the emotional heart, hormones, chakras

 

Our emotional brain directly affects our brain.

And our emotional heart directly affects our mind. 

So.... we have more than one heart? Um ... yes we do. We have three, actually. 

We're still with the emotional heart here. And you do know that I'm looking at the spiritual side of life, in calling our gut our emotional heart. 

I first came across the enteric nervous system, the "mind" aspect of our gut, many decades ago. I was always looking for answers, and I wondered what the chakra that is often called the navel chakra (it's actually Manipura chakra), related to physically. 

Now, a thing which is often overlooked today in modern "yoga", is that the chakras are intimately connected to our glands and hormones on the physical level. The asanas (poses) do definitely affect our organs too, in a most beneficial way. But the poses also regulate our hormonal system which governs our emotions in relation to our other glands. This is done via an area of the brain called the hypothalamus, which in turn works hand in hand with our pituitary gland. This gland then lets the other glands what hormones to secrete. Well, it's more involved than this, obviously, but simple explanations help us understand things better.

Why is this important? Who even cares? Remember how the nervous system of our gut is such a big nervous system? And a lot of the nerve messages are to do with the brain of our gut. Our gut is where our emotions emanate from. So, our emotions create nervous impulses, our head brain picks up the messages from these, and now we have thoughts in our head mind. And herein lies a lot of everyday problems. 

We act and believe in our thoughts. Of course we do!! But what lies behind thoughts which are troubling us, is really important. Most of us (including yours truly) are not so much in touch with our emotions. 

If we feel "down", why is this so? 

** Is it lack of sunlight? 

** An unhappy life? 

** Not enough exercise? Some people can feel quite "low" when they don't exercise enough.

** Eating too much rubbish that doesn't nourish our gut nor head. Makes us feel yukky?

** Financial worries? This one for most of us is major. 

** Toxic relationships? One of our biggest emotional problem areas. Bullying really can and does make us sick.

** Incredible trauma. I honestly would recommend counselling of some sort that suits your personality or type of trauma. And healing. 

** Addiction. 

All of the above, definitely affect the enteric nervous system, the mind of our gut. Or, the mind aspect of the emotional heart. Then the mind of the brain. In a very detrimental way. When we do something to sort out our situation, it"s like miracles starting to unfold. I know, from personal experience, how scary it can be to leave abusive situations. In those awful times, our mana, inner power, starts to flower in a most amazing way. Maybe slowly, but it does grow. 

We are supposed to have mana. 

And we slowly gain Inner peace.

Our gut and head and body start to heal.

All of these are priceless. 

**  I'm really interested in others' thoughts, feelings, and experiences of all of this.

** a recent post about healing trauma via the aura here

** some fabulousness of chakras here in relation to happiness