Introduction to Acupuncture Channels and Points

hey this is Nicholas and this is an introduction to acupuncture channels and points so if you're taking an acupuncture 101 class this is what the first lecture might look like in this video we're going to go over some basics like what are the channels how do we name the channels the basic pathways of the 12 channels and some of the functions and characteristics of the primary channels I'll probably have some slides on the website if you want to follow along the link will be in the description below and I'll put some time codes there as well in case you want to jump around to different sections but this is probably going to be a long one so go ahead and get comfortable grab yourself a snap and let's get started so when discussing channels for the first time a convenient place to start is with this passage from chapter 17 of the Ling Shu which says it is by virtue of the twelve channels that human life exists that disease arises that human beings can be treated and cured the twelve channels are where beginners start and masters end to beginners it seems easy the Masters know how difficult it is so this passage is highlighting a couple of interesting things first it's by virtue of the channels that human life exists so what this means is the channels are an integral part of the body's anatomy and physiology so we shouldn't just think of the channels and points like magic buttons that we press when somebody feels bad rather the channels are a part of the body's normal functioning and they're what keep us alive and healthy then it goes on to say that it's because of the channels that disease arises so when there's some malfunction or imbalance or disharmony in the channel system that's what makes us get sick or experience dis-ease but luckily there's a solution when we get sick or experience disease we can turn to the channels for treatment so that's what we're doing as acupuncturist we're using our knowledge of the channels to harmonize the body systems re-establish balance and heal the body so it's kind of like the channels are the cause of and solution to all of life's problems and like the passage says the channels are where beginners start and masters end so this is our starting point this is where we begin the study of acupuncture and hopefully the study will continue you over years and decades drawing on both theoretical or academic knowledge from textbooks as well as practical experience from treating patients in the clinic and as you get more comfortable with the material your understanding of a channel who become more sophisticated and that's what will make you an effective practitioner so what are the channels well you may have seen these diagrams or charts on the wall or you may have seen these acupuncture mannequins with a bunch of lines and dot's drawn on them well the dots are the acupuncture points that's where we stick the needles and the lines connecting the dots are the channels so where did these come from well there are actually two series the first theory says that the points came first and the channels came second so the idea here is when a person got sick they noticed that certain points on the body became tender and they also noticed that stimulating these points could help alleviate the symptoms eventually they group the points together based on what kind of symptoms they could treat and then they used lines to connect the dots and that's how he got the channels a second theory is the other way around that the channels came first and the points came second so here the theory is when Daoist were doing meditation or Qi Gong they may have observed energy traveling along certain pathways or when people did massage and they pressed a certain point they might notice a sensation traveling through the body along a particular path so they mapped out these pathways or lines of energy and those were the channels and then eventually they discovered specific points along those channels that could have a certain effect on how the Qi flows through the body so which is it well some recently discovered texts point to the second theory that the channels came first and the points came second these are called the MA longed ways silk texts and they're the earliest reference we found to the channels and basically these are scrolls that had pictures of channels but not points so we're pretty sure that it's the channels that came first and the points came second but either way it seems that by the Year 280 at least 349 points had been mapped on the body so we can say pretty confidently the a coherent system of channels and points has been around for at least 2,000 years so that's an interesting history lesson but it still leaves us with a question what are the channels well let's start by looking at the Chinese term for the channels which is Jing wool Jing means channel or path or track or route and wool means in mesh or web or net so together the term Jing wool means channel network so we can get more specific and say that the Jing are the up-and-down vertical pathways and the wall are the side-to-side horizontal pathways so it's the Jing and the law together that make up this web or network which distributes Qi and blood to the tissues of the body some other terms you might see here are the channels and collaterals or the channels and network vessels now these are just different translations of the term Jing pool depending on which book you're reading so one traditional image that we use to illustrate this idea was weaving if you're weaving on a loom or weaving a piece of silk you have certain up-and-down threads called the warp these threads are usually thicker and more tightly wound and form the structure of the piece then the threats that you weave in between are called the left or the wolf so these are the horizontal threads that fill in the spaces so in this analogy the Jing are the warp or the up-and-down threads and the law are the left or the side-to-side threads and I just want to point this out here because you might occasionally see these terms come up in certain textbooks for example in our biology class when you're reading Ben skis materia medica you might see him use terms like greater yung warp disease and you'll be like what is a warp what does that mean well that's just the translation he likes to use for Jing or channel another analogy we'll see use block here is the channels are like water pathways like rivers or irrigation ditches so just like in farming you have a series of ditches or channels that irrigate the fields and provide water to the plants growing there and the body we have this network of channels that supply and blood to the organs and tissues so the Jing bull are irrigating the body's organs and tissues and then another translation that gets used a lot in the West is meridian this is like on a map you have horizontal and vertical lines of longitude and latitude and you can say that those lines are like the Jing and the wall now personally I don't really like the term meridian either as an idea or a translation because when you say meridian you're talking about a coordinate system or an imaginary grid that helps you find a location and that doesn't really convey the full idea of the channel system in the body so when we say channel it's like the English Channel it's a waterway it's a pathway through which things can flow and that's what we're talking about when we say Jing wool so some people say Meridian but I prefer the word channel so that's the term Jing wool and again we can refer to these collectively as the channels and collaterals the channels and network vessels or more and commonly warp and wolf if we want to refer to them individually we often call the Jing the main channels or the primary channels and the low the bull connecting channels and the differences between these two is something we'll get into more in the next video for now let's just say that there are 12 primary channels one for each of the 12 organs and there are 15 bull connecting channels one for each of the 12 primary channels plus extras for the Ren the do and the great little channel of the spleen and again that's something we'll get into more in the next video so let's talk about how do we name the channels well in the West we tend to just name each channel after the organ it's associated with there are 12 song through organs 16 and 6 young and there are 12 primary channels now each channel is associated with an organ so we just say things like lung channel spleen channel gallbladder Channel and so on but the Chinese Way is a little bit different we have different names for the channels based on the relative youngness or Yanis of the channel so there are six levels or six divisions tae-young greater Yong chou-heung less are you and yang-ming young brightness for the young levels then tie in greater Yin Shao Yin lesser Yin and jooheon reverting in or terminal Yin for the yin levels so these are the six channels the six levels or the six divisions each of the six divisions has a hand section and a foot section so six divisions each with two sections gives us the twelve channels and that's how we name the channels we can say things like the Han Tae Young small intestine channel or the foot tae-yong UV channel or the Han Tae Young lung channel or the foot tae in spleen channel so where did these names come from and what do they mean well that's a little bit complicated one explanation is it has to do with how the channels are positioned on the body the back of the body is more young and the front of the body is more in so the more towards the back of the body the channel is the more young it is and the more towards the front of the body the more Yin it is so for example on the outside of the arm the channel in the posterior position is the greater young or tae yong channel then in the middle is the lesser young Channel and more towards the front is the young brightness channel so it's like we're going from young to yin or at least greater young to lesser young on the inside of the arm the channel towards the front is the tie-in or greater yin channel then we have the reverting yin channel and the lesser yin channel so it's going from yin to yaw or greater yin to lesser eaten but then on one side Xiao yang is in the middle but on the other side Shao Yin is on the outside why is this I don't really know and why do we call it young brightness instead of least young or reverting young I don't really know and then to make it even more confusing it turns out that some of the channels actually change position depending on where you're looking on the body so if you're confused by this explanation that's okay so am i another way to look at it is instead of the position of the channels on the body or talking about the depth of the channels and when you say depth we're not just talking about physical depth we're also talking about depth of function so we'll say things like tae-young opens to the exterior yang-ming closes to the interior and shall Young is the pivot between the two so if that all sounds really weird and complicated and confusing it kind of is I feel like for this one there's really no simple and straightforward explanation and that's just kind of how Chinese medicine is sometimes so if you want to know more about this I might recommend that you read the book apply channel theory by Wong GE he has a whole chapter that goes into more detail about this but for now it's probably okay to just know that there are six levels three in and three young and these six levels give us the naming system for the twelve channels and you'll need to be able to go back and forth between these two naming systems so when I say hand yang-ming you'll need to know that Matt means large intestine channel and when I say spleen you'll need to know that that's the foot tie-in channel things like that so why do we even have this naming system well for one thing it gives us a way to very clearly differentiate between the channel and the organ so for example we can have the disease of the large intestine organ or we can have disease of the large intestine channel and it's important to be able to differentiate between the two so somebody has constipation we might say that's a disorder of the large intestine organ but if somebody has tennis elbow we might say that's the hand yang-ming large intestine channel that's affected the other thing is it gives us a way to pair the channels so in your fundamental classes you probably talked about yin and yang paired organs for example the lung and large intestine are a yin-yang pair the spleen and the stomach are a yin-yang pair well we can do the same thing with the channels but instead of calling it a yin-yang pair we say it's an interior exterior relationship so the hantai in lung channel has an interior exterior a ship with the hand yang-ming large intestine channel because a long and large intestine or yin-yang pairs the lung channel runs on inside of the arm and the large intestine channel runs across from it on the outside of the arm both channels are associated with a metal phase and they're both on the arm right across from each other another example the foot tie in spleen channel has an interior exterior relationship with the foot yang-ming stomach channel the spleen channel the spleen channel runs along the interior or medial aspect of the leg and the stomach channel runs along the exterior or lateral aspect of the legs so these two channels have an interior exterior relationship but then getting back to what we were talking about before another way we compare the channels is through these six level or 6 division relationships for example the hand yang-ming large intestine channel and the foot Yongming stomach channel form the yang-ming pair these channels are kind of like mirror images of each other just one is on the outside of the arm and the other is on the outside of the leg so if you get a question like what's the interior exterior pair of the liver channel you should say the gallbladder channel since the liver and gallbladder are Yi and Yong pairs but if you get the question what's the sixth division pair of the liver you should say the pericardium since the liver and pericardium make up the jus a in pair things like that and just an extra note when we talk about interior exterior pairs those are young pairs and they're both on the same limb so you're gonna have a yin-yang pair that are both on the arm or eun-jung pair that are both on the leg but when we talk about six division pairs they're going to be either both Yin or both young and they're going to be on opposite limbs so you'll have one on the arm and one on the leg and that makes up the six division pair that might have been really confusing hopefully that makes sense oh this is a long video this video is brought to you by peanut M&Ms not like their response or anything this is just how I get through my day [Music] next we can talk about how the Chi flows through the 12 channels this is something you've probably learned in your front of mentals class that the chief flows through the 12 channels and a continuous circuit circuit from lung to large intestine stomach spleen heart SIUE kidney pericardium Sangalo liver and then back to the lung so this circuit or the order of the channels it's just something that you're kind of going to have to know forever and this is actually really a big deal because way back in the beginning in the time of the mondo 8x the channels were seen as separate entities so you had a stomach channel which contains stomach Chi and the kidney channel that contained kidney Chi and they were considered completely separate but now especially after the nanjing came along we say that there's one Chi in the body that flows through the 12 channels in a continuous circuit and that's why we can take the pulse at the wrist and from this one location we can know the state of the Chi and all twelve channels because they're all connected in this flow then using this idea of a continuous circuit we can talk about something called the circadian flow of Chi basically we take the order of the flow of Chi through the 12 channels and we line it up with the clock and two hour intervals with the lung starting at 3 a.m. now when you look at this chart don't get confused just because we say that the lung channel corresponds to 3 to 5 a.m. that doesn't mean that Chi is only in the lung channel during that time I mean if that were true the other tissues would die because they're not getting any Chi so instead maybe you can think of it like tides that a band flow so from 3 to 5 a.m. she pours into the lung channel Chi is exuberant in the lung channel or there's an abundance of Chi in the lung channel but they're still cheating all the channels all the time so some people will use this diagnostically for example if a patient wakes up with a headache at 1:00 a.m. every day that might mean there's something going on in the liver channel or some people use this in treatment so at certain times a day it might be more likely to needle certain channels because those channels have more tea and then this gives us another way that we can pair the channels for example the lung is three to five a.m. and the UB is three to five pm so we can call that a midday midnight pair because they're opposite each other on the clock so some practitioners might use points on the lung channel to treat the UV channel because of this relationship anyway you might occasionally get some questions about this like what is the time period associated with a spleen channel but really as long as you know the lung starts at 3 a.m. and you know the order of the Qi flow then you should be able to reconstruct this chart and get the right answer and one last thing I want to emphasize about this when we talk about the circadian flow we're talking about the channels not the organs so sometimes people will post these cute graphics on Facebook talking about how certain times of the day are related to certain organs or organ activity but that's not entirely accurate the original text where this is mentioned talks about cheap pouring into the channels at certain times a day so this is a phenomenon that has to do with Qi flow through the channels not the organs so how do you remember all this information well there's this neat little chart that can help us out so if you're taking a test it might be helpful to be able to recreate this chart on a sheet of scratch paper to help you answer certain questions so here's how I do it let's start with the yin organs first I asked myself what are the two sources of Chi well that would be the lung and the spleen from lung we get Chi from the air that we breathe in and from the spleen we get Chi from the food that we eat anatomically the lung is above the spleen so he put the lung above the spleen then I asked myself what are the two fires in the body well the heart houses the sovereign fire and the kidney houses the Ministerial fire heart is in the upper jaw and the kidneys in the lower jaw so the heart is above the kidney so we write down the heart above the kidney and then the only two that are left are the liver and pericardium we could say that both of these have a function of storing blood or I could just say that they're the ones that are left over and again the pericardium is in the chest above the liver so we write the pericardium above the liver so those are all the in organs so next we just have to fill in young pairs right across from them so the lung is paired with a large intestine spleen is paired with the stomach and so long then we can draw on the arrows like a snake and this will give us the order of the Qi flow through the 12 channels next we can group the organs into pairs and write down their six division names so on the inside it goes tie in shall yin Julian and on the young side its Yang Ming Chi Yong chou-heung now this is something that you just have to remember there's no significance to this in terms of order or channel depth or Zhang Han loom we only write them down this way for this chart but now you have all the correspondences for the sixth division names the one on top is the hand section and one on bottom is the foot section so if I ask you what's the hand way in channel you can say it's the pericardium and by following the arrows that will give you the order of the Qi flow through the channels and if you remember that the lung corresponds to 3 to 5 a.m. you can fill in the other time periods and now you have a table for the circadian flow so after you've been doing this for a while hopefully it will just become second nature so like at this point when somebody says foot Shao Yin I just automatically know they're talking about the kidney Channel but in the beginning it can be helpful to be able to recreate this chart and that can help you answer any questions about 6 division names 6 division pairs the order of the flow of Chi or the correspondence between the channels and the clock so that was all about the order in which the chief flows through the 12 channels next let's talk about the actual pathways of the channels on the body so the way the channels flow into one another on the body goes like this it goes from just a hand hand the face face the foot and then foot back to chest and then repeats just a hand hand a face face the foot foot to chest and one more time you can even do a dance just a hand and face face to foot foot to chest so these four pathways are repeated three times to give us the twelve channels so if we take these pathways and line it up with the order of Chi flow then that will give us the orientation of each of the twelve channels on the body so the long channel goes from chest the hand the large intestine channel goes from hand to face stomach channel goes from face to foot and spleen channel goes from foot back to chest and then it starts over again with a heart channel going chest the hand small intestine channel going hand to face so on so this is something we call the three circuits and when we start learning the individual channels we usually learn them in this order long large intestine stomach spleen blah blah blah so this can give you some idea of where the channels are located and in which direction they flow so finally let's just talk briefly about the functions of the channels this is something we'll talk about in more detail in the next video when you talk about the secondary channels but for now let's at least introduce it so we can relate it to some other things we talked about so far first we can say that the channels connect link balance and harmonize the various parts of the body and make the body into an integrated whole remember we said that the Jing low are like a network or a web and this web surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the body together so this web or these pathways connect above and below left and right interior and exterior they connect the organs to the tissues they connect the organs to each other and they balance out the yin and the Yong of the various parts of the body so rather than thinking of the body as a bunch of individual units that act independently the channels are like the fiber-optic cable connecting everything together and making it an integrated system and besides just connecting everything the channels also work as a distribution system remember we said that the channels are like waterways or irrigation ditches circulating Qi and blood throughout the body and providing nourishment to the organs and tissues so he said at the beginning it is by virtue of the 12 channels that human life exists this is what we're talking about the channels form a web that connect everything together and also a distribution system that circulates Qi and blood throughout the body and then the channels also have a function of protecting the body so when a pathogen tries to invade the body it starts at the exterior at the level of the skin and body hair and tries to work its way inwards towards the organs so the channels are there to prevent the pathogen from penetrating deeper in the body and then we say that the channels respond to dysfunction in the body and this can mean a couple things we can talk about this in relation to patho mechanism or how disease presents in the body remember in our passage we said it is by virtue of the twelve channels that disease arises so the channels themselves can become diseased like in the case of joint pain or arthritis the channels can reflect diseases of the organs for example say a person has a lot of heat in the stomach organ well as heat can travel up the stomach channel to the face and give us additional symptoms like toothache or bleeding gums or the channels can transmit diseases to other channels or other organs but when we say that the channels respond to dysfunction in the body we can also use this diagnostically so if a channel becomes diseased we might notice a change in colour along the channel or we can feel for areas of heat or cold or it can palpate for tenderness along the channel so these changes in the channels can give us diagnostic information about the nature of the disease and where it's located in the body and finally we say that the channels transmit Chi to the diseased area and here we're talking about treatment so again from our passage at the beginning it is by virtue of the 12 channels that human beings can be treated and illness can be cured so this is what we're doing as acupuncturist by stimulating the acupuncture points whether it's with a needle or with the application of heat with pressure and massage or even with cupping we're helping the body transmit Chi to the diseased area so that healing can occur and if you want to learn more I really do recommend this book apply channel theory by Wong GE this is my favorite non textbook book about Chinese medicine I mean when I first read this book it seemed like in every chapter there was something where I would say oh my gosh this makes so much sense why didn't anybody explain it to me this way before I will say that if you're just starting out this book might be a bit much sometimes I'll tell people to wait until they're done with her and then come back and read this to kind of put everything together but it's very readable it's easy to skip around to different sections if you want to and something that you can read multiple times and get more out of it each time so I'll leave a link in the description below full disclosure this is an Amazon affiliate link so if you click that link and buy anything I'll receive a small commission like less than 5% but this is the way you can support the channel at no additional cost to you so if you like this video go and hit the like button if we haven't met my name is Nicolas and I make videos for students about acupuncture and Chinese herbs so if you want to see more videos like this go ahead and hit the subscribe button but I hope you enjoyed this one because that's all for today thanks and see you next time hop sharing sauce that's hilarious

hey this is Nicholas and this is an introduction to acupuncture channels and points so if you&#39;re taking an acupuncture 101 class this is what the first lecture might look like in this video we&#39;re going to go over some basics like what are the channels how do we name the channels the basic pathways of the 12 channels and some of the functions and characteristics of the primary channels I&#39;ll probably have some slides on the website if you want to follow along the link will be in the description below and I&#39;ll put some time codes there as well in case you want to jump around to different sections but this is probably going to be a long one so go ahead and get comfortable grab yourself a snap and let&#39;s get started so when discussing channels for the first time a convenient place to start is with this passage from chapter 17 of the Ling Shu which says it is by virtue of the twelve channels that human life exists that disease arises that human beings can be treated and cured the twelve channels are where beginners start and masters end to beginners it seems easy the Masters know how difficult it is so this passage is highlighting a couple of interesting things first it&#39;s by virtue of the channels that human life exists so what this means is the channels are an integral part of the body&#39;s anatomy and physiology so we shouldn&#39;t just think of the channels and points like magic buttons that we press when somebody feels bad rather the channels are a part of the body&#39;s normal functioning and they&#39;re what keep us alive and healthy then it goes on to say that it&#39;s because of the channels that disease arises so when there&#39;s some malfunction or imbalance or disharmony in the channel system that&#39;s what makes us get sick or experience dis-ease but luckily there&#39;s a solution when we get sick or experience disease we can turn to the channels for treatment so that&#39;s what we&#39;re doing as acupuncturist we&#39;re using our knowledge of the channels to harmonize the body systems re-establish balance and heal the body so it&#39;s kind of like the channels are the cause of and solution to all of life&#39;s problems and like the passage says the channels are where beginners start and masters end so this is our starting point this is where we begin the study of acupuncture and hopefully the study will continue you over years and decades drawing on both theoretical or academic knowledge from textbooks as well as practical experience from treating patients in the clinic and as you get more comfortable with the material your understanding of a channel who become more sophisticated and that&#39;s what will make you an effective practitioner so what are the channels well you may have seen these diagrams or charts on the wall or you may have seen these acupuncture mannequins with a bunch of lines and dot&#39;s drawn on them well the dots are the acupuncture points that&#39;s where we stick the needles and the lines connecting the dots are the channels so where did these come from well there are actually two series the first theory says that the points came first and the channels came second so the idea here is when a person got sick they noticed that certain points on the body became tender and they also noticed that stimulating these points could help alleviate the symptoms eventually they group the points together based on what kind of symptoms they could treat and then they used lines to connect the dots and that&#39;s how he got the channels a second theory is the other way around that the channels came first and the points came second so here the theory is when Daoist were doing meditation or Qi Gong they may have observed energy traveling along certain pathways or when people did massage and they pressed a certain point they might notice a sensation traveling through the body along a particular path so they mapped out these pathways or lines of energy and those were the channels and then eventually they discovered specific points along those channels that could have a certain effect on how the Qi flows through the body so which is it well some recently discovered texts point to the second theory that the channels came first and the points came second these are called the MA longed ways silk texts and they&#39;re the earliest reference we found to the channels and basically these are scrolls that had pictures of channels but not points so we&#39;re pretty sure that it&#39;s the channels that came first and the points came second but either way it seems that by the Year 280 at least 349 points had been mapped on the body so we can say pretty confidently the a coherent system of channels and points has been around for at least 2,000 years so that&#39;s an interesting history lesson but it still leaves us with a question what are the channels well let&#39;s start by looking at the Chinese term for the channels which is Jing wool Jing means channel or path or track or route and wool means in mesh or web or net so together the term Jing wool means channel network so we can get more specific and say that the Jing are the up-and-down vertical pathways and the wall are the side-to-side horizontal pathways so it&#39;s the Jing and the law together that make up this web or network which distributes Qi and blood to the tissues of the body some other terms you might see here are the channels and collaterals or the channels and network vessels now these are just different translations of the term Jing pool depending on which book you&#39;re reading so one traditional image that we use to illustrate this idea was weaving if you&#39;re weaving on a loom or weaving a piece of silk you have certain up-and-down threads called the warp these threads are usually thicker and more tightly wound and form the structure of the piece then the threats that you weave in between are called the left or the wolf so these are the horizontal threads that fill in the spaces so in this analogy the Jing are the warp or the up-and-down threads and the law are the left or the side-to-side threads and I just want to point this out here because you might occasionally see these terms come up in certain textbooks for example in our biology class when you&#39;re reading Ben skis materia medica you might see him use terms like greater yung warp disease and you&#39;ll be like what is a warp what does that mean well that&#39;s just the translation he likes to use for Jing or channel another analogy we&#39;ll see use block here is the channels are like water pathways like rivers or irrigation ditches so just like in farming you have a series of ditches or channels that irrigate the fields and provide water to the plants growing there and the body we have this network of channels that supply and blood to the organs and tissues so the Jing bull are irrigating the body&#39;s organs and tissues and then another translation that gets used a lot in the West is meridian this is like on a map you have horizontal and vertical lines of longitude and latitude and you can say that those lines are like the Jing and the wall now personally I don&#39;t really like the term meridian either as an idea or a translation because when you say meridian you&#39;re talking about a coordinate system or an imaginary grid that helps you find a location and that doesn&#39;t really convey the full idea of the channel system in the body so when we say channel it&#39;s like the English Channel it&#39;s a waterway it&#39;s a pathway through which things can flow and that&#39;s what we&#39;re talking about when we say Jing wool so some people say Meridian but I prefer the word channel so that&#39;s the term Jing wool and again we can refer to these collectively as the channels and collaterals the channels and network vessels or more and commonly warp and wolf if we want to refer to them individually we often call the Jing the main channels or the primary channels and the low the bull connecting channels and the differences between these two is something we&#39;ll get into more in the next video for now let&#39;s just say that there are 12 primary channels one for each of the 12 organs and there are 15 bull connecting channels one for each of the 12 primary channels plus extras for the Ren the do and the great little channel of the spleen and again that&#39;s something we&#39;ll get into more in the next video so let&#39;s talk about how do we name the channels well in the West we tend to just name each channel after the organ it&#39;s associated with there are 12 song through organs 16 and 6 young and there are 12 primary channels now each channel is associated with an organ so we just say things like lung channel spleen channel gallbladder Channel and so on but the Chinese Way is a little bit different we have different names for the channels based on the relative youngness or Yanis of the channel so there are six levels or six divisions tae-young greater Yong chou-heung less are you and yang-ming young brightness for the young levels then tie in greater Yin Shao Yin lesser Yin and jooheon reverting in or terminal Yin for the yin levels so these are the six channels the six levels or the six divisions each of the six divisions has a hand section and a foot section so six divisions each with two sections gives us the twelve channels and that&#39;s how we name the channels we can say things like the Han Tae Young small intestine channel or the foot tae-yong UV channel or the Han Tae Young lung channel or the foot tae in spleen channel so where did these names come from and what do they mean well that&#39;s a little bit complicated one explanation is it has to do with how the channels are positioned on the body the back of the body is more young and the front of the body is more in so the more towards the back of the body the channel is the more young it is and the more towards the front of the body the more Yin it is so for example on the outside of the arm the channel in the posterior position is the greater young or tae yong channel then in the middle is the lesser young Channel and more towards the front is the young brightness channel so it&#39;s like we&#39;re going from young to yin or at least greater young to lesser young on the inside of the arm the channel towards the front is the tie-in or greater yin channel then we have the reverting yin channel and the lesser yin channel so it&#39;s going from yin to yaw or greater yin to lesser eaten but then on one side Xiao yang is in the middle but on the other side Shao Yin is on the outside why is this I don&#39;t really know and why do we call it young brightness instead of least young or reverting young I don&#39;t really know and then to make it even more confusing it turns out that some of the channels actually change position depending on where you&#39;re looking on the body so if you&#39;re confused by this explanation that&#39;s okay so am i another way to look at it is instead of the position of the channels on the body or talking about the depth of the channels and when you say depth we&#39;re not just talking about physical depth we&#39;re also talking about depth of function so we&#39;ll say things like tae-young opens to the exterior yang-ming closes to the interior and shall Young is the pivot between the two so if that all sounds really weird and complicated and confusing it kind of is I feel like for this one there&#39;s really no simple and straightforward explanation and that&#39;s just kind of how Chinese medicine is sometimes so if you want to know more about this I might recommend that you read the book apply channel theory by Wong GE he has a whole chapter that goes into more detail about this but for now it&#39;s probably okay to just know that there are six levels three in and three young and these six levels give us the naming system for the twelve channels and you&#39;ll need to be able to go back and forth between these two naming systems so when I say hand yang-ming you&#39;ll need to know that Matt means large intestine channel and when I say spleen you&#39;ll need to know that that&#39;s the foot tie-in channel things like that so why do we even have this naming system well for one thing it gives us a way to very clearly differentiate between the channel and the organ so for example we can have the disease of the large intestine organ or we can have disease of the large intestine channel and it&#39;s important to be able to differentiate between the two so somebody has constipation we might say that&#39;s a disorder of the large intestine organ but if somebody has tennis elbow we might say that&#39;s the hand yang-ming large intestine channel that&#39;s affected the other thing is it gives us a way to pair the channels so in your fundamental classes you probably talked about yin and yang paired organs for example the lung and large intestine are a yin-yang pair the spleen and the stomach are a yin-yang pair well we can do the same thing with the channels but instead of calling it a yin-yang pair we say it&#39;s an interior exterior relationship so the hantai in lung channel has an interior exterior a ship with the hand yang-ming large intestine channel because a long and large intestine or yin-yang pairs the lung channel runs on inside of the arm and the large intestine channel runs across from it on the outside of the arm both channels are associated with a metal phase and they&#39;re both on the arm right across from each other another example the foot tie in spleen channel has an interior exterior relationship with the foot yang-ming stomach channel the spleen channel the spleen channel runs along the interior or medial aspect of the leg and the stomach channel runs along the exterior or lateral aspect of the legs so these two channels have an interior exterior relationship but then getting back to what we were talking about before another way we compare the channels is through these six level or 6 division relationships for example the hand yang-ming large intestine channel and the foot Yongming stomach channel form the yang-ming pair these channels are kind of like mirror images of each other just one is on the outside of the arm and the other is on the outside of the leg so if you get a question like what&#39;s the interior exterior pair of the liver channel you should say the gallbladder channel since the liver and gallbladder are Yi and Yong pairs but if you get the question what&#39;s the sixth division pair of the liver you should say the pericardium since the liver and pericardium make up the jus a in pair things like that and just an extra note when we talk about interior exterior pairs those are young pairs and they&#39;re both on the same limb so you&#39;re gonna have a yin-yang pair that are both on the arm or eun-jung pair that are both on the leg but when we talk about six division pairs they&#39;re going to be either both Yin or both young and they&#39;re going to be on opposite limbs so you&#39;ll have one on the arm and one on the leg and that makes up the six division pair that might have been really confusing hopefully that makes sense oh this is a long video this video is brought to you by peanut M&amp;Ms not like their response or anything this is just how I get through my day [Music] next we can talk about how the Chi flows through the 12 channels this is something you&#39;ve probably learned in your front of mentals class that the chief flows through the 12 channels and a continuous circuit circuit from lung to large intestine stomach spleen heart SIUE kidney pericardium Sangalo liver and then back to the lung so this circuit or the order of the channels it&#39;s just something that you&#39;re kind of going to have to know forever and this is actually really a big deal because way back in the beginning in the time of the mondo 8x the channels were seen as separate entities so you had a stomach channel which contains stomach Chi and the kidney channel that contained kidney Chi and they were considered completely separate but now especially after the nanjing came along we say that there&#39;s one Chi in the body that flows through the 12 channels in a continuous circuit and that&#39;s why we can take the pulse at the wrist and from this one location we can know the state of the Chi and all twelve channels because they&#39;re all connected in this flow then using this idea of a continuous circuit we can talk about something called the circadian flow of Chi basically we take the order of the flow of Chi through the 12 channels and we line it up with the clock and two hour intervals with the lung starting at 3 a.m. now when you look at this chart don&#39;t get confused just because we say that the lung channel corresponds to 3 to 5 a.m. that doesn&#39;t mean that Chi is only in the lung channel during that time I mean if that were true the other tissues would die because they&#39;re not getting any Chi so instead maybe you can think of it like tides that a band flow so from 3 to 5 a.m. she pours into the lung channel Chi is exuberant in the lung channel or there&#39;s an abundance of Chi in the lung channel but they&#39;re still cheating all the channels all the time so some people will use this diagnostically for example if a patient wakes up with a headache at 1:00 a.m. every day that might mean there&#39;s something going on in the liver channel or some people use this in treatment so at certain times a day it might be more likely to needle certain channels because those channels have more tea and then this gives us another way that we can pair the channels for example the lung is three to five a.m. and the UB is three to five pm so we can call that a midday midnight pair because they&#39;re opposite each other on the clock so some practitioners might use points on the lung channel to treat the UV channel because of this relationship anyway you might occasionally get some questions about this like what is the time period associated with a spleen channel but really as long as you know the lung starts at 3 a.m. and you know the order of the Qi flow then you should be able to reconstruct this chart and get the right answer and one last thing I want to emphasize about this when we talk about the circadian flow we&#39;re talking about the channels not the organs so sometimes people will post these cute graphics on Facebook talking about how certain times of the day are related to certain organs or organ activity but that&#39;s not entirely accurate the original text where this is mentioned talks about cheap pouring into the channels at certain times a day so this is a phenomenon that has to do with Qi flow through the channels not the organs so how do you remember all this information well there&#39;s this neat little chart that can help us out so if you&#39;re taking a test it might be helpful to be able to recreate this chart on a sheet of scratch paper to help you answer certain questions so here&#39;s how I do it let&#39;s start with the yin organs first I asked myself what are the two sources of Chi well that would be the lung and the spleen from lung we get Chi from the air that we breathe in and from the spleen we get Chi from the food that we eat anatomically the lung is above the spleen so he put the lung above the spleen then I asked myself what are the two fires in the body well the heart houses the sovereign fire and the kidney houses the Ministerial fire heart is in the upper jaw and the kidneys in the lower jaw so the heart is above the kidney so we write down the heart above the kidney and then the only two that are left are the liver and pericardium we could say that both of these have a function of storing blood or I could just say that they&#39;re the ones that are left over and again the pericardium is in the chest above the liver so we write the pericardium above the liver so those are all the in organs so next we just have to fill in young pairs right across from them so the lung is paired with a large intestine spleen is paired with the stomach and so long then we can draw on the arrows like a snake and this will give us the order of the Qi flow through the 12 channels next we can group the organs into pairs and write down their six division names so on the inside it goes tie in shall yin Julian and on the young side its Yang Ming Chi Yong chou-heung now this is something that you just have to remember there&#39;s no significance to this in terms of order or channel depth or Zhang Han loom we only write them down this way for this chart but now you have all the correspondences for the sixth division names the one on top is the hand section and one on bottom is the foot section so if I ask you what&#39;s the hand way in channel you can say it&#39;s the pericardium and by following the arrows that will give you the order of the Qi flow through the channels and if you remember that the lung corresponds to 3 to 5 a.m. you can fill in the other time periods and now you have a table for the circadian flow so after you&#39;ve been doing this for a while hopefully it will just become second nature so like at this point when somebody says foot Shao Yin I just automatically know they&#39;re talking about the kidney Channel but in the beginning it can be helpful to be able to recreate this chart and that can help you answer any questions about 6 division names 6 division pairs the order of the flow of Chi or the correspondence between the channels and the clock so that was all about the order in which the chief flows through the 12 channels next let&#39;s talk about the actual pathways of the channels on the body so the way the channels flow into one another on the body goes like this it goes from just a hand hand the face face the foot and then foot back to chest and then repeats just a hand hand a face face the foot foot to chest and one more time you can even do a dance just a hand and face face to foot foot to chest so these four pathways are repeated three times to give us the twelve channels so if we take these pathways and line it up with the order of Chi flow then that will give us the orientation of each of the twelve channels on the body so the long channel goes from chest the hand the large intestine channel goes from hand to face stomach channel goes from face to foot and spleen channel goes from foot back to chest and then it starts over again with a heart channel going chest the hand small intestine channel going hand to face so on so this is something we call the three circuits and when we start learning the individual channels we usually learn them in this order long large intestine stomach spleen blah blah blah so this can give you some idea of where the channels are located and in which direction they flow so finally let&#39;s just talk briefly about the functions of the channels this is something we&#39;ll talk about in more detail in the next video when you talk about the secondary channels but for now let&#39;s at least introduce it so we can relate it to some other things we talked about so far first we can say that the channels connect link balance and harmonize the various parts of the body and make the body into an integrated whole remember we said that the Jing low are like a network or a web and this web surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the body together so this web or these pathways connect above and below left and right interior and exterior they connect the organs to the tissues they connect the organs to each other and they balance out the yin and the Yong of the various parts of the body so rather than thinking of the body as a bunch of individual units that act independently the channels are like the fiber-optic cable connecting everything together and making it an integrated system and besides just connecting everything the channels also work as a distribution system remember we said that the channels are like waterways or irrigation ditches circulating Qi and blood throughout the body and providing nourishment to the organs and tissues so he said at the beginning it is by virtue of the 12 channels that human life exists this is what we&#39;re talking about the channels form a web that connect everything together and also a distribution system that circulates Qi and blood throughout the body and then the channels also have a function of protecting the body so when a pathogen tries to invade the body it starts at the exterior at the level of the skin and body hair and tries to work its way inwards towards the organs so the channels are there to prevent the pathogen from penetrating deeper in the body and then we say that the channels respond to dysfunction in the body and this can mean a couple things we can talk about this in relation to patho mechanism or how disease presents in the body remember in our passage we said it is by virtue of the twelve channels that disease arises so the channels themselves can become diseased like in the case of joint pain or arthritis the channels can reflect diseases of the organs for example say a person has a lot of heat in the stomach organ well as heat can travel up the stomach channel to the face and give us additional symptoms like toothache or bleeding gums or the channels can transmit diseases to other channels or other organs but when we say that the channels respond to dysfunction in the body we can also use this diagnostically so if a channel becomes diseased we might notice a change in colour along the channel or we can feel for areas of heat or cold or it can palpate for tenderness along the channel so these changes in the channels can give us diagnostic information about the nature of the disease and where it&#39;s located in the body and finally we say that the channels transmit Chi to the diseased area and here we&#39;re talking about treatment so again from our passage at the beginning it is by virtue of the 12 channels that human beings can be treated and illness can be cured so this is what we&#39;re doing as acupuncturist by stimulating the acupuncture points whether it&#39;s with a needle or with the application of heat with pressure and massage or even with cupping we&#39;re helping the body transmit Chi to the diseased area so that healing can occur and if you want to learn more I really do recommend this book apply channel theory by Wong GE this is my favorite non textbook book about Chinese medicine I mean when I first read this book it seemed like in every chapter there was something where I would say oh my gosh this makes so much sense why didn&#39;t anybody explain it to me this way before I will say that if you&#39;re just starting out this book might be a bit much sometimes I&#39;ll tell people to wait until they&#39;re done with her and then come back and read this to kind of put everything together but it&#39;s very readable it&#39;s easy to skip around to different sections if you want to and something that you can read multiple times and get more out of it each time so I&#39;ll leave a link in the description below full disclosure this is an Amazon affiliate link so if you click that link and buy anything I&#39;ll receive a small commission like less than 5% but this is the way you can support the channel at no additional cost to you so if you like this video go and hit the like button if we haven&#39;t met my name is Nicolas and I make videos for students about acupuncture and Chinese herbs so if you want to see more videos like this go ahead and hit the subscribe button but I hope you enjoyed this one because that&#39;s all for today thanks and see you next time hop sharing sauce that&#39;s hilarious

Transcript for:Introduction to Acupuncture Channels and Points

Transcript for:
Introduction to Acupuncture Channels and Points