The pericardium, called xin-bao (心 包) in Chinese Medicine, physically wraps around the heart. The protection it offers the heart is physical and energetic, from external shock and excessive emotional energy from within.
The heart is the king of organs, the Supreme Controller. It is where our Spirit resides. In The Web That Has No Weaver, Ted J Kaptchuk writes, “the Heart Spirit ensures that whatever consciousness, intention, volition, thought, reflection, and self-awareness exist within the large composite Spirt intersects and ‘clicks’ with the world of time and space. Being respectful, helpful, thoughtful or emotional is only virtuous when the Heart Spirit ensures that the moment is right.”¹
The natural state of a healthy heart is peace and calm. It can be disturbed by imbalanced emotions from the other organs. So how to be open and yet discriminating? If left unprotected, sadness and anger can overcome joy, pleasure, and love. The pericardium plays this role. It is the door that affords the heart protection and allows us to receive love and access our inner voice.
If the gate is jammed shut, we feel trapped inside and quite alone. If stuck open, we are defenseless and vulnerable. If functioning as nature intended, whether our orientation is toward the inner or outer, we feel safe, secure, and able to see ourselves and others with eyes of love and compassion.
Professor Neil R. Gumenick, The Heart Protector – Circulation/Sex – Pericardium Official²
The Related Heart Wall
As many people have experienced, heartbreak can be extremely painful. It’s the end of intimate relationships. It’s also when a child feels unwelcomed and unloved, buying into an unworthiness. Some people may, as a result, build a heart wall to protect themselves. From future injury and from being completely heartbroken.
Dr Bradley Nelson, creator of Body Code and Emotion Code, works with the heart wall to create tremendous change in people. He’s said that the heart wall is rather common, which is not surprising seeing that during the period between pre-birth and seven years of year, children are like sponges.
While the heart wall may help someone feel safe, it can in the long run block them from receiving and giving love. Emotions passing through the heart wall, for example, are altered, so what we receive and what we send out is no longer perceived as love or loving. Being built of trapped emotions, including inherited ones, the heart wall can feel heavy.
Physically a person with a heart wall may experience shoulder and neck tension and compromised immunity as the thymus gland and heart communication are affected.
It’s important to know first if you have a heart wall, which can be done via muscle testing, and if it’s ready to be released. Sometimes you need one, such as nursing yourself through the death of a loved one or a divorce.
Opening to Love
Self-Reflection
We have the answers. The question is are we courageous enough to listen to our inner voice. Sometimes we are not ready, and that’s okay, as long as we can acknowledge this truth.
In our self-reflection, we can journal, meditate, and ponder about our past and current relationships. Are we loving, trusting, and warm with ourselves and others? Where have we been so desperate for love that we have opened up to the “wrong” people or had inappropriate boundaries? How did we cope when we experienced heartbreak? Did we say “no more”, “what’s wrong with me”, or “I’ll find love again”? Did we allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to have a heartbreak?
Flower Essences
Flower essences is a powerful energetic and vibrational form of healing medicine. You may have heard of the Bach, Australian Bush, or Green Hope Farm. Maybe the ones from Jackson Galaxy for cats. Yes, animals respond very well to flower essences too. (I always kept Rescue Remedy on hand for my dogs.)
Agrimony
The Agrimony person appears cheerful to the world, masking their pain and torment with smiles and jokes. They also avoid disagreements and be people-pleasing and may find refuge in drugs to maintain this facade. For many reasons, they may have come to distrust their own observations and perception of situations. Agrimony Flower Essence can help someone to connect their inner and outer worlds and for them to see how the world, not jus the dark side. This can help someone restore their true joy, with the light of the world.
Cerato
This flower essence is suggested for people distrusting of their own intuition and despite their gut feelings, opt to follow other people’s truth. Cerato then is a remedy that helps people reconnect to their heart wisdom.
Holly
Holly Flower essence supports those who are jealous, angry, and enraged that they are not receiving the love they know they deserve. They direct these aggressive energies outward because of a lack of love energy within or a lack of connection to it. From The Twelve Healers and Other Remedies, “for those who sometimes are attacked by thoughts of such kind as jealousy, envy, revenge, suspicion. For the different forms of vexation. Within themselves they may suffer much, often when there is no real cause for their unhappiness”
Acupressure
The body consists of networks of acupuncture points. Determining the optimal approach requires years of study and experience and sessions with an acupuncturist is well worth it. Most of us, however, can enjoy some benefit from acupressure. You can gently massage these points.
Pericardium 6, Inner Frontier Gate
This connects the Pericardium and Triple Warmer meridians, helping us to access our interior and exterior worlds. Recommended for a heart that’s been shut down, Pericardium 6 is the gate that Professor Gumenick speaks of in the quote above.
Heart 7, Spirit Gate
Heart 7 is the source point for the Heart Meridian. Being an earth point, working with Heart 7 can help someone feel grounded and calm. This state then helps them rediscover and hear their inner heart-based wisdom song.
Heart 5, Penetrating Inside
When the heart is shut off, receiving love to the heart is difficult. This point calms, opens the channel for energy flow, and regulates Heart Qi. As a luo-point or a connecting point, Heart 5 is useful for emotional and psychological challenges. It is helpful for those who identify with the external and their masks and have disconnected from their essence.
Five-element Acupuncturist Neil Gumenick writes in the articles Using the Spirits of the Points: The Heart Meridian and Using the Spirits of the Points: The Pericardium Meridian ³ that we can access the spirit within through several points, regardless of the causation. These include Heart 1 Utmost Source, Heart 4 Spirit Path, Heart 5 Penetrating Inside, Heart 7 Spirit Gate, Heart 8 Lesser Palace, Pericardium 6 Inner Frontier Gate, and Pericardium 7 Great Mound. You can find the Heart points here and the Pericardium 6 here.
(In Jin Shin Jyutsu, we may recognize this as the attitude of “trying” which corresponds with the Heart organ function energy. ☞ Self-help : Hold the pinky finger.)
Sources
1 The Web with No Weaver Ted J Kaptchuk. p88.2 The Heart Protector – Circulation/Sex – Pericardium Official by Neil R. Gumenick (link
3 Using the Spirits of the Points: The Heart Meridian by Neil R Gumenick. (link)
Using the Spirits of the Points: The Pericardium Meridian by Neil R Gumenick (link)
Heart 5 on Acupuncture Points (link)
The Emotion Code: How to Release Your Trapped Emotions for Abundant Health, Love, and Happiness by Dr Bradley Nelson.
