So did anyone catch last Tuesday’s CSI: Miami on Channel 5 (Season 9, Ep 13)? I love this programme, but it was almost a bit too scary for me last week to be honest – though it had just the right amount of analytical working out who-did-what for me to keep with the episode.
Horatio Caine once again attempted to track down a dangerous fugitive called Memmo Fierro, who in earlier episodes, had escaped from prison, coldly killed countless innocent people and threatened to take over control of Miami from the police. Half way through, a legal representative who threatened to expose the gang and their plans had her throat cut by an “old man” in broad daylight, which was almost enough for me to turn over to something more lighthearted, but the energy change I felt in my own body made me curious. I had felt this before when I had indeed switched off the television completely. I knew this energy, and I knew the person who had made this energy move like this in my body… I said out loud to the others in my living room, “that old man is Memmo!”. They, like the characters in CSI: Miami, insisted the killer was an old man… but the story unfolded to reveal that the hideous Memmo was indeed wearing an “old man” prosthetic mask when he killed the lady.
There were comments of “how did you know that?” and “you should be a detective!”, and I replied with “I am already a detective”… and I am, a detective in Chinese Medicine. I have to figure out what is going on in a patient’s body and emotions, track down what could have contributed to certain symptoms starting, when they might have started, who else in their lives might be impacting upon their health – a body and energetics whodunnit, or a CSI of energy! And this is all before I even pick up a needle, or decide on appropriate points!
So how did I know it was Memmo in a mask, purely from the way he made me feel? Well, we all have emotions and they create a certain movement of energy within our bodies. For example, anger (Wood Element emotion) can make our energies rise upwards – it can come out as a shout, or get stuck in the chest causing stagnation of Qi and a lot of sighing. Fear (Water Element emotion) makes Qi (or energy) descend, we can become frozen, pulling our lower backs in and down.
Worry or overthinking (Earth Element emotion) can cause our stomachs to feel strange and our appetites to disappear. Sadness or grief (Metal Element emotion) dissipates energy, causing our shoulders to hunch inwards and our breathing to become stifled. Even Joy (Fire Element emotion) can become pathogenic if experienced too much, our hearts become too overwhelmed with the upward energy and it can turn to mania… more common is the opposite, a “lack of joy”, which is a flatness of energy, which barely moves at all – a kind of depression… we all know how we feel when we have watched something particularly depressing, it is hard to even move off the couch afterwards.
I knew it was Memmo from the shock felt in my body – my energy went down, his matter-of-fact coldness made my body freeze, I stopped breathing a little, then only shallow breaths… my fight or flight mechanism had been activated and I wanted to stop watching – this was exactly the reaction my body and emotions had had in the episode that tracked his escape from jail.
At the end of the episode on Tuesday night, I realised I had been holding myself rigid, my diaphragm felt tight, and I needed to loudly “breathe out” the worry, fear and anxiety that had been building to a crescendo through the programme. A member of my household remarked, “but it is only pretend, its not real”, to which I said, “but the emotions evoked, and movements of energy in the body are real, whether the programme is or not…” So keep that in mind next time you watch an emotional rollercoaster of a film – the energies in your body are moving and changing as if the situation you’re watching was real, and this can have an impact on your health!
If you would like more information on how your emotions might be affecting your health, visit the website, or call to talk through how acupuncture could positively help you.