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Menstrual Cycle
21 Plays26 days ago
You may have one, you most certainly know some one who does. Whether you are listening for yourself, or to empathize with those around you do not miss this episode. Today we get into the first half of the menstrual cycle from a Chinese Medicine perspective. While certain parts of this episode are geared more for practitioners there is plenty of diet and lifestyle advice for our muggle family. Enjoy!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Menstrual Cycle
00:00:11
Speaker
This week, Voices on the Mountain, we're going to get into the female menstrual cycle. Sweet. With Dr. Stephen Wong. Oh. And Master Asha.
00:00:24
Speaker
Oh, no. Not not Master. Unless I'm Master like Worsley's Master and I'm just making that shit up. That's a teaser for an episode my Too Soon guest.
00:00:37
Speaker
ah Although I do like it when you call me master.
Humor and Mastery in Daily Life
00:00:40
Speaker
There you go, man. Everybody's master, right? ah Well, Confucius said, ah just Master, Master, it's like table mesa.
00:00:50
Speaker
um But yeah, like Confucius says, if there's three people walking down the street, one of them has to be my teacher. There you go, man. Well, that doesn't mean they're a master. No, it doesn't mean they're master.
00:01:01
Speaker
What about go? You're a master at go, right? No, definitely not. Oh, okay. i'm a I'm a fairly strong amateur. Let's say that. I like it.
00:01:12
Speaker
So you're a humble master. Yeah. i haven't yeah haven't really cracked the Don level yet, which would be where you start to get into the... I know Dons. They do that with black belts, too.
00:01:25
Speaker
Yeah. so um'm ah And do you do queues too? Is that another thing that we... That's another... Both of these are Japanese words, so yeah. Yeah. So yeah. I know of them. A high-ranked queue at best.
00:01:37
Speaker
hu But i when I play Dons, it's it's fun. It's more fun. They have less of an ego. I just haven't just gotten past the queue egos. don't All of us, right?
00:01:48
Speaker
Yeah. They just want to fight all the time. They're like, I'm better than you. I'm better than you. I'm like, ah you yeah. Okay. Well, it's... It's not fun for me. It's funny. Yeah. Yeah.
Understanding the Menstrual Cycle Phases
00:02:00
Speaker
there's There's a phrase in Chinese. They say um like a full bottle doesn't make any noise when you shake it. And a half bottle does. Yeah. And a fucking half empty or like a really empty one is super fucking loud.
00:02:13
Speaker
There's the slosh master. Uh-huh. Look at me. Look at me. Exactly. yeah Well, yeah. All right, let's hit this one. So, ladies cycle, right? Yeah.
00:02:24
Speaker
um I guess in the West, we basically, I think we break it up into into three because you have the follicular and you have the lunar and you have their bleeding. But I think their bleeding gets lumped in with or yeah one of them. Well, the follicular is the first one and then there's the... um the The corpus luteum phase, the luteal phase.
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah. Luteal, not lunar. wow Yeah. Same root. We know what you're talking about. So you got the, exactly. And then they also say there's ovulation and then they say there's menstruation. So- One way or another, they say there's the same four things as us. They just use it little bit different.
00:03:02
Speaker
Sweet. So for us, um you're starting it with tie-in. Is that correct? That's correct. Yeah. So part of the reason we wanted to do this episode is you know for practitioners just to get great information out there.
00:03:17
Speaker
And then for ah muggles or what we like to affectionately call our patients or anyone else who's not maybe in the field of Chinese medicine but interested in it, um then you can get a greater understanding of your own cycle if you're a female or have a cycle and don't identify as a female.
00:03:34
Speaker
um Or if you ah you know have people in your life who are do have cycles, it's helpful to know things. Because there's think there's a lot of empathy that can be built even if you don't have a cycle yourself about it.
00:03:46
Speaker
you know understanding it well. So this is where we're going to go for it. And we're going to try and go for the Chinese medicine understanding of it and kind of how should you then build around that, specifically food and exercise.
00:03:59
Speaker
There's a ton of different things you could focus on, but we'll focus mostly on food and exercise.
Common Misconceptions and Norms
00:04:05
Speaker
All right, let's start it up. So if we start and we'll start just like Western medicine does, where they start the cycle um in day one is the first day you menstruate.
00:04:15
Speaker
So the first day of bleeding, we'll call it day one, might as well. We don't really care what number it is. Again, the number thing. It's like an acupuncture point. But anyway, so a lot of patients, a lot of patients don't like they need to be reminded or like, they'll be like, oh, day one is the first day I stopped bleeding.
00:04:32
Speaker
Right. That's another point that you often have to even the Western medicine does it the same. Your patient might not know that they might have an internal idea that it's different. So true. It's like how the calendar should really start on Monday.
00:04:46
Speaker
that's Sunday, right? Yeah. There's a whole, catch what's happening on Sunday, I guess. Well, yeah. Well, Sunday is actually the first day of the week. Right. But then it's like, well, but Monday feels like the first day of the week, right?
00:04:58
Speaker
It's the first day you go to work. there's a Alan Watts has a joke of why Jews are always up on the Christians in business, and it's because they take Friday and Saturday off, which is the the Sabbath, and then they go to work on one on Sunday.
00:05:09
Speaker
Oh. Yeah. Got it. I got it. i like Is he Jewish too? Yeah. No, he's he was raised, I think, extremely Catholic. I think that was the thing. he was ah Either way, I know he was raised in a very strict way.
00:05:26
Speaker
Like Orthodox family. Yeah. Of the Christian. i don't know what the different, or like denomination. i don't know if we can put Christianity and Catholicism in the same. They feel the same to me. There's, mean, if it's the same guy, right?
00:05:40
Speaker
It's like, if we're all Hwa Toa practitioners, let's resist and say family, right? Yeah, pretty much. Except then you have all the infighting of a family, like any good family. There's a lot of breaks and infighting.
00:05:53
Speaker
Got it. all right. So if we're calling day one, the first day they're bleeding, then um you know there's some flexibility. Really anything between three and seven days is pretty is considered pretty normal.
00:06:05
Speaker
Seven is, of course, getting a little long. Three is a little short. Five is pretty standard. And when we say bleeding, we do include spotting days. um so I was going to say, another thing that you've brought up with me in the past is that if someone, let's say they bleed for three, and but two days prior to their bleeding, they have cramps.
00:06:24
Speaker
Their period has actually started when they are cramping. Is that correct? Such a good point. um We would say that the stagnation is notable and and really exacerbated in those first two, but you'd still count bleeding as the first day.
00:06:41
Speaker
Right. But correct. It's staged like they're trying to bleed those. Yeah. It's like, yeah but some people try and if you call that trying to bleed, it's kind of, some people try and do that from ovulation.
00:06:54
Speaker
So it's like two weeks of trying to bleed. Yeah. Granted. I might phrase it like, instead of trying to bleed, it's like their body can't even like, they can't even like get the cars in the garage properly. Right.
00:07:08
Speaker
Like, They didn't open the garage door yet, but the car is not even ready to come out. You know what saying? Right, right, right. Okay. But the car is trying to
Yin and Yang in Menstrual Cycle
00:07:16
Speaker
go somewhere, yeah? That's where you feel. yeah Yeah. Yeah. oh Yeah. But that's usually stagnation of one of the big three chi blood or fluids. Yeah.
00:07:24
Speaker
Okay. So, but here's a tricky one though. If they start spotting first, so not all women start with like a fruit fairly heavy flow. um A lot of women will start with a day or two of spotting and then I still count spotting days as bleeding days.
00:07:38
Speaker
So if actual any blood comes out, whether or not it's spotting or full bleeding, I still always count that as day one. Got it. Yeah, that's right. So here's the menstrual part. And then we're going to start the phase. We're going to start, that's all technically part of the follicular phase. And we consider this all part of um basically a Tai Yin phase.
00:08:00
Speaker
Now, if we take one step back, I like to remind people that when we're talking about the day and night um in in terms of Chinese medicine, Some people will learn it is greater yang, lesser yang, greater yin, lesser yin.
00:08:14
Speaker
And there's there is a basis to that. The Neijing does talk about i and yang and so forth. um In fact, the word for sun, right? Because the daytime is obviously defined by when the sun isn't visible in the sky.
00:08:27
Speaker
The word for sun in Chinese is called tayang. It literally is tayang, the same as the channel. And here's a fascinating one, the ancient word for moon. The the current moon is ๆไบฎ, the modern word. But if you go to back to the ancient texts, the ancient word for the moon, ah bet you can guess it. It's ๅคช้ณ. ๅคช้ณ.
00:08:45
Speaker
taenne italian you So it's not you know like mysterious why um there's bunch Yang. And here's an interesting point.
00:08:57
Speaker
um The Neijing says this. Obviously, the Shanghenglun goes into great depth, which we're actually going to touch on both the Neijing and the Shanghenglun understanding of it today. But the Neijing has a very nice quote. Maybe we'll pull it in if we have a chance. But they say throughout the entire daytime, doesn't matter if it's before noon, noontime, or after,
00:09:15
Speaker
it's all governed by Taiyang, which totally makes sense. When we go to the Shanghanlun way of understanding the body, it doesn't matter if it's the afternoon. We're still saying the surface surface of our body is Taiyang.
00:09:27
Speaker
As long as the sun is out, our body is governed by Taiyang. But at nighttime, Neijing then says we're got governed by Taiyin. The surface of our body is governed by Taiyin.
00:09:38
Speaker
And then there are ah more nuances in that where, you know, dusk and dawn have yeah special connections, right? Or meanings that are different than then the rest of the tie-in and tie-young.
00:09:54
Speaker
That's right. so if then if you So from that larger yin and yang idea... then you can subdivide it into um two. I like to subdivide it into three phases, which is where I think the Shang Han Lun added a little additional clarity to some of the base foundation that the Ni Jing really laid.
00:10:11
Speaker
So if you do in two, then you would say, which is the greater or lesser Yang? and then nighttime, which is the greater and lesser yin, that has some functional value as well. And then if you do it from a Shang Han Lun perspective, you'd say, which is the rising, which is the descending, and which one is the hub?
00:10:27
Speaker
And i'm going to put a little extra emphasis because a lot of people miss this one. There's a hub between the two different yang layers, just like there's a hub between the two different yin layers.
00:10:39
Speaker
There is no hub between the yin and the yang layers. They just naturally descend into one another. So when it comes to nighttime, the yang has naturally been submerged within the yin. um And it's because it's already started descending.
00:10:52
Speaker
Well, when did it start descending? after it hub like pivoted at the hub point. And so you you go from rising yang to descending yang, you need a hub. You need a pivot point.
00:11:03
Speaker
Hub and pivot are basically the same word in Chinese. We call that shu niu. Yeah, exactly. Shu, like as you know. Ling Ling Shu, exactly. So that pivot point or hub point, very, very key.
00:11:15
Speaker
But the very large perspective, like the most macro we can get is, I try and remind people that the day, which is a microcosm of the year, is pretty much all yang.
00:11:26
Speaker
So even though we were just talking about yin and yang, the primary way of looking at this is daytime is the presence of yang, and nighttime is the absence of yang. Notice there's not really a yin time there.
00:11:39
Speaker
Just like the moon is never yang, it's always yin. But there happens to be a slightly yang-yir time of the yin phase and a more yin time of the yin phase.
00:11:50
Speaker
I just like to bring that up to people because sometimes they're seeking a yang thing inside a yin cycle. Well, don't think of a yang thing in a yin cycle. Think of a yang-yir yin part
Diet and Exercise During Menstruation
00:12:00
Speaker
of the cycle, right? It's all pure yin.
00:12:02
Speaker
It's just some parts are more yang within the yin and some are just yin within yin. So at the bleeding point, which we're calling tai there's this movement of of a yin substance out of the body, which kind of feels counterintuitive to nighttime where everything's quiet and you know you're going to bed.
00:12:25
Speaker
Correct. And so I like to tell people that like, ah so yes, Western medicine puts that, you know, the period in the follicular phase, but we usually just say the menstruation kind of, even though we're still counting it as day one, just so we can be on the same number track as them.
00:12:40
Speaker
It's its own thing. So menstruation is just pure yin. It's the yin is time of all, which then kind of teaser here ah is when women should lay low. That is not the right time to do serious exercise or run marathons.
00:12:53
Speaker
And that is also not the right time to you know eat crazy moving things and all these sorts of things. It's the nourishing, it's the consolidating, it's the lay low time, the winter, if you will, of the female cycle.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yeah. And interesting though, too, just because they they're in the winter, but then they have this summer thing happening outside their body. Or like, what's... Oh, you mean they're bleeding? Like, why is the blood coming out?
00:13:17
Speaker
Yeah. I feel like there's like this weird counterintuitive dichotomy there with where you would think, oh, you're you're going to lay low. That makes sense in the winter or at night. But then your body is doing this very like is purging.
00:13:30
Speaker
It's expelling all this stuff, all all this in of yours out into the world. And it's like, well, man, keeping it in would make more sense.
00:13:40
Speaker
Yeah. if If it was pregnant. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's ah that's a really good point. it It does kind of go against that a little bit, but like you said, you just you can't block up yin stuff. So even in the winter, we wouldn't want to like get blocked up.
00:13:54
Speaker
sure We kind of correlate this. There's kind of a fun folk way of looking at this. is ah There's a saying in Chinese. They say, in the winter, eat radish, daikon radish, of course, because that's the chinese that's the Asian radish.
00:14:06
Speaker
And in the summer, eat ginger. And so you're like, wait a second, ginger's kind of warming, isn't it? Why are we eating ginger in the summertime? And why even eat radishes in the wintertime? Because it's based off of the the diet, which would be warming foods in the winter and cooling foods in the summer.
00:14:25
Speaker
Right. And you're counteracting what your other inputs that you're putting in your body. and Exactly. And so it's like, yeah, we're all going to be eating probably richer, warmer, i think like nourishing stews in the winter, but we can't get those stuck. And so we want to eat ah really gentle chi mover or chi buster, if you will call it that. and And that's radish.
00:14:48
Speaker
Serious chi busters, the seeds of the daikon, that's a true herb. life foods ah That's a weirdly powerful herb. Yeah. Before you described it as a farty party, and I will never forget that.
00:15:03
Speaker
Yeah. it's It's a great like ah vengeance meal if you want to invite someone over and give them way too much laifuza daikon radish. Send them home with their lover. ha Yeah, exactly.
00:15:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:16
Speaker
Do that before someone's getting married or something. Big speech. Exactly. Just a little base rumble behind the speech kind of thing. So the tie-in starting at the first day of the period and then extended to.
00:15:31
Speaker
Right. And so that's where I was saying yeah i probably wouldn't count day one as tie-in. I would just count it as its own thing. And so I actually count like that pretty much the day they stop bleeding as tie-in.
00:15:42
Speaker
Now, I know that we're saying, okay, well, what cycle is this? I would actually say it's closer to extending Shao Yin that came before the cycle, which we'll get to at the end of this. But Tai Yin here, the reason why it's so key is it's the motive force of the Yin, right? think about Of course, there's two tie-in organs, lungs and spleen.
00:16:03
Speaker
But what we're really talking about is this is the rebuilding period. This is the time to rebuild all the chi and blood that they've lost. And this is kind of the generating period, right? So it kind of thinks spring, if you will, in a way.
00:16:14
Speaker
So we've got to build, we've got to rebuild, we've got to grow. And so this is all based on spleen. So this is a really good time in a female cycle to start taking like spleen strengthening tonics, blood builders through the spleen and so forth. Or, you know, you can even think about it from an acupuncture perspective, strengthen the spleen.
00:16:35
Speaker
Right. And dietarily, we're looking at eating the red meats, having bone broth, bone marrow. i don't know. What are some other big hitters on the dietary side for building Yeah.
00:16:47
Speaker
When it comes to the spleen, it's an interesting one. So ah red meat is pretty good for all of them. ah When we talk about the meats, they actually, the five, we don't we don't eat all five of the major ones unless people do eat snakes regularly.
00:17:00
Speaker
Or horses. Or horses. Ooh, good knowledge, dude. Yeah. um But it is true that beef is the spleen meat. Especially a yellow cow. Yeah, that's true.
00:17:13
Speaker
My brethren. Yeah. but My name means yellow in case anybody missed that one. um Anyway, so ah so yeah, that that would that would be a good time if there are meat eaters.
Nutrition for Blood Building
00:17:24
Speaker
um There also are really great vegetarian ways to build blood. So my favorite combo is pumpkin and parsley. ah Pretty much all the orange, which remember is basically yellow.
00:17:35
Speaker
but all the orange squashes. So I like the kabocha pumpkin the best or call it a kabocha squash. um Pie pumpkins are of course great too. And then butternuts should fall in the same category as well.
00:17:45
Speaker
All of those orange ones, they have some actual chemicals that you can, I think Western medicine's even discovered that, but there is one like a chemical in there that triggers blood building.
00:17:56
Speaker
So it builds blood and hemoglobin and all that stuff. The problem is, is it doesn't have that most of those don't have a ton of iron. So you you trigger the body to do it, but you also have to give it a raw material. And in this case, iron is the most important.
00:18:10
Speaker
So then that's why I go parsley because parsley is like one of the best ways to get iron from the natural world. It doesn't matter if it's the French curly or the Italian flat. I tell people Italian flat because unless you really like parsley flavor, you'll probably think that the French curly is a little too intense.
00:18:27
Speaker
But the flat one goes in anything. And so I tell them like, you know, most let's say people are eating salads. We'll talk about how salads are not the bane of existence later, I'm sure. um but they should be eating, let's say a third of their salad could easily be Italian parsley.
00:18:42
Speaker
It's delicious, right? And just don't eat the stems in the salad, right? The stems you cut off and you save those and you toss those into your stir fry, chop them up a little. Nobody gets going to know that they're in there and they're going to be getting an iron jolt at the same time. And so, and remember ah minerals don't break down with heat. In fact, they extract better,
00:19:02
Speaker
So cooking these is just as good. If people don't want to eat raw salads, great. Just cook your parsley. I don't care. um But either way, you're aiming for like, let's say maybe two two bunches of parsley a week per person if you really want to be using it as like your main source of iron.
00:19:18
Speaker
Oh, because I think a more common Western dietary stuff would just to be go with the dark leafy greens, like the greens all around if it's charred or if it's kale or bok choy.
00:19:29
Speaker
Yeah. Which which are good. you're cooking too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Most of those are cooked and most of them are good, but it's crazy. It's fun. Just check out if you guys want to do a little Google fun, just check out the difference between say spinach or any of those dark leafies, kales and chards, which are great.
00:19:48
Speaker
Versus parsley, it's just like such a bomb when it comes to the iron content. And then some of those other dark leafies are better with other things. Like for instance, ah kale, oh my God, it's got so much good potassium.
00:20:01
Speaker
Although not as good as beet greens. Beet greens is actually the king of potassium or queen. don't know if potassium is feminine or masculine. Yeah, it's the yin. ah It's the tai yin of potassium leafy greens.
00:20:15
Speaker
That's right. say Sweet. So we have a vegetarian way of building black blood. And then just real quick, the spleen needs, you know, building blood is half of it, but then the spleen needs the chi to have it too.
00:20:32
Speaker
And a lot of times we have people who, you know, even given all the right and ingredients, um they're going to struggle to make the blood. hundred percent So what do we give the spleen chi people at this point?
00:20:44
Speaker
So there's a bazillion great herbs. So you herbers know there's like Renshens, there's the Huangqi. Huangqi is one of my all-time faves. You could do the combo of them. There's a cool formula called Guipitang. And as you might guess, that's a wonderful time to be using this formula, assuming they don't have blood heat.
00:21:00
Speaker
We don't need to go into all the nuances quite yet. But um the key here is build the blood through the spleen. And actually, i'm just going to add one more teaser. The name Guipi Tang for that formula means um revive or bring back the spleen decoction, even though we all know every book will tell you that's for nourishing heart blood.
00:21:23
Speaker
But it's called Bring Back the Spleen because that's how we build it. So this is the real idea that we're looking for here. It's like, how do we do that? So Asher's totally right. You give people a bunch of red meat.
00:21:34
Speaker
That helps. But how do you activate the spleen to be functioning better on its own? um So a couple of good things. Let's say we just want to strengthen. So things like ginger are really good.
00:21:46
Speaker
um Carrots are pretty good. Try not to overdo it like carrot juice per se, but like carrots in cooked food, you're never really going to overdo it unless your entire thing is carrots. So great stuff there.
00:21:56
Speaker
And then we also need to remember that you know nourishing the yang or the chi of the organ is really good. But we also want to kind of take away any blockages to that chi or yang function, which we know when it comes to a spleen is really dampness.
00:22:10
Speaker
So things like squashes are great. So yellow squash, zucchini, they clear dampness naturally um through the urine. So that would be a really good thing to do. um Kind of like, yeah, like you think of almost like a little kind of heartier meals.
00:22:23
Speaker
So lentils and these sorts of blood building and strengthening stuff. Can we wrap that up as like the complex carbs and the and the beans? Yeah. i So I'm not a big carb fan.
00:22:35
Speaker
I think we've kind of touched on that before. um um So it has to be a pretty complex. So I'm actually, I don't like the little carbs, which are the mono and disaccharides. And i don't like the big carbs called the polysaccharides, but I do like the middle carbs, which are the oligosaccharides. And those are the beans. Yeah.
00:22:54
Speaker
Ah, speaking of farty parties. Speaking of the old farty party, it's interesting because oligosaccharides don't absorb through our um intestinal wall very well, which is why they don't really shift our blood sugar notably, but it's also why they stay in the digestion long enough getting to the large intestine where then the biome can have a little feast and hence sometimes get a little farty.
00:23:21
Speaker
um Usually as you get better with your enzyme function, that tends to go down, but just kind of gradually increase. Yeah, totally. Switching up your diet to any kind of extreme extent will often give you digestive ah changes, whether it's farts or a little more movement and, yeah, sometimes a little pain or whatever. Anytime someone just goes crazy, they're like, oh, I decided to eat healthy, and then I changed my entire diet, and it's not working out well for me. It's like, yeah, well...
00:23:51
Speaker
Your biome's changing too, and it's dying off at a huge rate. And so that's all happening inside of you. Exactly. i always tell them that too. It's like, you're not just shifting your organs function. You're shifting and entire micro environment, right?
00:24:05
Speaker
Right. Not even that micro. We have this spleen building. We have the blood building and this tie-in
Strength Building in Tai Yin Phase
00:24:12
Speaker
part. And is that going to go all the way up to ovulation or including?
00:24:16
Speaker
Pretty much up to like two. I usually go about two days before. So let's say someone bleeds for about six, seven days, maybe. Let's say six days on average. So from day six, all the way up to about day 12 of their cycle, that's really that tie-in window. So there's a wonderful, at least almost everybody gets like about a full seven days in there.
00:24:36
Speaker
If their period is long, maybe it's a little shorter, but and so that's about it. So that one week is a great building time. So let's think about um how about strength building exercises. Great.
00:24:48
Speaker
If you want to go rock climbing or you know lift some weights or do strength building exercises as a woman, this is a really nice time. um like Literally like build the muscle mass and and strength.
00:25:02
Speaker
um So that's kind of exercise-wise a great time to do it. And then we just mentioned all those food things. That's that real ah building time. Now, the reason we stop around day 12 or so is because it's getting a little too close to ovulation and ovulation would get us into a transitional period, that pivot period between yin times.
00:25:22
Speaker
So if we've got the strengthening, building, rising tai yin phase, then we'd have to have a hub or a pivot period. Now, the Neijing doesn't talk about this, but the Shang Han Lun talks about it extensively.
00:25:35
Speaker
And there's a hub for the Yangs and there's a hub for the Yins.
Jue Yin Phase Transition to Ovulation
00:25:38
Speaker
So when we're talking about the hub between the two other Yin layers, that's called liver Drei Yin. It's really just called Drei Yin, but we know it's primarily the liver channel.
00:25:48
Speaker
Yeah, this is a huge one that I always have to keep reminding myself because whenever I was shown the six, what, Jing confirmations, however we translate that, at school, the Shaoyans were always the pivots for both Yang and Yan.
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah. And having just to change that internal knowledge that it's that for the Yan, it's going to be the Jui Yan layer. Yeah. Or circuit. It's a toughie. I think i've I've heard this when I came back and I started teaching like the classics courses and stuff.
00:26:20
Speaker
um I was like stunned that some people put the but even the channels in what I would just say is the wrong order. um Anyone who's read the Shanghun Lun and really has delved into it, maybe not read it.
00:26:34
Speaker
Let's say anyone who's studied it and certainly anyone who's used it, It's confusing to me how they would put it in any other order. There's no other way to explain it. um The Shao Yang goes into great depth to put the Shao Yang layer between the two other Yang layers.
00:26:48
Speaker
It has to be Tai Yang to the outside, Yang Ming to the inside, and Shao Yang And I've heard people be like, oh, but it's the hub between yin and yang. No, it doesn't exist that way. It's the hub between outer yang and inner yang. And that's the real trick.
00:27:02
Speaker
And then when people start understanding like, how come, for instance, a Shaoyang fever is half chills, half fever, it's because it's halfway in, right? And then you go all the way to the yangming.
00:27:16
Speaker
Now you've got only fever. Well, then how... i just I still don't understand. like How do you go back from like full fever to then half fever? None of it makes sense. Shaoyang is the hub between the two Yang layers, and Jui Yin is the hub between the two Yin. yeah and Actually, if you think about it with its internal external pairs, they actually match up better that way. because with With the turning inward from Yang Ming, you hit Tai Yin, and those are internal external pairs.
00:27:41
Speaker
Same thing from the Shaoyang to Tai Yang. closing out the yin and starting yang, you'd have um another internal external pair.
00:27:54
Speaker
So in that way, maybe it makes more sense. Totally. Totally. I like what you're saying. Yeah. Like it's pretty easy to go straight from stomach to spleen, right? Yeah. Oh my God. It's yeah. um That one is just so much intuitive sense. I actually had never heard of a different way of doing the Yangs.
00:28:12
Speaker
So that's interesting that that's out there too. there's ah every There's all sorts of stuff out there. So yeah pivoting into ovulation and Jui Yin. And now for me, just internally, this is again, like a very Yin time, right? Like they're building...
00:28:29
Speaker
all their it's almost like the precipice of yin building it feels like and um because this is when you'd potentially be building your your egg and your um your fetus if you're a pregnant crash and then i'm guessing that because well is then okay so there's gonna be a difference then between a pregnant woman at their ovulation and a not pregnant woman right where when they're pregnant and at ovulation, maybe we keep on going with this yin kind of story, but then if we're if we're getting ready for an explanation or a purging in two weeks, then we have to get moving.
00:29:07
Speaker
Literally, we can't just sit around and build. Exactly. Stuff's going to get stuck, right? It is in a way, but it's interesting. So basically as the Tai Yin was the building phase, we're transitioning into what will be the Shaoyan after this hub, right? It's a pivot.
00:29:24
Speaker
And Shaoyan is the holding in consolidating phase. Now holding in more for pregnancy, consolidating more for non-pregnancy, um But this is kind of what you were talking about before is where like that feels almost like the winter phase.
00:29:38
Speaker
um And then you might think of menstruation more as like kind of a spring cleaning before you rebuild, start rebuilding again.
Consolidation Phase for Pregnancy
00:29:44
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's true. I mean, we do modify, like for instance, we would never try and use um consolidating points, mostly Jing River points, um during the end of a luteal phase, because the goal is then to clear the menstrual fluid out, not necessarily to hold it in the body, right?
00:30:05
Speaker
But then of course, for pregnancy, we would go the other way and try and consolidate and hold inward. Got it. Okay. So at, so at the period, like the menstrual bleeding cycle and not the ovulation for, for that idea.
00:30:18
Speaker
Okay. Right. Right. Right. So ovulation, no matter what, we're starting to move stuff. Correct. And you got to move stuff no matter if they want to get pregnant or they don't, or it doesn't matter to them because you got to like, like that follicle has to be released.
00:30:31
Speaker
The egg has to come out. um And then you're creating this little thing. And so Most women, I would say, don't feel ovulation. They might feel different things in their body. Some women actually feel like a pop or like a cramp in their front during ovulation.
00:30:46
Speaker
So there is that too. um But this is the whole idea where we need to transition between this rising and building ya ah yin phase, which is the tai yin, to a consolidating xiao yin. And in order to do that, we have to move.
00:30:59
Speaker
Specifically, we have to move the liver gallbladder. um There's a reason why the liver gallbladder channels are the ones that are going to circulate or circle around the genitals. um And so here, it's really all about moving.
00:31:11
Speaker
So when it comes to exercise, what should they do? Now we take a little break from the super strength, right? So this is not weightlifting time anymore, this is maybe some cardio time or some stretching time.
00:31:24
Speaker
So it's great to do yoga. You can go for runs, no problem. Just remember when we're talking about like general um good cardio kind of movement things for moving a lower abdomen, we probably don't want to be in like, like let's say a seated bicycle position all the time.
00:31:42
Speaker
So like a spin class, maybe not ideal. You'll see this if you ever see patients who have really notable liver cheese stagnation and they get that lower ab pain that if they go on a bike ride, they'll they kind of feel like cramped up afterwards instead of actually released.
00:31:56
Speaker
But if they go for a run because that area is more open when they're doing their exercise, a lot less cramping. Nice. Is this going to be especially point important for like PCOS patients and the fibromyalgia some of the other kind of like where the the fibers are being built in the wrong places?
00:32:16
Speaker
Yeah, or like the the fibroids, utent fibroids, you mean? Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I got you. And PCOS too, that's a tricky one because... And they've got like, I like to think about that as like each of the the ovaries is like too ready.
00:32:32
Speaker
You know, they got like seven follicles, like getting ready to go. Yeah. And sometimes there's like, which one am I going to fire this month? Let's fire them all guys. Yeah. So, and you know, there's some other things for that one.
00:32:46
Speaker
Yeah. So that's part of it. And then the fibroidy, basically any sort of cyst or fibroid developing um constitution and, or you could call it a condition. um Then they definitely want to be wary of moving, not wary of like aware of moving, which means wary of stagnation.
00:33:04
Speaker
Ah, gotcha. Right. This is key time for them. Key time to move. so So basically, we've gotten into now shifting from building to moving. And so this is where we want to move the liver, circulate the qi, right? So all the good ones, men a super powerful point, um but there's lots of them for lower back pain. You might do zhuling qi. Is that 41, right? Gallbladder 41?
00:33:29
Speaker
Yeah. Zhuling qi. Yeah, let's say yes. The dye channel point? The dye, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because it's still gallbladder liver mover. It's really focused on that
Qi and Blood Movement in Jue Yin Phase
00:33:40
Speaker
area.
00:33:40
Speaker
So any of those, so basically the goal goal here is moving. So how do we do that from an exercise point we just said is basically like the, you know, the yoga or the running or the the cardio, but not cramping up that lower abdomen.
00:33:54
Speaker
So here's like, i mean, literally we call them crunches, right? No crunches. This is not the crunch time. That's that's crunching the wrong spots. right But you could do like plank. So it's not that you can't work your abs.
00:34:07
Speaker
You just don't want to crunch them up and create these like knots and so forth. Right. That makes a lot of sense. so i mean, you don't want to start your stagnation early. Yeah, exactly.
00:34:17
Speaker
And then food wise, we'd be like, all right, so what moves? Well, um there's a lot of things, but remember when it comes to moving, we're thinking about moving chi, moving blood, moving fluids. Right.
00:34:29
Speaker
So we separate blood and fluids because there's blood and then there's the gin and the yi are what we cumulatively call the ying nutritive, Y-I-N-G.
00:34:38
Speaker
Y-I-N-G. Correct, Y-I-N-G, ying nutritive. And ying nutritive is composed of gin and plus yi. It's just mostly gin less yi.
00:34:50
Speaker
But in this conversation, is the yi more of a predominance of importance? I mean, because we're talking about the organs function? Yeah, and the whole menstrual blood cycle, I figured, was more yi than gin.
00:35:05
Speaker
Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah, so in this case, when we're talking about yi, you kind of want to think about the thick fluid that's running the organ, not necessarily um the fluids that are moving things to and from the organs, if that makes sense.
00:35:21
Speaker
So, like, think about, like, well, it's like โ we we've We have a word for it. When when people don't have enough ye, then they have organ dryness, literally zhang organ dryness.
00:35:33
Speaker
This is called zhang zhao. Zhang is zhang organs, and zhao is dry. And so it creates irritability. And interestingly, the word irritable is also zhao. um So you get a double meaning there as well. Different characters. Well, same right side, different left component radical.
00:35:49
Speaker
um So anyway, the key here is think about yi as the thing, like if you didn't have enough yi, you couldn't run a spleen. You couldn't run a heart. But it doesn't necessarily mean you're moving stuff to and from it differently.
00:36:00
Speaker
If it's going to move to and from, we're still thinking about what we would call ying nutritive. And I know that sounds like a little bit of an academic difference, but if I switch it to like an actual applicable herb thing, I think it'll make sense.
00:36:12
Speaker
So one of our best herbs for generating yeah are those red Chinese dates, da zhao or hong zhao. Really good for nourishing. And yet no one would ever take that to move anything.
00:36:24
Speaker
they don't move. They technically generate blood through the spleen and so forth. Great things to do in your tie-in phase, by the way. So I think we talked about, did we talk about the red date and ginger tea before?
00:36:35
Speaker
We did. Yeah. Because the ginger does the movement part for you. Correct. And the, yeah, and the generating the, yeah, and also strengthening the spleen a little. great for the the red dates.
00:36:47
Speaker
So in your tie-in phase, one of the best things you can do besides, you know, we talked about the food things, but also how about start every morning with some Da Zao ginger tea? That's a bomb ass idea.
00:36:57
Speaker
Get everything going, right? Perfect. So, and you can do that for most of your cycle, but really, really key in that first tie-in phase. So then here, but we're talking about generating and strengthening the year, red dates. But if we're talking about moving the yin nutritive fluids, ๅ่.
00:37:14
Speaker
็ฝ่ is actually for generating both, well, the yin nutritive, which is, like I said, is mostly gin, ไธ็ฑณ, but ๅ่ is about moving those fluids. So here's now we've got a good herb that actually circulates the yin nutritive.
00:37:28
Speaker
That's what we're trying to do in this phase. Got it. So, yin and nutritive both being the the gin and the... I often think about the irritability thing in the dry as being like dry bamboo, because dry bamboo does not bend. It just breaks.
00:37:43
Speaker
Oh, interesting. And pain. yeah And just like any tree, branch or whatever, right? Like you'll see if it's if it's dry, it'll break. If it's actually, if it's frozen in the winter, it'll also snap and break. There's no flexibility in it.
00:37:57
Speaker
um But when you have supple fluid nourishing your limbs, you're a little bit more flexible and you don't get as irritable and break. Totally. Totally makes sense.
00:38:09
Speaker
So we're we're moving stuff. The other other dietary stuff for movement, we just mentioned ginger. there going to be other like spices, kind of aromatic stuff? Correct. So one of the best like easily found spices is fennel seed.
00:38:23
Speaker
Really good for moving liver gallbladder. ah We actually use it. It's called xia hui xiong. um it's an herb, and then like ah an herb in our pantheon. You could also use um a lot of the um spices that you might find in say Indian food, but the problem here is Indian food primarily moves blood.
00:38:42
Speaker
Now, that's not bad, but we're really more interested in moving qi because we're talking about the liver more. Now, it's true. The liver has a blood component. It has a yin nutritive component. And it has a chi component. So you could use all three.
00:38:54
Speaker
You just don't want to hyper focus on the blood side. If you were going to fight focus on any one of those three, it would be more chi than that the other ones. That's so interesting because I feel like that was something that we may miss in our Western academic teaching. Because when you get to the menstrual cycle, man, is it just about liver blood nonstop?
00:39:15
Speaker
Everything. It's like liver blood this, liver blood that. um And it's because, you know, we just mentioned how tight in the liver was to your genitalia. Right. So that part's not wrong, but then it's where's the focus in splitting the yin nutritive layer off that too.
00:39:32
Speaker
from Totally. As a distinction from the blood. So we're focusing on the liver qi because qi moves blood. Yes. And because we're at the quote unquote yang-iest time of this yin cycle.
00:39:44
Speaker
Ah, the youngest is at ovulation. Correct. Full moon. Correct. And so this also, a it really does correlate to the ideal time for women to have ovulation is the full moon.
00:39:58
Speaker
um If women are ovulating, usually they get pretty close to full moon or new moon. They could be somewhere in the middle too, but most women tend to be a little like more on one of the two ends of the spectrum.
00:40:10
Speaker
um So that means we we would ideally have them ovulate on the full moon and menstruate on the new moon or where it looks like there's no moon, right? Because the ovulation, the young-iest time should happen when the moon is biggest and brightest. That's the young-iest.
00:40:24
Speaker
Remember, again, we're talking about the young-iest time ovulation. the greater yin of tai yin. So that's why I tell people it's not a yang time of the cycle. It's just the yang-iest time of this yin cycle.
00:40:37
Speaker
Right. And so this is like, if you if you're not ovulating at the yang-yus time, then you're missing out on on your yin at the end of the day not your yang. And you you don't have the movement. And the reason why it needs to be the yang-yus time is because it's all about the movement.
00:40:54
Speaker
It's about that chi. It's about opening. It's literally about busting off a little follicle. This is all yang movement. It's not yin storage or building. Awesome. And so again, if you have someone who's, or if you're someone with the PCOS or the, or the fibroids or cysts, like, and you're not ovulating or you're not, um, yeah, ovulating at the full moon, just that little switch could, could be helpful.
00:41:17
Speaker
Heck yeah. And you can shift people. You really can. Sometimes you actually have to end up like going an entire cycle or sometimes even more. like you'll do a shorter cycle, shorter cycle, and get them on the right one.
00:41:29
Speaker
And if that's, you know, if you've fixed a lot of the fibroids and cysts and stuff, that's great. Just try and stabilize it there. Sometimes you actually have to go an entire shift another whole 28 days.
00:41:39
Speaker
It's kind of like unwinding it and just seeing how much knots are in the whole ball of yarn. Anyway, you you can shift a cycle for sure. um And as you start doing those things that are inherent in the treatment, so for instance, a lot of stagnation, you're probably going to shorten the cycle and so it will be moving.
00:41:56
Speaker
Now, quick little tangent. I know we weren't going to go crazy on points and techniques for practitioners, but it does bring up an interesting one because the gallbladder front mu is ri-yu.
00:42:09
Speaker
ri-ya. Yeah, that's a hard way. is It's a hard pronunciation on that one. Ri-ya. Yeah. yeah Ri-ya. and we'll We'll study that one later. It's like R-I, yeah. Okay.
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah. yeah Yeah. So, Sun Moon. Sun Moon. Is it about the, because I was ah originally told that it was about your circadian rhythms.
00:42:34
Speaker
Correct. And we're we're talking about stuff and this feels like another circadian rhythm. It really is. It really is about your circadian rhythms. But you know what he' is even stronger about your circadian rhythms? What? Chi Minh? Yeah. Yeah.
00:42:46
Speaker
yeah Because it's the gateway to the time periods. Oh, is that the chiy that it's talking about? Yeah, that qi literally a time period. See, look look what happens when we look at at um by names.
Liver Qi Movement Importance
00:43:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's awesome. I love it. So, Chiman is like, oh my gosh, you want a liver mover for the youngest time of this jiu-yin part of the cycle? I mean, can't really get better.
00:43:15
Speaker
Yeah. And i I mean, if you've worked with Stephen before, you probably already were like beating a dead fish or something because... I think Stephen uses his point. It's one of his greatest hits. And it's funny because it's not the greatest hits for for the Western kind of clinicians, I don't think.
00:43:33
Speaker
so At least yet. Then we went with the jing river Jing Wells, but they didn't go with the Qiman. You know, Shanghan Lun is fascinating because Shanghan Lun obviously is mostly herbs and formulas. But in there, they do talk about, I think it's like 10 or 11 points.
00:43:47
Speaker
um And by far, the number one most talked about point in the Shanghan Lun is Qiman, the liver 14. Yeah. Huh. ah Maybe that explains a lot why it's your favorite because we know you're all about the shot. And so the fact that they have an acupuncture point in there, you know, you're to love that guy.
00:44:04
Speaker
That's true. That's true. Easy. The liver is so, you know, it's ah responsible for moving everything throughout the entire body. So yeah, it's a pretty, pretty big one. And then we always diagnose people with liver cheese stagnation, which means it's not doing its job. So who pretty good point for that.
00:44:21
Speaker
Do you ever actually use the Hussi point for similar reasons or not so much? Yeah. You'd have a deliver Hussi. Yeah. Such a great point sometimes, but in this case, I think the gallbladder Hussi does a better job because it's the yang of the two pairs.
00:44:36
Speaker
And we're in the youngest time. Correct. And so I find Chimun is, I like to rank them for people just because I think that's a helpful, like clinically very quick, accessible way to do it.
00:44:48
Speaker
And we love the hierarchy here in the West. Yeah, I guess that's true too. So if you think about like the three most liver qi moving points, or most at least most common, I would... Qi Min, Tai Chong, and Yang Ling Kuan.
00:45:04
Speaker
Exactly. And I put them in the order of Qi Min moves the most, Yang Ling Kuan moves the second most, and Tai Chong is the gentlest. Okay. We learned a weird guy out here that we'll just bring up before we wrap up this little point section here.
00:45:19
Speaker
um female four gates for a woman during her cycle as being Yang Lingchuan and then the low point of the Sanjiao five. i don't know what the name is going to be.
00:45:32
Speaker
oh the low point. Why one? yeah Yeah. Yeah. Why gone? Oh, no. And I mean, i don't know why they throw why gone in there really, but that's what they do for quote unquote female four gates.
00:45:46
Speaker
Interesting. Well, that maybe he's talking about the ministerial fire, which is the hand and foot Shyang channels. Yeah. That's interesting, but I wouldn't necessarily say that specifically to females.
00:45:59
Speaker
um No, not all, because female and males both have. We'd like a ministerial fire too. Yeah, no, we both got it. ah So if you guys liked that,
00:46:12
Speaker
ah intro for the first half of our menstrual cycle and and the how to's and what to do's then stay tuned for the second one where we're going to be talking about the second half of the cycle.
00:46:25
Speaker
And don't forget to hit that like button, subscribe and share with all your friends. This is an important episode for all y'alls. I think at least over half the population is female and has menstrual cycles. So true. This one's for you.
00:46:38
Speaker
And the other half could benefit to learn about the menstrual cycle.