Viva Challenge: make peace with your liver

In my post “Is your liver causing your skin problems?“, I’ve mentioned that I’ll be sharing ways to strengthen a sluggish liver. There are many ways but for a start, let’s all stop getting angry. Yes, I’m not kidding. Outbursts of anger and constant irritability are destructive emotional energies that can hurt your liver in the long run.

Liver fire
In fact, both Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine relate anger with poor liver function. Believers of TCM are also probably familiar with “liver fire”, as that is something commonly diagnosed for those with a weakened liver. Liver is considered as the seat of anger; it stores not only your anger but the anger from others as well and the toxic energy stored will eventually affect the organ’s function. Run a search on the topic online and you’ll find many articles related to this; one of these is about organs and emotions. A TCM practitioner will tell you that anger injures the liver’s yin energy and that in turn results in a flare up of liver yang energy and can cause headaches, blurred vision, dizziness, and mental confusion.

Taxed by poor eating habits
Of course, the liver is also taxed by a poor diet, but I would say anger is probably a root cause. I’ve got a quick temper and used to have emotional outbursts from time to time. So despite having improved on my eating habits, my body has often been diagnosed as “heaty”, with “liver fire”. So my liver was loaded with toxins, consumed by anger. That was why after my 14-day detox session, my mood was so positive that I was really happy about everything and everyone. In addition, my skin tone also improved and it was a truly wonderful feeling! You can read more about my experience here: detox to lose weight and feel good. Unfortunately, three months later, I was back to feeling sluggish and I had to go back to taking the detox supplements to improve my condition.

Simple liver cleansing pose
I think improving our liver needs to be a long term, disciplined process. I’m going to look into the process and write a plan for myself, which I’ll eventually share it here. But to kick start, I thought I’ll share with you an easy liver cleansing yoga breathing pose.

Release your negative emotional energy
In addition, I wanted to create a challenge around this to urge everyone to make peace with your liver by not getting angry. It sounds easy but we all know how tough this can get. But difficult as it may sound, it is possible. Learn to be more forgiving and instead of storing up the anger, engage in physical activities to release these negative emotions. You can also consider verbalizing and expressing such emotions so that you do not contain them; I swear in private and that helps me. Crying and laughing will help too.

Love your liver
At the end of the day, if you make peace with your liver, it’s going to help your other organs, such as the gallbladder too. And you know that the healthier you are, the better you’ll look. So stop getting angry and start loving your liver today!

Comments

  1. coraline says:

    this is a very interesting and informative post. after reading through the link that you posted, i now know that my liver functions must have deteriorated as i often surpressed my feelings and kept them close inside me. i have skin allergies and my eyes often suffered from infection and red-eyes, even though i’m not wearing contacts.
    Thanks for sharing this! ?

  2. chenyze says:

    i tend to get angsty quite easily too! x= thanks for the challenge!

  3. sesame says:

    Glad you found the info relevant. The relationship between liver and skin allergies have been quite established. That is probably why pple discover their skin condition somehow change. Toxins in the liver can also affect our hormone production.

  4. sesame says:

    Peace, peace… I have to constantly remind myself this. It’s going to be a mantra soon. ?

  5. Ann says:

    Another lovely post!! I am a big fan of Chinese n Indian concepts about positive and negative energies….and that does make a sense how our organ responds to emotions. Ah! thanks for reminding to look after my liver, another reason to be happy now onwards ?

  6. Victoria Lewy says:

    Thank you for the challenge, Sesame!

    In the past i had the liver problems because of the poor diet and that was the cause of anger inside of me. After I ate something strongly fried I started to fill myself very irritated and in order to set my mood right i needed to balance my diet.

    But now it is all in the past, over the past year I have felt a strong pull towards nature which made me to stop eating junk food at all. I sometimes make gentle liver detox to keep my liver in a good shape :).

    Victoria

  7. sesame says:

    You’re welcome! ?

  8. sesame says:

    That’s great Victoria! We really need to change not only our eating habits, but our lifestyle and also mindset.

  9. fwy says:

    When you are having your PMS, it can be quite difficult to control. However, my vegan diet has been helping me for the past few months. Guess this is enough motivation to carry on with my diet.

  10. ap says:

    Thanks for the great info! As well, would you recommend any light moisturizers for oily, acne, sensitive skin? I’ve been using the grapeseed oil, but since school is starting soon I really need to find one that won’t leave a residue behind. Thanks!

  11. sesame says:

    I find it hard to recommend moisturizers cos I don’t really use it myself. I use oil as a base and then a sunscreen that works as a moisturizer. I guess it’s best to find something that works for your skin type.

  12. sesame says:

    I experienced being PMS free for about 3 months after my detox. I think a clean liver does help with that.

  13. Raymonda says:

    Hi Victoria,

    I too would like to do an extremely gentle liver detox. I can’t even take some supplements without feeling irritation and anger.

    Would you share what your did for a “gentle” liver detox?

    Thank you,
    Raymonda

  14. ummul khadiba says:

    Its good.But i can’t understand.please clear it with medical explanation,how anger affects our liver?

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