Liberty stagnation is probably one of the most common common Chinese medicine pattern we see in clinical practice so today I wanted to talk about its symptoms the consequences if it's not addressed the root cause and treatment including acupuncture points formula and food. hi if it's your first time here I'm Clara from AcuPro Academy and I create content for acupuncture students and practitioners making Chinese medicine easy to grasp and fun to learn. oh let's do this so let's start with going back to Foundation my teacher back in school used to say to me if you don't understand something or you can't grasp why go back to foundation so let's look at the function of the TCM liver system as a whole so it's function first and foremost is to allow better flow of Qi flow of Qi is depending on the liver the better the liver flows for the Qi because liver moves Qi the better Supple and easy moving we would be that's why the liver is also in charge of tendons ligaments sinews and Joints. so if there is tight joints or joint issue we also have to look at the liver the liver opens into the eyes it reflects into the eyes like red eyes I twitch we have to look at the liver itself the next thing is liver is in charge of storing blood specifically for menstruation when it comes to women if they're having scanty bleeding or amenorrhea or not enough blood we can look at the liver or if there's a lot of cramping clots and dysmenorrhea we can also look at the liver. the other function of the liver is that it reflects into the nails we look at the colour if it's brittle if it's purple if the nails are very pale that gives us Clues on what's happening with the liver and the other function that is part of the liver is that it is in charge of a vision our goals so whatever we want to manifest whatever we want to have happen we need to make goals to make it happen so being in control of having a vision of planning whatever we're trying to accomplish or achieve that is the liver next let's look at the cause of Liberty stagnation before we look at the causes let's remind ourselves of the symptoms often the symptoms are very subtle but they are there so one of the main symptoms since liver is in charge of moving Chi and good flow is tension right shoulder tension neck tension maybe tight hip flexors as well tight ankles so our whole body is not relaxed it's more tense the second thing is often for women is increased symptoms prior to menstruation so PMS or pre-menstruation syndrome usually including breast tenderness more bloating having more mood swings clumsy and feeling irritable right so that comes as a PMS however the rest are done for everybody other Liver Qi stagnation symptoms would be impatience not having any patients one time I ask a patient are you stressed and she said no I'm not I'm not at all and she got irritable with me and I said are you sure and she goes no it's just that everyone around me is stupid and I said is everyone around you is stupid like everyone and she looked at me and she went okay maybe I'm irritable and I'm stressed so sometimes people are so used to be impatient or irritable easily or frustrated they don't see it that it comes from stress and sometimes it could be years of stress right the pulse will be wiry mostly on the left side because liver is in the middle left side of the pulse and the tongue will not change so the tongue will stay pink or if we have other pattern then it will show the other patterns Liver Qi stagnation root cause is stress stress will start by tensing tightening the body and it'll show with planting the jaw as well because our body automatically will be tense even at night while we sleep so stress is the number one root cause of Liver Qi stagnation another one because we said it's about flow and freely flowing is a lack of movement so if someone has no exercise and they sit in front of the computer all day long and they don't move much eventually it'll get Liver Qi stagnation and because it's in charge of the flow of chi usually we have a good bowel movement good digestive system because it's flowing with people sitting and not moving at all they have tendency to have bloating at the end of the day it's getting worse so we have a lot of bloating that can be due to many different patterns right but if it's a liberty stagnation bloating it's the bloating that you've closed your pants in the morning but by the day goes it gets bigger bloating and by the end of the day you cannot feel your pants they're so tight you want to open them so the bloating increases with the day and that's a liver cheese technician and usually the next morning the bloating is right back down so when it comes to Liver Qi stagnation root cause stress and lack of movements other two main causes so I think the consequences of not addressing Liver Qi stagnation is going to lead to more issue and that's why it's important to address it what are the consequences of liver qi stagnation if it's not addressed so the most common one is liver yang Rising right so liver yang Rising is that next stage where we have Liver qi stagnation we are tense we are stressed but now we get more symptoms The more stress is put upon us the more symptoms we get we start getting temporal headaches at the end of the day we start having maybe red eyes we wake up in the night between 1 and 3 A.M however we are able to fall back asleep the tongue might have a bit of red sides because the yang rises so heat rises we feel warmer more irritable more Angry real short fused much more than with Liver qi stagnations like a volcano exploding and then coming back down that's Olivia young Rising the next level after that which is worse is level five so now we're constantly upset constantly mad we now have hot Tempo headache every day and when you put a cold compress it feels better because there is fire fire Rises we may get high blood pressure constant red bloodshot eyes now if we wake up at nine between one and three we will not be able to fall back asleep we are going to stay up and we are gonna be quite warm most of the night also because there's fire it dries fluid so there may be constipation a bit of taste in the mouth the tongue now is going to be red and it may have a really dry yellow coat on it the pulse will be wiry rapid with liver yang Rising usually the pulse is wiry it can go rapid and come back down but with little fire it's constantly wildly rapid the third one that can occur is liver blood stasis so liver blood stagnation or liver blood stasis is the consequences of Liver qi stagnation because liver moves qi but qi moves blood. blood is material it cannot move unless there's energy there's tea to move it right so if we have Liver qi stagnation that is there for a long time eventually it may lead to blood stagnation which is a worse condition in TCM perspective because now there's going to be pain fixed pain that could be dysmenorrhea could be clots in the blood with really bad cramping instead of shoulder tension you have that shoulder knot back there that's so painful you just want to take it out it's so stabbing pain or you have stabbing headache like just so strong and it's bounding and pounding right the tongue would be purple and the pulse will be wiry choppy those consequences are very much excess however this deficiency that can occur from Liberty stagnation because the liver in Chinese medicine or wood element which the liver corresponds to the wood element the wood controls the Earth in Chinese medicines which means that liver control spleen and stomach right when liver trees stagnate and there's a lot of stress a very common pattern is wood sorry wood overacts on earth over control over act on Earth and that can lead to two different patterns either screen sheet e deficiency sorry here we go or stomach Qi rebelling. so I'm going to talk about those two those are the two that it can lead to when there is a lot of stress for some people it will go more towards the spleen meaning the Liver qi stagnation will suppress the spleen energy and the spleen is going to become deficient when there's a lot of stress people will say oh I lost my appetite I don't want to eat I have loose stools all the time it's got IBS right IBS Liver qi stagnation overacting on spleen creating speech deficiency irritable bowel syndrome is a constipation alternating with diarrhea that is a liver overacts on spleen so that's very common as well the person will be fatigued all the stress and they go worry so much that it's exhausting them and spleen qi becomes deficient the other one that could happen and both can happen but often is like when there is Liberty stagnation it overacts or Over Control stomach and now because stomach has tendency to go excess versus spleen Qi density to go deficiency now it creates stomach chi rebelling and if Stomach Qi is rebelling we have symptom of constant nausea feeling like a nod in our stomach maybe acid reflux right this is very common when people are stress acid reflux will make it worse right we may have a bad breath we may have tendency to have acid regurgitation food will be really hard to digest hungry all the time and craving and we're just eating anything and everything so those are the consequences that Liver qi stagnation can lead to one more is the creation of excess fluid okay specifically phlegm oops and dampness as well I have a whole video on phlegm and dampness the difference in how do we differentiate them but no matter what it's excess mucus excess body fluid when there is no movement again when liver is not able to move cheap is stagnated then the fluids are not properly moving and because they're not probably moving they accumulate and now we have excess dampness or excess phlegm but Liberty stagnation can amplify it make it worse and so then we have a lot of mucus this is why even though it's super easy to treat Liver qi stagnation with Chinese medicine it has consequences that are massively impactful on the body and on the health of our patients by the way I wanted to quickly mention that I offer three books which are also available in digital format and if you wanted to check them out Acupoints Made Easy covers all acupuncture points function location and how to use them in clinical practice that's my orange book my green book Chinese medicine made easy is all about the foundation and diagnosis of TCM including my fillable intake form and my purple book Chinese medicine treatments Made Easy covers 160 syndromes where Formula acupuncture points ear acupuncture cupping Moxa and so much more! check them all out on my website now let's go back to Liver Qi stagnation treatment before we talk about points and all the treatments that we can offer in Chinese medicine let's talk about how to educate the patient in managing stress and reducing the stress it's important that patients found a way that helps them reduce stress it could be yoga Tai Chi exercising meditating journaling reading playing with their kids going to walk the dog whatever it is they need to take the time every day for that breath take breaths right breathing exercise and calming all that stress that's really important and then we can come in with acupuncture and acupuncture is one of the best way to treat liver cheese stagnation because it puts the patient into a parasympathetic State because most patients when they come in they have been stressed and they've been on a fight or flight so putting them on the rest and recover State or the birth of sympathetic state is really important that's what acupuncture that is it helps the body self-regulate the best point for liver cheese stagnation is liver 3. specifically if we combine live with three with large intestine four li4 and liver 3 are great because they're called the four Gates Right two points on each side two on the hand between the first and second metacarpal and two on the feet between the first and second metatarsal so it's the same area they open the flow of chi and blood because liver three moves chi and large intestine four moves blood the other point that we use a lot that is such a good point as well is gallbladder 34. it is really good for the joints to allow better flow for relaxing the shoulders and the shoulder tension or the tempo headache you can use this during pregnancy or anytime it's such a powerful strong point so those are my favorite point to look at when it comes of the basic of course you can add up the back shoe point of liver bladder 18. you can add up the front move point of liver level level 14. you can add up any other point that is basically needed by each patient's symptoms spleen 6 is such a good point for liver tree stagnation as well again not doing pregnancy because spleen sex not only moves Liver Qi but it also strengthens spleen if liver is over controlling spleen so it is a really good point to add for better movement of Liver Qi as well good and of course if the person is stressed you can do Yin Tang and yo Shen Men and any point to calm the mind the second thing is looking at formula so let's look at formulas there are a lot of formulas that can help with real cheese stagnation I think that acupuncture is usually enough but let's look at the formulas so the first Formula that's the most common formula is chai hu shu gan san and again I'm sorry I don't pronounce Chinese very well I'm French speaking English and teaching Chinese is fantastic I love it okay so Chai Hu shu gan san means chai hu is the king herb in the formula and the King herb chai hu in English or in Latin I should say shu gan gan is liver so shu gan sen sinus powder shu means soothe calm relax liver powder so chai nhu relax the level of soothe the liver about it so this is a really good formula for Liver Qi stagnation to de-stress as a great easy formula to take the other very common formula is this is one of the most common formula in TCM overall and Xiao Yao San is often translated against sand means powder as rambling powder or free and easy Wanderer powder so free and easy one Wonder right it's the opposite of the flow of tea that's tight it's freeing it's wondering it's happy so is for Liver qi stagnation when it's overacting on spleen and making spleen deficient this is definitely the formula for it so those two are the most common formulas last but not least food that is great for liver cheese stagnation because after all food is medicine when it comes to Liver qi stagnation I think the most important thing is to not overeat big meals that are going to sit there right because that doesn't allow for better flow so what we want to do is have meals that make us 80% full not a hundred percent eighty percent for which means satisfied but not feeling like our pants are going to explode and just burst out right the second thing is alcohol makes liver worse so we don't want obviously in the western sense the liver organ does not like alcohol right but in TCM perspective it is not helpful because alcohol brings more heat and liver has tendency to have a lot of heat issues like liver yang Rising level fire it has a lot of excess heat easily or liver yin deficiency for that matter right so we want to avoid things that are going to cause a lot of heat however we still want to put a little bit of spice to get some movement and something that is warm maybe not hot but warm like marjoram like basil like lemongrass right those are great you want to add up food that is really easy to digest as well that is going to flow easily apple cider vinegar sour food like lemon Granny Smith apple raspberries are very good for the liver as well I hope that was really useful and that helps you understand the whole Liver qi stagnation because it's so common thank you for being here I'm Clara I have so much more on my website resource page go check it out tons of free content free courses treatment principle treatment protocols and tons of videos and let me know what you think in the comments below I hope you have a fantastic day and no matter what keep rocking it using TCM