the layer of the meridians so we have many meridians channels throughout the body and they go from deep or the deepest to all the way to the surface which would be on our skin so let's look at the meridians layers and what's their purpose if we look at the layers of the meridian the deepest meridian are the 12 main meridians or channels whatever you want to call them that's different words in english you know this translation and the eight extra vessels okay so those are the deepest meridian or channel in the body the twelve regular meridian and the eight extra vessels the 12 regular main meridians which are the yin and yang meridians like the long the large intestine the stomach the spleen etc etc are the deepest with the eight extra vessel the eight extra vessel like the dude the ren the trunk the dye et cetera all those vessels so the 12 meridian main meridian carry tree and blood that's their main function to carry chi and to carry blood the eight extra vessels function is to carry essence right and that's how we connect to essence in order to protect our essence or jing or kidney essence it's to access them through the eight vessels okay so those are the deepest meridian next layer we're going to start going a little bit more we have the 12 divergence okay here we go then we have the 15 colato then we have the 12 muscular region i'm running out of space on my board you guys and then we have the 12 dermatome or subcutaneous or sorry dermatomes which is a superficial layers which is basically our skin so obviously we understand that the 12 dermatomes are the most surface and what they do is they correspond to the same area of the 12 regular meridians and they address anything on the skin so let's look at the dermatome of let's say because you could see it of the large intestine right so the large intestine goes on the lateral posterior side of the forearm on the extensors here right and it goes to large intestine 11 12 etc it comes up so the large intestine meridian itself goes right through here the dermatome is basically the band that's all around the large intestine and on the skin surface so if someone comes in and they have let's say some skin issue let's say psoriasis or eczema and it's right on this area here right this is the dermatome of the large intestine it tells us to look deeper into what's going on with the large intestine meridian junk foorgan and a whole energetic being so it helped us found clues what happened on the skin reflects what's going on inside right so every main meridian has a dermatome that's corresponding on the outside this is internal deep deep deep this is external on the surface that makes sense okay the muscular regions are the layers a little bit below right so they are corresponding to the same thing so if we talked about the extensors right your extensors here which um allow your your hand to extend your extensors are going to be the muscular regions of your large intestine because that's the area of the large intestine right we have uh eight nine ten that are actually really good for the extensors when they are carpal tunnel syndrome or forearm pain so the 12 muscular regions if someone has a lot of you know if you right now take your arm and start pressing around your extensors and you're like oh it's tender right here then let's look at what's going on with the large intestine because the muscular region is affected does that make sense so the 12 muscular regions are more surface not as much as the derm at home but they correspond again to the 12th main meridian and give us clues of what's going on yes okay so we've got the 2 in the middle the 12 divergence and then the 15 collaterals so today we're going to talk about all the collaterals and the connecting points that the collateral use the 12th divergent they diverge from the main meridian and their function is to connect the internal and external part of the body and extend the pathway of the twelve main meridian so if you have a main meridian again i'll take the large intestine because we can see it here uh if you have the the large intestine we have a divergent that diverged from the shoulder that diverged from the main large intestine and extend its pathway to cover more area so divergence are the same they are covering an extensive path all around the main meridian pathway that makes sense hopefully i explained that properly okay now the 15 collaterals there are no 12. you see how it's like 12 12 12 they all correspond to the main meridian but these ones often it's called the 15 collateral what's very interesting is in a lot of books we're going to see 16 collaterals but some books will say there are 15 collaterals so what i love about chinese medicine is that um there's different school of thoughts for many part of tcm 16 or 15 i'm going to talk about all 16 and then if you've been taught 15 then just you know a lot of school of thought will say there's 16 and not 15. their function is to reinforce the internal and external related meridian so first of all they reinforce the yin yang connection meridian meaning the large intestine will reinforce the lung and the lung will reinforce the large intestine so that's their first function remember how we said this here carry tree and blood this carries essence this is an extension of the main meridian pathway so that they're extended on she and blood the collaterals carry yin chi so yin as in nutritive chi they carry nutritive chi that is or that is one of the function because they are trying to buffer the space between the external part which is the muscular and dermatome layer and the internal part with all the deeper meridian layers that's their function to con to really connect the external with the internal right it's really balancing that physically they help expel pathogens from the internal pushing it out to the external and then emotionally they help expel repressed long-standing emotions that we haven't dealt with that we carry and not we're not able to expel so a lot of time when you use some of the lugo collateral or lure connecting point you're going to trigger sometimes for people to cry or let those emotions out so they are very good at expelling because they're balancing the internal versus the external does that make sense hopefully so that's the function of the 15 or 16 depending which book you read collato