Deepest Health » Organ systems

The importance of the Spleen in studying Classical Chinese Medicine

Eric Grey — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:00:40 +0000

脾 Pi – Spleen : Lessons learned from Yin Earth

Earthly Branch Si – The Snake : Lesson – You can take in a lot more than you think, but don’t overdo it

The Spleen is associated with the 6th Earthly Branch 巳 – Si. This is one of the few earthly branches that actually is a picture of the animal that came to be associated with it – the Snake. However, I should note that many people also posit that it is a picture of an infant. The oracle bone figures look more like snakes than babies to me, and as a picture of a snake is how I learned it, but certainly you may disagree.

The snake is a fascinating animal that both attracts and repulses most people. There are many characteristics of the snake that relate to the Spleen in structure and function. I’d like to just mention one that has been particularly helpful to me this week. As the title of this section suggests, I’m interested in the ability of a snake to consume prey much larger than itself.

Now, on the one hand, the Spleen really doesn’t like to be asked to do too much at once – as anyone can attest after a big Thanksgiving dinner. So, perhaps it’s not a perfect symbolic match. On the other hand, the function of the Spleen is to take whatever has been consumed and release the pure essence of that sustenance at a reasonable rate to the rest of the body. Often, even with big meals, we surprise ourselves with our ability to take it in and use it with some effectiveness. As a student, I am consistently asked to shove more information into my head than I think is possible. However, by approaching things deliberately and with confidence, I consistently surprise myself. No jaw dislocation required.

Phase element Earth – the Center : Lesson – Having a solid substrate allows for great transformation

The Spleen is the Yin Earth organ of the body, and as such serves as the stable substrate through which all of the activity of the body takes place. One of our professors mentions how people talk about the Spleen in an inappropriately “active” way. In fact, it is the organ that exemplifies that Wu-Wei principle of getting everything done while doing nothing. It is the rich humus that nourishes everything, yet serves as only a medium for that nourishment – not an active partner in it. Sure, mycobacteria and various little critters serve a vital function in keeping plants healthy, but these are not part of the Spleen principle. The Spleen Earth serves as a healthy place for these organisms to do their work, simply that – and that is more than enough.

Creating a super stable life management system for myself has been vital in my success. Still, it is always a work in progress. Unfortunately instability in my system was one of the keys behind why I was not so productive this week. I thought my system was more or less functional, and that I could work out any kinks quickly and simply. I was wrong. Several scheduling issues emerged that required my immediate attention. I had not fully “cleared my mental inbox” during my last Weekly Review (leaving many projects in an implicit mental stage, cluttering my mind). Most importantly, I had not settled my finances and finished budgeting. Thus, about 80% of my time this week was devoted to rectifying those situations. By the end of this weekend, all of that work will be done and it will serve me for the rest of the term. It will be the medium through which I am able to do all of the other work I do.

Clock pair/hexagram pair with the Triple Burner : Keep a balance between Yin and Yang

Around the organ clock, we can find many interesting relationships among the organ systems. The relationship between Spleen and Triple Burner is particularly interesting because these organs are united by their hexagram relationship and their actual position around the clock. When two organs are directly across the organ clock, we call them clock pairs and as I’ve mentioned before, we were taught to think of them as being able to “take one another’s shift” so they share some type of functionality. Hexagram relationships are more subtle and difficult for me to understand. Here is a diagram I drew during my first year at NCNM showing the hexagram relationships around the organ clock. The drawing is, admittedly, a little shaky.

The Spleen is associated with Hexagram 1 – Qian 乾, often translated as force, heaven, the creative and, sometimes, simply as Yang. It is made of six Yang lines, and is the most Yang hexagram of the Yijing. Funny considering what I just said about Earth and the Spleen! That’s the way of Chinese medicine philosophy sometimes. The hexagram of the Triple Burner is #2 – Kun 坤, often translated as the receptive, Earth and sometimes, simply as Yin. It is made of 6 Yin lines and is the most Yin hexagram of the Yijing. Unlike the Spleen, this makes a lot of sense for the mysterious and seemingly immaterial Triple Burner organ system.

It’s easy to see the relationship between these two hexagrams – they are opposites and create the dynamic Yin-Yang tension that characterizes the fundamental state of the entire Universe. I’ll briefly explore the Triple Burner-Spleen relationship, but certainly there is much more to say about the shared symbolism of these two important organ systems.

The Spleen and Triple Burner are both responsible for aspects of fluid metabolism, in a way they help to keep a balance between wet and dry in the body. Another organ with a relationship with wet-dry balance is the Lung, which is united to the Spleen in its 6 conformation assignment as Tai Yin. Wet and dry are two obvious manifestations of Yin and Yang, respectively. Another Yin/Yang symbol within Spleen and Triple Burner is the relationship between being in the world and being removed from it. The Triple Burner is the mysterious organ system of deep darkness and in-between-ness. The Spleen is more straightforward, and engaged in the vital business of getting things done in the world, despite it’s passivity that I discussed before.

Extending these analogies, I found myself considering the vital importance of balancing two categories of intellectual activity. First, the more “Yang” activities of memorization, reading and listening to lectures, and studying explicitly for tests. On the other hand, the more “Yin” activities of contemplation, creative thinking, and experiencing Chinese medicine principles as they operate in nature. When I don’t achieve a balance between these two types of activity, pandemonium results.

I was experiencing strange digestive and mental symptoms all this week, and found myself really perplexed by it until I thought of Spleen. It is often said that student life harms the Spleen and Heart the most. The Heart because of the incessant use of the mind, which is related with the Heart in Chinese Medicine. The Spleen because of its association with pensiveness/overthinking and worry. When we find ourselves thinking something to death or being obsessively concerned with some event – our Spleen suffers. This was certainly happening to me and I definitely noticed. As a solution, I have decided to look at my schedule again and find a way to incorporate more straightforward “study” (memorization, reading and rewriting notes, etc) with more contemplative creativity. Although the latter may not help me on tests, it will definitely help me as a practitioner and help keep my Spleen from suffering overmuch.

Archetype : The Great Yu – Channel things away instead of damming them up

One of the archetypes we learn about being related to the Spleen is the Chinese folk hero the Great Yu. It is said that he was able to stem the great flood when his father failed. His father’s strategy was to create huge earthen dams to hold back the floodwater, which inevitably broke. Yu took a different perspective, creating great ditches to lead the water away to the ocean. We are often taught in Chinese medicine school that the Spleen does something similar in water metabolism of the body – guiding dampness away from the body at a steady clip, instead of trying to create barriers to keep it away from vital organs and processes.

I learned this Spleen lesson gradually through the week. A number of projects dumped on to my lap and it was only listening to David Allen’s Getting Things Done Fast on audiobook that jolted me into healthy Spleen mode. One of the things that Mr. Allen recommends is to look at every project/action you have in front of you and figure out whether it actually BELONGS to you. Many times we take on projects that are not properly or best left with us. Delegate! Delegate! Delegate! Lead the floodwaters away.

Chinese medical symbolism: the organ clock

Eric Grey — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:00:05 +0000

Established readers : this is one of many reposted articles you will see in the coming months. It is part of the redesign process. I hope you agree that all of these articles are worth another look!

Chinese language is symbolic – it uses pictures (now highly stylized and simplified) to represent concepts. Chinese culture, even today, is infused with symbolism. What is a symbol? There are many potential definitions, naturally. For my purposes, I will simply say that a symbol is something perceptible that “points towards” a larger concept. There are many elegant and powerful systems of understanding symbols – one of my favorites comes from the work of Carl Jung.

To use a common example, the Apple logo () has come to represent a whole host of products, services, even people & communities. You can, of course, look to religious symbols like the Christian cross, the Jewish Star of David, and so on. These symbols hold great potency in many cases – in some real way they go beyond themselves.

Classical Chinese medicine takes the symbolic elements of the medicine very seriously. Over the thousands of years of the development of the medicine, a mind-boggling amount of symbolic information has been amassed and recorded. So for those of us who are committed to a deep practice of this ancient medicine, nothing else could be more important in our study and practice.

Vast amounts of information usually ends up organized into more manageable chunks. In Chinese medicine, various ways have been used to organize and help us find greater meaning in the symbols we encounter. One of the ways we organize the symbolism concerning the organ systems of Chinese medicine is through the use of a 12 section “organ clock.” Most people have heard about the organ clock – it’s one of the most popular Google searches that brings people to this website! To get a sense for the basic layout of the organ clock – see my unbelievably amazing artistry below.

HT = Heart, SI = Small Intestine, BL = Bladder, KID=Kidney, PC=Pericardium, TW=Triple Warmer/Heater/Burner, GB= Gall Bladder, LIV=Liver, LU=Lung, LI=Large Intestine, ST= Stomach, SP=Spleen.

Note: Focus on the general picture as some of the elements will not be explained right now (such as the constellation names “Wie, Mao, Bi,” etc).

The organs are laid out in the order of the energy flow through the channel system, then information known to be related is inserted in each section.

There are a lot of pieces of symbolic information that come in twelves. This is, I assume, why a twelve piece pie is so often used in discussing organ systems. We can use all of these to help us understand the organ systems, and thus the human body. Some of these groups twelves are:

The names of the organ systems, and thus the etymology of the Chinese characters associated with those organ systems. Also included here: information from a variety of medical systems concerning the physical organ associated with each organ system, information pertaining to the acupuncture channel associated with each organ system, etc…
Earthly Branches and their associated zodiac animals
YiJing (I Ching) tidal hexagrams
Two hour periods of the day
Month in the Chinese calendar, but also the related Western time of the year
Agricultural nodes – two per month, 24 total

We can also overlay information onto the twelve-part organ clock that comes in other multiples including (but not limited to):

The phase element (fire, earth, metal, water, wood) associated with each position (multiple of 5)
The direction of the compass and trigrams of the bagua (multiple of eight)
The six atmospheric influences or conformations (multiple of 6)
The relative concentration of Yin/Yang (multiple of 2)
The participation of each organ in one element of the Heaven, Earth, Human Being triad (multiple of 3)

Just imagine drawing several circles on tracing paper, one divided into twelve parts, one into eight, one into six and so on. Then imagine putting a representation of each piece of information in the correct section. When all of this information is put together, one begins to understand the complexity of the organ systems. For example, take the Heart. The Heart is explained as being the sovereign of the human body, keeping under control all of the other organ systems so they may work together in harmony. Using the organ clock we see that the Heart (only a partial list):

Is called Xin (心) in Chinese. This is often described as being a picture of the human heart organ with three drops of blood above it. Not particularly interesting, perhaps – though why there are three drops of blood is worth investigating. They could represent the ancient triad of Heaven, Earth and Human Being. Some primitive forms of the character look like a uterus, prompting an association between the Heart and femaleness.
Is associated with the Earthly Branch Wu (午), associated with the summer solstice and the animal of the Horse. The Horse is an interesting animal and deserves a post of its own, but everyone can agree that horses can work tirelessly (like the Heart) and that they tend to be very sensitive animals.
Is related to the Chinese agricultural periods (solar terms) called Xiao Shu and Da Shu, which are Small and Big/old summer heat, respectively. Summer heat is a heat with a damp quality – something anyone who has travelled in the American south in the summer can attest to. So, then, the Heart is related to this quality of intense heat.
Is associated with the element fire, in particular the Imperial fire that is pure, constant and the light of the whole body.

These are just a few of the elements we can use to expand our idea of what the organ system “Heart” represents. Now, because this is just a bit of an introduction and getting too long already, I won’t go into any greater detail. Let it suffice to say that when one investigates these elements to their fullest and combines it with more obviously medical information (like the kinds of herbs used to treat the organ, classical descriptions of physiology and pathology, etc) one has a true understanding of that system that is of great help in understanding difficult and complex diseases.

I hope to be able to continue to unpack the organ clock in future blog posts and possibly a course. I’m particularly interested in demonstrating to others how this information can be used in Chinese herbal treatment.