Hormones + Emotion

It’s time to understand the spectrum of emotions, and how to command them. Something that yogis and teachers through many lineages have understood is that you can get a powerful hold on your emotional experience through your endocrine system.

There is an actual physiological base to your emotions. There’s a chemistry of the blood, a chemistry of the organ health, and a chemistry of the endocrine secretions that creates your emotional balance, or lack there of. And it’s all very subtle, because these are subtle systems in the physical body. However, your emotional mastery and acuity are not so subtle, they are real and profound.

When the secretions are out of balance, you feel irritable, cranky, and aggressive. But when the endocrine system is secreting properly, it is actually very difficult, if not impossible for you to act obnoxiously or moodily. When the endocrine system is in balance, you are imbalance. You feel good. You have a connection to your infinite reality. You are happy. If your glands are totally in the right balance for you and your body chemistry, there is no way you can be depressed. So it makes real and practical sense to have a baseline understanding of your endocrine system and the tools to balance it at a moments notice. 

The endocrine system made easy

Your endocrine system is a collection of glands that secrete hormones. The major glands include the thyroid, parathyroid, hypothalamus, adrenal, pancreas, sex organs, and the pineal gland all up the pituitary gland, also known as the master gland, which controls all other glandular secretions. The job of the endocrine system is to trigger physiological processes, cellular growth, and emotional experiences through specifically coded, hormonal releases

If you experience anger, that’s a distinct hormonal code, running through your body via your circulatory system and bloodstream. If you are feeling depressed, that’s another separate hormonal code. It’s the same with happiness. And the more we refine a name for a feeling, like euphoria, versus sublime or pissed versus worked up, the more specific, the coded or mono mixture. 

This is why you can talk to a therapist until you are blue in the face, but if you don’t have techniques to command your endocrine system, you will still end up feeling blue. And often the repetition of trauma and unhappy events or situations through the retelling and reimagining of them create this exact same biochemical reaction and subconscious reality as the original event. And in some weird way the body gets used to, or even addicted to these biochemical experiences! 

The new age healer doesn’t get a free pass either. Even if your shaman goes in and removes that energetic block in your third chakra from a past life, if your blood hormone levels don’t get shifted, you end up with a hollow feeling, and most likely a reinforced or reactivated hormonal pattern despite the session . Then the trauma is often relived by talking about it, or by re-creating it in a relationship or experience of reality. There is no difference between a real or imagined event to the subconscious mind, and the bodies subsequent biochemical reaction.

We all want a positive, balanced emotional experience, right? So that means we must balance the glandular system on the regular. There are so many stimuli and patterns that throw it out of balance, so that we do have to make a bit of an effort and luckily, this is pretty easy.

The cold shower practice is the most effective glandular, detox, balancer, and rejuvenator, and if done consistency consistently, it’s a total antidote for depression. But if arctic temperatures at seven in the morning, aren’t your cup of tea (nor mine really), you can also reset your granular system with the four stroke breath for balance…

The 4 stroke breath for balance is a powerful glandular equilibrium because it balances out the pituitary gland. In yoga science, your pituitary gland is called the master gland. All of the other glands in your system take their direction from your pituitary. So your thyroid, parathyroid, pancreas, hypothalamus, adrenal, aqnd sex glands all change based on the secretions of your pituitary gland. This is the seat of the endocrine system power and command. Your glands control the onset of emotional experience moment to moment. So you can completely alter your total experience of life by adjusting and balancing these secretions . 

The 4 Stroke breath for balance

Posture sit easy pose. Alternatively, you can do this at your desk in a car or wherever you are.

Keep the eyes closed, gently, focusing up and in at the brow point

Inhale with four strokes through the nose. Exhale and four strokes through the nose.

Do this for 3 to 11 minutes

To end inhale, hold the breath. Exhale and relax.