GB-14 : Meridien Design : Headaches

[rideforever]

Regarding Gall Bladder 14 above the eye, this acupuncture point appears to be located at an inconvenient point on the GB merdien where it goes down to above the eye before turning 180degrees and going back upwards.  

What are the implications of this design ?  It seems this point gets blocked a lot which is not surprising given its design at the apex of a U-turn.

Does it work like this ?  Or does it not work like this ?
And why was it designed like this ?
And are there any secret channels that actually have it continuing down through eye along another meridien or something ?  ( I seem to remember there is a bridge or regulator meridien that flows straight down through the eye to the stomach meridien )

 

 

Edited February 13, 2020 by rideforever

[ReturnDragon]

On 2/13/2020 at 7:51 AM, rideforever said:

And are there any secret channels that actually have it continuing down through eye along another meridien or something ?

 

Follow the green line is the continuous GB meridian in the front and back of the body.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acupuncture_points#/media/File:Chinese_meridians.JPG
 

[rideforever]

This is what I was thinking of it's part of the 8 extraordinary meridiens from Mantak Chia.  Go straight down through GB14 down the stomach channel.  Michael Winn has a nice form for working on these although I don't do Healing Tao anymore.

[rideforever]

And another view of the switchback at GB 14.

 

[ReturnDragon]

With respect to the previous view, the two GB 14 points are the two red dots above the eyebrows. Is that what you are refferring to?

[Walker]

10 hours ago, rideforever said:

And another view of the switchback at GB 14.

 

 

Hi Rideforever,

 

This switchback does not really exist. 

 

The diagrams we are used to seeing from TCM that display the acupoints with lines connecting them are a relatively "late" development. As I have been told by sources I trust, they derive from the bronze dummies created for studying and testing students during the Song dynasty, "only" ~1000 years ago. In order to help students trace the acupoints related to certain meridians, lines were drawn between them. Eventually it became commonplace for people to mistakenly believe that these lines represent the meridians themselves, which they do not.

 

I base the above paragraph, which discusses where this mistake comes from, on hearsay. This mistake might actually be older than the Song dynasty's bronze dummies.

 

What I can say for sure, on the basis of studying the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, is that it is true that the lines drawn on the surface of the body on acupuncture charts and dummies do not reflect the actual pathways taken by the meridians as they were described in the fundamental writings of Chinese medicine. Those pathways are little to nothing like what one would imagine from looking at modern charts, which seem to imply qi meridians that are very linear and superficial. The Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic's descriptions are neither of those things. The meridians branch and bifurcate many a time, and they travel all over the interior of the body. The acupoints on the surface of the body, therefore, connect to or correspond with the meridians, but they do not tell us exactly where the meridians go. Thus, the appearance of a "switchback" at GB-14 is on the charts is misleading.

 

The chapter in the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic's that describes the pathways of the "twelve primary meridians" in great detail is called "The Essay on Meridians" and it is located in the volume of the book you could call The Numinous Pivot in English. The full name for the book, volume, and chapter in Chinese is 《黃帝内經·靈樞·經脈篇》. In pinyin that is Huangdi Neijing - Lingshu - Jingmai pian. Here is a translation. I have never read it and it is by a guy who does not practice Chinese medicine, never learned clinically, and claims never to have even received a treatment. However, he is known to be a stickler for language and a serious scholar, so it is probably a good translation. 

 

By the way, the above information implies something of a litmus test for whether or not a Chinese medicine practitioner is rooted in the classics. If this is an issue in choosing a practitioner, you can point at the charts hanging in his or her office and say, "hey, so do those lines tell me where all the qi meridians are traveling in the body?" A practitioner who studies the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic and received training based upon its theories will know that those lines don't actually represent the meridians, they just "connect the dots" between points to help with memorization. Modern practitioners often do not know this.

 

That is not to say that the modern approach cannot help patients--it can--but just as the ancient descriptions of the meridians contained more depth, three-dimensionality, and non-linearity, classics-based acupuncture/acupressure potentially allows for deeper healing. 

[dawei]

There are several switch backs along the GB line.  Don't think it is a block but all that the line hopes to traverse.

 

If you explore the line enough, you will come to understand so.e points usefulness.