THE ALCHEMYCAL PAGES

MERIDIAN DIAGNOSIS

Many of you may be familiar with the organization of "chi channels" or meridians from acupuncture developed by ancient Far Eastern Medicine.The knowledge and understanding of these meridians is used in acupuncture treatment and shiatsu massage.

Knowledge of these meridians and where they are can be very helpful in self-diagnosis.

The first aspect of meridian diagnosis I want to touch on here is knowing which meridians are present in the hands and feet.

On each hand, the lung meridian runs down the thumb, the large intestine meridian on the forefinger, the Heart Governor meridian on the middle finger,the Triple Heater meridian on the ring finger and BOTH the heart and small intestine meridians are on the little finger, with the small intestine meridian running down its middle upper side and the heart meridian down the middle outside of the finger.

I do not believe I have mentioned the Heart Governor and Triple Heater before. They are FUNCTIONS correlated with the FIRE state of transformation. The Heart Governor is responsible for regulating the overall metabolism of the organism(anabolism and catabolism) and the Triple Heater is responsible for maintaining the internal body temperature with respect to the temperature of the environment in which we find ourselves so that we are always in harmony with it. Thus if we have too much internal body heat or too much internal body cold, these are symptoms indicating the Triple Heater is not functioning properly.

Since the Heart Governor and Triple Heater are correlated with the heart and small intestine, then irregularities of internal body temperature are traced to problems in these two organs, and we need to strengthen, detoxify and harmonize their condition in order to clear up the symptoms of internal body temperature irregularities. See Healing with The Seasons under FIRE to get more information.

With respect to the feet, on each foot, the spleen meridian runs down the side of the big toe, and the liver meridian down its middle. The stomach meridian runs down both the two toes next to the big toe; on the next one is the gall bladder meridian and on the little toe is the bladder meridian. The kidney meridian ends up right in the center of the ball of the foot.

One more piece of information we need is that when we look at the limbs we will see that they are "segmented" in 7 stages. For example, with the arm starting at the neck, we have phase 1 to the shoulder, phase 2 from the shoulder to the elbow, phase 3 from the elbow to the wrist, phase 4 from the wrist to the knuckles, and we have three phases between the knuckles and the tips of the finger. This is a spiralic motion when we curl our fingers in and tuck the hand under the shoulder, representing the seven-fold organization of each internal organ, with the tips of the fingers/toes representing the deepest, innermost regions of the organ.

So, how does this information help us with self-diagnosis?

Well, many times we develop pain, swelling, and skin break-outs on the fingers and toes. These all indicate there are stagnations in the organs correlated with the organ meridians on the respective fingers and toes and that these stagnations are in the deepest areas of the organ in question. For example, pain and swelling may develop in the first joint of the thumb. Then you know that there are problems going on in the lung, if it on the left thumb, then the problem is in the left lung.

Or, perhaps there is a bunion on the inner upper part of the big toe- then we know we have problems in the spleen, usually related to eating too much animal protein.

The approach here is thus not to treat the pain or swelling, unless it happens to be very painful, in which case we can do a ginger compress or taro potato plaster on it, but to address the problem in the organ by changing our dietary habits to macrobiotically oriented daily eating and doing the ginger compress regimen on the abdomen.

Taro Potato Plaster.

Generally, for bruises, moles, swellings, warts, bunions etc., which are of longstanding duration, the best method is to do the ginger compress for five minutes on the swelling or blemish, and then apply a taro potato plaster. The taro potato plaster is made by purchasing some taro potatoes from an oriental grocery store or market - they are brown potatoes with a hairy skin. Pick out the smaller ones when you buy them.

Then take a piece of cheesecloth or cotton cloth cut in a size and shape to cover the wart, swelling or bruise you want to treat. Cut open a taro potato and scoop out the flesh - the texture of the taro potato is much different from that of a regular potato, it is gooey - and using a knife spread it approximately 1/4 inch thick on the cheese or cotton cloth you have prepared.

After treating the area to be treated with a ginger compress for 5 minutes, take the taro potato plaster and place it with the flesh of the taro potato plaster directly on the skin. Then bandage it in place and leave on for four hours or overnight. This is done daily until the wart, bunion, swelling, etc. has disappeared. This may take a week to 4 months depending on how long the blemish, bruise, swelling has been present.

The taro potato works by drawing out toxins through the skin, and it may cause some itching. In some instances the itching may be severe, so I recommend in such cases to spread a thin film of sesame oil on the skin before applying the plaster. The itching does signify the taro plaster is working!

Another very helpful self-diagnostic tool is the Daily Meridian Cycle.

kaareb@mac.com

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