthy, it emits healthy emotions. You feel confident and assertive.

When your liver system is stressed, it emits challenging emotions. If you’ve been a heavy drinker with a compromised liver, you get frustrated and angry easily. This is the natural law.

When you bring balance to your liver system, your emotions will naturally move from frustration to assertiveness.

3 Secrets of Emotions

In summary, the secrets of emotions are:

• Your emotions are related to your internal organs. They’re natural attributes of your visceral organs.
• You experience these emotions with your physiology; your cells, hormones, etc.
• Each organ has its own distinct set of emotions. The liver system holds the anger bucket, the kidney system holds the fright bucket, and so on.

Healing Techniques as Toolkit

The best part of this model is that there are simple healing techniques to balance your organ systems. These include energy exercises, acupressure, sounds, etc. – all of which can transform your emotions. I’ve shared many of them with you on this blog.

One way to balance the liver system is by making the hush sound, ‘shh’. As irritation is one of the stress emotions ‘emitted’ by your liver system, making the sound ‘shh’ can help you stop being irritated.

That’s exactly what my client John did.

One last thing

You’ve just learned about the anatomy of emotions, the best kept secret in Chinese Medicine about emotions. What do you think? What’s your gut telling you?

Leave me a comment below!

Disclaimer: The information presented in this article and on this website is for educational purposes only. It’s not intended to be a diagnosis. Reading articles on this website does not constitute a healer/client treatment relationship.

The most popular way to sooth any abdominal discomfort is to massage the 36th point on the Stomach meridian, Zu San Li (足三里), commonly know as ST-36.

ST-36 is one of the most well known points in acupuncture treatment. It is known as the #1 longevity point. It is also one of the four Command Points for the body. It influences the abdomen. As such, it is beneficial for your stomach and intestines.

Here are a few more benefits from massaging this point:

• Enhance your immune system.
• Strengthen your digestive track.
• Boost your energy.

General guide for acupressure:

• Use firm pressure when you massage a point, unless it’s too painful. If it is, then use lighter pressure.
• If the point is painful to massage, it means that there is energy congestion and it’s in need of massage.
• If it’s not painful, you’ll want to dig around. You may find a spot that’s tender.

Let me know what you find by leaving me a comment below.

Acupuncture and acupressure have been accepted by Western Medicine for pain relief. Here I’m introducing you to one of the most powerful acupressure points, he-gu (合谷), the 4th point on the Large Intestine meridian.

It is one of the four Command Points for the body. It influences the head, face and mouth. As such, it is beneficial for headache, toothache, eye pain, and gum pain.

When you massage it regularly, you’ll help reduce the chance of having those symptoms.

BTW, if the point is painful to massage, it means that there is energy congestion and it’s in need of massage.

If it’s not painful, you’ll want to dig around to find a spot that’s tender.

Let me know what you find by leaving me a comment below.

A Happy Client

A few months ago, a young lady came to me, seeking energy healing. She was anxious all the time. Her stomach could barely handle any food. She got tired easily. She was so weak that she was barely able to get around or do housework.

Like most of my clients, she had tried many treatment options, from Western medicine to other holistic modalities. She came to me as a last resort.

I worked on stabilizing her energies while guiding her to slowly make adjustments to her diet. Within a few months’ time, she was able to feel normal, in a way she hadn’t in years.

My Take on Diets

Years ago, I avoided talking to my clients about diet. As an energy healer, I restricted my work to balancing the body’s energies.

However, I’ve seen many cases of ‘untreatable diseases’ resulting from diet mishaps (on top of other, myriad causes), and my mind changed on the topic. Over time, I realized that this is the #1 diet mistake that nobody talks about.

The Impact of Raw Food on Your Body

When clients who rejected almost all food started showing up in my office, I was puzzled. It sent me on a wide
research about stomach indigestion.

Finally, I came upon an article from Chinese Medicine that said raw food is good for detoxification and cooked food is good for nourishment. That got me taking a second look at the digestive system.

Your Stomach

Your stomach’s job is to process your ingested food and break it down into nutrients. You can think of it as a compost bin. A compost bin needs to be at a certain temperature to break down twigs and garden waste. The same thing goes for your stomach.

Too much raw food in your stomach weakens its ability to digest food. What’s worse, according to Chinese Medicine, it eventually weakens your spleen, your stomach’s earth partner.

When your spleen meridian is weakened, you have a compromised immune system. In addition, your mind tends to spin out of control. As a result, your sleep becomes challenged.

This is often when people restrict their diet to mostly raw foods, because they feel it’s easier on their digestive system. That might be the case, yet it exerts a big toll on their overall health. It creates a vicious cycle.

Your Action Plan

If you’re experiencing a health challenge, you might want to take a look at how much raw food you eat compared to cooked food. Balance out the nutritional value of the raw food with the tax on your digestive system.

If you’ve been sick for a while, you might want to work with a qualified practitioner to adjust your diet VERY slowly and balance your energies at the same time.

Finding the right balance for your body is key because every body is different.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Disclaimer: The information presented in this article and on this website is for educational purposes only. It’s not intended to be a diagnosis. Reading articles on this website does not constitute a healer/client treatment relationship.

Photo credit: https://pixabay.com/photos/flat-lay-food-salad-diet-healthy-2583212/.

We’re spending a lot more time on our phones and computers than ever before.

That’s taxing for our eyes. What’s worse, the health of our eyes contribute to the health of our hormones and our entire body.

I’m sharing with you 3 energy exercises to prevent eyestrain.

How you like them? Leave me a comment below.

A turbulent/stressful time calls for non-conventional ways to calm the mind.

One method that I’ve used successfully with combat veterans and people with severe PTSD is body-awareness meditation.

It allows you to ground in your physical body yet not identifying with the body.

It guides you to becoming aware of bodily sensations yet you don’t get bogged down by any tense or aching spots.

It allows your mind to relax naturally by strengthening your connection to the earth, the earth element that’s in and around you.

Here’s a recording of my body-awareness meditation from Day 1 of my “9-day de-stress challenge”.

Let me know how you like it by leaving me a comment below.

By the way, for other alternative ways to do seated meditation check out my blog post in June 2020 ‘When not to meditate”.

My 79-year old mom lives alone in Wuhan.

When the lockdown started there, it didn’t matter that my sister lives close by. Nobody was allowed to leave their apartments except to pick up groceries in their own gated communities. The gates to outside world were guarded and locked.

The social isolation, the monotony of dietary choices, the lack of activities was much more severe over there than what most of us in the western world are experiencing.

Throughout the pandemic when she scantly saw a soul for 70-some days, Mom stayed upbeat. Her voice was loud. Her spirit was joyful.

Here’s how she did it.

1. She kept up her daily routine as much as possible.
   For decades she’s been up around 4:30am every day. The first thing she does after attending to her morning hygiene is to mop the floor of her apartment. She does it the old fashioned way:with a bucket of water and a shredded cloth mop on a wooden stick.Nobody came in & out of her apartment. There was not much dust. Certainly whatever there was didn’t warrant the floor being mopped everyday.Yet she stubbornly and proudly carried on throughout the lockdown.She also cooked and ate her daily three meals right on schedule.
2. She kept her exercise regimen.
   Before the lockdown Mom walked around the lake outside her community every day. When my father was alive they took a walk twice a day.When the lockdown first started she stopped walking.Pretty soon she figured out that she could walk inside her little 800-square feet apartment.She walked the floor of the apartment, from the living room to the master-bedroom to the small bedroom, before returning to the living room.She would walk twice a day for 30 minutes each, swinging her arms as if she was outside by the lake.
3. She kept her brain sharp by learning songs.
   Mom’s been in a senior’s choir for the past 15 years. A few years ago she learned to read simplified music notes.Even though her choir wasn’t getting together, every day after breakfast she went through her binders of songs to learn something new.

All those little things add up.

It’s been a blessing to me and my sister that Mom handled the lockdown like a pro! I’m sure it was harder than it looked, something I’ll explore in the following months.

What have you done that kept you healthy and vibrant during the past 6 months? Share with me in the comment section below.

PS: You can still join my FREE 9-day de-stress challenge in the next three days. The door closes on Saturday 9/19 midnight. The challenge starts on Sunday 6am EST. Check here to enroll.

Here’s my go-to energy exercise for de-stressing. The exercise, ‘Calm the Fighter’, takes 3 minutes to do.

Check it out! You deserve the investment of your time.

Let me know how you like it by leaving me a comment below.

Take good care of your precious self!