In traditional Chinese medicine, the warm summer season is associated with the heart. The heart’s element is fire, representing joy, passion, and warmth, which makes summer the easiest time of year to connect with those feelings and bring your heart meridian back into balance.
When the heart is out of balance, the most common symptom is anxiety — something virtually everyone has experienced at some point. Anxiety can center on work, family, health, or nothing you can quite put your finger on. It becomes a problem when apprehension and fear grow out of proportion to any known cause: the kind of panic that keeps you from getting through your day or interrupts your sleep. Symptoms include nervousness, irritability, dread, insomnia, and trouble concentrating, along with feeling shaky, restless, or tired. Left unaddressed, anxiety can also take a real toll long-term, affecting your cardiovascular system, digestion, and nervous system.
Finding the Root Cause
So what can we actually do to balance the heart and ease anxiety? The most important step is understanding where it’s coming from. Can you identify the source? Look beyond your relationships and daily stressors to your diet and lifestyle too. Stressful jobs and relationships are common root causes, but so are blood sugar imbalances and poor sleep.
I can also run testing to check for imbalances in your endocrine or nervous system. The adrenal stress index is a genuinely useful tool for uncovering the root cause of anxiety, especially when that “wired and tired” feeling shows up. If your anxiety comes paired with mood changes and trouble sleeping, a neurotransmitter test might be worth considering too. Once we’ve identified what’s actually driving your symptoms, we can build a real treatment plan around it.
In the Meantime: A Few Tools for Quick Relief
Belly breathing. This ancient diaphragmatic breathing technique helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system (“rest and digest”) while calming your sympathetic “fight or flight” response. The easiest way to practice it: lie on your back with a small book resting on your belly. As you inhale, let your belly rise and push the book toward the ceiling, keeping your shoulders and ribcage still. As you exhale, let the book fall back down.
Rescue Remedy. This flower essence blend, developed by Dr. Edward Bach in the 1930s, is designed to help restore inner calm and a sense of control, and many people find it genuinely helpful for anxiety.
Chamomile tea. This age-old remedy for stress and anxiety holds up remarkably well. Chamomile acts as a nervine, protecting and restoring your nervous system, along with being mildly analgesic, antispasmodic, and carminative — which makes it especially helpful if your stress tends to show up in your digestive tract.
If you’re dealing with anxiety, this is a great season to prioritize balancing your heart. Let’s work together to find the real root cause of your symptoms.
— Dr. Faith Christensen