EP 69 TCM Part 2

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It's a constant movement from winter to spring to fall to summer. There's constant fluidity and each one requires a piece of the next one within it. Remember when we talked about Yin and Yang theory? There's always a seed of yin within Yang and there's always a seed of yawn within yin.

Hey friends, thank you for listening to the all things good4u podcast. Join us as we explore ancient traditions, modern tools and practices in the world of health, wellness and personal development. I'm Amy Christensen, your host and your curated mind coach.

And I'm your co host, Brian Bowen, founder of Integrative Health, Inc. And Better Human Company High Performance Coaching. Are you ready to take control of your life and start feeling enthusiastic, empowered and limitless each and every day for a life well lived, let your curiosity flow with all things good for you. Amy. Amy. Amy. Good morning.

Good morning. It's still morning. Good morning, Brian.

Ready for your big move today?

I. Yes, I am ready for a move. I feel like I was the military wife without being a military wife.

Okay.

I am a. I'm a wanderluster apparently, and nomad is in my jeans. I just stay within a certain locale. A three mile radius, maybe a three hour radius. I did live in the mountains for a while. Yeah. Within Colorado. The way to go.

Awesome. I forgot, did you go skiing last week? Did you make it?

I did, I did. It was wonderful. It was a good day. It was a good starter day again as the latest I've ever started skiing, but it was fun. So we got to get our ski day on the books.

I know. Yeah. I just went up a Saturday with my kiddos and it was so beautiful. 28 and sunny and amazing. So I got. My ski bug is on.

So good. Yay. All right, we're gonna get one on the books then.

All right, let's do it. Let's do it. All right. So today we are doing a continuation of our traditional Chinese medic series. So yay. Got some more stuff to talk about that.

Yeah. So if you missed, if you didn't get into the last one, jump back and listen to it. But it's going to also build upon itself here. We're just we touched a little bit more into like where traditional Chinese medicine kind of approaches things from understanding some of the different areas. And really it's, it's, it is very complex. And while we might be getting into a lot of things that aren't going to necessarily translate to everyone's general language, but it will certainly help if have an understanding of it, give it a big, a bigger scope. And then if you're somebody who is interested in working with Chinese, traditional Chinese medicine or acupuncturist, you might, it just might help with some of the language and concepts a little bit better. But we're going to talk a little bit more about the Yin Yang today. Right. And then branch into some of the other topics from there.

Yeah. Last time, just on some of that recap, we were talking about some of the specifics around what is traditional Chinese medicine, because a lot of people just think of it as acupuncture, but we talked about how that's the roots of cupping that a lot of other people are doing, or that is gua sha tuina herbology. So there's a lot of components to traditional Chinese medicine, which a lot of people just aren't aware of where some of these things come from. But the thing I love about our conversation last time too is there's the idea of this energy, the body that has this chi. Really, it's the. Also the root of so many other things that are discussed in other modalities. So even when we're doing yoga and we talk about yoga, a lot of all those aspects, even getting into the meditation and stuff, all that, all those roots go way back to all of this stuff. The more awareness we have and when we're talking about some of these different systems theories in traditional Chinese medicine, even though you might not understand it at a deep level, the whole thing with all things good for you is also to help you become more aware and in tune with your body and, and have that type of observation. So you just have a deeper understanding of what's going on, even if it might not totally make sense. So it's pretty, pretty cool stuff.

Yeah. And it can get really complex and deep. But what I really appreciate it about the approach of Chinese medicine and acupuncture, herbology, all of those, is that it feels more holistic in that it's treating where the source may be coming from for problems, but it also feels more preventative. So if you're approaching your body with some of the traditional Chinese medicine theories or approaches or herbs, I feel like you're catching things that could be solidified or remedied balance before it gets to the disease process. And Western medicine then becomes so important and great to intervene at that stage. But hopefully if you are practicing some of these things or getting help and seeing an acupuncturist, then maybe you're going to prevent ever having to have to deal with surgeries or. More.

Yeah, stuff.

More. More interfering. I would, I want to say interfering, but that's not the right word. But more complex and. And significant medications is what I was trying to say. But hey, I've been up since 4:30. Sorry for the mumbling.

Yeah, yeah. You always talk about everything has a balance, right? So I think that even to. To the observation and to the respect of traditional Chinese medicine where we're at, everything has a balance. And I think that we are not as focused on the movement of stuff and the balance of things. And when that, when the movement is off and the balance is off, then there is dis ease that you always see as disease, Right? Dis ease. But there's a dis ease in the movement or flow of that. And I think that to start looking at it from a perspective of everything is energy. And energy causes different things to move different ways. For instance, grief or sadness suppress chi, push it down, right? Everything has an energy or movement. We might not understand it, but every day we experience it, even with our interactions with other people, even in our conversation. And the way you are engaging with me, how does it affect me? And how does your energy, how does your qi and your. Through your tone, through your presence, whatever, affect my energy or the situations or environments I put myself in? And so it's to pay attention to those little details on how things are affecting us. And does it bring me up? Does it bring me down? Does it cause me to feel scattered? Does it scatter my chi and make me feel a little crazy? Does it make me feel ungrounded? What words can we put to those? And how can we start having a vocabulary to that? Because it's. Oh, if it makes me feel this way, then I need to have an energy that is going to help help ground me and help anchor that versus feel it scattered. Or if I have too much of this, how can I put myself in an environment situation or whatever to then counteract it with this, just to help keep that movement going.

Okay, I like that. Considering how scattered I am at the moment, what would you recommend for me to be? What would you recommend for me, Brian? I. Yes, I'm already doing some tai Chi balancing, breath work in the monks, all of the packing and waiting for movers and then planning the move over and the shifting of everything there. And then I've already doing some of those cleansing things and just visualization. But what else would you think would be helpful for me and my scatteredness?

Yeah, so the, the scatteredness. One thing you could do is the earth element. And we're jumping ahead. We'll get into five elements theories in a bit. But the earth element is very nurturing and also very grounding. But so we think about it as being grounding. So you think about, oh, I'll take my shoes off and connect with the earth. So that's like a very. It's a more kind of obvious component of it. But the earth element is a very mothering, nurturing kind of energy and element and things that give you nourishment and nurturing in a variety of ways, whether it's from the foods, whether it's from things that bring you comfort in other ways I think are really good to incorporate. But then also the earth element helps create our boundaries and helps create strength, structure. So that can help channel it or guide us and keep us in a certain framework. Because, like, when you're all over the place and you have so many things going on in your mind, that's a lot of fire element happening. And just think about when the fire is really raging and just you feel scattered. You can think about even a firefighter in the mountains with the fire. They have to use the earth, right? To create boundaries, to create lines, to help control it. And so the earth element can be a component in that way, too, to help direct it, to help control it and direct it to the thing, because it's. You have so many things going on and that energy is way up here and it's, oh, no, we need to anchor it, we need to control it, we need to ground it. And then you could talk about it from the water element too, where you need to. Water needs to control fire and. And not let it get out of control. So that's jumping way ahead. But anyway, I love five element stuff, but I'd like to bring that back when we get into the conversation of five elements a little bit more.

Very good. Very well.

Yeah. Yummy stuff.

I like it. I like it. I was gonna say this is why I was naturally making a craving chicken vegetable soup, but that's in the warm and hot, and I don't know, that may not be very grounding for me right now.

I don't know that can be a still a nurturing that's not like a too young of a food when you even think about foods. Last time we talked about Yin and Yang theory and how you know that's a huge foundation for Chinese medicine and with our bodies too. And Yin and Yang does relative and in Chinese medicine that was one of the biggest things I had to learn is the relativity of everything. But Yang is this very warming and energy energetic moving, transforming type of of energy. So more like spicy foods would be more yawn the chicken. The chicken noodles actually more of a yin relative to other things. But again Yin can be relative to the thing next to it. Yang can be rel to the next thing of it. But that.

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B R I K.com that would be more in a yin food compared to if you went in a Thai food. Right? That would be a whole different situation. But yet last time we talked about Yin and Yang as a foundation and understanding some of that we related we used an example of even menopause. So if you haven't heard the last one, go back and listen to that. It explains a little bit more a little bit more about that. But in Chinese medicine there's different systems theories and or frameworks. When it gets into the diagnosis and differentiation when it starts to understand like where are the imbalances coming from what's going on and how do we fix it so we have the foundation of everything. Every living thing has this omniscient energy called chi. And it's important to always have a smooth flow of it. And we talked last time about prenatal and postnatal qi. We have two buckets. One can never be replenished, the other one and we need to protect it and astringe the essence of it or the energy of it. The next one can always be replenished. And we want to live off that one. So we talked about protecting that energy and kind of the discovery of chi and how it's been supported in. In science now that they've. Every living thing has this biomagnetic field. We built a bridge between those two examples, and then we moved into that Yin and Yang theory. And unless you have other questions, Amy, I'd like to talk a little bit about eight principles.

Let's jump into eight Princip.

You sure you ready?

Oh, yeah, I'm ready.

Again. These. Once you understand that every living thing has this. Has this energy, and we have to. They've built these kind of, again, frameworks around what energy's off, how's it balanced, and all this different stuff. And a lot of it's. The beautiful thing is a lot of it is through observation of nature and because every living thing has a sink. So we're like, okay, how does it show up in nature? How do these imbalances or how do these things imbalance work together? And we start to. To get a deeper understanding of this. And in Chinese medicine, just to recap, we have what's called Yin and Yang theory. Eight principles, five elements, six stages, and four levels. And the Yin and Yang theory, the one we went over last time, again, has, is huge and really important. But the other one, just to pull the Yin and Yang theory into it, is called eight Principles. And again, think about a. Think about this as a system of understanding, a system to where you can. That has certain metrics to it to help us understand what the hell's going on. Right? Like, where's this imbalance? Because an acupuncturist can't do a point, can't do it just. You just don't do random acupuncture points. There's not just a specific point to fix every disorder. So any disease process or any imbalance that you have that's showing up with symptomology, there's not just one point to fix that. So you don't have one point to fix every migraine. Right? You don't have one point to fix, you know, your constipation. There's this imbalance going on, and. And it's not the same for everybody. And that's one big differentiating factor. You know, when we talk about Chinese medicine, the idea is, is they want to treat the root, not just the branch, which the root is the cause and the branch is the symptomology. So, you know, eight principles gives us a little bit more understanding on when we're Having a conversation with somebody. We're thinking about these things. We're. We're like, is it yin and yang? What is the end doing? What's the on doing? Is it. And I'll go through the next examples and then that helps me pick my points because points have specific energetic functions and so do the herbs. So the herbs aren't even just rooted in their chemical constituents, but it's rooted in the energetic properties of the herbs. So pretty cool.

Yeah. And it's very complex, like the, the things. And I guess you guys just. Obviously this is why you go to school for quite a while to learn all these things. But just the connection of overlapping. And I like the way it just. It's not. Again, it's okay. This leads to. It's like a flowchart. If in those yes no's. If this. Then this type thing where you. Okay, if this is happening, then what's happening over here? And it just all intermingles.

Yeah. Your brain starts to. It all. It's all intertwined. Your brain starts to really like when you ask a question here, something. Then it. It's okay. It's choose your own adventure. What way do we. What way do we go with this? And then we're we based off of all these systems and understanding them and really have a visceral connection to them. It helps us start to guide us to the next questions. And sometimes you get to that question and you say, I'm like, hey, do you have this going on? You're like, no, I don't. This is all good. It's okay. Then. Wait, what's. What? No shoot. Maybe I need to go this way. But these are the tools that help. There are guides, right? And eight principles. You have Yin and Yang theory still. What's the Yin doing? What's the Yang? Are there relative balance? Is there a deficiency of Yin? Is there a deficiency of Yang? Is there excess of Yin? Is there excess of Yang? And then you have. That ties into the next piece, the deficiency in excess. You have eight principles. You have Yin and Yang deficient excess, cold or hot interior exterior. And Yin and Yang is extremely important. They're all important but primary in this. And then deficiency or excess. So again, what's happening not just Yin and Yang is one deficient ors, one excess. But what's happening within all the body systems as far as the meridians that we'll talk about later. Is there a deficiency of Qi in any of these systems? So is there Lung Qi deficiency or is there Lung Qi excess or is There kidney Qi deficiency or is there a kidney Is a young. This is young. And also the blood, what's happening to blood? Is there a deficiency of blood or excess of blood? And you can have headaches, for instance, because of a deficiency or excess of any of these combinations. So people can have headaches because there's a deficient. There's a deficient type syndrome. People can have headaches because there's an excess of tight syndrome type of syndrome. And those headaches are going to show up differently. And then based off that, if you had a tense, throbbing headache, that, and it's sharp, that's more likely going to be an excess type of more, maybe even a more of an excess of yang or an excess of stagnant energy, whatever it is. And so we have to look at these imbalances as far as overabundance of one. Is there stagnation? Is there a deficiency of one? Sometimes a deficiency of one can lead to an excess of another. And so there's a constant dynamic movement, an evaluation of all of these things. And if you're off, then you're not treating the root. If you're off just by one little thing now, then all of a sudden your, your diagnosis and differentiation isn't correct. And you still might have. You might still see a huge benefit and you might start making changes. But if you're not. If you're off just a little bit, just a little bit, and you're treating three quarters of all the components and missing off on a little bit, then you're still, again, not hitting the. The root of the problem. Really important.

Yeah. Okay. And sometimes that's just an investigative communication. It's similar to even in Western medicine. We'll try this and see if it works. Oh, that didn't do it. We're going to try this. Or do you feel like you guys get pretty specific?

We get really specific for sure. And the great thing is, yes. I always tell people I have to be a private investigator. And sometimes it's very obvious and sometimes there are layers. And as you. As the symptoms clear up, then sometimes the root becomes more clear too. So when somebody comes in and they're there, it's been chronic. Right. They've had something for 10 years, 15 years. What you're just a long time. It's really complicated to, to understand where the root is because there's so many imbalances. I've had people come in that are on 41 medications and a lot of times meta. That's the, you know, are creating certain Symptoms showing up for the person that throws it off from a traditional diagnosis and differentiation for somebody that's on an antidepressant, their pulses can be really weak anyway. Yes, there's still a deficiency in the Qi and the pulses and whatever, but you have this other influence that is, is pretty interesting. Or like a medication that causes constipation. If you were to say, hey, do you have, what are your bowels, do you have any problems with diarrhea or constipation? And they're like, oh yeah, I have, I have constipation. And then you find out they're on a medication that's causing the constipation, then that can make things really complicated. And all of these layers of, of influence from, for medications can definitely be a challenge for the true symptomology.

So somebody who is going to come in or somebody who obviously is not being trained in this and isn't going to memorize all this in depth information. What would be a good for the common person going in to work with acupuncturists or Chinese medicine to know that would be helpful to help that process along.

Honestly, the biggest thing I would say is everything means something. So know that every thing that you feel, even if you think it's insignificant, is significant. And I think that's important actually for you to know anyway. Like if there's one thing that you're like, oh, it's probably. This is probably nothing. It's small, it's not even. That doesn't even bother me that much. It means something. Everything that feels, could feel insignificant is significant at some level. And so to be very open and share every little detail. The great thing in Chinese medicine, we ask crazy questions that most people don't ask and we do crazy things that most people don't do. So we talk about not just your, if you're pooping, but the texture of your poop. Is it loose? Is it firm? Is it dark? Is it, is there any mucus in the stools? Is there any undigested food? We ask way more questions in crazy detail than a lot of other types of practitioners. And so everything means something. Be vulnerable, be honest. And medications, like I might ask somebody if, let's say if you have any, just to stick with the digestion. Any digestive problems? And they're like, nope. And I'm like, okay, so no constipation, diarrhea? Nope. And then sure enough, three, three visits later, I find out they're on, they're taking something to make them regular every day. Right. That's still a problem. So if you're taking a medication, if you're like, oh, my sleep's good, and then I find out you're taking a medication to make you go to sleep every night, there's still a problem. Because if you can't go to sleep or if you can't have a bowel movement without taking a medication or whatever, then the dis. Ease is still a problem.

Yeah.

And so don't. If it feels fine, but you're taking something to make that correction, make sure you are being open with your acupuncturist about that, because even though it's not a problem, you're taking something to make it happen, so it's still a problem.

Good. Good. All right. Okay. So the eight principles.

Yes.

And they fall underneath, like, is. If I'm correct, like, yin is associated with cold deficiency in interior. And yawn is hot, excess exterior. Is that right?

Yeah, no, that's. So that's. Yin and yang, again, is very vague because they have this relative interplay with each other so much. And so you can have a con. You can make a combination of all these. Okay, so you have yin and yang. That's one of the eight principles. So that's a set. And then you have excessive and deficient.

Oh, I gotcha. Okay.

And then you have interior exterior. So interior exterior. Just a quick example, because that also goes into the. Later on into the four levels and all the six stages and things like that. So that, like, for. We'll use. Use an example of. Of being sick. And so if you are just feeling a little achy and you just feel off a little bit, your muscles are tight, and technically you have an illness. You just don't know it yet. It's the beginning symptoms. That's considered more exterior. Once you have a high fever and you're really sick, you know, shaking and all that stuff. That's deep interior.

Right.

So that you can think about interior exterior as far as the level at which it's affecting the internal organs or. And. Or your systems inside the cold and heat is exactly what it sounds like. So you can have, for instance, yang would be more warming. Right. Cold, but cold.

You.

You, like you said, could be more cooling. But the problem is you can be cold because you have a Yang deficiency.

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

So I'm cold because I don't have enough Yang, which is generating this warmth of this heat. But you can also be cold because of blood deficiency. Right.

Which would be in. Yeah, yeah.

And blood deficiency would go fall More into the excess deficient category. So then you could literally have a diagnosis of Yang deficiency leading to cold. And so there you just use three different sets out of those categories. It could be a combination of all of those things, but just there is not necessarily one static thing. So that's again, everything is so relative to each other. But it's great because as I'm listening, I'm like, okay, I just heard three things that are pointing to Yang deficiency. She's cold, she has a low libido, she has back pain. Those are low back pain. Those are all Yang type deficient things. Oh, she's. And again, there's the cold and then there's a deficiency. So it's. Okay. So I got, I got something to work with here. And then that might lead me to more questions. The next category. I love five element theory, to me is super, super beautiful. And the eight principles isn't very sexy. The five element I've used. I use this model for many other things and I've manipulated it into some of my own frameworks for coaching into business or making decisions. I could geek out on five elements all day.

No. Okay, so yeah, those are the principles. Right, The A principles. Then from there you go. I know that it's not quite that obvious, it's not stacking. But from there you'd go into the five elements. Should check when you're doing a diagnosis or something or you're looking at it, you'd start with the yin yang and then move. Obviously, if it's a. Well, it's going to be all intermingled all together. Right.

All of these systems, theories are turned on inside of your brain all at once.

Yeah.

So there's not like a specific order that you're utilizing during your evaluation. There are all these frameworks, all these systems are live and active in your brain. And as you're listening to somebody, you're literally processing all these at once.

Yeah. But for, for people who aren't experts in this, just to give people some understanding of what we're talking about, do we want to jump into a little bit of the elements? The five elements?

Oh, for sure.

Yeah. Let's do a little. Let's do a little bit of that chat, shall we? So the five elements you are.

Looking.

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Water, wood, fire, earth and metal. Correct.

Correct. Yes.

And then how do those. I know that there's quite a bit. There are color, sound, odor, emotion, power, spirituality, organ sense, body tissue, time of day, taste, climate. Like, there's quite a bit within there that starts to show up for people. But are there of those all that little bit. Is there something in particular, like when somebody's in there chatting with you, that you can start to pick up out the wood or the elements to make it more sensible to people without having to memorize this huge table?

Yeah, I think even. Yeah, without even going. I think the one important part I'd like to point out with the five elements, a couple things is one is this is very much started with the observation of movement and interactions with things with nature. And we're all connected to everything and we. The way to think about these are they're buckets that everything in life can fit in, and they have these interactions with each other.

The wood.

Think about it as a bucket that has all these different characteristics that fit in this bucket. Fire, same thing. Each one of these are a bucket that everything in life you can get. You could give it to me and I can tell you, you can put it in this bucket because it helps us understand how they. The interplay and how there's this dynamic movement. But again, starting with the observation of nature, now I'm going to take it a little bit deeper. I studied five elements from a couple different people, and it's classical. Five elements from JR Ruley's perspective is originally when. When it came over here to the west, and we started having an understanding of five elements in the treatments. Part of it is you would say, okay, out of five of these elements, most of us have three dominant elements that we're noticeable. And out of those, there's one that's really dominant. Okay, let's say you have somebody that comes into your office and they're just a little irritable and they've got this loud, robust kind of characteristic in this voice. And there's an assertiveness to them. You could be like, oh, wood element, right. Or there's somebody that comes in and they're very grand, they're very grandma y, and they have a little sing song in their voice. And, you know, there's a certain complexion and you can just tell, you know, that you're like, okay, Earth. Their element is Earth. That's where their home base is. So really from the Understanding of kind of the way it was classically is you would treat somebody in that element. If you're predominant in one element, a lot of your treatments would be specifically more focused in that element. Now, having said that, I am more of a believer of the model that the heart. The easier it is for me to identify you in that element, the more out of balance you are. So because the elements, you're supposed to move effortlessly. So there's a term called wu wei, which is effortless movement, if we have a smooth flow of this energy. So you have two cycles within the five element. You have this picture like a circle and it's the generating cycle. So it's going in this perfect circle, one feeds into the next. They call that the mother child relationship. And then you have think about like a star, I hate to say pentagram because there's such a misconception about that, but it almost looks like Pentagrammy. That's called the control shot. That's called the control cycle.

Okay.

So you have these two different dynamics of interplay between the two.

So you have, so you have a circle with all the elements, but you've also got like the meridian lines and that kind of stuff in there. And that's the circle to the outside where you're supposed to. But then you have lines of direction that go from one element or meridian section to another, which makes a star pattern in the middle of that circle.

Yep. And that kind of goes back to what I was talking to you earlier when you said, how can I, what can I do if I feel crazy, not crazy if I feel scattered or whatever.

What are you saying, Brian?

That's looking at that control cycle a bit. So the, the, that generating cycle, the mother child relationship, one nourishes each. Now picture. If all those are going effortlessly. Right. There's not. I like to think about when you're born, okay. You are moving effortlessly through all of those. You can't identify in a, in an infant that their fire, the earth, their metal, their water, their wood, they're moving effortlessly through all those. I like to think that the elements, when they become stagnant and when it's easier to identify somebody in three or in a specifically one of those is their home base. That's been, that's epigenetics. That's been socially conditioned by your environment, by your, your parents, by everything around you as you develop your life's experiences. And this, the great thing is this is very much falls into coaching. Right. So if I can identify you as a wood, your Home base is wood elements. Oh, let's talk about your mindset. Let's talk about the things that you're doing. Let's talk about where you're stuck. And so the goal is to unstick you. The. I don't want to be able to easily just identify you in one of these. In one of these elements. I want to get you. So think about maybe the center of all of those elements is this percolating, yummy energy. And the cycle, as it moves more fluidly, you're more in the center of that and things are just moving effortlessly, effortlessly around you. And that's when you feel like you're on top of it. That's when you feel like life is just beautiful and smooth and. But then once you start feeling the stuckness, the stagnation, the irritability, the lack of willpower, the lack of desire, overwhelmed over, worried over, mentally chewing on stuff and just consumed, those are. Though you're stuck in. You're stuck in an imbalance in one of those elements. And you're not moving with wuwe. You're not. You don't have effortless movement going on, and you're not going to feel that experience of man. Everything in life is just so beautiful and everything's thriving. And I see this and you got this energy that's moving forward and is amazing. So again, we don't want you to. We don't want you to feel stuck in one of those. We want it to be effortless. So I don't want to just treat you in one element. I don't want to have you just treat you in this category that you've identified with and you've become stuck. And I want to get you out of that. I want to. I want you to find balance with the other things.

I like that. It's making me think of like an atom, electrons flowing around constantly. And the neutron, the neutrons, protons, you know, in the center and like all the stuff, the. The ions, electrons moving all around. Yeah, that's intriguing, but. And it also makes me think you're never stagnant in life. And so when we talk about, like, the elements, they also coordinate with an emotion. And water coordinates. And maybe it's not this cut and dry, but water coordinates more with fear. Wood with anger, fire, joy, Earth, empathy and reflection. Metal, grief. Is that those are the coordinating emotions? Is that correct?

Those are some of the coordinating emotions when they're out of balance. So each one has its own virtue. Right. And so you have these virtues and you have these Kind of out of balance emotions, if you will. And so that you can start to associate with. It's easier to talk about the out of balance stuff because that's the, that's what we typically are seeing because we're treating somebody so, you know, if somebody is over worry word and overthinking constantly, that's associated more to that earth element, right? If somebody has more irritability, anger, assertiveness, that's wood out of balance where wood imbalances benevolence. It's really caring for the whole. It, it wants that balance of things. And internally there's not that I'm going to complicate things a lot here. Every element has two organs associated to it. So the wood element has liver, gallbladder, the earth elements, spleen, stomach, the metal elements, long, large intestine, the water elements, kidney, bladder. Now just to confuse you, the fire element actually has four. The heart, the small intestine, the pericardium, and a system called the triple burner, which is a harmonizer. From our three jowls, which anything above our diaphragm and up is upper jiao, belly button to diaphragm, you can think of this middle jowl, pubic bone to belly button, lower jowl. So you can think about oh, my lungs and my heart are from the diaphragm up. So that's upper jiao. And so you can start looking at the systems in that way. But the liver, gallbladder, each system is, has a yin and yang organs. The liver is the yin organ for the wood element and the gallbladder is the yang element for the wood element. The spleen is the yin element. The stomach is the yang element, the metal. The lung is yin organ. The large intestine is the yang. The kidney for the water element is the yin. The bladder is the yang on the fire. The pericardium and the heart are the yin. The small intestine and san jiao are the yang. And the thing to point out with those, the reason why one is yin, one is yang. The ones that are more transforming and transporting of energy are going to be more of the yang systems. The ones that are less transporting and more reservoirs and nurturing kind of components are more of the yin components. When we look at irritability and all that stuff and remember the balance part of that wood element is benevolence. It wants the harmony between everything. And that's when we see the liver component come in there. And so we talk about people that have a lot of irritability or assertiveness having liver Qi stagnation. And so we want the smooth flow of liver Qi because that's also the benevolent of everybody. It's like the coordinator and trying to get everything nice and smooth and everybody working together like the conductor and the symphony. But every, every. There's so many characteristics and again, we could talk about this forever but I know I've already created a crapload of confusion for everybody. But if you could walk away and if you look at nature, nothing is stagnant in nature. Right. It's a constant movement from winter to spring to fall to summer. There's constant movement, there's constant fluidity. And each one requires a piece of the next one within it. Remember when we talked about yin and Yang theory? There's always the seed of one, there's always a seed of yin within Yang and there's always a seed of Yang within yin. And so you can think about. I was looking at our tree in our backyard the other day and there's freaking some buds on it. And you look at the interplay of the seasons and how if something's off it can start creating confusion and start throwing things out of balance. And then what happens if you don't have.

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Let'S drive one component working in sync to the next. Then it's going to show up some way. That's not going to be the best scenario for that thing.

Right. Because trees budding this time of year is likely going to stunt them because it's going to freeze again. So it's just not in. But I. Yeah, okay. So that makes sense. And so you can think about. My point to the emotional is that you're going to experience all of those. It's just to the how much of an extreme and how quickly can you fluidly balance and move through all of them?

Yeah.

Standing or being in one overly all the time may not be the healthiest even for joy you can have. You can be a little too unaware of reality if you're just. I don't want to say that there's ever going to have too much joy in your life, but if you're always wrapped up in that, you might be in a denial process of something else going on and not experiencing something that's more imbalance with some of the other emotions. So I just, I like that connection of you. You experience all of it. You just don't have to be heavily embedded in one element.

Yeah, just. I could give you examples all day long of this. But for instance, with somebody that's in a metal element that's out of balanced. And just to say this, anytime I'm treating somebody on an emotional mental level, I'm always looking at the five elements as one of my primary systems theories for diagnosis and differentiation and also to help understand and help them move through it. So let's say, for instance, there's a lot of stagnation in the metal element and that out of balance, you know, is grief or sadness. Now there's a lot more to that grief or sadness. You know, I've seen a lot of people who've, you know, lost a loved one, but they haven't moved through it. And it's been like 10 years later. But it could also be around loss of sense of self. It could be around so many things. But what happens is if you're constantly in that metal state, there's a lack. Metal has a lot to do with value. And for instance, let's just look at the systems. The lung and large intestine. The lung, you breathe in oxygen and it's going to retain that because of the value. And then it lets go of all the unnecessary stuff. So you breathe out the. The carbon dioxide and the large intestine takes. And it takes the last of the nutrients from the food that's been rotten, ripened and has gone through the systems and it's taken the last of the nutrients and. And then it's eliminating the stuff that doesn't have value. So think about something in your life that you've had an experience. And let's say it was a relationship. Let's say it was a boyfriend or a girlfriend or whatever. And you've had this. You've had this relationship and then things went south and there was good things in that relationship. But you're. You hold on to the loss and that you have harbor some stuff around some of the bad experiences, but. And you don't let go of it. So it's okay. No, you have to hold on, think about the stuff that was a value of that, how you grew, how it shifted something in you, how it helped you move forward. And then you have to let go of that other stuff that doesn't have value. And so many of us have a hard time of letting go. And that's a huge thing. We have to let go of the stuff that does not give us value and remember the things that give us value that's going to help us move out of that grief and sadness. And then we can experience some of these other emotions like joy again. Then we can experience some of these other nurturing feelings of that the earth element gives us. Then we can experience some of the beautiful benevolence and creativity and growth that the wood element gives us. And then we can experience some of the purpose and the will and the deep resonance of what life is about that the water element gives us. But if we are always stuck in that place, it doesn't allow us to do that. And you can use that example in any of those things. Somebody in the earth element that's stuck and they're constantly worried and they're constantly overthinking. That also puts them in a state of fear of some of the imbalance of the water element. And then again, they don't have the courage, they don't have some of the other components to want to move forward to grow and, and have that characteristics of the wood element, or they can never allow themselves to feel the joy and excitement that the fire element can offer us.

Oh, my goodness. So got a lot of good deep stuff today, all of that. So touching lightly on. On the elements and then the eight principles, and these could just be the foundations. We're obviously going to get in to talk quite a bit more about the six divisions of the 12 Meridian. You have two. You said you. They have two branches or two areas.

I think we can go into those five element. Again, we could talk about forever. We can bring that back in. But there's two other systems theories that are utilized for diagnosis and differentiation. And we don't need to go in depth with these, but one's called four levels. And so that's just. The four levels are. Is it a. So there's what's called Wei Qi, which is defensive Qi. And this is a lot when we look at where we're at in specific illnesses too. So Wei Qi is your defensive qi. And that's very exterior. That's what we talked about earlier. That exterior component, your Wei Qi is it's between the skin and the muscle. Think about it at that level. And when we first start getting sick, you know, we're starting to feel a little achy in the muscle. You know, that's weight Qi level. As it gets deeper, it's moving, penetrates a little deeper. Into the Qi level. So maybe you start to get some symptoms of some thirst and some irritability and you're starting to feel really off you. Maybe you start getting a little bit of a fever. The next one is called the nutritive level or the Ying level. And that's when it's more deeper and it's getting much more serious and the fever's getting higher. It gets worse at night and you start feeling really crappy and your mind starts going a little nuts on you. And then the shway level or the blood level is the deepest, most severe. And then that's when you can really. Have you ever been so sick that you've almost been like hallucinating? Really high fever, right? 103. That's, that's that shway level. And that's like when people can start to. If it gets so high, you could go into a coma or you could have brain damage. And. Yeah, so that's like tons of stasis, tons of heat, potential bleeding from such high levels of heat and stuff like that. So that's Shua level. Again, we're using that mainly when we're looking at illness stuff. And so we don't need to go too deep into that. The six stages. This one, this one's really confusing just because of the names for people. But remember you have, how I said, you have young within Yin, that kind of component. This is a little bit of a play of that. So you have what's called a Yang Ming stage. And again, that's a bright Yang stage. So Yang is greater, so there's more Yang than there's kind of Yin. And then you have a Xiaoyang stage, which is a lesser Yang, so the Yang isn't as great. And then you have a Tie Yen, which is Yin is the greater Yin stage, so there's more Yin.

And.

And then you have a Shao Yin stage where Lin is Yin is a little lesser. And then you have a Yin or terminal Yin stage, where. I don't even want to go into all that. That, that. Just so you know, there is a. Again, so many different systems theories that when you're working with somebody who practices traditional Chinese medicine, whether it's herbology by itself or the acupuncture and herbology, there's a lot of things going on. My favorite component out of these, again, I, I After school, I continued on with the five element stuff, but you're consistently looking at that. Eight principles, I'd say the other, the ones that aren't as common would be the Six stages, four levels you're looking at more specifically around illnesses.

Okay, Boom. We have got deep into it. You may be getting more clear or more confused, but don't worry, we're going to do another continuing session on talking about this and. And seeing how things can tie together. We're going to touch a little bit more into meridian lines and what that means on the next podcast. Yay.

Yeah, yeah, you're welcome. We'll talk about the meridians, and we'll probably tie it back a little bit to some of these other components. And that's why I wanted to make sure we went over these other things so it all makes a little bit more sense. But how, again, if you. If your takeaway today is that everything, even if it doesn't seem important, is important, and if you catch yourself in one area, that's a little more like a hangout. Wait, there. There's an imbalance there. Right. What can I do to move through this? What. That does mean something. Just even if you're like, oh, my God, that does mean something. What does it mean? That's good. If it prompts a question. That's good. If it. If it gets you to think this. But, you know, again, it's. This is all good stuff, but just to have the awareness and. And you start to see this stuff in the interplay of things at a whole nother level. And it's cool to observe not just yourself, but what's going on in nature around you, what's going on with other people around you. And then this is when you start to really see what does the dynamics and the movement of energy do. Right. Like, how does it affect things?

Yeah. And just being aware that it's all balance and no stagnation. You shouldn't be hanging out in one particular area of anything.

100.

So this is really good when I go from yelling and then laughing. Right. I can. That's great. Chi management.

Yeah. Total manage your cheese. Yeah. So if you catch yourself in one thing, it's okay. What's one of the other emotions I can bring in there to. To neutralize this or put it back in balance.

That's right. Put it in balance. All right, Brian, thank you so much. I'm going to load up all of my belongings and move from one location to another.

Have fun.

You have a fabulous day, and I will have fun.

Thank you, Amy. And for those of you listening, please, again, as always, share the podcast, leave a review, all those good things.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, talk to you later. Bye.

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