Dear miyoid:

You read in a spiritual book that “if someone’s air element is not in balance, then that person might have some troubles with flatulence”, that kind of sentence made you “even more skeptical” about what’s in the rest of the book. To me, this sentence is a poetic kind of sentence with no practical or scientific meaning.  Better we talk practicality and science (if you don’t have the time or the patience to read the following, please postpone reading it to a later time):

Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers. They transmit messages from neurons (nerve cells) to target cells (other neurons, or muscle cells, or gland cells, etc.) across a synapse (a meeting place/ connection between neurons, or  between neurons and other cells), and they regulate all  our functions, including our thinking, emotions, motivations and behaviors. Three examples of neurotransmitters: Dopamine regulates motor behavior, pleasure related to motivation, and emotional arousal. Serotonin regulates appetite, sleep, memory and learning, mood and behavior. Norepinephrine regulates sleep patterns, focus and alertness.

Some neurotransmitters transmit messages from neurons to endocrine glands. Endocrine glands  produce and release hormones into the bloodstream. Hormones, like neurotransmitters, are also chemical  messengers. They transmit messages from the glands where they are produced to organs farther  away from the glands, like the liver, heart and brain. Like neurotransmitters, they too regulate different functions, including emotions and behavior. An example: when you believe that you are in danger, your pituitary gland located in the base of your brain releases a very powerful hormone called adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). This hormone travels to your two adrenal glands, located on top of your kidneys, triggering your adrenal glands to produce another powerful hormone called cortisol.

Cortisol then stops your body’s non-essential physical functions like digestion, triggers your liver to produce glucose (a sugar), your blood sugar concentration then goes up, you feel a burst of strength and energy and are better able to deal with the potential threat. Cortisol also increases your emotional arousal, and you feel strong fear and/ or anger.

Cortisol is released not only when we face danger, but in lower levels all through the day an night, normally reaching the lowest level late at night, around midnight, then gradually rising to its highest level early in the morning, peaking around 9 am, when we feel most alert,  and then it declines again throughout the day and into the night, when we are least alert and able  to sleep.

When you were a child and your mother used to sit by your bed, putting you to sleep, you were relaxed enough to eventually fall asleep, but because you were already an anxious child, fearing that your mother is not there with you, your cortisol level was too high to make it possible to remain asleep. So, you woke up,  saw that she wasn’t there, your cortisol level shot up some more, and feeling alert and in danger, you got up and looked for her. Once you found her, your cortisol level went down a bit, she took you to bed..  and repeat, you woke up, looking for her, etc. Fast forward, as a teenager and an adult, your cortisol levels are still too high to fall asleep and/ or to remain asleep at night, so you stay up in front of the computer, alert.

You stay up at night because your body has formed a chemical habit of keeping you alert at night. It is a chemical habit involving not only your ACTH and cortisol hormones, but other hormones, as well neurotransmitters and other chemicals, a very complex physiological dynamic .

Everything about you that is habitual- the habitual ways you think, feel and behave- is a result of chemical habits formed long ago and maintained since.

Any and all your rational understandings of your childhood, of your relationship with your mother, of how your chemical habits came to be- will not change these chemical habits (This is true to everyone). The rational understanding of your childhood etc., can at best motivate you to continue your emotional healing process that only starts with rational understanding. The healing process, at one point and onward, has to include changing your chemical habits, and forming new chemical habits. This is possible to do but it requires a lot of time, persistent effort and patience. You started doing yoga recently and it made some difference in the way you feel, correct? If you make yoga a new habit, you will also make how you feel doing yoga a new habit.

Doing yoga and persisting in it, is a beginning in the process of changing the old chemical habit of anxiety into a new habit of calm.

anita