“Tao is empty- Its use is never exhausted
Bottomless- the origin of all things…
Deeply subsistent-
I don’t know whose child it is.
It is older than the Ancestor.”
-Tao Te Ching, 4

Creation and Tao

“Tao engenders One
One engenders Two,
Two engenders Three, 
Three engenders the ten thousand things.
The ten thousand things carry shade
And embrace sunlight.
Shade and sunlight, yin and yang.
Breath blending into harmony.”
-Tao Te Ching, 42

Tao translates to “way”. It also implies the void nature of the universe that exited before creation. In Taoist cosmology it is said that from tao (“nothing”) came the the one. The one is called wuji, the infinite space. Wuji is stillness within stillness, inner stillness, inner essence, beneath and interior to any movement.

The one engenders the two, called taiji, the great ultimate.

Taiji is the harmony of opposites of yin and yang.

The two engenders the three, and from the three all of creation, the “ten thousand things”.

The Five Phases

The five phases, or wu jing shen, represent the movement of the energies of nature: fire, earth, metal, water, and wood.

The five-pointed symbol here represents the flow of energies in nature. The five phases are not discrete elements like the four elements of classical Greece, but phases of nature which transform into each other in a cyclical way.

These five phases are the basis for Taoist medicine and feng shui, the sciences related to health and harmony in life and nature.

The Cosmic Trinity

Tao engenders the three treasures in different scales of existence, each with its own science for mastery.

Heaven is the cosmic scale with the sun, moon, and stars, and its science is astrology.

Earth is the terrestrial scale with wind, earth, and water, and its science is feng shui, or geographic physiognomy.

Human is the microcosmic scale and has the internal jing, qi, shen, the essence, energy, spirit.

The Human Trinity

The three treasures of humans are the jing, qi, and shen.

Qi is the term for “energy” in the body, and also in all of nature. Qi is movement and functionality, life force.

Jing is the essence, the root of the qi in our body, and the force that can generate new life, or with special efforts, regenerate us spiritually. Jing is related to our DNA, our instinctive animal nature to survive and reproduce.

Shen is the spirit, or translated literally as “heart-mind”. Shen resides in the heart and is nourished by the blood, or vital fluids in the body. Shen is expansive and connects us to our true nature, beyond the body.

Qi is the mediator between jing and shen, matter and spirit.

The Emperor

“The Heart is the emperor, the supreme controller. The Heart is the fire at the center of our being, from which the spirit radiates.” 
-Neijing Suwen (Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine)

From a Chinese medicine perspective, the organs of the body are not just physical but include functional, emotional, and spiritual aspects.

The Heart is called the Emperor because it is the seat of the most important part of our being- the shen, or spirit. According to Chinese medicine and its Taoist roots, humans are of an earthly nature and the divine cosmos. The shen is the divine spark within and governs the individual spiritual aspect of all the other organs.

Shen literally translates to “heart-mind” and mental illness is considered to be a disorder of the shen.

Fire Element

In the body, as in nature, the fire element warms, burns fuel, transforms fluid into vapor, and energizes. In its grossest state it provides metabolic function and in its more rarified state it is the fire of the spirit and of love.

There are two pairs of organ systems classified as fire element: Heart and Small Intestine, and Pericardium and Triple Burner.

Small Intestine

Just as the Heart is the throne of the shen, the Small Intestine is the repository of the blood which is the substance that allows the shen to interface with the body’s function.

“The link with the Heart is key to understanding the subtle levels of the Small Intestine function. The Shen, or pure awareness housed in the Heart and whose influence is distributed throughout the body via the Blood, arrives in the physical body at birth like a ‘stranger in a strange land’. In order to be rooted in the physical confines of the human condition and function appropriately within human existence, it must perform the massive task of assimilating the experience of the physical environment and its conditions.” [source]

Pericardium

Also called the Heart Protector. The Pericardium acts as an intermediary between the Heart and the outside world, functioning on the emotional level as interpersonal love and warmth. Because the Heart is considered sacred and the repository of the divine spirit, in some earlier traditions of acupuncture the Heart channel is not needled. The Pericardium is paired with the Triple Burner organ.

Triple Burner 

Also called the Triple Warmer, Triple Heater, Triple Energizer, or the Chinese term San Jiao. This organ has important functions within the body of metabolizing fluid and regulating temperature.

There is discussion that the Triple Burner corresponds to the lymphatic or fascial systems, but it really has no physical biomedical counterpart.

Chinese Medicine and the Heart

Disorders of the Heart in Chinese medicine are related to anxiety, sleep disorders, and mental illness. Basically an over or under-functioning fire element in relation to general enthusiasm about life. The Heart can be treated directly, or through supporting the Pericardium or Small Intestine systems.

Love and the Heart

“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.”
-John Keats

A broken heart is not just an expression but a real understanding that the heart is affected physically by emotional turmoil and trauma. Loving involves an opening of the heart, a connection of the fire element to another person, and even an electromagnetic connection. Loss and heartbreak affects us on an electro-magnetic level and takes time and therapies to heal.

A connection to something greater than ourselves is crucial for a healthy heart whether it is a spiritual, humanistic, community, family, or creative connection.

In traditional Chinese medicine the organs are considered to be not only the solid structures we recognize in modern Western medicine, but also a sphere of influence that can include cellular, hormonal, muscle-skeletal, emotional, energetic, and inter-organ functions.

In traditional Chinese medicine theory there are twelve organs (zangfu), each with a yin or yang assignment which describes something important about its nature. In this article, to distinguish the Chinese medicine conception of the organs as opposed to the Western medicine conception the names of the organs will be capitalized.

Yin (zang) organs are solid organs that store qi, blood, fluids, or other substances. They generally benefit from nourishment and suffer from depletion. Yang (fu) organs are hollow and are meant to be active in transformation and movement of substances, not storage. They generally benefit from harmonizing and moving and suffer from stagnation.

The Lung, Heart, Spleen/Pancreas, Liver, Kidney, and Pericardium organs are yin. They store substances. The most Yin organ of all is the Kidneys, being the Water element, a very yin element, and located low in the body. The Kidneys store our most important substance the jing, our ancestral life-force. 

The Large Intestine, Small Intestine, Stomach, Gallbladder, and Triple-Burner organs are yang. They are hollow and use the qi to digest, transform, extract nutrients, and eliminate waste.

Zangfu is an important component of diagnosis and treatment for internal medicine and of particular use with herbal medicine.

Relaxed abdominal breathing is fundamental for health and wellness

Along with bringing the body into a parasympathetic “rest and digest” mode, it is the body’s most efficient way to expand the lungs while also preventing unnecessary neck tension.

The diaphragm is a parachute shaped muscle that occupies our entire midsection and can be thought of as shaped like two merged umbrellas which attach from our lumbar spine around the entire bottom and front of the rib cage.

The lungs are shaped like two jelly fish that start at the tip of the shoulder where it meets the neck, just under the scalenes muscles, and then each lung drapes down over the double umbrella shape of the diaphragm. When the lungs are expanded the diaphragm is contracted down so belly breathing contracts the diaphragm, which pushes down on the soft abdominal organs, expanding the abdomen. This draws the lungs downward, because they’re draped over the diaphragm, and thanks to negative pressure in the pleural cavity.

The close relationship between neck tension and breathing is due to the location of the lungs, which sit rather high in the chest cavity and only extend as low as about the 8th rib, leaving two rib spaces worth of empty pleural cavity.

When we are not breathing with the abdomen we are chest breathing and using our accessory muscles of breathing, the scalenes and sternocleidomastoid

These overworked muscles attach onto our upper two ribs from a large portion of the sides of the cervical spine and from the bottom portion of the back of the skull to the collar bone, respectively.

These muscles can easily get chronically tight when chest breathing is predominate. Not to mention that all that prime abdominal real estate space of pleural cavity that is underused down there at the 9th through 11th ribs when chest breathing is in action. So, relax, take a breath, and notice the difference.

Resources
Kendall, F., McCreary, E., Provance, P., Rodgers, M., Romai, W. (2005). Muscles testing and function with posture and pain (5th ed.). PA, USA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.