What is ” Turkducken-ing” your emotions? And why does almost everyone do it?
When life is too much, we get overwhelmed and stuff our emotions in our waist. Along with those emotions, we may be stuffing a big pile of toxins as well (chemical, bacterial or viral – like long-COVID). These toxins can get stuck in the belt channel and can’t find a way out. They may contribute to body fat accumulating in the waist and lead to many health challenges that Chinese Medicine addresses on many levels – with many diagnoses of pathology, treatment strategies, and so much more!
by
Leta Herman, Alchemy Learning Center & Alchemy Healing Center
The good news is: Your body is wise and resilient – and it naturally knows what to do to “fix” things that we subject our bodies to like internal pathogenic (emotions) or external pathogens (coming from outside of you). Let’s look at this a little bit…
First of all, you already have an amazing purging system built right into your body. Fluids can be excreted on a daily basis or released through sweat and a number of other mechanisms such as urine, feces, and even tears. Our human bodies already know what to do to clear these “toxic things” when you’re overwhelmed emotionally by life or physically by toxins, bacteria, or viruses (like COVID). Your body has a smart survival strategy… and that strategy is to store things until they can be dealt with later…UNTIL… things get compromised, damaged, or even completely suppressed.
How does the body store things like trauma, emotions or toxins?
The body stores things in a number of places.
- Uncomfortable feelings – For general unresolved emotions, the first storage area the body creates is a network of little spider veins in the body, called the Luo Vessels. As we get older, we may see more and more spider veins, and according to Chinese Medicine, that just means old resentments and unresolved emotional baggage. These can be treated with Luo Channel treatments in Chinese Medicine.
- Physical toxins – But sometimes we have more physical toxins in our environment, and the first line of defense is to store those in our joints. These are called the Divergent Channels – and it is a great strategy for the body, because offloads those toxins so they won’t hurt your vital organs. But over time, this can develop into arthritis. Divergent Channel treatments can help dredge out those toxins from the joints ( We have a class on how to do Divergent Channel treatments in the ALC).
- Trauma and toxins – But what happens when we become really overwhelmed by emotional toxicity (negative emotional patterns like resentment and bitterness) or physical toxicity (such as with long-viral conditions, like long-COVID). Now the body needs another storage mechanism that can handle more intense situations – and that’s your waist – the Belt Channel (called Dai Mai in Chinese).
The How and WHY of the Dai Mai…and what you need to know for yourself and your clients!
The Dai Mai is how our ancestors passed down their unresolved traumas to us. It is like storing our toxins and emotions in our deepest part of us, our essences or DNA.
The body’s hope is… since we are overwhelmed and cannot handle this situation, we can then pass on the problem to our children. Maybe the children can heal our genetic line. (And there is a belief that when the children heal, they also heal up to 5 generations back of the ancestors).
This may be a really new way to think about healing for you, but here’s why it’s a really interesting thought.
As some of us get older (not all of us!), our body shape can change. Some of us can see the distribution of our weight change and gather more around the waist, with some pudginess below the belly button and love handles over the hips. While we may blame the food we are eating, it is not necessarily from overeating or eating the wrong foods. The body may need that extra fat around the middle to store the toxic emotional and physical baggage that it was unable to deal with.
When we store stuff in our Belt Channel, our bodies must work very hard to keep these toxins away from our vital organs. Because holding onto this latency in the Belt Channel takes a lot of effort, it often results in exhaustion and compromises a person’s ability to create and reproduce. Eventually, if this accumulation of dampness and stagnation continues, the Belt Channel will become full and will no longer be able to contain what is being stuffed, resulting in physical illness.
Essentially, what has been suppressed begins to leak out and cause many different types of symptoms. Causes of latency may include long-term negative emotional situations, trauma, and viral illnesses. Dai Mai treatments often are quite extensive and require a unique strategy for each person. The Dai Mai Extraordinary Vessel (Belt Channel) can release toxins, emotions, patterns, and virtual load that the body has been unable to purge.
Backhoein’ the toxic sludge in your belt channel…it’s a good thing… 
The Dai Mai is like breaking up after a long-term bad romance… not pleasant but you know you need to do it!
When we begin to treat the Dai Mai in Chinese Medicine, we slowly dredge out these toxins from the waist. I suggest that these treatments span a minimum of a three month period and can go as long as a year.
Over the past 20 years in my practice, the results have been pretty amazing both in improving a person’s health but also in the physical changes to the waist (e.g. quite dramatic loss of belly fat).
But before you rush to receive Dai Mai treatments as the latest weight-loss scheme, you need to know, the Dai Mai treatment protocol is not for the faint of heart. Undergoing a series of Dai Mai treatments requires that the person FIRST be strong enough to purge and not in an overwhelming life situation at this time. The purging can come out in many ways (and sometimes all at once!). So the body needs to be strong enough to handle the purging. If it’s not, the body’s survival mechanism will put the toxins right back in the Dai Mai, just as it should do! (rather then let those toxins swim around your body and cause illness).
To summarize the readiness of a person for the Dai Mai:
- First – be strong in your physical body (your energy is good, you) and in a not-too-stressful life situation
- Second – be willing (and able) to commit to a series of treatments for over at least a 3 month period
- Third – want to be free the toxic sludge being carried around in the belt channel
As a Chinese Medicine practitioner, I love to explore and dive into a number of considerations to think about before suggesting whether a course of Dai Mai treatments would best serve a client. This takes a bit of practitioner/client collaboration to best understand the factors that determine the most successful treatments.
This is one of the most successful ways I have found to treat long-term viral conditions (like long-COVID), deep emotional pain that contributes to a host of mysterious symptoms, unusual belly fat that seems unrelated to dietary choices.
If you have any questions or would if you would like to dive even deeper into this fascinating treatment – OR want to learn how I determine whether or not to use Dai Mai Vs. the Ghost Points… we have a super deep dive Livestream class on the Dai Mai in April 2023. Follow the link below to get more info and save your seat.
Thanks for reading!
Leta