Tactile

For me millet works really nicely. I usually eat it every night. Soak it well and cook at least 30min with 3-4times water. Add some salt, cinnamon and 1tbsp of coconut cream for taste.

If you try to pitch existing music down to 432Hz it won't sound good in general. Pitching music will screw up the overtone series of the sound making it unnatural and likely more dissonant.

Yes, I see what you are saying. But with all the other generating relationships the correspondence to their physical counterparts is quite obvious and with this relationship not so much - hence the question Yes, thank you! Metal = contracting / condensing movement --> condensation of water. Metal also is related to structure of things, so how about this: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-tower-pulls-drinking-water-out-of-thin-air-180950399/?no-ist - using the concept of metal to create water out of thin air Thanks! That's also a very good point, in nature things don't exist in separation. Regarding your point about the phases not creating one another, how would you explain the sheng cycle then? Isn't that what it's about?

Hello Dao bums, I have a back to basics moment and I'm pondering the wu xing. I'm looking for perspectives on how you look at / explain the relationship of metal and water in the sheng cycle. For every other element pair the generative aspect is very clear, but this has always seemed a bit opaque to me, so I'm wondering if there's something that I've missed. Any ideas?

While we're on the topic of CM education, one really good resource worth mentioning here is elotus.org . They have a lot of video material online on a variety of topics - shorter (1h) free clips and longer seminars which are not free. Acupuncture systems which are widely discussed are Tung's acupuncture and dr Tan's imaging system. I just started learning them as they are supposed to be really good for pain, which is one area you have to be really good at if you want to make it as an acupuncturist as many people are coming to you for pain relief. Their gold pass (1300$ yearly) is really a no brainer for any US based acupuncturist as you get a gift certificate for herbs for the whole amount. I'm even considering as a European even though I don't benefit so much from the herbal stuff due to custom fees and import regulations for herbals (and the live seminars end something like 4AM for me )

Hello all, I'm doing a little research for my blog article regarding the taijitu. I'm wondering about its origins. This page: http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/yinyang.htm (also mentioned in the FAQ) has an interesting viewpoint on it, but it doesn't mention any sources. The basic astronomical / astrological ideas in the above article seem to match with what I know but if possible I would like additional sources for the method of constructing the taijitu. Anybody?

I'm not a LAc as I didn't get my education in the states, but if that's fine with you then: Hi.

I'm a bit late to the discussion, but regarding CM and the western picture of the human body there was a very interesting book that came out this year, written by a British emergency medical doctor who also has had training in chinese medicine: http://www.amazon.com/The-Spark-Machine-Acupuncture-Mysteries/dp/1848191960 It's not perfect, but has some very interesting concepts about the connection of the theories of CM and western anatomy & physiology. Embryology is discussed a lot in the book and looked through the lens of CM. So much stuff there which starts to makes sense. For example you get the divisions of the meridians (tai yin, shao yang etc) straight from embryological development! He also talks about the channels being related to embryological development and fascial planes of the body from where you get the connections of channels to organ, which is something that is definitely a bit hard to see first that why sticking a needle to a point in the leg would have any effect to the liver organ, for example. Also the functions of the organs from chinese perspective (Liver regulates the smooth flow of qi, kidney rules the bones etc) are all explained from the perspective of western physiology better than I have ever seen before. The book starts a bit slow and during the first maybe 50 pages I was thinking if it was even worthwhile to finish, so if you decide to read it, follow it through! I do recommend it! Oh, and thanks for all the discussion in this thread. The image of that pile of shit was a suprisingly comforting one..

Nice to see the branch relationships to the 5 elements mentioned here! I was taught CM according to the system of stems and branches and in that theory the branch element qi (or seasonal qi as it was called) plays a big part. When I first heard about it I was quite confused as it is not mentioned in the TCM theories at all (and with only 1 mention in the nei jing + ling shu I think), but when you dig a little deeper the stuff is there. It also makes a lot of sense regarding the organ function if you combine the energetics of the wu xing and branches. For example - Lung is metal and wood. So what this gives is the image of expanding and contracting, which exactly what the lung does! Large intestine has also the metal and wood, and here you can think the wood relating to the peristaltic movement which is happening all the time in the LI. In the fire of the branches you have Sp and Ht. With Sp the fire is relating to the digestive aspect of transforming the food. Also, Sp is related to mind and thinking -- aspects of fire and consciousness. And that Ht is fire + fire is very natural as it's the seat of our consciousness. The rest are left as an excercise for the reader But I can of course answer questions if they should arise. Oh, and +1 for the applied channel theory book! For me it's one of the sharpest text on CM I've read.

Yes I think that adequate protein (+100g) intake is generally recommended building mass. I'm not sure if you're vegan or vegetarian. If the latter, eggs and some high protein milk products would be a good addition for you. BUT, there is still another important factor.. you should be consuming enough calories. If you're active, it's probably best to shoot somewhere around 3500-4000kcal per day. If you're running out of things to eat, a relatively easy way to bulk eat is to use starchy stuff (rice, pasta, potatoes, etc) and combine it with a fat (coconut oil, olive oil, butter, etc.)

My CM teachers teach that left is yin and right is yang. This is also switched in the head where left = yang and right = yin. In practice you can see for example this in unilateral imbalances where the problem is only on one side. If it's in the sex side (males -- right, females -- left) then it's considered to be deeper and thusly will take longer time to heal. I also bumped into this contradictory statement from TCM sources and asked about it from my teacher and he used your first example as a point that left = yin , right = yang : The emperor is facing south. South, as we know, is yang. The front of the body is yin. So, the yin side is facing the yang side. So, the left (yin) side is facing the east (yang) side.

Double post

One remark about the term 'element'. The original chinese term is 五行, wu xing. 五 is five and 行 means movement or a phase. So the translation 'element' is quite far from the original. 'Five phases' or 'five agents' are used by good translators.

For me using spring water is too inconvenient to do so I'm thinking of getting a water distiller as I've heard good things about drinking distilled water. I've also heard that it can leech your body's minerals, but how much of an issue is this really? If you have a nutritious diet otherwise? Also, do you know any solutions for restructuring the water?

[ Other points you could try are: Si-7, Pc-7, Pc-6, liv-8 and Ki-10 (and probably other points on the kidney and liver meridians too). Bl-1 seems to calm the mind quite well for me so you could give it a shot too. Also, Li-4 has multiple locations. First is on the top of the bulge of the muscle interosseus between the metacarpal bones. The second is between the junction of the muscle and the second metacarpal bone. Third is where the 1st 2nd metacarpals start separating, first place where you can easily stick your finger to . They have somewhat different effects so you should try all of them out too.. I've also suffered with kind of the same problem (minus nocturnal emissions) so I have more advice. Fixing your diet (if you've not already done it) will have good results in the long run. Don't just stick to dogma about what's healthy but experiment different approaches and see what works for you. I've had this feeling of 'hangover' after orgasming for a very long time, but right now it seems almost nonexistant, probably because I've found a girl I connect with sexually really well and maybe my recent acupuncture treatments are working too... In my CCM school they say that the ke cycle actually works from yang-->yin and yin-->yang (of which the yang-->yin movement is stronger, naturally). So you might also think of the large intestine controlling the liver, which is actually the reason LI points are used for allergies (because allergies are a pathology of the liver qi).