Emotions and spiritual interaction between people
Have you noticed that we feel and behave differently around other people? “The mood has changed,” we say. In fact, not only our mental mood changes, but also the physiology of our body, which instantly reacts to what is happening around us.
We perceive the “language” of the body and facial expressions, the mood of others with all our senses. Empathy, imitation, copying are inherent in us genetic level, and we cannot control these processes. We, like communicating vessels, transmit our moods, experiences, nervous connections to each other, “infecting” them and “infecting” others. Do you agree that feelings such as anger, fear, and indignation are very contagious? Just like laughter and smile!
The influence of emotions on health
Emotions (from Latin emoveo - shock, excite) are the subjective reactions of humans and higher animals to any external and internal stimuli. Emotions are a personal attitude, a person’s reaction to the events that happen to him; they accompany all processes of human life and are caused, among other things, by situations that exist only in the imagination.
Recently, scientists have begun to carefully study the impact of various kinds of emotions on people’s health. IN small quantities Stress is even useful, as it helps the body stay in good shape, not become limp, and pushes us to action. However, prolonged exposure to strong emotions can lead to health problems.
Humanity has long known that emotions have a direct impact on health. Evidence of this is the widespread sayings: “All diseases come from nerves”, “You can’t buy health: the mind gives it”, “Joy makes you young, grief makes you old”, “Rust eats iron, and sadness eats the heart”, etc... Even in ancient times, doctors determined the connection between the soul (the emotional component) and the physical component - the human body. The ancients knew that everything that affects the brain equally affects the body.
But during the time of Descartes, in the 17th century, this postulate was forgotten, and man was “divided” into two components: mind and body, dividing diseases as either purely physical or mental, which were shown to be treated in completely different ways.
Only recently have we again begun to look at human nature, as Hippocrates once did, in its integrity, realizing that in the study of diseases it is impossible to separate soul and body. Modern doctors recognize that the nature of almost all diseases is psychosomatic, that is, that the health of the body and spirit are interconnected and interdependent. Studying the influence of emotions on human health, scientists different countries came to the most interesting conclusions. Yes, laureate Nobel Prize neurophysiologist Charles Sherrington established the following pattern in the emergence of various diseases: first appears emotional experience, and after it, vegetative and somatic changes occur in the body.
German scientists went further, establishing a connection between each organ and a specific part of the brain through nerve pathways. Today, scientists are developing a theory for diagnosing diseases based on a person’s mood and expressing the possibility of preventing a disease before its development. This is facilitated by preventive therapy to improve mood and accumulate positive emotions.
It is very important to understand here that repeated grief provokes somatic diseases, and prolonged negative experiences lead to stress. It is these experiences that weaken the immune system and make us defenseless. The chronic feeling of causeless anxiety, depressive states and depressed mood are the basis for the development of many diseases. Undesirable, negative emotions include: anger, envy, fear, despondency, panic, anger, irritability. It is not by chance that Orthodoxy classifies anger, envy, and despondency as mortal sins, since each of these emotions leads to very serious illnesses with sad outcomes.
The meaning of emotions in Eastern medicine
Eastern medicine also emphasizes that mood and certain emotions can cause diseases of certain organs. For example, kidney problems can be caused by feelings of fear, weak will and lack of self-confidence. Because the kidneys are responsible for growth and development, their correct operation is especially important in childhood. That is why children should grow up in an atmosphere of love and security. Chinese medicine calls to instill in children courage and self-confidence. Such a child physical development will always correspond to its age.
The main respiratory organ is the lungs. Abnormalities in lung function can be caused by sadness and sadness. Respiratory dysfunction, in turn, can cause many concomitant diseases. Treatment atopic dermatitis in adults, from the point of view of oriental medicine, it should begin with an examination of all organs, including the lungs.
Lack of vitality and enthusiasm can negatively affect the functioning of the heart. His healthy work is hampered by: bad dream, depression and despair. The heart regulates the function of blood vessels, so its condition can be easily determined by the color of the face and tongue. Arrhythmia and rapid heartbeat are the main symptoms of cardiac dysfunction. And this, in turn, can lead to mental disorders and long-term memory disorders.
Irritation, anger and resentment affect the functioning of the liver. It is in this regard that people who are offended by someone say: “He’s sitting in my liver!” The consequences of liver imbalance can be very severe. These are breast cancer in women, headaches and dizziness.
In connection with the above, medicine calls for experiencing only positive emotions: this is the only way to preserve good health on long years! Of course, get rid of negative emotions immediately, as if by magic magic wand, it’s unlikely to work. But a number of useful tips will help us with this:
- First of all, it is necessary to understand that we need emotions, since the internal environment of the body must exchange energy with the external environment. And such an energy exchange will not cause harm if natural emotional programs inherent in nature are involved in it: sadness or joy, surprise or disgust, a feeling of shame or anger, interest, laughter, crying, anger, etc. The main thing is that emotions are a reaction to what is happening, and not the result of “winding up” oneself, so that they manifest themselves naturally, without anyone’s coercion, and are not exaggerated.
- Natural emotional reactions should not be restrained; it is only important to learn how to express them correctly. Moreover, you should learn to respect the expression of emotions by other people and perceive them adequately. And under no circumstances should you suppress emotions, no matter what color they may be.
On the dangers of suppressing emotions:
Suppressed emotions do not dissolve in the body without a trace, but form toxins in it, which accumulate in the tissues, poisoning the body. What are these emotions, and what is their effect on the human body? Let's take a closer look.
Suppressed anger - completely changes the flora in the gall bladder, bile duct, small intestine, worsens pitta dosha, causes inflammation of the surface of the mucous membrane of the stomach and small intestine.
Suppressed fear and anxiety - change the flora in the colon. As a result, the stomach becomes distended with gas, which accumulates in the folds of the colon, causing pain. Often this pain is mistakenly attributed to heart or liver problems.
Suppressed emotions cause an imbalance in the tridosha, which in turn affects the element of fire - agni, which is responsible for immunity in the body. A reaction to such a violation may be the occurrence of an allergy to such completely harmless phenomena as pollen, dust and flower smell.
Suppressed fear will cause disturbances in energy air flows - vata dosha.
Suppressing the fire emotions of anger and hatred can cause hypersensitivity to foods that aggravate pitta in people born with a pitta constitution. Such a person will be sensitive to hot and spicy foods.
People with a kapha constitution (prone to being overweight) who suppress the emotions of kapha dosha (attachment, greed) will have an allergic reaction to kapha food, i.e. will be sensitive to foods that aggravate kapha (dairy products). This may result in constipation and wheezing in the lungs.
Sometimes the imbalance that gives rise to a disease process may first arise in the body, and then manifest itself in the mind and consciousness - and, as a result, lead to a certain emotional background. Thus the circle is closed. The imbalance that appears first on the physical level later affects the mind through disturbances in the three doshas. As we showed above, Vata disorder provokes fear, depression and nervousness. Excess pitta in the body will cause anger, hatred and jealousy. Worsening kapha will create an exaggerated sense of possessiveness, pride and attachment. Thus, there is a direct relationship between diet, habits, environment and emotional disturbances. These disorders can also be judged by indirect signs that appear in the body in the form of muscle blocks and clamps.
How to detect the problem
The physical expression of emotional stress and emotional toxins accumulated in the body are muscle tension, the causes of which can be both strong feelings and excessive strictness of upbringing, ill will of employees, lack of self-confidence, the presence of complexes, etc. If a person has not learned to get rid of negative emotions and is constantly tormented by some difficult experiences, then sooner or later they manifest themselves in muscle tension in the facial area (forehead, eyes, mouth, back of the head), neck, chest area (shoulders and arms), lumbar, as well as in the pelvis and lower extremities.
If all these conditions are temporary, and you manage to get rid of the negative emotions that provoke them, then there is no reason to worry. However, chronic muscle tightness, in turn, can lead to the development of various somatic diseases.
Let's consider some emotional states that, being in a chronic form, can cause certain diseases.
Depression - lethargic mood, regardless of circumstances, for a long time. This emotion can cause quite serious problems with the throat, namely frequent sore throats and even loss of voice.
Self-criticism- feeling guilty for everything you do. The result can be chronic headaches.
Irritation - a feeling when literally everything annoys you. In this case, do not be surprised by frequent attacks of nausea, from which medications do not help.
Resentment- feeling humiliated and insulted. Be prepared for frustration gastrointestinal tract, chronic gastritis, ulcers, constipation and diarrhea.
Anger- causes a surge of energy that rapidly grows and suddenly splashes out. An angry person is easily upset by failures and is unable to control his feelings. His behavior is incorrect and impulsive. As a result, the liver suffers.
Joy- dissipates energy, it is dispersed and lost. When the main thing in a person’s life is to receive pleasure, he is unable to retain energy and is always looking for satisfaction and ever stronger stimulation. As a result, such a person is prone to uncontrollable anxiety, insomnia and despair. In this case, the heart is often affected.
Sadness- stops the effect of energy. A person who is lost in the experience of sadness is disconnected from the world, his feelings dry up, and his motivation fades. Protecting himself from the joys of attachment and the pain of loss, he arranges his life in such a way as to avoid risk and the vagaries of passion, and becomes inaccessible to true intimacy. Such people have asthma, constipation and frigidity.
Fear- reveals itself when survival is in question. From fear, energy drops, a person turns to stone and loses control over himself. In the life of a person overwhelmed by fear, the expectation of danger prevails, he becomes suspicious, withdraws from the world and prefers loneliness. He is critical, cynical, confident in the hostility of the world.
Isolation can cut him off from life, making him cold, hard and unspiritual. In the body this manifests itself as arthritis, deafness and senile dementia.
Thus, along with correcting your diet and lifestyle, selected by an Ayurvedic doctor in accordance with your constitutional type, it is very important to learn how to manage your emotions and take control of them.
How to work with emotions?
To this question, Ayurveda gives advice: emotions should be observed detachedly, with full awareness watching them unfold, comprehending their nature, and then allowing them to dissipate. When emotions are suppressed, it can cause disturbances in the mind and ultimately in body functions.
Here are some tips that, if followed consistently, will help you improve your emotional situation.
A proven method, but one that requires constant effort from you, is to be kind to others. Try to think positively and treat others kindly, so that a positive emotional attitude will help improve your health.
Practice so-called spiritual gymnastics. IN ordinary life we perform it every day, scrolling through familiar thoughts in our heads, empathizing with everything around us - the sounds from the TV, tape recorder, radio, beautiful views nature, etc. However, you need to do this purposefully, understanding which impressions harm your emotional health, and which ones contribute to maintaining the necessary emotional background. Correct spiritual gymnastics causes corresponding physiological changes in the body. By remembering this or that event in our life, we evoke and consolidate in the body the physiology and neural connections corresponding to that event. If the recalled event was joyful and accompanied by pleasant sensations, this is beneficial. And if we turn to unpleasant memories and relive negative emotions, then the stress response is consolidated in the body on the physical and spiritual planes. Therefore, it is very important to learn to recognize and practice positive reactions.
An effective way to “remove” stress from the body is proper (not excessive) physical activity, which requires fairly high energy costs, for example, swimming, exercise gym, running, etc. Yoga, meditation and breathing exercises are very helpful in returning to normal.
A way to get rid of mental anxiety as a consequence of stress is a confidential conversation with a loved one ( good friend, relative).
Create the right thought forms. First of all, go to the mirror and look at yourself. Pay attention to the corners of your lips. Where are they directed: down or up? If the lip pattern has a downward slope, it means that something is constantly bothering you and making you sad. You have a very developed sense of escalating the situation. As soon as the unpleasant event happened, you already painted a terrible picture for yourself. This is wrong and even dangerous to health. You simply must pull yourself together right here and now, looking in the mirror. Tell yourself it's over! From now on - only positive emotions. Any situation is a test of Fate for endurance, health, and life extension. Hopeless situations does not happen - this must always be remembered. No wonder people say that time is our best healer, that the morning is wiser than the evening. Don’t make hasty decisions, let the situation go for a while, and the solution will come, and with it good mood, and positive emotions.
Wake up every day with a smile, listen to good pleasant music more often, communicate only with cheerful people who add a good mood and do not take away your energy.
Thus, each person himself is responsible for both the diseases from which he suffers and for recovery from them. Remember that our health, like emotions and thoughts, is in our hands!
A person’s behavior throughout the day, like a rainbow, changes from bursts of joy to unreasonable sadness. All his actions and actions are controlled by many factors. This could be a change in weather, the specifics of the situation, or simply pleasant or unpleasant news. These factors evoke in a person certain emotions and a specific attitude towards a particular event. They are the main lever in shaping behavior.
Depending on what emotions prevail over a person at the moment, behavior can be adequate and correct, or it can be illogical for the situation.
The famous psychologist K. Izard proposed identifying 10 emotions as fundamental. According to his theory, interest, fear, joy, surprise, anger, suffering, disgust, contempt, shame and embarrassment are of decisive importance in a person’s life, his activities and behavior.
Behavior, in turn, is of great importance for a person in terms of survival. By changing behavioral reactions, a person avoids dangerous situations and adapts to changing external environment. For example, a person under the influence of the emotion of fear is not confident and is very tense. All his actions boil down to attempts to escape from a frightening situation. A person can do rash things. In most cases, actions are performed automatically, unconsciously. Visually, the person appears tense and cowered. The pupils dilate and the skin becomes pale. Sweating increases. Distinctive feature a person in a state of fear is a change in voice associated with difficulty breathing.
Satisfaction of interest is an important need in human life. Thanks to the feeling of the emotion of interest, a person learns more deeply the world, gets acquainted with new facts and objects, deriving personal benefit from this. The thoughts and attention of the interested person are directed to the subject of knowledge. He looks and hears carefully. All internal forces are aimed at the process of touching and understanding the object of interest.
Joyful man Gestures intensely, makes quick and energetic movements. He feels light and cheerful. Blood flow to the brain activates mental activity. A person who feels the emotion of joy speaks animatedly and thinks quickly. Work productivity increases significantly. During joyful experiences, body temperature rises, eyes sparkle, and face glows. The activity of the external secretion organs increases - tears appear, salivation increases.
Emotion of surprise easiest to recognize. It occurs in response to any unexpected event or action. A surprised person is tense, opens his eyes wide, wrinkles his forehead and raises his eyebrows. The surprise is short-lived.
It is difficult to confuse a person with someone in anger. All his actions and even his facial expression show aggression. The person becomes tense and impulsive. His movements become more active and self-confidence appears. Thinking, memory, imagination do not function as they should. The face takes on a reddish tint and a stony appearance.
During the experience suffering, a person experiences physical and mental discomfort, pain or even agony. This state is extremely unpleasant for him, as evidenced by external manifestations in behavior. Physical activity decreases and may develop into a complete lack of movement. Thinking and attention are significantly reduced. The person is apathetic and unable to adequately assess the situation.
Emotions of disgust arise when a person observes a phenomenon or process that is unacceptable and unpleasant for him. There are no generally accepted criteria for defining disgusting and unpleasant. One person feels disgust when looking at an insect or a rat, while another feels disgusted by a certain food product. All human actions, facial expressions and gestures are aimed at avoiding contact with the object of disgust. Facial expressions are dominated by wrinkling of the nose and eyebrows and lowering of the corners of the mouth.
Contempt in its manifestation it is similar to disgust. They differ only in the object of hostility. Thus, disgust can be felt exclusively for objects or phenomena, and contempt concerns exclusively people. In addition to the main manifestations, contempt is characterized by the presence of sarcasm and irony in words, as well as a demonstration of superiority over an opponent.
The emotion of shame arises as a result of one’s own actions that do not meet generally accepted standards and stereotypes. A person experiencing shame is tense and silent. His movements are constrained. The face turns red, the gaze becomes lost and falls down. The mental activity of the brain is activated.
Embarrassment, the emotion is similar in its manifestations to the feeling of shame, but does not have an obvious negative connotation.
Depending on the effect emotions produce on the body, they can be sthenic or asthenic. Stenic emotions are strong feelings, which bring all the body’s resources into a state of mobilization. They stimulate human activity. Asthenic emotions, on the contrary, suppress the vital processes of the body.
It should be remembered that no matter what emotion a person experiences, serious physiological changes occur in the body. The significance of such processes for the body cannot be underestimated or ignored. Long-term exposure to emotion shapes a person’s specific mood. And if it has a negative connotation, such exposure can lead to mental and physical disorders.
Emotions have a generalized effect, with each having a different impact. Human behavior depends on emotions that activate and organize perception, thinking, and imagination. Emotions can cloud or color your perception of the world. bright colors.
A person's behavior is largely influenced by his emotions, and different emotions have different effects on behavior. There are so-called sthenic emotions, which increase the activity of all processes in the body, and asthenic emotions, which inhibit them. As a rule, positive emotions are sthenic: satisfaction (pleasure), joy, happiness, and asthenic are negative: displeasure, grief, sadness. Let's look at each type of emotion in more detail, including mood, affect, feeling, passion and stress, in their impact on human behavior.
Mood creates a certain tone of the body, i.e. its general mood (hence the name “mood”) for activity. The productivity and quality of work of a person in a good, optimistic mood is always higher than that of a person in a pessimistic mood. A person who is optimistic is always and outwardly more attractive to others than one who is constantly Bad mood. People around you are more willing to communicate with a person who smiles kindly than with a person who has an unkind face.
Affects play a different role in people's lives. They are able to instantly mobilize the body’s energy and resources to solve a sudden problem or overcome an unexpected obstacle. This is the main vital role of affects. In an appropriate emotional state, a person sometimes does something that he is usually not capable of. A mother, saving a child, does not feel pain, does not think about the danger to her own life. She is in a state of passion. At such a moment, a lot of energy is spent, and very uneconomically, and therefore, in order to continue normal activities, the body definitely needs rest. Affects often play a negative role, making a person’s behavior uncontrollable and even dangerous to others.
Even more significant than moods and affects is the vital role of feelings. They characterize a person as an individual, are quite stable and have independent motivating power. Feelings determine a person’s attitude to the world around him, and they also become moral regulators of people’s actions and relationships. The upbringing of a person from a psychological point of view is, to a large extent, the process of forming his noble feelings, which include sympathy, kindness and others. A person’s feelings, unfortunately, can also be base, for example, feelings of envy, anger, hatred. A special class includes aesthetic feelings that determine a person’s attitude to the world of beauty. The richness and variety of human feelings is a good indicator of the level of his psychological development.
Passions and stress, unlike moods, affects and feelings, play a mainly negative role in life. Strong passion suppresses other feelings, needs and interests of a person, makes him one-sidedly limited in his aspirations, and stress generally has a destructive effect on psychology, behavior, and health. Over the past few decades, much convincing evidence of this has been obtained. Famous American practical psychologist D. Carnegie in his very popular book “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” writes that according to modern medical statistics, more than half of all hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from emotional disorders, and that three quarters of patients with cardiovascular, gastric and endocrine diseases They could very well cure themselves if they learned to manage their emotions.
