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Minister and Ming Men Fire
159 Plays1 year ago
Goodness Gracious Great balls of fire!
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Transcript
Introduction to Mingmen Fire Concepts
00:00:09
Speaker
Hi. We going Mingmen fire? What are we doing? Mingmen fire, minister fire. Yes. What do we know? What do we not know as we're taught by Machocha that that's that's wrong.
00:00:24
Speaker
Well, all right. I actually don't know what Machocha says because we don't use Machocha in China and that, you know, why would we? So let me just start with, yeah, I'll need you to jump in and tell me what's been said because I don't know what's been said in the church and other things.
Differentiating Mingmen and Ministerial Fire
00:00:43
Speaker
But key is the Wingmen fire and the ministerial fire.
00:00:48
Speaker
They present similarly, and I think this is the confusion. So for instance, if we just take pulse as an example, you can actually tell Mingman fire and ministerial fire and pulse.
00:01:00
Speaker
But what would you expect or suspect? Or like maybe a strong Mingmen fire and a strong ministerial fire? How would you expect to see that in a pulse? The Mingmen fire, I would expect to see in the Cher, specifically the right Cher. You got it. And then the minister fire in the left.
00:01:23
Speaker
Oh, is that is that a church thing? That is, I think so. Well, unless it's back in the right right. Sure, again, and I'm right. Exactly. So that's how I that's how I would describe it is this is why it's confusing is they're both the right triples. So the Nanjing calls it the Mingman pulse, the Nanjing calls it the kidney yang pulse, whatever it is, we know that it's strengthening lower burner yang.
Origins and Physiological Sources of Fire
00:01:50
Speaker
But here's the big difference. If they both are, you know, at the same pulse, then why does it, like, what's the difference? And the difference is where it comes from. So Mingman fire comes from a different source. It still strengthens kidney young. Ministerial fire comes from, again, a different source, and yet it still strengthens kidney or lower burner fire. So we can think of, well, where does Mingman fire come from? Obviously, it comes from prenatal chi.
00:02:20
Speaker
But it's basically the kidney yang that comes from our ancestors, our parents, and so forth. Whereas the ministerial fire is the physiological way for us to strengthen that fire. It's the ongoing way to feed the fire. And it's coming from the monarch fire. The monarch fire being the heart. Correct. And then the ministerial fire being pericardium. It's actually the gallbladder descending along the treble burner.
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So this was one of the first conversations we had that blew my mind and I think started my, what will be a lifelong, uh, nudging you for these nuggets and information. Cause as we're taught out of Machocha, Mingman fire comes out of the right kidney. Sometimes they just say in between the two kidneys, but sometimes they'll say the right kidney. Those are both right. And then.
00:03:15
Speaker
As we learn it, it comes out the San Zhao. Ah, that's wrong. Yeah. I see. I've heard of this. And it works nicely for us because it's San Zhao and Pericardium are paired. And it's like, wouldn't that be convenient? Oh, that would be convenient. But then you came in and said, oh, no, no, no, it's gallbladder. And so walk us through the Shaoyang, the gallbladder, and San Zhao relationship to Mingmen Fire.
Anatomical and Energetic Location of Mingmen
00:03:43
Speaker
Got it.
00:03:44
Speaker
Um, I just, I do want to shout out to the first thing you said, which was totally right. So when people talk about the right. True pulse as the kidney young pulse. That's correct. When they talk about it as the Mingman pulse, that's also correct. It's two names for the same thing. But when you're talking about where physiologically is the Mingman.
00:04:04
Speaker
or really where physiologically is kidney young, it's not in either kidney. It's not anatomically in either kidney. It is in the middle of the kidneys. And you know this when you practice martial arts or meditation.
00:04:17
Speaker
So you'll feel that you're, you know, when you go up the doo channel, it doesn't like deviate on both sides. It'd be awesome. I mean, that'd be like a hilarious little like right around to the both kidneys and then right back to the spine. It doesn't do it. It goes straight up the spine and you feel the heat in the middle of the two kidneys, not on either side. And so what this tells us is that both of the anatomical kidneys are yin.
00:04:39
Speaker
which makes sense, they're full of water, they're processing water, they're actually doing it, and that insubstantial yang has to be held between them. So that is where the Mingman is, it's just the pulse is the same as the kidney yang. And it's not that one kidney is one and one kidney the other, it's the anatomical organs, or the yin, and the insubstantial yang fire is in between. So then, if we go back to, like you were saying, the ministerial fire,
00:05:06
Speaker
Well, if we think about the Mingmen, I think a lot of people have heard that it's kind of the pilot light to start the organs. That's right. That is right. Like when we want to kickstart, you know, a spleen or a heart or anything that has a notable yang component to it, we need some Mingmen fire. Obviously with the kidneys and the qihua transformation and so forth, we need kidney yang or we need the Mingmen to kickstart this thing. Just like click, click, click, we start the fire. But to burn the fire, we can't rely on a pilot fire.
00:05:35
Speaker
So then we need a regular physiological input of Yang. Because if you think about it, if Mingmen really just comes from our parents, that's going to run out pretty darn fast. How long can a baby just roll on that prenatal Qi?
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, especially without replenishing it. Exactly. So then the whole Chinese medicine idea is, well, there is a way to replenish it. There's got to be a physiological way. And this is where it's not actually five elements, it's six.
Monarch and Ministerial Fire Cycle
00:06:05
Speaker
Because fire is divided into two. It's the monarch fire, the ministerial fire. Great Nijin quote about that one, talking about the cyclical nature of it. Do we want to do that? Do we want to go in there? Totally. Lay it on us. We want it in
00:06:21
Speaker
We're doing English, Chinese. What are we doing? I mean, if you want to spout out the Chinese, but I think it would be helpful to translate it for our listeners and me. Got it. It's from the Hongdae Neijing Suwen, which is argue. Yeah, some people call it the 68th chapter, or you can call it Liu Wei Shi Da Luen. So the key here is
00:06:45
Speaker
What does this quote from the 68th passage or 68th chapter say? The qibo says, we don't actually have a word for this. It's calling it the great brightness. And xian means obvious or great. Ming is bright, just like Mingman. Actually, that's Mingman. More like young Ming.
00:07:08
Speaker
It's Yang Ming, it's the Yang Ming word. So it means bright, so this means obvious bright. And it says, to the right of that, which tells us that from this initial, whatever you want to call it, prenatal celestial Yang, we get the which is the monarch fire. So he says to the right of the
00:07:35
Speaker
Xianming, the great brightness, or the obvious brightness, comes the monarch fire. And this is basically how life starts from a Chinese medicine perspective, which is you have to animate it with yang, and what's the yang within yang, organ, it's the heart. So lots of key things. Even if you wanted to look at Shang Han-Lun, there's no school that the Shang Han-Lun obviously abides by, and thank goodness it doesn't, because every school has its own limitations.
00:08:00
Speaker
If you're going to call the Shang Han-Luna school, it's probably the Heart Yang school because it protects Yang very much. The name of the book is Shang Han, damage from cold. It's very much interested in protecting the Yang in our body. The amount that they dedicate to the three Yang chapters is vastly larger than the three Yin chapters and so forth. So anyway, he says to the right because this is also a cultural phenomenon.
Cultural and Classical References
00:08:24
Speaker
In China, things move to the right. So I guess Beyonce is not Chinese. Anyway,
00:08:30
Speaker
Right? You got me there, right? Yeah, I got you. Going to the right to the right. So, the monarch fire is to the right. And then it says, again, okay, what's one more step to the right of the monarch fire? It says, go backwards one step. That's the only time that's used in this phrase, go back one step. Now, obviously, there's not saying go back to the original source, you can't do that.
00:08:54
Speaker
They're saying go back one step as in not furthering the five elemental cycle. Xiong Hu. Go back to the ministerial now. Once you take a step back from the monarch, you're actually going, or you could sidestep it. That's why I drew it this way in the picture. It says Xiong Hu or Zhir Zhir, which means the ministerial fire.
00:09:16
Speaker
That's where it's activated, that's where it's, this word, JUR doesn't mean treatment here, it means more like managerial doing its administrative goodness and all that stuff, functioning physiologically.
00:09:28
Speaker
Then it continues and it says, take another step, which now again, we're going to the right, which means the earth. So of course we know that's spleen and that's the earth element. Take another step. It's metal. And then
00:09:59
Speaker
So the key here is, they did that last line to not repeat that we're going just from wood back to monarch fire, but to remind us that we no longer have the great brightness. Great brightness is the starting point and it's no longer in the cycle. That's what a pilot blight is. It starts it and no longer participates in it. If you rely on your Migma and you just burn it out,
00:10:23
Speaker
But that's not what it's for. It's the pilot light that once we get that monarch fire stoked up.
00:10:28
Speaker
We don't need to use it anymore. So that's the essence of what Mingman is. It's that great brightness that starts. Now here they call it Xian Ming, not Mingman, which is different, but it's, you know, physiologically it's relatively the same thing. And you see that pilot light come in because it's no longer part of that cycle. Now it's true. There are six elements and it's
Clinical Applications and Misuse Consequences
00:10:49
Speaker
a six element cycle. But then you'd say, well, what's the ministerial fire doing? It's no coincidence that there's six channels paired, of course.
00:10:59
Speaker
as opposed to the five organs, right? And so that ministerial fire is that sixth. Nice. That goes a long way too to explaining like both pathology that we run into all the time in clinic of people just burning the candle of both ends. And it's like you're burning up your pilot light, which isn't
00:11:19
Speaker
meant for that. That's so true. And so you have to use that to build a bigger fire. And then from that, you can then go harvest and do physiological actions. So true. So true. Well, so then like, so then we'd say, okay, the monarch fire, very clear heart. So how then is the ministerial fire the gallbladder? And this is the trick. This is the one that gets a lot of confusing people.
00:11:42
Speaker
The gallbladder is the vehicle. It's the car that's taking excess heat from the heart. We know a big bonfire up top. I mean, fire is not supposed to be on the top of anything. Fire rages upward. That's going to leave the whole organism. That sounds like it's going to cause like a face full of heat and everything else. The key is how do you get that fire back down below? And this is the trick with the ministerial fire.
00:12:09
Speaker
The gallbladder is the vehicle. It's the one that's taking excess heat from the heart. And that's why it's still considered a fire. It's just secondary ministerial. But the key is it needs a pathway to get down there. And that's the triple burner. The triple burner is the road system that the car is traveling on. So the sand jow is involved? It is, but it's not the yang by itself. It's just a pathway yang is descending along.
00:12:38
Speaker
Okay. So the gallbladder is going to be the vehicle. Correct. And the sand jowl is going to be the road. That's it. Carrying the fire back down. That's it. Okay. And is this also linked into the whole, like, um, we talk about in Machocha and in school a lot of taking fire from, from the heart and taking it back down to warm up the kidneys again. That's it. Start closing over. This is that half of the heart kidney cycle.
Heart-Kidney Cycle and Transformative Processes
00:13:04
Speaker
Okay, perfect, which will be really fascinating. Once we check out the other half of the heart kidney cycle, which we'd have to talk about Chihua transformation.
00:13:11
Speaker
cheat transformation for that side to make sense. First of all, how do we know it's the gallbladder descending along the triple burner? I think what we could do is kind of the whole gist of our podcast, right? Besides nerds on mountains. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's just nerds on mountains. That's what we should call it.
00:13:36
Speaker
Shout out to like 1990s candy. Right? You had nerds, right? Not to date myself with my candy selection here. I was going to say, you better watch it, man. Yeah. Fun dip? Did anybody have fun dip? She was just so gross. So good. So gross. But not the stick. The stick was amazing, right? Was the worst part. No. I would throw the powder away and just eat the stick.
00:14:02
Speaker
It was all just sugar compacted. Yeah, but that one was like a slightly more tolerable level of sweetness. Okay. Obviously sugar is bad. Once you join TCM, it's like sugar never again. That's right.
00:14:18
Speaker
And so classic so basically the two just I think if we can get on these I think it'll make a lot of sense is first What's the classical? Foundations underpinning for all this and it doesn't mean that everything has to be rooted in the classics, but here's this funny one I always thought I'm gonna kind of soapbox for just a second
00:14:35
Speaker
Totally. Like so many people will be like, Oh, yeah, the naging says boobity boobity boob, right? But it doesn't because they're not actually quoting the naging. And they're just giving authority to what they're trying to say. Totally. That's like the ultimate worst, in my opinion, like either just say like, Hey, I was thinking about this on the toilet the other day, this is me winging it.
00:14:56
Speaker
That's fine. Just wait. Toilet's a good place to think about stuff, but don't have false authority and try and claim some sort of this or that connection. Or do it right and actually tell us what the quote is and at least give us a translation and a chapter that we can go back and check.
00:15:13
Speaker
So that's what I'm going to try and do is always give you the chapter if I don't translate it directly off. That's what I'll try and do because I don't want to be that dude. Totally. It reminds me of my favorite Confucius quote, which is people who quote other people don't know what they're talking about. Is that real? No, of course. Because there is a Confucius quote, which is one of the best tongue twisters in Chinese. It's called,
00:15:41
Speaker
That must be a wrap. Yeah, dude, let's put it in there. I got my DJ name ready. I don't DJ yet, nor do I think I ever will learn. But if I ever do, it's DJ boosted move. So don't steal that shit. Okay. It actually comes from how I recommend people tonify. If they boost, they got to move. So it's DJ boosted move. Nice. Smooth moves. Dude, your DJ smooth moves.
00:16:05
Speaker
We'll get far. Yeah, exactly. So, where were we? Oh, so the old boost to move? No, that was not it. The quoting the classics. Oh, yes, quoting the classics. And so the background for what the ministerial fire is actually comes from a direct quote from the Nijing 2. I'll paraphrase here and then I'll give you the exact quote later. But it says, Xianghua, which is the ministerial fire
00:16:32
Speaker
Show show young it says the hand and foot shy on channels so that's basically i'll get the exact one there but it's exactly it is that it's a strong wall hand and foot shy on and so we know the foot shy on gallbladder and shy on triple burner and it's not because the triple burner has heat.
00:16:51
Speaker
That's not what the triple burner is. If you go back to the Nijing and look at it physiologically, it just says it's the waterways. That's all it says. It doesn't say it's the source of Yong, it doesn't say it's imbued with Yong, it doesn't say any of those things.
00:17:02
Speaker
It just says it's the waterways. It's the irrigation pathways of our body. The ditches. The ditches. It's the ditches that move things around. It's moving water. And you can move stagnant or unanimated water. It can also move animated full of Yang Chi Jin and Ye. But the key is it's just moving the water around. And along that pathway can that's the physiological like pathway of well, we got to get this fire down somehow. It's going down.
00:17:32
Speaker
on the ministerial, it's going down the triple burner.
Role of Sanjiao and Ministerial Fire
00:17:35
Speaker
And then when you go over to the clinical side, which obviously everything that we say should have, I think, the classical background, but also the clinical background, how do we get this stuck ministerial fire down to the lower burner again? There's a classic key formula, Wen Dan Tang. Oh. So that's what Wen Dan Tang, you know that bad boy. I know that one.
00:17:58
Speaker
You haven't even gone through my herbs class and you know that one. Yeah, warming the gallbladder concoction. That's right. So that's how it's been translated and it's confusing because it's cooling herbs. So sometimes you'll hear people say like, I've heard this one where they're like, the two most common ways I've heard teachers introduce and teach this are number one, well, it's warming the gallbladder. You know, these are cooling herbs because they used to put a lot of ginger in it.
00:18:24
Speaker
Really? That's your answer is they just put a lot of Shengjian ginger in this. And now it's considered a warming formula. So first of all, there's no formula that says to put that much ginger into it. And second of all, ginger is not really for warming, it's for moving. Ganjian is for warming. Shengjian is for moving. So none of that does make sense. And then some people will just giggle and say, they were like, they just named this wrong. Like literally one of our best formulas since the Tang dynasty.
00:18:53
Speaker
And they just named it wrong? Like, so then why is it such a genius formula? Clearly, the name is kind of important. So neither of those are correct. And what it is is because we got the verb confused with the noun. It's not gallbladder warming formula. It's the warmth of the gallbladder formula. Got it. And the warmth of the gallbladder is the ministerial fire. It just happens to be stuck in the wrong place. So if you keep the ministerial fire in the chest, you're going to get information.
00:19:21
Speaker
If you descend the ministerial fire, which is where it's supposed to be, you can use that warmth of the gallbladder to do what it's supposed to do, which is warm the kidneys. Perfect. Full circle. Full circle. Literally, a cycle, circle. I see you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The discussion of the sand gel waterways made me think of another pet peeve, which is where people will say that the fascial system or the new organ found in the west, the interstitium, is the sand gel. They go, oh, hey, look, they finally found the sand gel.
00:19:51
Speaker
You know, like, look how smart we were. But I'm like, I'm going to misquote the classics here. But I'm pretty sure it says that the sandjaw has function but no form. So when they point to a physical structure and they say, oh, that's the sandjaw. I'm like, well, it's just the waterways. So that's a really interesting point about you say there's no structure. Anything that carries fluids is considered the sandjaw. Right. Yeah. So that's a really interesting point when you say, I don't think they would say that it's a
00:20:19
Speaker
When they say there's no structure, there's just function, but no form. The key here is, I think that it actually uses the vessel system and it uses lots of systems. Your blood is only 45% blood, that's 55% basically, if you're healthy. Or maybe if you have a lot of edema, you just have pure water in there, whatever. But the key is, there's a lot of fluids moving around in different places.
00:20:46
Speaker
And all those places cumulatively would be called the triple burner. The Sanjiao, right? The Sanjiao, triple burner, triple. I've heard people call it triple energizer. That doesn't make sense. No, it's a strange one. It's a strange one. We do a lot of strange translations because we don't speak ancient Chinese. Well, yeah, there you go. Let's just start calling them strange-lations.
00:21:12
Speaker
That would be sure to get people confused. There you go. So yeah, you're absolutely right. I think when they're identifying or misidentifying things like interstitial areas is that then it doesn't make sense. What they should be looking for are vessels, right? Channels even, because where's the channel? Space between. Yeah, space between. And we know that the vessel and the channel are basically the same words in Chinese.
00:21:39
Speaker
My. My, yeah. And then we know the yin nutritive, which is what that's clearly fluids that are clearly following on the long, the triple burner. They're inside the vessel. So in Chinese, we say yin xin mai zhong wei xin mai wai. The yin nutritive travels inside the vessel, the wei qi, or the defensive qi travels outside or what I would consider around the vessel. Well, that's funny because wei means surrounding. Yeah.
00:22:09
Speaker
Oh, that's funny. That's a really fascinating point there, man. Oh, I know why, because different characters, same pronunciation. That's why the opinion makes it so hard. So Wei-Chi, the board game, is not the same as Wei-Chi.
00:22:33
Speaker
Correct. Defensive G in the body. And they pronounced, the tones are different. Wei qi versus Wei qi. Okay.
00:22:42
Speaker
But the annoying thing is the word defensive qi wei qi is the exact same pronunciation, literally tone for tone, word for word as stomach qi, wei qi. So even in Chinese, when like my Shang Han-Lan teacher was talking to a group of Chinese people, this is not like, you know, him trying to talk to American people or something, he'd have to say wei qi and by wei, I mean pi wei or stomach and spleen.
00:23:05
Speaker
And you're like, man, that is really annoying Chinese medicine. Could you please not at least give me a tonal difference or something? How am I supposed to figure this out except context? And so when he doesn't want us to mess up, he of course clarifies this is the way she that I'm talking about specifically stomach Chi or defensive Chi depending on the context. Sure.
00:23:25
Speaker
I wonder if they did it on purpose, too. Just to throw a bone in there. Yeah. Yeah. And so this is the whole idea of how do you get the ministerial fire down there? Well, clinically, there's two ways. You either just descend the gallbladder. There's lots of ways to do that.
Ministerial Fire in Digestion
00:23:43
Speaker
But the combination of Juru and Jurshur is really the way that we do it. Juru is the captain. It is the captain. It's incredible. And Juru is just the inner pith of a bamboo.
00:23:54
Speaker
it's the white part where you take the green outside part off like you skin the bamboo and the inner pith shredded is juu. I like to call it panda food or panda power if I'm sometimes I'll give it to little kids because it doesn't taste really doesn't taste bad at all, actually. But some kids, especially ones that have been exposed to like trauma or like here in Colorado, we see some kids that have been exposed to like fires.
00:24:19
Speaker
like their house almost burned down because of forest fires and shit. So there's a lot of trauma in there. And sometimes you see ministerial fire stuck. So it'd be great if they would take the whole formula, but if they're like my kid, they're just not gonna. So you can give them just panda powder.
00:24:36
Speaker
When does the fire get stuck, the ministerial fire? Such a good point, dude. You just talked to me about the second half. So if it's literally just a gallbladder stagnated,
00:24:49
Speaker
then we just use Juru and it'll descend it right down. But here's the big problem. And Jursher, classically, is the other half of that too. So Juru basically takes the top half from like gallbladder down to like maybe the navel, and then Jursher brings it all the way down, all the way to the kidneys, because Jursher covers all three of the digestive compartments, the upper, middle, and lower one, which are the three. When we separate the digestion, we separate that also into three components. But digestion, from our perspective, is just the middle and lower burners.
00:25:19
Speaker
Should I digress? Do you want to digress? Always. I was surprised that it wasn't the three Lee. Dude, solid. Because San Lee, Lee is the same as Juan. Oh, it is. Okay. Yeah, it's just a different name for it. So there's three names that can refer to the same thing. Lee.
00:25:38
Speaker
Shu and Wan. And all three of these are the same thing. It's just they have three classical different names. And so, for instance, when we say upper, middle, and lower Wan, we're talking about the upper two thirds of the middle burner. The middle Wan is the lower third of the middle burner and the upper third of the lower burner, basically peri-enable.
00:26:01
Speaker
And then the low, the lower one is the last two thirds of that lower burner. So, you know, you have to divide two burn, like two burners into three compartments. So each one gets two thirds of a burner, you know? Okay. So anyway, but there's, there's three acupuncture points. There's one called upper one, one called middle one, and one called lower one, all in the ren channel. That's going to be ren 13, 12, and 10. I have no idea.
00:26:30
Speaker
I know 12 is middle one. That's all. Yeah. Yeah. That's one up is middle one. Five soon up is upper run, run 13. And then it's going to be too soon up is going to be the lower one. Oh, you nailed all three. Thank you. And you know, just that alone, man, that is a game changer. If people can't get food in upper wanted five to an up man. If they can't process the food on the inside middle, want it. That's four to enough. If they can't get that food out lower one.
00:26:58
Speaker
Tutsuna, so already we I mean like poof that's useful or you want to hit all three at the same time And you know what we're even at what hits all three at the same time It's more than one point actually I was gonna say you just use three needles That's true, or you could use one that is it's the foot three Lee. Oh, yeah. Yeah do something does only but there's actually shows only two and
00:27:24
Speaker
which is large intestine 10, I'm guessing. Yeah. Thank you for the point. That's very useful. Yes. And that's large intestine 10. Sweet. But the difference is they both address all three Lee. It's just that the show, the hand one is for external pathogens and the foot one is for more for internal kind of disharmony.
00:27:47
Speaker
Sure. So like foods, you know, food stag or something causing vomiting, some pain and diarrhea. I mean, that that hits large intestine 10 on every single point, because it's an external, it's more of a superficial one dealing with external stuff, because it's a hand channel. And then the foot channels deal with a deeper organ level stuff. Yeah, I like that differentiation. It's useful. Sweet.
00:28:12
Speaker
So if the minister of fire is stagnant, it's going to be stagnated in the upper. Thank you for getting us back on track. So you're right. So if it's in the gallbladder, we use ju-ru. If it's stuck somewhere in the digestion, we use ju-shur. But here's the next problem.
00:28:30
Speaker
We said that the Sanjau is anywhere that the water travels, meaning it's not just the big bus stations, it's all the bus routes. So what do you do if it's really getting stuck because there's blockages in these waterways in the peripheral water pathways, the streets, if you will, according to this bus metaphor?
00:28:51
Speaker
Well, then you have to open up those blockages along the pathways, right? So this is like, if some of the neighborhood streets had like little car accidents, we have to clear those out. Otherwise it's still not going to get down there. And that's where you use the other part of this formula, which is called arch and tongue. Um, and it's the one that disperses, uh, fluid accumulation anywhere in the body, including on those small pathways and so forth. Nice anywhere in the body. Head to toe. That's useful. Yeah.
00:29:21
Speaker
a little dry as a formula by itself, but it's very useful. So anyway, that tells us there's the organ kind of based one and then there's also the pathway based one.
00:29:31
Speaker
And that's how you get that ministerial fire back down. I have heard, unfortunately, that a beautiful, beautiful, maybe the most beautiful formula of all time, called Shao Chai Ho Tong, you know, I'm a huge fan. It's so beautiful, man. We'll do some, you know, in the herbs class, I try and toss in some Shang Han stuff here and there.
00:29:53
Speaker
But like, man, if you go back to the show, you realize that is like the most perfectly balanced formula that ever was created. I was going to say, is there any patient that you see that you don't give? A lot. Yeah, a lot. Okay. But it's by far the most commonly prescribed one. So like, some people would hate Xiao Chai Hu Tang. A perfectly balanced formula for the wrong demographic is still a disaster.
00:30:18
Speaker
Sure. So like, for instance, a good example is if people have like, abdominal, especially lower abdominal cramping and pain, that causes illicit loose diarrhea. And then after the diarrhea, the pain goes away. If you give them a shao chai wu tongue, you are going to give them explosively painful diarrhea. Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. What's not our right, but that's that's it. So yeah,
00:30:44
Speaker
And it's too activating and elevating for some people. So you either have to, as you know, kind of counter it with other things and balance other elements, or you can switch to something else. What Stephen meant by all that was that I am activated and elevated already and don't need.
00:31:00
Speaker
Too much help in that area. Wow. I'm just, it's not bad to be elevated, man. No, it's great. Close to the good stuff. The last example of symptomology gave, uh, rose an interesting point for me, which was that a lot of times people come in with symptoms and like diarrhea.
00:31:18
Speaker
And then you can see it as, oh, a spreadsheet deficiency or something like that. But also, you know, their body's trying to get rid of maybe damp or something. It's like actively trying to get rid of cold or whatever they're dealing with. Yeah. And so in a certain way, I'm like, you know, your symptomology could get worse after my treatment, depending on what it is.
Clinical Practice: Treatment Decisions
00:31:41
Speaker
And then sometimes they come in with something and I'm like, I'm going to stop your symptoms because that's not helpful for you. So do you have a way that you think about that in clinic? Yeah, that's kind of getting to the root and branch stuff, right? So like, do you want to treat the root cause of what's causing the diarrhea or do you want to treat the branch? And it depends on a couple of things, but the biggest one is how acute is it?
00:32:05
Speaker
So dysentery is a good example. Nobody dies from the bacteria or the amoeba. They just die because they're dehydrated. So in that case, because it's so severe, we stop the leakage first, and then we work on clearing it. We actually do it at the same time, but you can't not astringent that case. So there's some astringent going on.
00:32:29
Speaker
But then, just like you said, food poisoning is a good example. They've only been having vomiting, stomach pain, and diarrhea for the last two days. They're not dehydrated, really. Quite unlikely.
00:32:42
Speaker
You know, if they can't drink water, maybe, but then we would also just that as well. But that's a case where you just keep clearing it out to make sure it's gone. It doesn't mean you want to like force them to have extra diarrhea, but if there's any left, then you would clear it out. That's a different formula. Yeah. Yeah. That's a formula called Huo Xiong Chung Chi San.
00:33:00
Speaker
Usually anyway and it clears out cold damp in the middle, but it's considered kind of well most food poisoning falls into that category again. There's no there's no universal way I'm the last person that'll ever say like treat all food poisoning this one way Good because that's why we're talking to you if you said that
00:33:21
Speaker
This podcast would be very short. Do it Steven's way. No other way. And that's it. And like, let's just destroy all of how to understand the complexity of physiology. And totally. Yeah. And then you could just misquote like to bow to us because it's not like any of us in the States. No, she says diarrhea sucks.
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah. You betcha, man. But yeah, when you're talking about what's the cause of it, so for instance, Chosande, that would be a good case. If they had recent food poisoning and stuff and you can identify it as an external pathogen, then you don't need to stop the diary at all. You just clear the all three one. Right. And that's Chosande.
00:34:04
Speaker
And if they're fluid deficient, you know, if they had cracks in their tongue already, then that's telling you it's starting to get severe. So you would actually nourish fluids at the same time. Right. Get them to retain some. Yeah, you betcha. Perfect. Yeah.
Conclusion and Spleen Yin Inquiry
00:34:18
Speaker
Awesome. Well, I think we, uh, we covered the fires in our, in our medicine pretty well. Nice. Yeah. Any last words?
00:34:27
Speaker
Well, no, I think that's it. So yeah, we're talking about a fire organs, right? Yeah. You betcha. And, you know, each organ does have its own thing, like livers have their yang component. But that's not fire. So yeah, we covered the fire, we just didn't cover all the yang. I know you know that, but I'm just shouting out to everybody else too. We'll get there. One at a time. Yeah, you want a crazy idea? Just as like a last minute thought. Check this one out. What's a spleen yin?
00:34:58
Speaker
I mean, some organs we know, okay, there's liver yang, there's liver yin, there's heart yang, there's heart yin. What the heck is a spleen yin? Is it not going to be yeah? Dang, look at you pulling some. It's yin-nutritive, yeah, yin, which is one of the major two components of it, of course. Wow. The torture isn't all bad, I'll say. All right. Does he say it's yeah?
00:35:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you have to dig deep in the stuff, but he talks about ying chi and the spleen. That's right. The spleen's fluid is the ying nutritive. Wow. All right. All right. So, chalk one up from a josh.