Qi Stagnation and Stress: what to do to relieve stress.

Qi Stagnation is The Jewel in the Crown of Chinese medicine.

Qi Stagnation works rather like a roadblock, or a traffic jam. In fact that’s how I describe its action in my book, see sidebar, and below.

Frustration, tension, hindrance and STRESS – all examples! It’s an idea from which many acupuncturists have made a fortune!

And they deserved it!

To understand stagnant qi, you first need to understand Qi. As you’ll realise when reading the linked page there, Qi underlies the universe. It’s a fundamental building block, preceding matter. If you’re reading this, you have it. For health, you must allow it to move and change. Among the worst things you can do are waste it, or block it.

Blocking it, and the symptoms and diseases that arise from blocking it, are what this page is about.

What is Qi Stagnation?

At this early, temporary level, how would you notice it in someone else? That depends on the individual.

How do people show mild, passing irritation? Some people don’t show it all. Others purse their lips, or frown, or tense their jaw, or hunch their shoulders, or stare hard. Some feel depressed.

Others mutter to themselves, swear or twitch. Some scratch (eg their nose), rub their fingers or chins, pull their earlobes or fiddle with their hair.

People used to light a cigarette. Or they chewed gum – they still do! You’ll see why in a moment.

Also, people move with a rhythmic pattern, tapping fingers or feet.

When the cause ceases, they stop doing it.

As Qi stagnation continues, what happens as Conditions Worsen?

As the symptoms become more severe, or last longer, there will be some damage. 

Here the damage is usually temporary. The body soon repairs the fingernail, replaces skin, grows more nose! 

But suppose the trigger or cause of the Qi stagnation continues or worsens?

What happens depends on the individual’s

• strength,
• self-discipline and
• constitution: the ability to endure adverse circumstances.

In general, the younger and/or the less healthy or resilient you are, the less well you’ll tolerate it.

Age, experience and good health increase the ability to resist stress or at least to show less signs of it. Self-discipline helps. People with a military background often cope well.

But if you can’t tolerate it, what happens?

Signs usually intensify first in the upper parts – head and arms. You get tension headaches and sore neck muscles. Then comes swearing, shouting, gesticulating. Chewing teeth together becomes bruxism, grinding teeth down. It takes a while to grow teeth back! So this is more serious.

Click to read what happened to Linda!

Next? Symptoms begin to move towards the centre. People need to smoke a cigarette or swallow, eat or drink something. Sighing counteracts an unconscious tendency to hold the breath.

Some people compress it all inwards: not good for emotional health. Often not good for physical health either! You may get IBS – Irritable Bowel Syndrome – if you stick it in your gut, or migraines if it goes to your Liver.

Liver Qi Stagnation Tongue

In the early stages of qi stagnation, the tongue doesn’t change much: it looks normal.

As qi stagnation worsens and particularly affects the Liver, the sides of the tongue may show signs of heat, and go a bit red. When and if it goes further into your system, affecting digestion and breathing, signs of these conditions begin to appear on your tongue. For example, check Stomach Qi Stagnation.

Q Stagnation Pulse

Qi stagnation produces a wiry pulse. As it affects the Liver mostly, you feel this wiry pulse first on the left wrist in the middle position, over the radial bone. In the image above, you’d feel for it under the top-left angle-point of the triangle. (I’ve no idea whether the drawings mean anything other than mountains!)

Is there a Qi Stagnation Type?

Although everyone gets Qi stagnation from time to time because it’s part of life, some types are more prone to it.

For example, if you know anything about homoeopathy – and whether or not you accept it! – it does describe different kinds of people and the kinds of ill-health they typically experience. 

One particular type – described as Nux Vomica – is especially prone to qi stagnation:

• Physically they are ‘rather thin, spare, quick, nervous and irritable’.
• Often sedentary ‘they remain under stress and strain from prolonged office work, with business cares and worries’.
• ‘Such persons in order to forget their worries are apt to indulge in wine, women, rich stimulant foods and sedative drugs: with ill-effects from which they are prone to suffer.’

You probably know people like this! Suitably adapted it applies to many women too! (By the way, I’ve quoted from Materia Medica by Dr S.R.Phatak, a text I consult very frequently.)

What’s going on here?

Stagnant Qi tries to burst out!

Then Stagnant Qi attacks Lung qi, so now not only are you sighing but it’s hard to catch your breath. Your chest feels stuffy, blocked, congested. Sometimes it feels itchy, too. Qi stagnation then transforms into either Heat, or movement and Ascending Qi.

(Think what happens to a balloon as you try to compress it. It pushes out in other directions, between your fingers – assuming you don’t burst it! Compression also makes it hot.)

Whatever! Stagnant Qi tries to burst out, almost like a firework.

If it changes form into heat, you feel hot, bothered, red-eyed, irritable, and it’s hard to sleep. If there is also phlegm (see below) then you get sinus, ear and gland problems, with heat too! (That means pain and offensive smells too! Sorry.)

If stagnant qi attacks Kidney qi, not only is there desire to urinate, but noises in the ear – tinnitus. (This is because, in Chinese medicine, the Kidney zang rules your ears and your hearing.) For some the pressure builds into hypertension, high blood pressure.

Abdominal Effects of Qi Stagnation

• have to hold your tongue, or
• must work late to meet a deadline, or
• stop yourself screaming because it would set the wrong example?

• Are you trying to achieve too many things at once?
• You’re in an intolerable situation, hard to avoid?

Your Abdomen is your soft centre.

Qi stagnation presses onto your digestion and bowels.

So in your abdomen, you feel swelling or distension. This isn’t always from gas, but may be. When pressed the area may be sore, and the local distension may appear to move around. Almost like bubbles of stuff deep inside.

With distension comes a feeling of stretching, distension, cramping or burning. You want to loosen clothing and release tight belts. Sometimes you feel a band round your centre.

Circulation: feeling too hot, too cold, sweating even though you aren’t exercising.

Qi Stagnation Periods

Women get this distending, stretching sensation as qi stagnation builds before their menses. They may already be under mental pressure (from career and family demands). Now it’s physical too. And all the tension down there puts them off sex, a tragedy if they’re trying to conceive.

It often makes them weepy with frustration. But qi stagnation periods can be painful, very painful. (Eventually, as the qi stagnation  spreads deeper, it can lead to Blood Stasis, with tangible lumps and stabbing pains.)

What’s going on here?

Chest Damage from Qi Stagnation

Sometimes this precedes and sometimes it follows abdominal symptoms.

What would you feel as Qi stagnation pressure expands in your chest?

• Chest feels tight – you can’t get your breath – you start worrying about asthma, which it isn’t: yet!
• Throat feels blocked – the Chinese called this ‘plum-stone’ throat blockage
• Heart beat does funny things – too fast, too slow, misses a beat.
• Chest gets itchy
• You start getting colds more often and breathing gets blocked by phlegm
• Some get hot flushes as Qi transforms into Heat and the body responds with perspiration. Disconcerting and embarrassing!
• … I’m sure you’ll think of more examples!

Chronic Damage

The longer the stress continues the more likely becomes chronic damage.

For example …

• Stomach or intestines lose their elasticity or become inflamed
• Lungs congest with phlegm. (If you’re a smoker, you now can’t stop smoking because smoking helps shift the mucus)
• Why that cigarette? Because smoking in effect makes you sigh. This is a downward-acting movement that relaxes you. Like swallowing – see next below – it takes Qi downwards.
• Cravings develop for sweet, spicy or salty food and/or alcohol. When you swallow something, it takes qi downwards. This counteracts the ascending tendency mentioned earlier. Unfortunately most such foods and alcohol have secondary effects that tend to be heating. So you need another sweet or – just one more – drop of the hard stuff!

The Next stage as Qi Stagnation penetrates within

So from being stagnant qi that tried to escape upward, it has now ‘attacked’ the centre, and your ‘spirit’.

That can lead to yang deficiency.

The longer it goes on the more Qi stagnation prevents Blood from flowing smoothly. That leads to Blood Stagnation. (You get Blood Stagnation anyway as you age, but try to delay its arrival for as long as possible!)

Examples of Blood Stagnation? Lots, but check Stomach Blood Stasis.

Qi stagnation can lead to Heart Qi Stagnation. You don’t want that! That can lead on to Heart Blood stagnation. (Yes, you’re right, that can look like heart attack or stroke.)