LOVE ABIDING

A RESEARCH-INFORMED CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE

Emotional Releasing, Purification, and Rebalancing
Through Embodied Awareness

Prepared for G. Ross Clark | August 2026

CENTRAL FINDING The relief you experienced is real and therapeutically meaningful. The cough may have been part of that experience. What cannot yet be concluded is that a discrete emotion was physically stored in the liver or spleen and expelled through coughing. The wisest approach is to honour the felt release, remain open about its cause, and attend appropriately to the cough as a bodily symptom.

Your recent meditation contained several potentially healing elements: physical support from the couch, deliberate grounding, sustained attention to bodily sensation, gentle hand contact, the orienting phrase “PURE MIND,” permission for the body to respond, and a felt movement from tension toward relief. Together, these form a plausible contemplative and somatic practice. This article develops that practice without requiring an unproven anatomical explanation.

1. Beginning with the experience itself

A trustworthy starting point is to separate what you directly observed from what you inferred.

Observed: you were lying comfortably, grounded in bodily sensation, with a hand resting on the right side beneath or around the lower ribs.
Observed: coughing began, became deep and repeated, and was followed by a subjective sense of relief or release.
Inferred: the contact may have involved the liver or lower right lung, and the coughing may have released emotion associated with that organ.

The observation is solid: something happened, and relief was felt. The inference is a meaningful possibility within a traditional or symbolic framework, but it is not established by the event alone. Preserving this distinction does not diminish your experience. It protects the experience from being burdened with a conclusion that cannot yet be known.

There was deep coughing.
Relief is present.
I do not have to explain everything yet.

2. Three levels of truth can be held together

Experiential truth

The cough felt relieving. Your body softened or reorganized, and the meditation seemed therapeutic. This first-person truth deserves respect. It tells us about the meaning and immediate effect of the event.

Traditional-symbolic truth

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) connects emotional patterns with broad zang-fu systems: anger and frustration with Liver, grief with Lung, pensiveness or worry with Spleen, fear with Kidney, and joy or agitation with Heart. In scholarly descriptions of East Asian medicine, these visceral systems do not correspond exactly to Western anatomical organs; they are wider functional and relational systems. [11]

Biomedical truth

Modern anatomy places most of the liver beneath the diaphragm and lower ribs in the right upper abdomen. The spleen lies beneath the diaphragm in the left upper abdomen. A hand on the surface cannot reliably determine which internal organ is generating a sensation. [9,10] Cough is ordinarily understood as a protective respiratory reflex initiated through airway and related sensory pathways, including vagal afferents; it is not a recognized method by which the liver or spleen discharges stored emotion. [6,7]

These levels do not have to compete. TCM may provide a reflective map, modern medicine may provide anatomical and physiological safeguards, and your own experience may reveal whether the practice leaves you more grounded, compassionate, and able to function.

3. What might have contributed to the coughing?

No one can determine the cause from this description alone. Several ordinary mechanisms could have contributed, separately or together:

A change of body position may have moved mucus, altered chest-wall mechanics, or changed stimulation around the throat, airways, diaphragm, or esophagus.
Relaxed or fuller breathing may have brought an existing airway irritation or urge-to-cough into awareness.
Lying down can sometimes bring reflux or throat irritation into play, even without obvious heartburn.
Gentle touch can focus attention, increase a sense of safety, and alter the perception of internal sensation. In one randomized laboratory study, self-soothing touch reduced the cortisol response to acute stress, although it did not reduce every subjective or physiological measure. [3]
Attention can detect an urge that was already developing. The hand placement and the cough may therefore have been linked through awareness without the hand directly causing it.
Emotional state can influence breathing, laryngeal tension, autonomic arousal, and symptom perception. This mind-body influence is plausible; it still does not establish that a particular organ contained and expelled an emotion.
The timing could also have been coincidental. A meaningful emotional effect can follow an event even when its physical trigger is ordinary.

IMPORTANT DISTINCTION A cough is mediated partly through vagal sensory pathways, but “vagal” does not automatically mean “emotional discharge.” The vagus participates in many protective and regulatory functions. A cough can feel releasing while still being an airway reflex.

4. What contemporary research supports

Interoception: learning to feel the body more clearly

Interoception is the sensing and interpretation of signals arising within the body. Research associates interoceptive awareness with brain systems including the insula and cingulate cortex. [2] A small randomized trial found that three days of mindfulness training increased several self-reported dimensions of interoceptive sensibility and that this change statistically mediated a reduction in state anxiety; it did not improve objective interoceptive accuracy. [1] This is an important caution: feeling more connected with the body does not necessarily make every anatomical interpretation accurate.

Decentering and reduced elaboration

When you say “PURE MIND” and then attend to raw sensation, you may interrupt the usual chain of fear, explanation, and resistance. Sensation becomes something known within awareness rather than immediate proof of danger or personal failure. Mindfulness trials have reported reductions in negative mood and anxiety, and experimental work suggests that acceptance and reappraisal can influence emotional and physiological responses through different pathways. [4,5]

Safety through supportive touch

A gently resting hand can serve as an attentional boundary and a nonverbal message of care: “This part of the body is not abandoned.” The benefit does not depend on the hand physically reaching an internal organ. The touch may help by providing warmth, contact, proprioceptive information, and an embodied signal of self-support.

Allowing completion without forcing catharsis

Coughing, sighing, trembling, tears, yawning, warmth, or spontaneous movement can occur during relaxation and emotional attention. Any of these may accompany relief, but none is required. A dramatic physical event is not evidence that more healing occurred. The goal is increased capacity, integration, and wise action—not the production of catharsis.

5. Understanding the TCM organ-emotion map wisely

The classical map can be used as a source of inquiry rather than as a self-diagnosis. A traditional association might invite a question such as, “Is there frustration needing kind attention?” It should not become a conclusion such as, “This sensation proves anger is trapped in my anatomical liver.” Contemporary academic accounts emphasize that zang-fu terms refer to broader functional concepts and do not map neatly onto Western anatomy. [11] Research on TCM varies substantially by practice and condition; official evidence summaries advise evaluating specific interventions rather than assuming that every traditional claim has been biologically confirmed. [12]

A balanced use of the map could be:

Liver / anger: “Is there frustration, blocked intention, or resentment asking to be understood?”
Lung / grief: “Is there grief, longing, or unexpressed sorrow here?”
Spleen / pensiveness: “Has worry or repetitive thinking exhausted this body?”
Kidney / fear: “What needs protection, reassurance, or practical support?”
Heart / joy: “Can joy be received without grasping or overstimulation?”

These are contemplative prompts—not organ diagnoses. If you wish to pursue TCM treatment, use a regulated practitioner and tell your physician about every complementary treatment or herb, because some products can interact with medicines or cause organ injury. [12]

6. A careful definition of emotional release and purification

Emotional release

In this practice, emotional release need not mean that a substance or stored packet of emotion leaves an organ. It can mean a measurable or felt transition: muscular guarding decreases, breathing changes, tears or words become possible, an emotion becomes conscious, a defensive pattern loosens, or the person feels less compelled to avoid or act out the emotion.

Purification

Purification is best understood contemplatively rather than medically. It is not detoxification of an organ. It is the reduction of confusion, shame, compulsive resistance, hostility, or grasping around an experience. Anger may still arise, but it can be known without hatred. Grief may remain, but it is no longer abandoned. Fear may speak, but it does not have to command the entire being.

Rebalancing

Rebalancing is a return to enough regulation and clarity to choose wisely. It may include rest, hydration, medical care, a boundary, forgiveness, prayer, movement, or simply stopping for the day. Peace is one sign of rebalancing; appropriate protective action is another.

Pure Mind does not expel the wounded part.
Pure Mind makes room for it.
Love holds it; wisdom decides what comes next.

7. The PURE MIND Embodied Release Practice

This 10- to 15-minute practice combines grounding, interoceptive awareness, gentle touch, emotional permission, and careful integration. It should be receptive rather than forceful.

Prepare for safety. Use a comfortable but not collapsed position. If lying flat promotes coughing, reflux, dizziness, or shortness of breath, elevate your upper body or sit supported. Keep water nearby. Do not practise directly after a large meal.
Orient outward. Open your eyes. Notice three ordinary things in the room. Feel the couch, chair, or floor supporting you. Let the nervous system register the present environment before turning inward.
Establish Pure Mind. Silently say “PURE MIND” one to three times. Do not demand joy or a special state. Let the words mean spacious, non-condemning awareness.
Begin with a neutral area. Feel the hands, feet, or contact with the couch before moving toward a charged area. This prevents difficult sensation from becoming the whole field.
Describe, do not diagnose. Notice location, size, temperature, movement, pressure, pulsing, tightness, softness, intensity, and change. Prefer “warm pressure beneath the right ribs” to “anger stored in my liver.”
Add gentle hand contact. Rest the hand lightly on or near the area. Do not press deeply or try to palpate an organ. Feel the hand and the body receiving the hand.
Allow the natural response. Let breathing remain easy. If coughing, sighing, tears, or movement arises, allow it without encouraging it. Sit up if coughing becomes strong. Never force repeated coughs, breath-holding, hyperventilation, or shaking.
Recognize emotion tentatively. Ask, “Is there an emotion, memory, need, or protective impulse here?” Accept “not knowing” as a complete answer. If an emotion appears, name it gently: “There is sadness,” or “There may be anger.”
Join experience with Pure Mind. Use: “There is this sensation—and Pure Mind is abiding.” Or: “Yes, this too belongs within Love.” Let the joining word “and” prevent either rejection or over-identification.
Integrate and close. Notice what is different and what is unchanged. Open your eyes, look around, move the feet and hands, drink water if appropriate, and choose one ordinary next action. Do not immediately interpret every sensation.

8. Phrases for the practice

Before turning inward

PURE MIND.
This body is supported.
Nothing has to be forced.

While staying with sensation

There is sensation.
Sensation is sensation.
May it be gently held and understood.

When emotion becomes clearer

Yes, there is grief—and Love.
Yes, there is anger—and forgiveness.
Yes, there is fear—and Pure Mind is abiding.

When coughing occurs

There is coughing.
Let the body breathe naturally.
Relief may come; no explanation is required.

When no release occurs

Nothing needs to happen.
Pure Mind is not measured by intensity.
Quiet presence is enough.

9. Inquiry after the meditation

Choose two or three questions. Inquiry should clarify experience, not turn it into an elaborate theory.

What did I directly feel before the cough, during it, and afterward?
Did the cough begin after a change in position, breath, swallowing, or pressure?
Was it dry or productive? Was there wheezing, pain, reflux, mucus, dizziness, or breathlessness?
What emotion, memory, image, or need appeared—if any?
Did I feel more present afterward, or more numb and disconnected?
Did the practice increase kindness and choice?
Am I describing the experience, or claiming more than I know?
What practical care does this body need now?

10. A simple observation record

For several sessions, record the event without trying to prove an organ-emotion theory. Patterns will be more informative than one episode.

Record	What to note
Context	Time, posture, recent food, activity, room air, and emotional situation.
Sensation	Exact location and qualities; avoid naming an organ unless medically established.
Hand contact	Light resting, movement, or pressure; right or left side.
Cough	When it began, duration, dry/productive, mucus, pain, wheeze, or breathlessness.
Emotion	What was present before and after; include “none noticed” or “not known.”
Effect	More grounded, relieved, tired, activated, numb, clear, or unchanged.
Follow-up	Hydration, rest, medical contact, conversation, boundary, prayer, or no action.

12. The wisest understanding of your experience

Your experience need not be reduced to “only physical,” nor elevated into certainty that an organ released a stored emotion. A more complete statement is:

While grounded in Pure Mind and gentle bodily awareness,
a deep cough arose and was followed by genuine relief.
Its complete cause is not yet known, and the experience may still be healing.

This formulation honours your body, your contemplative knowledge, traditional wisdom, and medical humility at the same time. The body does not have to prove that an emotion was stored in a particular organ for the practice to be therapeutic.

A master PURE MIND Abiding sequence

PURE MIND.
Yes, there is sensation.
Nothing needs to be forced.
May this whole experience be well held and understood.
What is the next warm and wise step?

The deepest purification is not the production of a cough, tremor, tear, or joyful state. It is the gradual purification of the relationship: less fear of sensation, less abandonment of emotion, less compulsion to explain, and more capacity to meet the body with Love, truth, and appropriate care.

Research and clinical sources

Educational note: This article offers a research-informed contemplative framework and is not a diagnosis or a substitute for medical assessment.