How Does Joy Affect Your Heart?

Joy is a feeling of great pleasure and happiness, to which the heart responds to. 

Joy is related to the heart and the fire element in traditional Chinese medicine. It’s been said many times that the heart is your emotional center, or it’s the place where you deepen the inner connection to your spirit.

It’s important to keep your heart in good condition, as well as to keep the circulation of blood throughout your body strong. The heart can experience stress, strain and tension, all of which can lead to the blockage of your blood vessels and cause your blood supply to diminish.

Blockages of the blood vessels and the hardening of your arteries cause poor circulation. The heart gets exhausted by accelerating its pump to compensate for poor circulation in the body. It’s a physical imbalance in the system. Your heart suffers from other imbalances too, like emotional imbalances.

Healthy expressions of joy are good for your body and heart, but can there be an imbalance of joy in your life?

Is there such a thing as excessive joy that could impair your heart?

If you ask me, there’s no such thing as too much joy in life. 

It turns out that some people believe there is such a thing as too much joy.  This can come in the form of agitation. Some people believe too much excitement from a fast-paced lifestyle can consume your body, taking away your energy. 

Too much joy also can be expressed as a form of restlessness where you are always on the edge, looking to move around without a purpose, leading to compulsive behavior. You’re so excited, you want to overindulge in something.  

Or too much joy could turn into a form of mania where you are in a period of high energy. During this time, you cannot calm your mind or soothe your emotions.

Then there is too little joy. This is called depression. 

Is Your Heart Related To The Nervous System?

Your heart suffers from imbalances through the autonomic nervous system’s stimulation of your body. The nervous system controls the heart from opposite ends. Your heart is controlled by your parasympathetic nervous system, which lowers your heart rate. It’s also controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, which increases your heart rate. 

Throughout your lifetime, your heart is stimulated more by the sympathetic nervous system than by the parasympathetic nervous system.  The sympathetic nervous system uses the spinal cord to connect your brain with the rest of your body.  The parasympathetic nervous system uses the vagus nerve to connect your internal organs by regulating their functions.

A Gentle Exercise To Heal Your Heart

In a previous blog, I told you about this theory where you have a limited number of heartbeats in your lifetime.

Let’s say you have 2.5 to 3 billion heartbeats to use in your lifetime. When you get overstimulated, your heart rate increases, which can lead to a shortened lifespan according to this theory. When you watch a ball game or a horror movie, your heart is going to race, you’re going to be overstimulated, causing an increase in your heart rate. When you get angry, worried, afraid, or experience sadness in your life, your heart is also going to be affected in the same manner.

In large doses of these emotions, your heart can become exhausted from an accelerated heart rate through the stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system.  You need to do something to help your heart rest. And not only does your heart need rest, your spirit also needs rest. 

Sleep disorders are common symptoms of imbalance in the heart system in your life.  For example, if you are having a manic episode, you could have racing thoughts.  When this happens, your thoughts and emotions can become so overwhelming, you start to lose control and you lose sleep.

It’s common to experience anger, worry, fear, and grief. But when you experience any of them in excess, you can deprive yourself of joy in your life. Remember, you are a spiritual being and you need some rest in order to thrive. Meditation, or an acupuncture session can help you relax. What I recommend is giving Tai Chi a try. It can help your heart filter and process emotions.

Tai Chi is my method for improving circulation without needlessly burdening my heart.

The objective of Tai Chi or any internal exercise is different from that of regular exercise or cardiovascular exercise. Its main purpose is to relax the entire body so that the afflicted part of your body can receive nourishment and heal itself. Tai Chi can train or direct your brain to stimulate the vagus nerve to lower your heart rate. Stress, strain and tension can be relieved through the practice of Tai Chi.

Let’s do an internal heart exercise and follow up with some Tai Chi flow.

1. Stand in a comfortable position. Extend your hands out in front of your chest at the level of your shoulders and keep your fingertips close to each other. The fingertips of each hand should almost come together. Keep a little distance between your fingers.

2. Keep your eye focused on the tips of your fingers and start to feel the energy flow between the fingers. You may also want to close your eyes a little bit and get the feeling of your fingers right in front of you.

3. Feel a current of energy flow between your fingers. Now this can happen in a clockwise direction, where energy is coming out of your left fingers and going through into your right fingers. Imagine that.

4. Hold your arms out for as long as you can and keep your concentration on your energy flow. As mentioned before, imagine that energy is flowing from your left fingertips, jumping over the gap between your fingers into your right hand. The energy is going into your right fingers, then down into your hand, through your arm, into your body, and finally touching your heart.

5. Relax your arms down.

You may feel a little bit of tingling sensation in your fingers. That is what you want to experience.

Now let’s get into the flow of Tai Chi, we’ve touched on this in previous posts as well so you may be familiar with this exercise.

1. Energize the fingers up, exhale, relax back down.

2. Energize the fingers, and relax back down. Exhale all the way.

3. Energize and turn.

4. Energize ward off left. Exhale, relax.

5. Turn and energize ward off right.

6. Turn and exhale into your left foot and energize, roll back.

7. Exhale into your right foot and energize to press. Press in front of your chest, in front of your heart and relax back down, exhale all the way.

Do this a few times and follow along with my video to help with the flow.

Experience More Joy

As you do these movements, you feel an opening in your heart center. There is a release and energy is flowing in and out, and through your body.

You can change your emotions or your responses to your emotions by doing Tai Chi or any type of breathwork. 

Remember when we flow, we’re also inhaling, exhaling, and aligning our movements with our breath.

Stay tuned as we continue to do our research on the link between your emotions and organs. 

Follow my YOUTUBE channel to see how we’ve done some Tai Chi flows in the past. 

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If you’d like to explore Tai Chi further, you can sign up for an online Tai Chi class here.