Body Economy: Time, Money and the Adrenals
How Stress Response Shapes the Texture of Experience
We’ve all heard how modern life makes for a state of constant, if low-grade, stress. After a while, our inner stress meter gets confused. Because unless there’s a tiger on the prowl, the emergency our body is prepping us for probably isn’t one at all.
Urgency is just the adrenals talking. You can’t fault them, the only languages they know are Cortisolish and Adrenalinese. Feeling their jolt of chemical urgency, we think we have to hurry, but doing so only perpetuates the dysfunctional cycle.
“The times are urgent: let us slow down.”1
Urgency is closely bound up with how we relate to time, to other people and even to money.
Let’s start with time. Hurrying about at the beck and call of stress signals, it’s as if we skate on time’s surface. Like a jet-skier, we stay on top simply by virtue of our velocity. Sure, it feels good once in a while to have the wind in our faces, to cover some ground and make some waves. But what kinds of encounters do we miss while skipping over the whitecaps? We can forget that there’s a whole world beneath the surface. A watery world that may well terrify us if we’ve forgotten how to swim.
Mindlessly heeding urgency—habitually playing the “too busy” card, which seems to be epidemic in urban areas especially—means opting out of entire dimensions of relationship. In this way, hurrying can become a defense mechanism: if we stay busy, we have an excuse not to confront the realms that frighten us. For there are some strange creatures underwater. Strange and beautiful.
In East Asian Medicine terms, this difference between rapid/surface and slow/deep corresponds to the qi of the Urinary Bladder organ network vs that of the Kidney. (I’m capitalizing these organ network names to distinguish them from their western/anatomical counterparts. The two overlap but are not identical.)
The Urinary Bladder’s energy is like a rushing stream, babbling and busy as the mind itself. Fittingly, its channel pathway covers the eyes and cranium and flows along the spine like a waterfall. As an organ, the Bladder is deeply intertwined with the brain, the nervous system and our sense organs. It’s about responding to stimuli, especially those that trigger a fear response. When an animal’s hackles rise, that’s the Bladder talking. (It’s also the Bladder talking when it empties itself in response to terror.)
The Bladder’s counterpart, the Kidney, is also watery but more in the way of an underground aquifer. The Kidney represents our deep reserves, where we’ve got our energy stores salted away. Unfortunately the Kidney’s reserves are not near-bottomless. The Kidney can also be likened to a deep-cycle battery. The Bladder is like the wiring that draws on the battery’s charge.
There’s nothing wrong with the Bladder or the brain. It’s just that our modern circumstances tend to put this system under such stress that we lean on it too heavily. In the process, we tax our deeper reserves and risk scraping the very bottom of the barrel.
I sometimes talk about this with patients in terms of bodily bank accounts. Every 3pm cup of coffee, every all-nighter is like making a withdrawal from savings to get some ready cash. Now, some people are blessed with deep reserves and can get away with this behavior for an amazingly long time. Though it tends to catch up with them eventually, in quality of life even if not in quantity.
Signs of Kidney qi deficiency include low back pain, knee pain, impotence (in men) and urinary issues. Also low resilience to stress, and proneness to fear and dread.
If the latter sounds like a side-effect of watching TV news, well, yes: staying plugged into the news cycle’s perpetual emergency is a sure-fire way to stay imbalanced, as the doom drip keeps the Bladder in excess and the Kidney deficient. Some would say the powers that be prefer us this way: scared means less empowered, more easily subject to propaganda and control.
What’s the alternative to the hurried, harried, surface-skimming lifestyle? Slowing down. Stopping, even. This can start with interrupting the impulse to respond to urgency with hurry.
Try it. Next time you feel the need to rush, ask yourself what would happen if you took a pause instead. Even just 5 minutes. Then, do the unthinkable: take that pause. Breathe. Notice the clouds and the earth under your feet. 4 min 45 seconds to go.
Sure, there are times when a delay isn’t appropriate, but a lot more times when it is. Often when we feel we least have time for it is when we need it most. Slowing down can mean saving a life—just ask the possum in the road.
Meditation is a golden key, as is napping. Both allow us to break the cycle of stress and hurry.
Acupuncture can help—there are adrenal and Kidney-specific treatments, as well as ways to vent out excess Bladder qi. Herbal formulas like Jin Gui Shen Qi Wan can be deeply helpful, as can some adaptogens. (Careful, since herbs like Siberian Ginseng and Rhodiola can actually overstimulate in some cases. Counterproductive).
A tool I’ve learned about recently from functional medicine is phosphatidyl serine, a phospholipid compound found naturally in the brain. This chemical helps buffer the nervous system against stress and, amazingly, down-regulates the effects of cortisol. For anyone harried by stress hormones, this stuff can be an anxiety-reducing godsend during the day and a serious sleep aid at night. It can help us re-pattern our stress responses—but unless we do the work to change, like most supplements it will eventually lose its effect.
We have to do our part to short-circuit the constant drain of hurry and worry, to cultivate something different in ourselves, or no amount of herbal additions will ever fill the tank. Herbs can work amazingly well if we do, otherwise they’re little better than a band-aid.
And the money piece? Well, people’s finances can reflect the state of their water organs, i.e. the Bladder and Kidney. Strong Kidney qi goes along with an ability to save. Excess bladder goes with anxiety and overactivity, whether that means over-trading in one’s retirement account or blowing money on junk. These correlations make sense: when we’re in fearful Bladder mode, we find excuses to spend on things we think will help us prepare for an impending calamity. When we tap into the Kidney, conversely, we access the watery qualities of trust, faith and wisdom. This helps us to take the long view and plan ahead—so that our bodies, families and bank accounts all benefit.
Credit for this phrase goes to an unnamed Yoruba elder by way of Bayo Akomolafe, a Yoruba younger.