Transcript for:
Secondary Channels in Acupuncture

in this video we're going over the secondary channels like the sinew channels the dual connecting channels the divergent channels and the eight extraordinary channels so if you are taking an acupuncture 101 course this is what the second lecture would look like but again this is probably going to be another long one so let's go ahead and get started so we went through the first video we introduced the term jingle the channel network we said the jing are like the vertical channels that go up and down the low are like the horizontal channels that go side to side and this creates a web or a network of channels over the body when we talked about the jingle we said the jing are like the primary channels or the main channels and kind of when we say the main channels or the primary channels that's sort of implying that there are other channels that are not the main channels there are other channels that are the secondary channels and that's what we're going to talk about today is the secondary channels that exist above and below the primary channels so we look at these secondary channels it turns out we're not just dealing with the jingle or not we're just dealing with the primary channels we have a whole bunch of other channels that exist at various depths above and below the primary channels so we have things like the cutaneous regions these are just regions of skin on the surface of the body below that we have the minute collaterals these are like capillaries that supply chi and blood to the tissues we have the sinew channels or the tendino-muscular meridians these are the muscles ligaments and tendons that hold the bones together and let us move we have the lull connecting channels like we said the horizontal channels in the body we have the below that the primary channels the jing the vertical channels in the body but then even deeper than that we have the divergent channels that separate from the primary channels and dive deep even deeper than that we have the eight extraordinary channels that act like reservoirs of qi and blood deep in the body and then even deeper we have the deep pathways that are not really mapped out but we exit but we acknowledge that there are other channels or pathways that are deeper than even the eight extraordinary channels so this is what we're talking about today is these other secondary channels that make up the entire channel network or channel system so maybe we should start by going back and reviewing what were the functions of the channels or what are the functions of the channel system so remember we said that number one the channels connect the body balance and harmonize the various aspects of body and render the body in integrated whole so the channels and network vessels were like a web that holds the body together so instead of thinking of these separate parts like the organs and the tissues and the structures channel system is like a series of fiber optic cables that connects everything together so the channel system brings us into one hole so we're connecting up above and below we're connecting right and left we're connecting the exterior to the interior we're connecting the channels to the organs we're connecting the organs to each other the channel system serves as this connective stuff that makes the body an integrated whole but beyond just connecting everything we also said the channels are like a distribution system that the channels distribute qi and blood to every part of the body to nourish those tissues so just like in western anatomy and physiology we have a circulatory system made up of blood vessels that distributes nutrients and oxygen to every tissue in the body well in tcm we have a series of channels that supply chi and blood to every tissue in the body so if your tissue wants to stay alive it has to somehow get chi and blood distributed to it and so it's these various channels in their channel system that distribute and circulate that qi in blood we also said that the channels protect the body protect the body from harm and really this means two things on the one hand we could say that the channels are protecting the body from blunt trauma say i get i fall and hurt my knee or i get hit in the head with a baseball we can also say that the channels are protecting the body from exterior pathogens so when we have this evil qi the shiichi of the environment trying to attack the body our channels are there to help ward it off and protect us from those pathogens getting deeper to the interior of the body the channels also respond to dysfunction in the body on the one hand we can use this diagnostically we can say that [Music] if there's something going on if we have some disharmony something going on in the organs this will get reflected in the channels so that we can palpate the channels we can feel for changes in temperature we can look for changes in color we can uh press on the channels and say oh it's really tight on this channel or it's kind of loose and flaccid on this channel that those channels will reflect disease or disharmony in other parts of the body but then this is also used treatment-wise that when there's something going on in the uh in the body or in the channels the channels will send chi to that area in the course of treatment and so that gets to our next one the channels transmit qi to the diseased area and this is what we're doing when we do an acupuncture treatment we're needling certain areas in order to circulate or get that chi to the diseased area so a healing state can take place so as we go through and look at all of these secondary channels we're going to see how these secondary channels relate or contribute to these various functions of the channel system so that's what we're going to go through and maybe before we do that we should kind of make a little bit of a disclaimer that first of all this is meant to be an introduction to those secondary channels that here if you're just starting out on your acupuncture journey here we're just trying to introduce a few terms so that in the next couple of weeks as we start going through the channels and the point functions that when certain terms come up you'll know what they mean so this is just kind of an introduction this isn't going to be an in depth of how do we treat the sinew channel what kind of signs and symptoms do we see for a divergent channel how do we treat the diverging channel those are things that come much later sometimes years later for now we're just trying to introduce these things so that you have some concept of them as we move forward in the acupuncture curriculum and so what this also means is if any of this seemed like really confusing and you're like i don't know what to do with this that's totally normal this is just one of those things where we're introducing at first so it's going to be very confusing but then as you get through your channels and points classes we'll start to give examples of all these channels so it will start to make more sense and if at this point you're like what what is this what good is this why do i need to know this that's again something we'll get to later that later down the line we'll start talking about these channels in terms of diagnosis and treatment how do i treat the divergent channel how do i know that one of the eight extraordinary channels is diseased and what do i do about it that comes later for now we're just going to discuss some basic functions of these secondary channels so as long as you know that the sinew channels connect the hundred bones or that the divergent channel supply chi and blood to the face or that the eight extraordinary channels are reservoirs and qi and blood that's probably going to be good enough for now so that's where we're going with this with this discussion of the secondary channels so again here are channels from superficial to deep and so instead of going from top to bottom we could go the most superficial is the skin the cutaneous regions and go down we're actually going to start at the middle and work our way out so we're going to start with the primary channels remember what we said before the primary channels are like the gene they're the vertical up and down channels and these are probably the most important channels because these are the channels where the points are located and so these are the ones that we're probably going to pay the most attention to because this is where we locate the acupuncture points so here as an example this is a picture of the hand tie in lung channel the hand tie in lung primary channel and so you can see like we said when you look at this picture we have a bunch of dots those are the points that's where we stick the needles and then we have a line connecting the dots and that's the channel and so maybe something extra we should pay attention to here is when we look at this picture on the one hand we have a solid line going up the arm but then we have a dotted line in the middle so what's happening here is it turns out the solid line that's where the points are so we have lung one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven but that solid line where the points are is called the superficial pathway or external pathway of the channel the dotted line is the interior pathway of the channel so even when we're just talking about the primary channels we kind of have two separate levels we have a superficial or external part of the channel and we have an interior slightly deeper part of the channel and this is what i want to talk about in this section because normally when people study channels and points they just pay attention to the superficial or external pathway but it turns out when we're learning these channels we definitely need to know the pathway of the interior part of the channel so like we said the external pathways that's that solid line right there are the superficial parts of the twelve primary channels and this is where the acupuncture points lie so each channel we're talking about lung large intestines unexplained heart siub kidney pericardium sandra goldberger liver each of the 12 channels has an external portion of the channel but each of these channels also has an internal pathway which is the deep portion of the channel that enters into the body cavities once this internal pathway enters there it can do sorts of cool stuff where it connects to various organs and tissues so one thing we should say about the interior pathway is every channel has an interior pathway that connects to its own organ and to its yin yang pair so every channel is connected to its own organ and its yin yang pair through the internal pathways so here we have the lung channel it has an interior pathway that connects to the lung which is its own organ and it has and that interior pathway also connects to the large intestine which is its yin yang pair and this is true for all of the channels so the spleen channel connects to the spleen organ but it also connects to the stomach organ through its interior pathway the gallbladder channel connects to the gallbladder organ it also connects to the liver its yin yang pair through its internal pathway so this is kind of an important function of these internal pathways but besides just connecting to yin yang paired organs sometimes these internal pathways connect to other organs and other tissues and this is what we want to pay attention to because when these internal pathways connect to these other organs and other tissues that's a sign that the points on this channel can have an effect on those organs and tissues so when we get into our acupuncture points class and we start going through all the 12 channels we're going to learn the internal pathways of the channel and one of the things we want to pay attention to is what organs and tissues does this channel connect to because what that's going to do for us is it's going to explain and help us understand the functions of certain points along the channel that may not otherwise make sense so like when we use the lung channel as an example besides connecting to the lung organ and the large intestine organ we can see that this internal pathway also connects to the stomach and that's going to tell us that there are points on this lung channel that have an effect on the stomach so lung one jeongfu has an action of calming rebellious stomach chi and so normally if you just looked at the pathway on the arm you'd be like well lung one starts here lung 11 ends here how does it get to the stomach well the answer is through its internal pathway we can also see up here that the lung channel connects to the throat so this is a very important part of the lung channel so we're going to have points like lung 10 is very good for treating sore throat so again if you were just looking at the external channel starting at the shoulder and going down to the thumb you'd be like how does this channel treat the throat well the reason lung 10 can treat the throat is because of the internal pathway does go to the throat so that's what we need to know about the internal pathways and that's why it's important to pay attention to these a lot of times when people go through they just want to know the locations of the points but in order to really understand the functions of those points and how we can use those points in treatment we need to also be aware of these internal pathways the internal pathways of the primary channels so here we have another example this is a small intestine channel see we have that solid line is the external or superficial pathway the small intestine channel starts at the pinky goes up the arm zigzags around the shoulder so this is a really good for like a rotator cuff issues and then goes up to the face but we can also see from this dotted line that there's an internal pathway that connects to its own organ and it's yin yang pair so the small intestine channel connects to the small intestine organ and the heart organ the its internal pathway but it also connects to the stomach organ so that's something we should take note of and then we can see there's some extra branches up here that we have internal pathways that connect to the eyes and wrap around the ear and so that tells us when we start to look at the functions of the small intestine points we're going to see some points that are good for the eyes and good for the ears like a ringing in the ears deafness tinnitus and so the reason we can affect those areas is because we have an internal pathway that goes to those tissues so that's why we need to know the internal pathways of the primary channels so that's just something we want to mention about the primary channels that yes these are the most important channels probably these are the channels that we study the most because that's where the acupuncture points actually are however we still need to know those interior pathways so after the primary channels we're actually going to move up a level into the bull connecting channels the lull connecting channel so again in our first video we talked about the jing buo the channel network or the channel network vessels and so this is the other half of the jinglu the jing are the primary channels that go up and down the rule connecting channels are the horizontal channels that form this web so here we have an example of a wool connecting channel it's kind of hard to see because it's just uh out here in the hand it starts kind of by the wrist and goes into the thumb this is the lung dual connecting channel and so it turns out that each of the primary channels has its own dual connecting channel so there's a long ball connecting channel a large intestine lure connecting channel a stomach lure connecting channel a spleen lure connecting channel heart lure and so on each of the 12 channels has its own lure connecting channel associated with it so we can say that the lure connecting channels branch out from the primary channel and are distributed superficially over the body so again each channel has its own law connecting channel that branches off from the primary channel and the lull channels are a little bit more superficial they're a little bit more above the primary channels in terms of depth so dual connecting channels strengthen the connection between internally externally paired channels and organs so we talk about lull connecting channels what do they connect they connect yin and yang paired channels and organs so technically according to the textbooks when we look at dead men and machiocho they say the lil connecting channels are good for yin yang paired channels and organs i would say this is primarily about connecting yin and yang paired channels just because whenever we look at these pictures notice there's no organs in this picture so i would really say that really what's more happening is these little connecting channels branch off and connect to the internal external paired organ or sorry these little connecting channels branch off and connect the internal external paired channel but because the channels are connected that kind of means that the organs are connected indirectly but basically what we're saying here is low connecting channels what do they connect they connect yin yang paired channels and organs so lul connecting channels branch off at the wall connecting point and they travel around and meet their yin yang pair so again each of the 12 channels has its own dual connecting channel each wool connecting channel begins at the lower connecting point so here in our example the lung this is lung seven we have the lung primary channel that comes down and goes into the thumb well at one of those points along the channel lung seven this is the rule connecting point this is the point where the lull channel breaks off separates and connects to its yin yang pair and then proceeds along its own path so actually in total there are 15 dual connecting channels one for each of the 12 primary channels plus we have extra for the ren and dew channels which are extraordinary which are extra channels that we'll talk about later and then we actually have an additional low channel called the great rule of the spleen which kind of wraps around the entire body so if you ever hear people talk about the 15 network vessels sometimes we say the 14 channels and the 15 network connecting vessels and you're like how did we get with 15 that's just because the 12 primary plus the run and the dew plus the great rule of the spleen and again that's something we'll get into later when we start going through all the channels so those are the lure connecting channels this is kind of what they look like kind of the takeaway here is each of the 12 channels has a low connecting channel that begins at the lower connecting point these branch off from the primary channels they connect to their yin yang paired channel and then they proceed along their own course so what do these do for us or what do they do in the body well the lull connecting channels number one balance the yin and yang of the limbs like we said little connecting channels what do they connect they connect the yin and yang paired channels and so we're looking at a limb remember we said about the pathways of the channel is we have a yin channel that goes down the arm towards the fingertips and then we have a yang channel that comes up the arm towards the body so as one channel is coming down and the other one comes up there's a change in polarity the chi changes from yin to yang and so we have these yin parts of the limbs and the yang parts of the limb yin shi and yang chi and so these low connecting channels balance out that yin and yang in the limbs just where we have that change in polarity so that's what one of the things they're doing by connecting is help balancing out yin and yang we can also say they nourish the superficial and deep areas of the body so this is kind of weird but so on the one hand we can say that low connecting channels are more superficial than the primary channels they're above the primary channels so they're nourishing the more superficial levels of the body the more superficial levels directly above the 12 primary channels and we can call this area the li the li this refers to the area between the muscles and the skin it's a little bit more superficial than the 12 primary channels and this is where the lull connecting channels go nourishing those areas small side note here uh in chinese for opinion when you see the letter c that's pronounced like a ts so one way you can do it is if you put your hand in front of your face you should feel air hitting your hand and go the air hits your hand so the point here is when when you see this term this is pronounced please do not say cooli this is the so we have the low connecting channels which are slightly more superficial than the primary channels and these are nourishing those more superficial areas specifically the area between the skin and muscle the solely kind of the weird part about this is uh this is not something we necessarily talk about in deadman or some of the other books but machiocha will also talk about there's a deeper aspect of the loyal connecting channel so when he says they nourish the superficial and deep areas of the body this is kind of a machioche thing where there's the deep aspect of the little connecting channels that are under the main channels and nourish the the areas under the main channels so if that's a little bit weird i'm going to blame that one on machiocho but that's something that he talks about in his book channel the channels of acupuncture he talks about the deeper aspects of the lure connecting channels so that's why he says nourishes superficial and deep areas of body but usually we talk about the little connecting channels we say they're more superficial than the primary channels the little connecting channels also protect the body and circulate defensive qi or wei chi so this is one aspect of protection of the body so maybe you remember back in your fundamentals class when we talked about the different types of chi we said there's yinchi and weichi there's nutritive chi or there's construction chi and then there's defensive chi or weichi and so what we said about some of the differences between these two is that the nutritive t flows inside the channels and so it can be distributed and and nourish the various tissues of the body but the weichi actually flows outside of the channels because the he is bold and fierce so it can't be contained by the primary channels the way she the defensive chi actually circulates outside of the primary channels what do we mean when we say it circulates outside of the primary channels it's circulating in that solely space it's circulating in that area that's governed by the lower connecting channels so when we say they protect the body and circulate weichi that's because the waichi doesn't actually flow in the primary channels we said in our fundamentals class that the waichi flows outside of the primary channels and that has something to do with the lull connecting channels and the solely spaces we can also say the low channels warm the muscles again because we're uh nourishing then these areas uh the totally space between the muscles and the skin so we're warming the muscles as well we can also say the lower channels connect the left and right sides of the body so again when we talked about the jingle the channel network or this channel web we said the jing the primary channels are the up and down channels but the rule are the side to side horizontal channels that form that web across the body so because the dual connecting channels are the horizontal channels that means they're they have this function of integrating or connecting the left and right sides of the body low channels also connect interior to exterior and this is kind of just because they're a gobi tune we said they're they're in that solely space between the skin and the muscles so they're a little bit more superficial than the primary but they're a little bit deeper and so they're kind of a go-between between the interior and exterior and then again we say the deep connecting channels play a role in making blood and again if you're if you're just following along in deadman deadman doesn't really talk about the deep aspects of the connecting channels that's just something that comes up in the machioche book so this looks like a lot of functions and it turns out these functions are all coming from this machioche book the channels of acupuncture now i'll be honest i don't really like this book uh one of the reasons i'm not a big fan of machioche books is he's just he's very verbose he that's that's a lot of words but i like to include all this from this book just because i know that some people teach from this book and so it could be that if you're in one of those situations sometimes people say you have to memorize all of the functions from the machioche book so that's why i like to present it this way but to me this is a little bit um it's a bit much it's a lot of functions by contrast if we look at deadman he kind of says two things about the little connecting channel so deadman when you look in that introduction section he's a little bit more concise deadman and maize and alcathaji are a little bit more concise than machiocho so what deadman says deadman says about the little connecting channels is they basically say they connect internally externally related paired channels so uh each little connecting channel branches off of the little connecting point and it goes and connects to its yin yang pair and then these little connecting channels proceed along their own pathway and this is something important and this is something we didn't necessarily mention when we went over our machioche functions about warming the muscles and circulating the huichi that besides just connecting to its yin-yang pair these little connecting channels actually have their own pathway as well and again that's going to be important when we start to look at the functions of the points and how we can use these points and channels in treatment so one example we had was the lung dual connecting channel and it's kind of hard to see here it's just goes from the wrist and then spreads over the thenar eminence so we have the lung primary channel that goes down the arm at this point lung seven that's the law connecting point at that point the lure connecting channel branches off from the primary channel it connects to its yin yang pair the large intestine channel but it also has its own pathway that spreads over the thenar eminence and what this means is we can use the lung lure connecting channel and the lung law connecting point to treat disorders of the thenar eminence now i'll be honest when i was learning points we we like to talk about the lung log spreading over the xenar eminence and i was kind of like how often does that really come up are people actually in clinic treating a lot of thenar eminence pain and uh after i got into practice it turns out yes i actually do treat a lot of thenar eminence pain i have a lot of um hair stylists that come in that they get pain right in this area i have uh people who like to garden and use their garden shears and they'll complain of pain in their thenar eminence well it turns out that because i know the pathways of the law connecting channels i know that i can use lung seven to treat this because lung seven is the low connecting point and that's where this pathway branches off and spreads over the thenar eminence so that's why we need to know these pathways another example here we have the large intestine wool connecting channel each dual connecting channel begins at its low connecting point so this is large intestine six it first connects to its yin yang pair the lung channel we we kind of don't draw that part in we just assume that it's there so we don't really see a dotted line going to the lung channel but we know that it's there but after that it then the large intestinal connecting channel goes up the arm goes to the cheek and spreads out into the mouth and ear and so this might be really important like there was one time i had a patient with trigeminal neuralgia and he had a lot of pain in his teeth he like wanted to get some pliers and pull out his teeth because he felt like there was something in his teeth he also had a lot of pain in his ear he was constantly digging around his ear he would take a screwdriver and dig around in his ear because he felt like there was something there well i happen to remember that the large intestine dual connecting channel goes up in the arm and spreads into these two areas so since he was feeling symptoms in these two areas i needled that point so that's an example of it can be important to know the pathways of these lull connecting channels here we have another one this is the liver lull connecting channel it begins at liver five the low connecting point it branches off from the liver primary channel it connects to its yin yang pair the gallbladder channel and then it goes up the leg and goes to the genitals so by knowing the pathway of this channel we know that liver five can have an effect on the genitals so like one time i had a patient come in and she was like my lip is swollen and i was like really which well which lip and she was like the left one and so it turns out uh this is the point i used i knew that the liver low channel goes up and goes to the external genitalia and so that was a point we could use in treatment for swelling and pain of the external genitalia because that's the pathway of the bull connecting channel so that's kind of what we're doing with the law connecting channels that's why it's important to know them and so the gist here is each of the primary channels has its own wall connecting channel this little connecting channel branches off from the primary channel at the low connecting point it branches off to its yin yang pair so low connecting channels what do they connect they connect yin yang paired channels and then each low connecting channel then proceeds along its own pathway to an area of the body and so we can use that in our treatment so those are the dual connecting channels so if we go up one step from the low connecting channels we're going to more superficial more towards the surface of the body up one step from the lull connecting channel is the sinew channels the sinew channels or the tendino-muscular meridians i don't have my cam right here but i believe cam calls it the tendino muscular meridians denman calls it the sinew channels and so the sinew channels are also called the tendino-muscular meridians depending on which book you read and uh so basically when we say tendanomuscular these are the tendons and the muscles these are the sinews ligaments tendons and muscles in different areas of the body so again each of the 12 channels has its own sinew channel there's a lung sinew channel a large intestines in you channel a stomach synu channel a spleen sinew channel a hearts and you channel blah blah blah and so we have these uh sinew channels and basically they roughly follow the course of their associated primary channels as well as the major muscle groups uh tendons and ligaments so here we have the lung sinew channel and if you remember what the lung primary channel looked like this pretty much just looks like the lung primary channel maybe a difference with what we could say here is instead of a line it's more of a broad area because we're again we're dealing with muscles we're not dealing with energetic pathways we're dealing with actual muscles so they're going to have a little bit more substance than the other types of channels so sinew channels each of the 12 primary channels has a sinew channel and it pretty much looks similar to the primary channel but it's going to be a larger in diameter take up more space because they're more substantial sinew channels originate at the extremities and ascend towards the head and trunk and so this is something that's different from the primary channels remember with the primary channels you said they go from chest to hand hand to face face to foot foot to chest so some channels are flowing down the arm some channels are flowing up the arm some channels are flowing down the leg some channels are flowing up the leg well it turns out with the sinew channels that's not how it works the sinew channels always start at the fingers and move towards the trunk the singing channels start at the toes and move towards the trunk because that's the way it is we can also notice here that the sinew channels do not connect to organs so when you look at this picture there are no organs in this picture and this is just because we're talking about the muscle layer the muscles are more superficial they're just right under the skin so they're really not deep enough to connect to the organs the organs exist much deeper in the body here we're talking about the more superficial parts of the body uh one of the things we can say is that these new channels can reflect disease of the primary channels or they themselves can be injured by trauma or external pathogens so on the one hand uh we said the sinew channels can reflect diseases of the primary channels and so it may happen that we have something going on in our primary channels and we're going to feel it in our muscles tendons and ligaments we could have an external wind cold pathogen that gets into the lung channel or gets into the tion channels and we feel some soreness and heaviness in our muscles because they're being affected by what's going on in the primary channel and so again we can think about this in terms of symptoms or use this diagnostically that if the organ or the primary channel is affected we might see that reflected in the muscles and tendons or the sinew channels can be damaged directly either by trauma i get hit with a baseball and now my shoulders all sore or i can have external pathogens lodging in the muscle layer um there are no specific points for the sinew channels so again when we look at this picture there are no points on this picture so how do we treat the sinew channels well one we can do needling and do shallow needling usually on these points where they're tender we call these ah sure points so if you're an observer and you've been in the clinic and you've heard your intern say oh i'm going to needle some ah sure points this is what we're talking about we're talking about we palpate around we palpate at the muscle level we palpate at the level of the sinews and look for tender spots and if there's a spot that's tender that might be an indication that we want to stick a needle there and so it's kind of funny ah sure is actually a word that is what it sounds like onomatopoeia asher is an onomatopoeia so it literally means like an ouch point if you're palpating around the muscles and sinews and someone is like ouch that's a sign that you might want to stick a stick a needle there it just turns out apparently in china instead of saying ouch when you hit a tender point they say ah sure and that's an osher point we can also get to these muscles and tendons through other means main one is massage so instead of sticking needles into the muscles we can do some toy knot or do some massage to affect the muscles cupping by separating the layers of muscle and fascia can affect the sinew channels gua sha especially if we're doing some cross fiber gua sha scraping we can affect the sinew channels and that's what they're good for and then we can say that sinew channels have certain binding or nodding points along the channels usually are the major joints so we're looking at this picture of the lung sinew channel you notice that certain places we have darker areas and that's just we say that the lung sinew channel binds at the wrist or knots at the wrist the lung sinew channel binds at the elbow or knots of the elbow and kind of that's just saying that that's where a joint is occurring that these these sinews are knotted together to form a joint and so that's all we mean by that so when you start studying your channels we're going to go over the primary channels we're going to go over the law connecting channels we're going to go over the sinew channels when we look at our channels and points so we're going to see that these these sinew channels bind or not at certain points along that pathway so what are the functions of these channels well one the sinew channels protect the body from trauma here what we're saying is when we talk about the sinew channels we're talking about the muscles and tendons and ligaments and just by virtue of their mass they're by virtue of their substance they're able to protect the body from trauma so somebody comes up and punches me in the gut i can contract my abs and protect my internal organs if i fall on my side i have some muscle and sinew that's protecting my body from that injury and trauma so when you say the sinew channels protect the body we're talking about the sort of blunt trauma by virtue of their mass and substance the sinew channels sustain the body in an upright position i mean hopefully this is pretty obvious if you didn't have any muscles or tendons or ligaments you'd just be all loosey-goosey and you wouldn't be able to stand upright so these sinew channels sustain the body in the upright position it could be that when people are experiencing some weakness or as they get older or if they become deficient they lose this bod ability to sustain an upright position that maybe their sinew channels are no longer being properly nourished they get weak and the person can no longer stay upright so that's a function of the sinew channels the sinew channels connect the hundred bones again we're talking about the tendonomuscular meridians or the sinews what do tendons or ligaments connect the bones together and again this is a thing in chinese uh just a way of phrasing that uh in chinese we tend to use powers of 10 just to mean a lot of things or everything so when we talk about the 10 000 things we just mean everything uh but this this applies to other powers of ten as well so when we say shennong tasted the hundred herbs we don't mean we tasted exactly 100 herbs like why not 99 why not when you say shendong tasted the hundred herbs i mean he tasted all of the herbs so here when we say the sinew channels connect the hundred bones we don't mean that there are exactly one hundred bones that are connected by the singing channels we mean the singing channels connect all the bones so yeah we're talking about tendons and ligaments of course they connect bones together they govern the movement of joints and allow the body to move again we're talking about muscles and tendons of course they help the body move they contribute to the integration of the surface of the body to the interior and again here we're just saying that they're kind of a go-between between the exterior and the interior you have your skin on the exterior your deep channels and organs on the interior the the sinew channels are kind of a go-between and this can be important because the these can also connect to the deeper levels of the body so on the one hand when you go and get some massage you get some twain ah done of course we can use twina to help with neck pain you have a tight and stiff low back of course we can use twin ah to affect the sinew channels directly it turns out if you have somebody who's really good at twain ah there are actually twain off techniques that we can do twaina to improve your digestion and you can say how can we do that how can massaging the muscles help with my digestion well it turns out that by affecting or massaging these sinew channels that can affect can go deeper into the body and actually affect the channels and organs so we actually can do twinal we can manipulate the sinew channels in order to have an effect deeper in the body so that's one of the functions of the sinew channels machioche says they contribute to the integration between the three yang channels and the three yin channels when we say the three yang channels we're talking about taiyong ming xiaoyong when you say the three yin channels we mean taiyan xiaoyun zhuayian so the sinew channels are help connecting those things together and really that's just because the sinew channels have certain overlaps that uh in these three yang channels they have the sinew channels have certain points where they overlap so there's some communication or there's some integration between those channels and we say that the sinew channels are nourished by the primary channels again these primary channels are distributing qi and blood all over the body and part of what that means is your qi and blood is nourishing the sinews and hopefully that would be kind of obvious but again we can have other problems that start to pop up if the sinew channels are not being nourished um let's say somebody has a post-stroke condition they have a stroke sometimes what can happen is they can have complete hemiplegia on one side so they just can't they're paralyzed they can't move their arm they can't move their leg and so what's happening in that situation is we have a wind pathogen blocking the channels and because there's wind blocking the channels the channels aren't properly nourishing the sinews and so my sinews can't move the hundred joints maybe after a stroke it's really common that people will have a weakness or atrophy or they'll have especially trouble gripping things that's one of a post-stroke thing they have poor grip strength and again they had this stroke that there's some blockage in the channels and they're not getting proper nourishment to their sinew channels so they don't have the ability to move the joints and have strength and so that's kind of an important thing so again we're talking about these functions of the cine channels and again this is something that uh we can tell this is from machioche because there's a whole lot of them montiocho is very verbose so whenever we have a whole lot of functions we know we're reading from a machioche book so those are the functions of the sinew channels and again we're basically talking about muscles tendons and bones each of the 12 primary channels has an associated sinew channel so lung senior channel large industries you know stomachs in your channel and so on these sinew channels kind of look like the primary channel so if you draw the line of the primary channel it's very likely the sinew channel is going to look very similar it's just going to be broader and it's going to include the muscles that are traversed by that primary channel these sinew channels start at the tips of the fingers and toes go towards the body they do not connect the organs and basically they act like muscles tendons and ligaments but it turns out manipulating muscles tendons and ligaments is part of what we do as acupuncturists so we need to have this knowledge in our anatomy so that was the sinew channels and again we're going from we're going up so we're going more superficial so after the sinew channels one step more towards the surface is the minute collaterals the minute collaterals what are the minute collaterals well there there's not a whole lot to say of them because we don't really map them like with our other channels so far we said there's something associated with each one it turns out we don't really name the minute channels we don't draw pictures of the minute channels we don't map them out and talk about their pathways we just know that they're there so it's not like there's not a lung minute channel there's not a large intestine minute channel we just say the minute collaterals they're there and what they are is they're like capillaries or small blood vessels so if you think about your circulatory system you have large arteries and veins and then these branch off into arterials and venules and then these branch off into either small even smaller things like capillaries and so we have these small capillaries that just allow us to get blood to every tissue that every cell in the body we have the same thing going on with the channel system that we have channels that branch out and branch out like little capillaries to supply key to all the tissues of the body and so this is just a way for qi and blood to reach every tissue through these minute collaterals again they're relatively superficial but we don't really name them we don't really map them so we know that they were there but we don't really talk about them very much it's just kind of a convenient that's how the g in blood gets there so after the menu collaterals we go up to the cutaneous regions cutaneous means skin so the cutaneous regions are the most superficial these are the regions of the skin so you look at the cutaneous regions these are really just broad areas and a lot of times we can talk about the cutaneous regions individually or in terms of their sixth division pair but again here we have a cutaneous region that's associated with each of the 12 channels so we have a lung cutaneous region a large intestine cutaneous region a stomach cutaneous region a spleen cutaneous region and so on so we can talk about them individually or here we just say the tie in cutaneous region but again uh in the upper body that's the lung cutaneous region and going down the inside of the leg is the spleen cutaneous region so again each of the 12 channels has a cutaneous region and they overlay the primary channel so again when we looked at the primary channel of the lung it kind of went down the arm towards the thumb when you look at the cutaneous region of the lung channel kind of covers the same area so it's an area above the channel but it's the most superficial part it's your skin so what do we need to know about these cutaneous regions well one external pathogens can penetrate through the skin to the deeper aspects of the channels and organs so basically the skin is the most superficial layer so this is the way that certain pathogens can get into the body and if we don't have a good defense system these pathogens can work their way deeper and deeper into the body until they get to the channels and organs and this is something we'll talk about when we talk about exterior attacks and the six evils that i know at least when we talk about the shanghai loon and cold damage we said zhong jong jing says cold damage is caused by cold pathogens attacking the body through the skin and muscle layer later in the wen bing yiati and sure said that febrile diseases are caused by heat pathogens entering the nose and mouth but we do have some examples of pathogens entering through the skin or the skin and muscle layer so the skin it's your most exterior part that's the way the pathogens get in and like we said with the other ones cutaneous regions can reflect disorders of their associated channels or organs so again this is something that we can palpate or just visually observe these areas on the surface of the skin so we can palpate for areas of warmth we can look is there redness in certain areas is is maybe one area is red or one area is pale or one area is kind of greenish meaning there's pain we can look for changes in color there the patient may report some abnormal sensations maybe some numbness and tingling that goes along in certain areas so if you have numbness and tingling in certain areas that may help us diagnose a problem in the associated channel even certain skin conditions so you might have a patient that she says before my period i break out in certain areas that might have some breakouts that might clue us into what channels are affected based on the skin region so that's why we need to know about these cutaneous regions and these cutaneous regions also explain how treatments at the skin level can have a fair and have a therapeutic effect deeper in the body so one of the ways this comes up is liniments we have liniments that we apply to the skin but they don't just stay at the skin they can actually penetrate in deeper we have things like jungushue which we can apply to the surface of the skin but jungushui means rectify the bone water and so even though we apply it to the surface of the skin once it gets on there the herbs are penetrating deeper into the body and going to the level of the tendons and bones or sometimes even deeper and so again it's like the the skin can be an entry point it can be an entry point for pathogens to get deeper into the body and cause disease at the level of the channels in the organs but we can also use this therapeutically by applying certain liniments or doing certain techniques we can have those herbs penetrate deeper into the body through the skin so those are the cutaneous regions the most superficial regions of the body again each channel each primary channel has a cutaneous region associated with it that looks pretty much like the channel itself just it's a broader area and this helps us explain certain things about how pathogens get in the body it helps us explain how certain treatment work at the skin level and we can also use it diagnostically by looking at certain regions of the skin so after the cutaneous regions we're at the most superficial level so we're going to jump back down to the middle where we started with the primary channels the level of the gene or the primary channels and now we're actually going to start to move deeper in the body so these are the channels that exist below the primary channels or at a deeper level than the primary channels so we're going to start out with the divergent channels the divergent channels so the divergent channels in chinese this is the the channel divergences or the divergences from the primary channels so what does it mean to diverge it means to separate or to branch off so we talk about the channel divergences these are things that branch off or separate from the primary channels so what that means is each of the 12 primary channels has its own divergent channel so we have a lung divergent channel a large intestine divergent channel a stomach divergent channel a spleen divergent channel a hard torn and so on each channel has its own divergent channel where the it's a channel that splits off and dives deep and so maybe that's the way you can remember that divergent channels are deeper than the primary channels we say that divergent channels dive deeper into the body after they separate or diverge from their primary channel so these divergent channels run deeper than the primary channels divergent channels tend to run from the lower part of the body to the upper part of the body so again with our primary channels we had this loop of chest to hand hand to face face to foot foot to chest so some of the channels ran up the body some of the channels ran down the body it turns out divergent channels always run up so the duran channels are always going from lower to upper and what we can say about the divergent channels is generally as we trace along their path the divergent channels diverge or separate from their primary channel on the limb so we have the lung channel going down the arm we have a lung divergent channel that separates from the lung primary channel and goes up we have a stomach divergent channel that separates from the stomach channel on the leg often these divergent channels enter the body cavities and maybe connect to certain tissues or organs after they dive deep they then re-emerge usually around the neck and then they converge or join or reconnect with the related young primary channel and so kind of what we're saying here is we have a large intestine divergent channel a large intestine channel separates enters the body cavity [Music] messes around with some organs and tissues then it re-emerges and connects to its primary channel so the large intestine divergent channel then reconnects with the large intestine primary channel when it's the yin channels the like the lung channel it separates it diverges it enters deeply into the body connects to these organs and then it re-emerges but now it connects not to the lung primary channel it connects to its yin or its yang pair the large intestine diverging channel in the large intestine primary channel so everything ends up connecting to a young channel in the end so lung connects the large intestine large intestine connects to large intestine stomach connects to stomach spleen connects to stomach and so it's always connecting to the yawn of the two pair i feel like all of that was really confusing so let's see if this makes it simpler remember when we at the beginning we said that the primary channels we often use this analogy of water we said the jing or the primary channels are like rivers so it turns out that this is a picture of a river uh if you couldn't tell i went ahead and put the word river there just so you know that this blue thing is a river so the so we have this river or this primary channel that's flowing kind of near the surface of the body well then the divergent channel is kind of like an underground passageway that diverges or separates or veers off from the river it dives deep it connects to some stuff and then it re-emerges so we have this river is the primary channel but then we have this other passageway that separates from the main river or separates from the primary channel it dives deep and then enters some of these deeper levels of the body and then it re-emerges it comes back up from those deep levels and then it converges or reconnects with the primary channel and we just have to know that it's reconnecting with its young paired channel and so maybe this was not a not a great example because this this river is running horizontally but we know that in the body the the primary channels run vertically up and down and our divergent channels start at the bottom and go upwards towards the face so if we look at a an example in the body we're going to kind of have to flip this river on its side and we get something that looks like this this is the stomach divergent channel so the stomach divergence channel starts or separates from the primary channel on the limb it starts in the lower body and moves towards the upper body so diverting the channels always move upwards towards the head and face so here we say the stomach divergent channel it separates from the stomach primary channel on the thigh it separates or diverges on the thigh we don't say exactly where we just say somewhere on the thigh it then enters the abdomen it enters the body cavities and it connects to these deeper tissues and organs in this case it's connecting to its own organ and it's yin yang pair the stomach and spleen but it's also connecting to the heart so it's connecting to other organs and tissues then it re-emerges or reappears or comes back up from the deep it emerges at the neck and then it converges or rejoins the stomach primary channel so here we don't have it pictured but there's a stomach primary channel that runs up the leg and somewhere as it's running up on the leg when we get to the thigh there's an extra little channel that separates out goes deeper into the body cavities and then pops up and reappears and then goes back to the stomach primary channel so why do we need to know this why is this important well let's look at this uh this whatever the divergent channels do number one they strengthen the relationship between yin yang paired channels and organs so on the one hand we're strengthening the relationship between yin and yang paired channels because we said that every divergent channel connects to its young pair so that's the way that the lung connects to the large intestine is it converges or rejoins with a large intestine channel so we have this connection between yin and yang paired organs or yin and yang paired channels but we can also see that some of these divergent channels also connect to organs so in the case of the stomach it connects to the stomach and the spleen so it's strengthening the relationship between yin and yang paired organs the divergent channels also distribute qi and blood to the head and face what we said about these divergent channels is they start in the lower body or they start in the limbs and they all move upwards towards the face whether we're talking about the arm it might diverge or separate on the arm but it moves upward towards the head and face it might diverge or separate on the leg but it moves upward towards the head and face like we see in this picture so that's a way that we get qi and blood to the head and face another thing we can say is these divergent channels connect to areas that are not connected by the primary channels so in terms of making connections that yes we have the primary channels and we have these internal pathways of the primary channels that connect different tissues and organs but now we just have another system another backup of divergent channels that are connecting tissues and organs and maybe it's connecting things that weren't connected by the primary channels and so this brings us to the next one is really what we're doing here is this allows us to explain the functions of certain acupuncture points that we otherwise would not be able to so if we take an example here this is this picture here this very well drawn very artistic very beautiful picture here is a representation of the stomach divergent channel so it turns out when later when we get to the the channels and points and we go over the point functions we're going to see that there are certain points on the stomach channel that can affect the heart we have points like stomach 40 is very good for calming the shen especially if the heart is being misted by phlegm if we have phlegm misting the heart orifices one one point we might be able to go to is stomach 40 on the leg but if we were just looking at the primary channel if we only looked at the stomach primary channel we'd be like wait a minute the stomach primary channel doesn't go to the heart how is it that stomach 40 can have an effect on the heart when the stomach primary channel does not connect to the heart organ well the answer is we have a stomach divergent channel that does connect to the heart and so that's why stomach 40 can have can help calm the shen is because there is a pathway from stomach 40 up to the heart it just has to separate it has to dive deep and go down that little passageway of the divergent channel in order to get there so this is a way we can explain certain functions of the acupuncture points maybe another example is there's a very famous point on the urinary bladder channel bladder 57 or ub57 has a very famous action of treating hemorrhoids and so ub57 is good for hemorrhoids but if we look at the pathway of the bladder channel of the uv channel if we just looked at the pathway even if we looked at the internal pathway we'd be like wait a minute how is it that the ub channel can treat hemorrhoids it actually doesn't go to that area well it turns out the uv primary channel does not go to that area but the uv divergent channel does wind around the anus and that's why we can use uv 57 to treat hemorrhoids so these are ways that we can explain the functions of certain acupuncture points that we wouldn't really be able to explain otherwise but we know that they can do these things because of the pathways of the divergent channels so at least when we go through channels and points for now that's what we're going to focus on is how we can use these diversion channels to explain the functions of certain points later in life like two years from now one or two years from now we'll talk about what it means for the divergent channels themselves to become diseased we'll talk about how we can use the divergent channels in treatment we'll talk about certain points that connect to the divergent channels that we can use when those divergent channels become diseased but that comes later for now mostly when we talk about the divergent channels this is a way that we can explain why the points do what they do so those are the divergent channels remember divergent channels dive deep so the diversion channels are deeper than the primary channels but each of the 12 channels does have its own divergent channel that dives deep enters the deeper levels of the body and then re-emerges and reconnects with its young paired channel so those are the divergent channels if we go one step deeper we get into the eight extraordinary channels and these are our deepest of the mapped channels the eight extraordinary channels and i'll be honest these are kind of weird so when we talk about the eight extraordinary vessels it turns out we're talking about something completely different first of all there are eight of them these are separate from the primary channels so with our other channels that we were talking about we when we talked about the sinew channel we said each of the primary channels has its own sinew channel so there's a lung sinew channel a large intestine sydney channel a stomach signal channel so on we talked about the low connecting channels each of the 12 channels has its own wool connecting channel lung blue large incessant low stomach spleen male blah blah blah when you talk about divergent channels each of the 12 channels has its own divergent channel the eight extraordinary vessels are completely different it's not like there's a long eight extraordinary or a large intestine eight extraordinary the eight extraordinary channels are completely different they have their own names and it turns out they are not associated with the 12 primary channels so we look at the eight extraordinary channels the chinese here is xi jinbami xi jinba mi so what does this mean well jing like we said means channel like we talked about the jingle the jing are the channel my actually means vessel so we can talk about this like in terms of blood vessel my means vessel my can also mean pulse when you get into your pulse diagnosis you'll see the term my a lot like fumai is the floating pulse and so on but here mai can mean pulse but it also means vessel ba means ate what's interesting here is the word chi chi means weird or odd or singular or i guess we could say extraordinary but so that's why i say the eight extraordinary vessels but really this is the eight weird channels the eight odd channels the eight singular channels so these are the weird channel eight vessels and so when we say these are the weird vessels what makes them weird what makes them odd well if you if you go download the slides you can probably read this this is actually chapter 27 of the non-jing so these eight extraordinary channels show up in chapters 27 28 and 29 of the non-jing and so that's kind of what they're asking here is these eight channels we say they're the eight weird channels the eight odd channels the eight extraordinary channels what makes them weird well first of all the thing that makes them weird or that makes them odd or extraordinary is that these eight channels are not touched by the 12 primary channels these eight channels are outside the flow of the 12 primary channels so we talked about the primary channels he said the primary channels go in a big circuit lung large intestines unexplained heart siu b kidney pericardium cyanogal by our liver and then back to lung and they circulate in this big loop it turns out the eight extraordinary channels are not a part of that circuit the eight extraordinary channels are not touched by that circuit of chi so that's why we call them the weird channels the odd channels or the extraordinary channels and then it goes on to ask it's like well what do these do how do how can we visualize or how can we explain these eight extraordinary channels and just so the nanjing says it is like this the sages of antiquity uh developed and constructed ditches and reservoirs and so it's basically saying that remember when we talked about the jingle we said uh we could talk we could think of them as rivers or you can also think of them as like irrigation ditches if you're trying to irrigate your fields you dig some ditches and so the water can go through and provide nourishment and water to the fields just like the channels provide qi and blood to the organs and tissues so they said in the past yeah we had these sages in the past that would dig out irrigation ditches so that we could water our crops but sometimes what would happen is if you had a big rain that came down from the mountains it could flood the fields and could overflow the irrigation ditches so the sages being wise what they did is they dug out great reservoirs so that in the case of this great rain these reservoirs were there to accept the surplus and so that's what we're saying about uh what it says over here is that uh in times like that when the floods uh rushed wildly even the sages could not make plans here in oregon when the network vessels are overflowing none of the main channels could that's too soft when we could uh receive any of the content contents and so the eight extruding channels are like reservoirs to accept the surplus so that's what we're talking about the eight extraordinary channels it turns out there are eight of them each of them has names like the ren the do the chong the dai yin chao yangchao yinwei and yangwei these are the eight extraordinary vessels that are completely separate from the 12 primary channels now the annoying thing about anything that happens in chinese and chinese medicine is it turns out we have these chinese terms but every book likes to translate these differently so for the rend channels we'll sometimes call that the conception vessel the controlling vessel or the directing vessel depending on which book we're reading do we can say governing chong is penetrating the dimi is the one that actually goes horizontally so we call this the girdle vessel or the belt vessel because it goes across like a belt yin chao we can say yin motility or yin stepping yang motility yang stepping i think i've heard some people say the yang heel or yin heel yinwei and yangwei would just say linking so this is kind of an annoying thing that you can have three different textbooks and each book will translate these terms differently that's why i prefer just to use the chinese terms and again later on down the line we'll talk about the more specifics of these eight extraordinary channels so each of the eight extraordinary channels has its own pathway each of the eight extraordinary channels has symptoms related to it that we can talk about when the eight extras get diseased what kind of symptoms do we see and if one of those eight extras is diseased how do we treat it what kind of points can we use to treat the extraordinary channels that's not something we're going to talk about right now that's something that comes after we learn all the channels and points then we can get into those kind of deeper concepts of how do we treat the divergent channels how do we treat the eight extras for now we're just kind of introducing some terms so that you have a general concept of what this channel system looks like and so when these words come up later you'll have some idea that you know what they mean but those are details we'll get into later so just be patient and don't worry about it too much for now because when you get there it might be a little bit complicated so we can we can be glad that we're not uh we're not there yet so what what do the eight extraordinary vessels do and so we said that these are eight extraordinary or weird or odd channels that are outside the flow of the twelve primary channels so that flow of lung large intestines unexplained heart siu bikini pericardium sandra goldberg liver all the way back to lung these eight vessels are outside of that flow these vessels branch off within prime turn and interlink the primary channels to each other yes that's what does that really mean um really i think here there's a good analogy if we again look at our wong ju yi applied channel theory long judy applied channel theory it turns out he does have a chapter sort of going over some of these ways we can think about the eight extraordinary channels and i really like the analogy that he uses that he says the eight extras are like they're not like rivers they don't flow like rivers when we talked about the the primary channels we said they're like ditches or like rivers and there's water flowing sometimes flowing rather swiftly through these rivers the eight extras are not like rivers they're more like swamps or lakes or ground water so there is some movement there but it's not like a rushing river it's more like an ebbing and flowing or tides or that come and go like that and so maybe we can think of the primary channels are like the rivers that flow kind of more on the surface the eight extras are more like the underground water the the water table that exists underground at the very deep levels but it's also connected to those rivers so we can have one river over here and one river over here but they share a common water table they share a common underground water and that's how they're kind of linked and connected so this kind of links and connects the channels to each other but not in the way that like one river connects to another river more that the way that the groundwater can connect two bodies of water so that's what we're thinking about with the eight extra channels but again this is a really good analogy that uh wong ji uses in his his book so i definitely recommend getting this book it's really good for a lot of different things but it does have a chapter on the eight extras that kind of that might make a little bit more clear another thing we can say about the eight extraordinary channels is by and large they do not have their own points the two exceptions to this because this is chinese medicine and there are always exceptions the two exceptions to this are the ren and do channels so the ren and do channels do have their own points there's a red one run two run three run four run five and on the do channel there's a d1 do two do three do 45. the ren and dude channels have their own points the other channels do not have their own points so when we look at uh our other channels like uh the yin chao there's no such thing as yin chao one yin chao tu yin chao three those are not real points the daimai there's no such thing as dai one die to die three those are not real points the these other channels the chong the dai the yin chao yang chao yin wei yangwei they do not have their own points instead they share points with the other channels and because of this but because the the ren and do are different because they're different in that they have their own points sometimes when we're talking about doing acupuncture we talk about the 14 channels so if you ever see hear somebody talk about the 14 channels what they mean is the 12 primary channels plus the ren and the dude so sometimes we'll say the 14 channels and the 15 network vessels well there are 14 the 12 primary plus the ren and do and then there are 15 low channels we add on the great law of the spleen so that's those are the exceptions are the ren and the do do have their own channels sorry lauren do do have their own points but the other ones don't have their own points they just share them with the other channels so for example here we have the yin wei or the yin linking vessel it starts near the foot and it goes up towards the face so pretty much all of the eight extraordinary channels start in the lower body and again move upwards towards the face the one exception is the dimi which wraps around but all the other ones start at the bottom and go upwards towards the face there are no extraordinary channels on the arms so we might see some pathways on the leg we're never going to see an 8 extraordinary channel on the arm so they might start the leg but then they go upwards towards the face and again they're not part of a flow so the other ones the other channels we could set we say they're probably slow chest to hand hand to face face to foot foot to chest and they go around in a circle that's not true with the eight extraordinary channels it starts at the leg goes up to the face and stops there's no circuit there's no flow this is not like a big water pipe system this is more like a swamp or ground groundwater that exists deep below the surface but it turns out that these uh like we said these don't have their own points so when you look at the yin linking vessel we can kind of needle into it but we're borrowing points from other channels so we could say that the yin linking vessel if we wanted to connect the dots we say oh kidney nine as a point on the yin wei eye spleen 12 and spleen 13 are points on the in weiman liver 14 run 22 run 23 so we're borrowing points from other channels in order to have an effect on the yin the yin linking vessel so that's what we mean when we say these don't have their own points we still have points that are associated with them but they're kind of borrowed from the primary channels because we know that they can have an effect on these deeper levels so what are the functions of these eight extraordinary channels the xi jing bomi one like we said they act as reservoirs of chi and blood so um this is what we said that was in that chapter 27 of the nanjing like reservoirs during a heavy rain when qi and blood of the primary channels overflows the eight extraordinary channels are there to accept the surplus so then one of the things we can say about these um these are reservoirs that are accepting the surplus there are certain practitioners who will say that because these eight extras are like our reservoirs not only do they accept the surplus when the primary channels overflow we can actually draw on these reservoirs in times of deficiency so it's like yeah when we had a big rain the ditches were overflowing we collected all this water in the reservoir but now if we don't have rain if we have a drought we can pull that water back up and use it to irrigate our fields so there are some practitioners who say we can use the eight extras this way that if we have a deficiency in the primary channels we can draw from those reservoirs to help tonify as far as i know i've never i've never actually seen this in a book or seen it classically but that is something that i've seen modern practitioners do so that would be something that you would have to go to someone who's a little bit more of an expert in the eight extras i don't know a whole lot about that as far as i know usually when we talk about the eight extras as reservoirs we're talking about accepting the surplus the extra linked the primary channel so we said they lincoln to connect the primary channels but again this is not like a direct pathway when we talked about the dual connecting points linking the channels or anything like that here we can kind of think of this as like the deep underground water that is kind of the underlies all of the rivers so but they do link the primary channels so so maybe you can think of uh say you had one river and somebody dumped some toxic waste in one river and then a couple miles over you see you do some tests on the water you see this chemical has shown up in the other river how did it get there well the rivers weren't necessarily connected but it could be that something when they dump this toxin it seeped into the groundwater and it very slowly made its way through diffusion over to the other river and then popped up in the other river so we can have the same thing happening in terms of the primary channels that we can have a pathogen getting into one channel and it can get into that ground water the reservoirs the eight extra and kind of pop up in another channel but that also means we can use that in terms of treatment as well to affect the we can affect many rivers by affecting that groundwater protect the body and circulate weichi there it comes up again the we're specifically talking about the ren the dew and the chong circulate defensive qi over the chest abdomen and back protecting them from pathogens so the ren channel goes up the midline in the middle the dew channel goes up the midline on the back the chong goes up pretty much in the middle and then kind of spreads out so here we're talking specifically about wei chi uh over those areas chest abdomen and back so that's that is one function of the a extra specifically the rendu and chong maybe not all eight of them and then we say they regulate the seven and eight year cycles of women's and men's lives so maybe you talked about this in your fundamentals class but uh remember i think this is in the first chapter of the non-jing and this in the sioux when it comes up very early on where we talk about uh these life cycles going in seven and eight year periods and if you read through it it's really depressing it's like when you're 35 years old when you're at seven times five your yang ming dries out your teeth fall out your hair falls out and you're basically uh falling apart at seven times five well anyway with women we said it goes in seven year cycle 7 14 21 28 35 and then we go on eight year cycles um and it's the eight extras that kind of regulate those cycles and again this has to do with the ren that do and the chong are linked with the kidneys and kidney essence so this kind of growth and development has to do with kidney essence and then when you get old and you start to fall apart that's because you have weighing of kidney essence and so because the ren the due and the chong are linked to the kidneys we can say the eight extraordinaire channels are also have something to do with the seven and eight year cycles so those are the eight extraordinary channels and there are certain ways we can treat these eight extraordinary channels as well we talk about uh master and couple points i think it's a term machiochi uses or deadman says confluent points i believe but it turns out there are distal points on the primary channels that can have an effect on the eight extraordinary channels so if we had something going on in the rend channel we could affect the rend channel by needling lung 7 and kidney 6 and that will affect the lung channel or the lren channel for the dew channel if somebody oh they have some some back pain their back isn't so great well we know that the new channel goes up the spine if we wanted to treat the dew channel we could use si3 and ub 62 to strengthen the new channel and help that person with their weak spine so again this is something that we'll get into later this is something that comes later after you've already learned the 12 primary channels of how do we treat these eight extraordinary channels directly for now maybe a way we can think of this is again this is going to be a way to explain certain functions of the points on the primary channel here we can use an example of the rend channel in lung seven when we get into our channels and points and when we start looking at the points on the lung channel and when we get to lung seven we're going to look at the functions and indications of lung seven it turns out lung seven is really good for releasing the exterior lung 7 is really good for opening the nose and that all makes sense because those are functions of the lung it turns out you're going to get to a function that says lung 7 is really good for like menstruation issues lung 7 is really good for fertility and lungs seven is really good for regulating the uterus on the lower jaw and you're gonna be like how how does that happen i mean the lone channel doesn't really go to the lower jaw or the uterus the lung channel doesn't have anything to do with the blood or menses the lung there's no reason the lung should have any effect on fertility well it turns out the reason lung 7 has this function is because it's the master point of the ren channel the conception vessel so the rend channel does go to the lower gel the rend channel does go to the uterus and you can use the gen channel to treat fertility or menstruation issues and so that's how we can explain the functions of lung 7 not through its primary channel not through its internal pathway not through its divergent channel but through its association with one of the eight extraordinary channels so that's what uh kind of what we're going to look at for now so when we go through our 12 channels and we go through the functions and indications of the points on the 12 channels this is where it's going to be a little bit more relevant later on down the line we'll talk about what happens when the eight extraordinary channels are diseased what happens if we have some evil that penetrates into the yin chao mai what does that look like and how do we treat it that comes later for now we just want to know that these eight extraordinary channels exist they are at the very deepest levels of the body they are completely separate from the 12 primary channels they are not part of that flow and that they act as reservoirs of qi and blood and sometimes we'll use points that have an effect on them that's what we need to know for now if we want to treat them directly we'll get to that later and then i always like including this is another passage from uh the chapter 28 of the non-jing that says when the single conduit vessels this is uh at least in the first position this is paul unshuld's translation of the chi jing bama he calls them single conduit vessels meaning that they're not part of this big circuit they're not part of the big conduit of 12 they're single conduit vessels anyway when the single conduit vessels receive evil qi which stagnates in them swelling and heat will result in this case one has to hit them oh one has to hit the respective vessel with a sharp stone so i i just always thought that was kind of funny when it's like oh you've got some heat in your eight extraordinary channels like well what are you gonna do should we do needles should we do massage should we do gua sha it's like no we have to hit the patient with a sharp stone i just thought that was kind of funny it turns out that this is actually when they say hit with a sharp stone really what they were talking about is one of the traditional needles using it as a lance and using it basically prick to bleed that basically these eight extraordinary channels are so deep that if we want to release that heat we actually have to do a prick to bleed and release some blood i think that's what they were talking about not that you should get a rock and hit someone over the head although that actually sounds more exciting so those are the eight extraordinary channels again uh we don't need to know a whole lot about these if you're really confused about these that's okay we'll get into more signs and symptoms diagnostic treatments stuff like that later in life for now we just need to know that these eight extraordinary channels exist they exist at the deepest level they're lower than even the divergent channels they're they're very deep in the body they act like reservoirs or could say they act like ground water underneath the rivers and um and then there are eight of them and that's some and then we'll get into later that they don't have their own points that they borrow points from the other channels and that's kind of all we need to know about for now and we just like to mention them now because again when we get into the functions of the actual points sometimes when we get to lung 7 we're going to say lung 7 is the master point of the ren mai we kind of need to have some idea what that means and so when we look at lung 7 we're going to say oh it's really good for fertility issues or menstruation issues that's because it's a master point of one of the eight extras when you get to si3 it's going to be really good for things like back pain or stuff happening on the back of the neck and that's because it's the master point of the do chant the doom on and so that's kind of all we need to know for now more complicated stuff we'll get into later and so those are the eight extraordinary channels technically we can go one level deeper to the deep pathways but really these deep pathways are just not mapped it's kind of what we're kind of saying in here is we recognize that there are other pathways that are deeper even than the eight extraordinary channels but again we don't name them we don't map them we don't have points but we just we kind of recognize that there's still more going on deeper in the body and that it's very mysterious so these are our secondary channels again from uh superficially deep cutaneous as the skin regions the most superficial these are just areas of the skin or we could say they're like dermatomes uh areas of the skin that are above the primary channels and so we have a lung cutaneous region a large intestine cutaneous region and so on my new collaterals are just more like capillaries we don't name them we don't map them we're just acknowledging that there's these small capillaries that are there to provide qi and blood to every tissue in the body the sinew channels or the tendino-muscular meridians are the muscles tendons and ligaments and again these generally follow the course of the primary channel so we have a lung sinew channel that looks a lot like the lung primary channel we have a large intestines in you channel that looks more or less like the large intestine channel and these are like your muscles they protect you from getting injured they connect your bones together and form the joints they help you move around and help you stay upright but they can be damaged directly in cases of injury and trauma or in the cases of an external pathogen or they can reflect things that are going on deeper in the body that if we have some pathogen in the organ or some pathogen in the channel we might feel that in our sinew channel law connecting channels what a little connecting channels connect they connect yin and yang paired channels so each of the 12 primary channels has a low connecting channel this little connecting channel starts at the low connecting point it branches over and connects to its yin yang paired channel or its internally externally related channel and then it spreads or it proceeds along its own pathway and usually spreads across areas so those are the lull connecting channels they're the horizontal channels the primary channels are the jing they go up and down there are main channels but we should also pay attention to the internal pathways of these channels so we have superficial or external pathways and that's where the points are that's where we stick the needles but we also have internal pathways divergent channels dive deep they separate from the primary channels they enter the body cavities they move around in the organs and tissues then they re-emerge usually on the neck and they reconnect to their young paired channel the divide divergent channels dive deep and the eight extraordinary channels are weird they're the eight weird channels the eight odd channels they exist outside the flow of the 12 channels and they they have their own names they don't necessarily have their own points and they're weird so we can talk about them more later in life the deep pathways are just to acknowledge that there are deeper aspects of the body that we don't talk about so again let's go over the functions of the channels and see that see if these functions make any more sense or see if we can tell where certain channels contribute to these functions so first we said that the channels connect the body balance and harmonize the various aspects of the body render the body an integrated whole so we have all these separate parts we all have all these tissues we have ligaments bones blood vessels we have fluids like blood we and fluids we have organs yin organs young organs but but the channels serve as a way to connect and integrate all of these separate parts like the fiber optic cable that connects us and gives us the world wide web of chi so what did we see here how did these different channels contribute to this well again we talked about the the primary channels those have the points but they also have internal pathways that connect to the organs so when we talk about connecting the body we talked about the internal pathway connects yin and yang paired organs sometimes we have additional organs that these internal pathways connect to so they connect the organs that way they connect the channels to the organs that way harmonizing the body we had um the law connecting channels he said they harmonized the yin and yang in the limbs where you have the change of polarity lull connecting channels by connecting yin and yang paired channels they help harmonize with that we talk about connecting left and right sides of the body we said the law connecting channels are horizontal so they connect left and right sides of the body we said that the eight extraordinary channels the dimi connects left right and sides of the body because it's like a belt or a girdle we can connect the channels to each other through the eight extraordinary vessels the eight extraordinary vessels are like that ground water that kind of seep below and so those link all of the primary channels we can connect above to below but the divergent channels start at the bottom and go up the eight extraordinary channels start at the bottom and go up so we're connecting above and below so all of these channels contribute in different ways to connecting balancing and harmonizing the various aspects of the body and that includes just the the channels themselves connecting interior to exterior that things go through the skin to the muscles to the channels to the organs connecting interior to exterior through this channel system so in terms of that all of our channels are doing some work there circulate qi and blood to nourish the body again we have all these different pathways that are circulating qi and blood to various parts of the body we have things like the minute collaterals that are like branching off more superficially to get the more superficial levels of the body we had internal pathways of the the gene the primary channels that they're not just going on the limbs they also have internal pathways that circulate uh more on the interior we had divergent channels that separate off and dive deep to get to those deeper aspects we had the lull connecting channels going through that solely space between the muscles and skin circulating weichi so again all of those channels are contributing to this function of circulating qi and blood to nourish the body the channels protect the body here we are talking specifically about a few things we can talk about protecting the body from blunt trauma and that's what the sinew channels do the sinews the muscles by virtue of their substance and mass basically they act as some padding so if you experience some blunt trauma those sinew channels will absorb some of that impact but we said protecting the body we that also meant protecting the body from exterior pathogens that are trying to get into the body so one of the main things we talked about was the law connecting channels circulating the waichi through that solely space that the nutrient of chi goes inside the channels the wai chi is circulating outside the channels and we associate that with the lull connecting channels and i think we also said the eight extraordinary channels also help with some circulation specifically along the trunk along the abdomen and on the back because that's where the ren the dew and the chong go so those also have some action of protecting the body so again we have a couple different types of channels that are involved in this function of protecting the body how about responding to dysfunction in the body again we have a lot of channels that will do that but we talked about the cutaneous regions the skin regions if there's some dysfunction even if it's happening deeper in the body it might show up on the skin we might observe changes in color we might feel changes in temperature the patient might have weird sensations like numbness or tingling or other sensations on the skin in certain areas and that and they're feeling that because they have some dysfunction somewhere else in the body we also talked about this with the sinew channels can also respond to dysfunction if we have something going on deeper in the body we might feel it in the muscles and tendons we might get some attack and we're like oh we feel sore we feel achy things like that the that's the sinew channels responding to that dysfunction and they transmit qi to the diseased area and basically this is something that all of the channels do to some extent that we have this network system that goes all over the body and that's what we're doing as acupuncturists and again what this means is we can rely on various different treatment modalities in order to run a treatment so we can do stuff on the skin we can apply liniments topically to the skin and that will get in deeper to the body we can do twain on not just twain off or muscular complaints but we can do twin o to affect the interior of the body because the sinew channels are connected to the interior we can do cupping gua sha we can do needling we have all these different things we can do because this system is connected by these channels so those are our secondary channels and this kind of gives us a lay of the land in terms of our channel system all of these are very important in our understanding of anatomy and physiology according to tcm and according to the channel system and again for now we can dive much deeper into these we can go into much more detail on these but for now this is really just going to help us as we go through in the next couple weeks as we start to get into our functions and indications of the points having an understanding of these secondary channels is going to help us have a deeper understanding of what the points do what how we can use them in treatment and how we can use them to heal our patients we need to have an understanding of these secondary channels in order to do that so that's where we're going with that and that is all for today again if you want to download these lecture slides those are available on the website tcmstudy.net under the introduction to acupuncture uh section as always thank you to the patreon members for supporting the website the channel and everything we do here basically these videos are brought to you for free and ad free thanks to the support of viewers like you so we really appreciate those people who donate either by joining the patreon giving a one-time donation or through other ways of purchasing the courses or purchasing merchandise we just made some more t-shirts and stuff like that so those are some ways that you can support the website and support the channel i know i've been a student and i know that not everybody has great finances when they're going through school so also just liking this and sharing this is another good way to support the channel that's all i have for now i'm tired go away and leave me alone i'll see you next time thanks for being here [Music]