30. Aggressive Energy
Chapter Contents
What is Aggressive Energy?236
Diagnosis of Aggressive Energy238
Testing and treating Aggressive Energy240
What is Aggressive Energy?
Its nature
Aggressive Energy is described as qi ‘which has become contaminated or polluted’ (Lavier 1966; Worsley, 1990, Chapter 6, p. 175). Aggressive Energy can also be described as evil or unhealthy (xie) qi as opposed to upright or healthy (zheng) qi. (This was first suggested by Flaws, 1989.)
The contamination caused by Aggressive Energy can severely affect a person’s health and well-being. Physically it may cause life-threatening or debilitating illnesses. Aggressive Energy can affect a person’s mind and spirit and can cause symptoms such as instability, depression, despair or fluctuating emotional states. The treatment of Aggressive Energy can have a dramatic effect on the patient’s body, mind and spirit, enabling them to be restored to better health.
How Aggressive Energy develops
Once Aggressive Energy is present in one or more of the Organs, it is hard to expel without treatment. Healthy (zheng) qi naturally flows from Organ to Organ along the sheng cycle – the nurturing cycle of qi (see Chapter 2, this volume). Aggressive Energy is not healthy so it does not travel along this cycle. Instead it travels along the ke cycle. The ke cycle is usually translated as the ‘control cycle’ but when Aggressive Energy is present in the system the ke cycle becomes a destructive cycle. The yin Organs are connected across the ke cycle and this qi travels across it from yin Organ to yin Organ. Aggressive Energy is not usually found in the yang Organs.
Su Wen Chapter 65 describes how disease travels across the ke cycle:
If a disease first develops in the Heart, there will be cardiac pain. One day later it reaches the Lung, causing dyspnoea and cough. Three days later, it reaches the Liver, causing propping fullness in the (free) rib region. Five days later, it reaches the Spleen, causing blockage and stoppage, generalised pain and heaviness. If it is not cured within three days, the condition is fatal.
(Huang Fu Mi, translated by Yang and Chace, 1994)
If two Organs across the ke cycle have Aggressive Energy present, it is said that one ‘leg’ of the ke cycle is affected (see Figure 30.1). For example, if a person has Aggressive Energy on the Pericardium, this Organ may pass it on to the next Organ along the ke cycle – the Lung. If both the Pericardium and the Lung are affected this forms one ‘leg’ of the cycle.
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| Figure 30.1 • |
The Lung will then attempt to throw off this unhealthy or evil (xie) qi but it may be transmitted to the Liver. If the Pericardium, Lung and Liver all have Aggressive Energy, then two ‘legs’ are affected (see Figure 30.2). The more Organs that are affected the more serious the condition for the patient (see Figure 30.3).
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| Figure 30.2 • |
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| Figure 30.3 • |
The aetiology and pathology of Aggressive Energy
Aggressive Energy can arise from an internal or an external cause.
Aggressive Energy from an internal cause
If Aggressive Energy comes from an internal cause, an emotional trauma is usually the initial trigger. This can be anything from relationship problems, financial worries, work difficulties, family concerns or shocks. Under normal circumstances people recover from the effects of these stresses. When patients have had intense and repetitive emotions over a long period of time, however, this tends to cause disease, especially if the emotion is not expressed and has created stagnation.
In Chinese medicine emotions are called the internal causes of disease because they arise from inside us. Emotions that are not resolved eventually stagnate. As with all stagnation, this may eventually turn to toxic heat or fire. This may accumulate within an Organ as Aggressive Energy.
Mantak Chia, a qi gong teacher, describes heat in the Organs in the following way:
… each organ is surrounded by a sac or membrane, called fascia, which regulates its temperature. Ideally the membrane releases excess heat out through the skin, where it is exchanged for cool life force energy from nature. An overload of physical or emotional tension causes the membrane, or fascia, to stick to the organ so that it cannot properly release heat to the skin nor absorb cool energy from the skin. The skin becomes clogged with toxins and the organ overheats.
(Chia, 1985, p. 71)
During the initial case history a patient admitted that he had been unable to forgive his wife after she’d had an affair many years before. He continually felt angry towards her in spite of the fact that she had been committed solely to him for many years. Years of chronic resentment and hurt had led to Aggressive Energy that was drained from his Pericardium, Lung and Liver. Following this he felt able to forgive her and was stunned that the simmering anger he’d previously felt towards her had disappeared.
Aggressive Energy from an external cause
Evil or unhealthy (xie) qi derives from the external pathogenic factors of Wind, Cold, Damp, Dryness, Fire or Heat and can arise from inside or outside the body. The cause of a pathogen entering the body from the outside is often a climatic condition which ‘invades’ the body. It can also arise internally after an Organ becomes weakened or a drug or a vaccination has been administered. This causes a pathogen such as Heat to form in the body. (For more about ‘latent Heat’ and ‘residual pathogenic factors’, see Maciocia, 2008, pp. 1133–1139.)
If the patient’s healthy (zheng) qi is strong, then the pathogen is normally thrown off or dealt with. Having evil or unhealthy (xie) qi inside the body will not in itself be a cause of Aggressive Energy. Over time, however, if a pathogen is not thrown off by the body’s healthy (zheng) qi, it may penetrate deeper into the body. Finally it will reach the yin Organs. This is the deepest place that it can reach, so it stays there and stagnates. Over time, accumulation or stagnation turns to Heat and this unhealthy or evil (xie) qi may become toxic heat or fire in the yin Organs. It has now become Aggressive Energy.
Su Wen alludes to this when it describes disease penetrating deeper and deeper into the body in Chapter 5:
It is best to treat diseases at the level of the skin and hair; the next best is to treat them at the level of the muscles and flesh; the next best is to treat them at the level of the sinews and vessels; the next best is to treat them at the level of the six yang organs; the next best is to treat them at the level of the five yin organs. When treating the level of the five yin organs half the patients die and the other half survive.
(Su Wen Chapter 5; translation from Bensky and Barolet, 2009, p. 4)
Aggressive Energy and the CF
Pathogens can only invade the system if the upright (zheng) qi is weak. If a person’s qi becomes weakened, it is usually the Organ of the CF that is the first to be affected. Correspondingly, the first Organ to be affected by Aggressive Energy is likely to be the
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