406: How Your Thoughts Impact Your Health {Repost}
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Welcome to the Ancient Health Podcast, where East meets West in the world of medicine. I'm Dr. Chris Motley, and here we explore how modern Western science and traditional Eastern wisdom come together to unlock the body's full healing potential. Each week, we'll dive into powerful tools, techniques, and approaches from both sides of the world to help you optimize your health and live with vitality. Let's bridge the gap between ancient practices and cutting-edge medicine. Let's get started.

Hey friends, Dr. Motley here with the Ancient Health Podcast. And today, let's talk about how our emotions can create physical pain in the body. Can the way we think, can our psychology result in physical pain? Yes, it definitely can. And we have to remember, in psychology today, they talk about how our bodies are physical expressions of what we think. We can go down the route of how our thoughts become belief patterns.

and our belief patterns direct our daily life. So when we get into a car, we believe that the car has the ability to take us to school or take us to work. We create patterns of normal everyday activity, repetitive patterns that get ingrained in our brain, and we follow those patterns without thinking about them. What I'm saying is that even the way we turn the steering wheel, how much pressure we put on the gas pedal,

what direction we take after we get to the first stoplight. Those are physical reactions or physical expressions of what's going on in our brain. Can the same thing happen with pain? Can pain be an expression of what we're thinking? So in Chinese medicine, we talk about how we have the main organ systems, the meridian. There's 12 meridian pathways and they're on each side of the body.

Now, these pathways, you've seen me do this before, but the pathways called meridians are like maps. And the maps are basically these small lines, which are microtubules that make their way through the fascia. We have scientific evidence that there are small pathways throughout the fascia that connect to tissue in the body that transmit electrical signals from one organ to the next.

Those electrical signals, as they travel through the tubes, are feeding electricity and energy. They're helping the blood flow, the lymph flow, throughout the pathways. For example, if you have a pathway for the kidney that starts at the very bottom of the foot, there is a microtubule that's going up the inside of the leg through the actual hip areas and going up through the chest near the heart, and that pathway stops up here by the collarbone. Now,

With that traveling of electricity through the fascia, the fascia is made of water, proteins, certain amounts of sugar molecules, but it's very electrically conductive. It has this crystalline formation that's very moldable. It moves fast.

So if you could strip away the skin, you could strip away the muscles, you could strip away the ligaments. If you left the fascia of the body, you would see a perfect representation of the whole body because we have specific fascia, connective tissue that wraps around our brain and our spinal cord, around our bones, around our muscles. Literally, we have this protective covering, but it's a transmission conduit of electricity that goes throughout the body.

They say in Chinese medicine world that the fascia is where the emotions are transmitted. That's where the emotions make their way through the body. Reason being is because the organ systems of the body are related to emotions. The organs help the body process certain emotions. Now, when we're talking about how you process certain emotions, each emotion has a particular organ it's connected to. Let's run through those.

Let's start at, let's say, the midnight hour. The midnight hour is basically related to the gallbladder and liver. From 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., the gallbladder is basically receiving most of the energy from the other organs. It's trying to be nourished. The body's trying to give a lot of energy to the gallbladder. The gallbladder helps you process resentment and frustration and being overwhelmed.

So the next cycle is where it goes to the liver. And the liver basically helps you process anger and hate. When we have the liver being energized, you're supposed to process all those chemicals related to anger. And then the body sends the energy into the lungs. And the lungs help you process grief and crying. And then we go into the large intestine.

The large intestine is from 5 to 7 a.m. That's when you should have your bowel movements in the morning. Why do you have the urge to go in the morning? Because your large intestine is getting all the energy in that particular time. Now, before I forget, I'm going to make sure that I send this chart that I have right here to the show notes so that you'll have this show note. Now, the large intestine is 5 to 7 a.m.,

The energy then passes down to the 7 to 9 a.m., which is the stomach. So after you have your bowel movement, you then do what? You get hungry. So the stomach receives a lot of energy so that you dissolve your food. And that emotion is going to be worry. It's going to be over-concerned. Thinking about everybody else or what I have to do today, I'm getting over-concerned and I'm getting too much information in my body.

Then from 9 to 11, you're going to go into the spleen time. The spleen helps produce enzymes to dump into the stomach to help you process your morning breakfast. Are you guys following this pattern? The spleen reacts and helps the body process pensiveness. It's almost where you know what's coming around the corner. You know what to expect, but you still get uptight about it.

You're worrying if your family member is going to feel good or if they're sick. You're always wondering if they're going to feel any better. That's pensiveness. When we go into the 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. time, everything you ate is being pushed through the bloodstream, all the nutrients up into the heart. The heart's getting energized, getting ready for that nutrient download. All those nutrients from your food are getting ready to be sent to the heart. So the heart's being energized from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The heart then...

is getting geared up. But at that time, the emotions of the heart have to do with joy, have to do with love, have to do with being literally overburdened with too many things to do and then feeling depleted. That time of day is when that emotion is supposed to be processed. So you feel it at that time of day like, man, in the middle of the day, I feel like I am just had too much on my shoulders. I have too much weight in my chest. My heart feels heavy. I just feel sad for no reason, out of the blue. All of a sudden, I feel sad.

the heart then remember the food is being digested the hearts being prepared in the energy jumps down to the small intestine because that foods finally make its way into the small intestine from 1pm 3pm small intestine starts to push the nutrients out of its walls into the bloodstream where it's going to travel to the heart the small intestine helps you process emotions

that have to do with things you cannot process well in your life. Things are just not processing well or you can't break things down or understand why things are happening. I feel confused. I don't know what direction to take in my life. I just don't feel like I can actually take another thought because I can't process it. That's small intestine. So whenever you have a small intestine issue, I'm supposing that the patient usually has a problem with SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or digestive issues. Which one caused it?

The emotion or the physical problem. It could go either way, but most people think that the psychology is what sets up the terrain. So when we go from that 1 to 3 p.m. for small intestine, then the energy jumps over into the bladder kidney time. So the bladder is from 3 to 5 p.m. So the small intestine, it has basically its last point is up here on the head, right near the cheek.

And it jumps over to a space right between the eyes, the bladder. The bladder then transmits the energy down the back of the head, down the back, through the glutes, down through the hamstrings, down the calves. So the bladder is being energized. The spine where the bladder meridian runs. If you guys are just listening, you have to imagine. Try to check out the video. But there's this meridian pathway that goes right down the spine and through the glutes. But that is the bladder meridian.

It's a very long meridian, the longest meridian in the body. Now, with the bladder being energized, it has to do with feeling stuck, feeling stiff, feeling like, basically like, I am in this place and I don't know if I have the energy to go forward. I feel stuck, paralyzed. It's a paralyzed will. Then from that 5 p.m., we go into the 5 p.m. to 5 to 7 p.m., the energy is going over into the kidneys.

Kidney and bladder are paired meridians. The kidneys are right where? Near the flanks, right in the abdominal area, right near the lumbar spine. And the muscles that the kidneys are sitting right next to are your hip flexors. The hip flexors help you move forward. Kidneys have everything to do with feeling fearful, feeling stuck, like the bladder. I'm fearful about life or I'm afraid that I can't move ahead fast enough. People are going to leave me behind.

I feel like I'm out of place here. I fear that I am not a person who belongs with this group of people or I'm not meant to be in this type of job or in this career. The kidneys will show that and that usually results in people having higher amounts of urination, peeing throughout the night, but definitely having extreme fatigue from 5 to 7 p.m. So we have fear in the kidneys. Kidneys then jump over into the pericardium, which is the heart.

The meridian of the kidney goes right through the stomach, up through the chest, and passes right through the heart, around the heart, to the muscles around the heart, which are the pericardium, around the heart. And it's right here on the chest, so that energy is feeding the heart. Now, if an efficient amount of energy from the kidneys is going up into the heart, the heart will process the emotions, just like we talked about before, about joy and protection. The pericardium protects the heart. It's a shield. You want to be able to protect your emotions, right?

If the pericardium gets weak because either the kidneys are too weak, not transmitting enough energy up into the heart, you will feel no protection and you'll feel apathetic. You'll feel like, I just don't feel any emotions anymore. I don't feel like I can process my emotions emotionless. That's the pericardium. It often results with people having wrist pains because that pericardium reading goes right through the wrists. So if you feel that way from 7 to 9 p.m., it's the muscles around the heart.

Then we go from 9 to 11 p.m., which is going to be the triple warmer, which is when the energy of the body really goes into the three gates, the three triple warmer, the warming aspect of the body, which I usually associate with the thyroid, the adrenals, and with the gonads or for the testes or ovaries. So these areas get really energized. And if they are emotionally fatigued, you usually have the emotions of feeling completely depleted, like I have no energy to move. I have no energy to get up out of bed. I don't even have the motivation anymore.

That is the emotions of the triple warmer. And then it circles right back around, 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., which is the gallbladder. So the body's made a complete circuit. The body is using energy, qi, bipolar electrical signals that transmit back and forth. And the body wants to use them in a unidirectional way, but the body will actually pull the electrical signals in both directions if needed. But the body is not only sending energy to the organ system, to each organ,

To help you process what the organ can do physically, such as the stomach digesting food or the small intestine distributing the nutrients into your bloodstream. But it helps process the emotions that the organ should be processing. So if everything was in balance, if all the organs were healthy, you would be able to process liver issues or liver stagnation, which means you would process your anger.

Every day, we're going to encounter people who are angry. We're going to encounter things that make us sad. We're going to encounter things that make us feel grief or sad or feel lonely. But our bodies, if the organs are healthy and if they're strong, you'll process them. So you want healthy organ systems. Can taking nutrients and supplements help you to have healthy organs to help you process the emotions? Very much so, yes. When the emotions are not processed properly though through the organ system,

It means that the area of the organ, follow me here, the area of the organ can stagnate the chi, the electricity, because the energy is trying to help the organ mend. So if you had liver anger, if you had high amounts of anger, if you had a lot of hate, one of the anger and hate associations with the liver is the starvation conflict. Hey friends, Dr. Motley here, and let's talk about healthy blood circulation.

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It means that the liver will try its best to create enzymes to help dissolve every morsel of food you have to get the amount of energy out of every single thing you eat.

So if you ever were young and you maybe had not enough food or your parents didn't have enough means to get you the food you needed or you had a starvation conflict where you didn't feel like you had enough to eat or emotions like love, I didn't get enough love to help feed my soul. I didn't get enough comfort from my parents or from loved ones to help me feel like I was cared for. The liver will keep producing enzymes trying to attempt to find any source of food to dissolve to give you energy.

So as you experience things in the emotional realm, your body will relate it into your physical realm. So I didn't receive that love or that care. Your liver still goes, I need something to help me survive. I need more food. So you start seeing the liver overgrow with tissue. The energy of the body is stagnant around that idea and that thought because it's stagnating in from the brain to the liver. The brain is telling the liver, no.

I'm starving and the liver's like, yes, so I'll grow more tissue, more cells to produce more enzymes to find any type of food or any type of source to help me feel fulfilled. Whether it's a thought, whether it's actual food, whether it's a memory or trauma, this can cause a thing to be unlocked, a trigger to be unlocked in your brain to tell your liver that. So there's going to be a lot of chi built up, a lot of electrical energy in that liver to help mend or produce energy to do those tasks.

to break down things to help you process those emotions. And when that happens, the liver is connected by the nervous system to certain parts of the spine, such as the thoracic, the T7, T8, T9, the area right basically in the lower mid-back area, the area between the spine, between lower below the shoulder blades but in the middle of the spine. The liver is connected by the nerves,

It's also connected neurologically to the muscles that are pertaining to the chest, the pecc sternals. So you have this physical connection to your spine. You have a physical connection to the muscles of the pecc sternal, the pectoralis right here in the chest. And you also have a physical connection to teeth, neurological tooth. Research that, especially around the canine teeth. And you have a neurological connection to the lymphatic system. So you have the liver connected.

With this emotional programming being triggered, and now the nerves get inflamed or irritated by the emotion. The body reacts. This high amount of chi, this high amount of energetic stagnations around the liver, this signal is being sent into the spine saying, hey, there's some issues going on with the liver. The same nerve root that captures all that information from the liver has small branches.

Those branches go to the muscle, the spine, the neurolymphatics, to certain blood vessels. So you start to see a stagnation within the lymph system. You see contraction and cramping within the chest muscles. You start to see the spine being locked up. Every time I go to my physiotherapist, that area is so tight. I keep having to do things to release that part of the spine. I have to keep getting adjusted by the chiropractor in this same area over and over again.

I had the same tooth problems. I keep getting cavities in those teeth. I keep having bleeding gums around those areas of my mouth. Foot reflexology. There are certain parts of the feet that are neurologically and reflex-related to the liver. Why is it I keep having a callus on this area of my foot? Because you had an emotional program, a trauma, that was initiating a physical response that biochemistry in your brain

that basically received the thought, the higher mind, the conscious received this emotion. Oh, I'm afraid. I'm afraid. And the kidneys help you process that emotion. I'm afraid I can't move forward in life. The kidneys are feeling it. The heart has to understand it. The heart does. So you start to have this pattern where the kidneys are trying to process the emotion. You get this stagnation. It starts to create all these physical connections.

And then you'll start to see that as the fear keeps sinking in, you start creating more neural networks in your brain to hold more of that information of fear. So then your body starts emitting the frequencies off the body, and you almost can train the higher mind, the conscious or the mind, super conscious, to what? Be attracted to things that create fear or are fearful. You could attract people to you that are fearful or fearful in nature.

So you have this dichotomy. Your belief system can be trickling down into the brain, into the physical body, creating some of this physical stagnation within the organs. Or you could have genetically weaker organs, let's say the kidneys from a parent, and those areas can be more of an attractive site to what? To emotional baggage. If you got weak kidney signals or weak kidney DNA from a parent, you may have more propensity having fearful thoughts.

And those fearful thoughts make your kidneys grow because the kidneys will grow to what? Absorb more water. I need more water to survive because I have a big task ahead of me. I'm fearful. So people get more thirsty and they'll pee more. So you have this genetic baggage that could allow that to happen where the kidneys start to get weakened. And then there's microbes or certain types of infections or bacteria that can be lodged in the kidneys because of this.

And then you start seeing people that have chronic UTIs or kidney infections or kidney stones or bladder infections. All the while, remember that what you think can be expressed in the organ, the organ is connected to your nervous system. The nervous system is connected to all these parts we just mentioned and you start having physical pain. You could by chance eat something that had parasites with it and it got into your colon. And you could have an over-inflammation of the colon because of the parasites.

And that could cause stagnation of blood flow and toxic buildup within fecal matter causing constipation. And that will then make your brain signal say, hey, I can't poop very well. But it also could keep you from processing the emotions that are very, very toxic to you. I can't flush these toxic thoughts out because remember,

The brain sees these toxic emotions like it would toxic food particles. When it becomes waste, there's waste in my life. I want to process this waste physically, and I want to process this waste that's emotional. So you can get it all from the parasites as well. There's a lot of ways that people love to discuss. Did the physical cause the emotion? The emotion caused the physical.

I think it could go both ways. But if you have your thoughts, I'd love to hear them. Please drop us comments in the comment section. When we look at how the body's interconnected, I always thought, wow, it's just hearsay. Like, oh yeah, these organs, they process emotions. But when you look at how the body is made, you have three types of cells. Endoderm, ectoderm, and mesoderm.

And these three primary types of cells create most of all the organs and all the tissues and all the coverings of the body, like the skin and the fascial system, the organs, the digestive system, the reproductive system, the respiratory system. You start to see that the organs are all made from three different types of cells.

The liver is made by what we call the endoderm. And the endoderm creates and leads to all of our digestive system, even our tonsils and our thyroid. People say, how can one infection or how one thing could be affecting the liver and the thyroid or liver and the colon? Because they're all made of the same types of cells. They all resonate. They all have the same types of frequencies. So the liver is connected to the endoderm because it's made out of that type of cell and that is controlled by our brainstem.

Our brainstem is directly below what? Pineal, pituitary, hypothalamus. The glands that produce hormones that respond to stress. So stress comes into the body. It signals to these glands, the pituitary, pineal, the hypothalamus, the thalamus, the hippocampus centers, the fear centers, and it stimulates them to create certain types of chemicals that's transmitted down through the brainstem and eventually to the thyroid, and that thyroid kicks on, giving you fight or flight, leading to the adrenal overload.

The brainstem is connected to near the vagus nerve and you start to see that brainstem could be stimulated by reaction to the liver. If we had a fearful thought or let's put it this way, we had an angry thought. If we have anger, if we have hate and that stemmed from the body being angry when you're hungry. Have you ever been angry? Hangry? It's a real thing, right? When you're starving internally, right?

When you're hungry for food, whether it's emotions or real physical food, care, love, you will become angry because you know you need those things to survive. So the liver is building up. It's trying to build up more tissue. The brainstem is recording this. All your cells are recording this. The biochemistry in your body is shifting and changing because you're hungry. And that hunger is going to lead into the hangries.

So then your body is prepping that liver, and that liver is sending signals continuously up through the spinal cord up to that brainstem. And that brainstem is recording it. And the brainstem is going to do everything it can. The brain is going to do everything it can to help subside that hunger. So it's going to make basically alleviations in different parts of the body to do what? To help you out, to keep you from feeling so hungry. And so as it's trying to keep you from getting hungry, your body then is saying, okay, we're going to make pathways here.

throughout the brain, down the brain stem, through the spinal cord to help any other avenue I can to keep that liver from overloading. This happens to all the other organs with their particular emotions. They are doing their biological processes when you get into fight or flight depending on the type of trauma you experience in your life or experiencing right now. I use a liver as an example.

But I want you to show that there's a literal physical connection between your organs and your brain and how your brain responds to higher mind or thinking or a super conscious thinking creating chemical changes within your brain and that is transmitted back down through the brain stem. And that's going to transmit into what? Through those nerves that are connected to the liver or the other organs we're talking about.

You're going to see that the body will give physical signs and symptoms just connected to that liver in certain areas to give you an indication that the emotions are not processing out efficiently. When you see that there are definite connections between those emotions and those organs and those organs to the nerves, you'll start to give yourself a bit of grace because people say, oh, I have an emotional low back and I'm constipated. Yes, absolutely.

Constipation has to do with the large intestine. You're not getting rid of the stinky things in your life, the things that really were nasty to you, nasty divorce, a nasty relationship, a nasty childhood. That's stimulating that L5-S1 nerve that's going up into your spine and injuring that disc. And the branches from that nerve are going into you, what? Your glute muscles, your hamstrings, your

Your low back muscles, the areas around your sacrum. Oh, my sacrum, my low back always slips out, especially when I get nervous or I get afraid or if I just feel like, man, I remember this bad event in my life. Oh, goodness, my back keeps slipping out. You have to address the emotions. I like good emotional freedom technique, EFT tapping. I love neurofeedback.

I like Lens Therapy, L-E-N-S. And I like NET, Neuroemotional Technique. These are really good emotional clearing techniques. But look into a good applied kinesiologist or a good holistic practitioner that incorporates something as EFT tapping or with the NET or the neurofeedback. You can get the brain to pull up those signals to the surface to help you process them out.

So as we see this connection, I talk a lot about this on my membership or in the membership because it's so important to me because we realize that even though we have these physical expressions, our physical expressions are related to our emotions. Remember that. Physical related to the emotions. Emotions creating the playing field to not only give you this physical pain, but creating organ imbalances. Chronic organ imbalances because of the way our minds are thinking.

So when you start to see how the emotions could lead into that physical area where all these nerves are being injured, there are really good, basically, charts that would tell you every single muscle associated with which organ.

For instance, we could have the stomach. The stomach's related to the pec clavicular, the muscles right below the clavicles, causing the shoulders to turn in. Again, the liver has to do with the chest muscles. The spleen has to do with your latissimus muscles on the back because it's near the spleen meridian and the triceps along with the pancreas. So pancreas and spleen, triceps and the latissimus muscles. We talk about the small intestine. The small intestine has everything to do with the quads and the abdominal muscles.

We talk about the heart. It has to do with the subscap muscles right behind the shoulder blades. I have sore shoulders consistently underneath my shoulder blades. That's the heart. Large intestine. The large intestine has everything to do with the glutes and the hamstrings. The lungs. They are associated with the deltoids, your shoulder muscles. When you talk about anything with the kidneys, the kidneys have to do with the hip flexors such as the psoas. The bladder has everything to do with the calves, the gastrocs, the areas around your Achilles tendon or plantar fasciitis.

We talked about the liver, but the gallbladder has to do with the popliteus muscles, the muscles behind the knees or the anterior portions of your shoulder muscles. But the knees are a big thing for the gallbladder. We talk about anything that has to do with the thyroid. The thyroid, again, has to do with the shoulders. The tear is minor. You talk about anybody that has throwing arm or rotator cuff tears, I'm going to tell you they have a thyroid issue or an emotion that's related to the thyroid. Ovaries or testes. G-medias. The abducting muscles of the glutes. Weak glute muscles on the sides.

These are just examples. Guys, I hope this was informative. I want to send some of these charts over to the team so they can put these charts to help you know what this is about. But please, guys, if you have any more questions, drop a comment in the comment section. Like and subscribe. Check us out. If you need more information, I do a lot on my page at Dr. Motley on Instagram and social media.

But if you have any other thoughts, any comments, please let us know. Love to hear it. Love to be interacting with you. And until the next podcast, I hope that we can discuss emotions and we can discuss everything that you want to discuss. So let us know what you have in mind. If you want to hear a certain subject matter, please let us know. The team and I really keep that in importance, and we want to make sure that we get everything, all the information that you want out there. All right, guys? Take it easy. Have a good day.

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Thank you for joining us today on the Ancient Health Podcast. We hope you've gained valuable insights into the harmony between Eastern and Western medicine. If you've enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe, share, and leave us a review.

Remember, true health is about balance, mind, body, and spirit. So stay tuned for more episodes where we continue to explore how ancient wisdom and modern science can work together to help you thrive. Here's to your health, balance, and well-being. I'm Dr. Chris Motley, and I look forward to our next episode together.