Mark Barwell: Blog

 

Yin and Yang within the body

  So how do these energies manifest within the body? As you can imagine, Yin energies tend to be represented lower down the body whereas Yang energies are higher up. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, meridians (energy lines that run throughout the body) that are associated with Yang organs start at the top and run downwards while Yin ones start towards the ground and work their way up.

For instance, Bladder is a Yang organ and Kidney is the Yin organ that it is paired with. Even considering their physiology, we can see that Bladder is a more open space (Yang) than the Kidney, which is more dense and solid (Yin). Bladder (figure 1) starts between the eyebrows and runs over the head and down to the little toe. Kidney starts at a point on the sole of the foot and runs upwards

Kidney_bladder

Yin and Yang can also be attributed to the energy centres within the body. Let us consider the two main schools of thought:


Tantien (Dantian, Dan Chen, etc)

In Oriental medicine, these "nexus points" are known as tantien (pronounced "dan-chen") or hara points. All three lie along the central axis of the body that runs down the middle from head to feet.

The lower tantien is also referred to as the Hara (it literally translates as abdomen, or belly) although all three tantiens are sometimes confusingly called hara points too! This tantien is at a point roughly 3 finger widths below the navel. This is said to be the centre of your being, where Original Energy is stored, and is the symbolic energy centre for Earth Ki, or Yin energy.

The middle tantien is level with the heart, is the emotional centre of your being, and the space where we connect and balance the energies of Yin and Yang (more on this in a later blog post).

The upper tantien is in the middle of the head at the rough location of the pineal gland (take a line backwards through the forehead and another line sideways just before the top of the ears. Where they interesect is the upper tantien). This is the symbolic energy centre for Heaven Ki, or Yang energy.

Tantiens

Chakras

As can be seen from the diagram below, the lower three chakras deal primarily with issues concerning the self and therefore equate to Yin energies (the root being more Yin than the sacral, which is more Yin than the solar plexus). The upper 3 chakras deal mainly with issues concerning external forces and how we relates to the world around us, therefore Yang energies (crown the most Yang and throat the least). In this way, the chakras equate to the tantiens as seen above although with more differentiation between the groups.

Chakras
 


How do we deal with an imbalance of energies within the body? This is a big question and one that has many answers. The next blog post will return to the topic of Yin energies as we explore how to examine and resolve such imbalances within the context of the Japanese style of Reiki that I teach.

To learn or experience Reiki for yourself, visit http://markbarwell.co.uk/reiki.asp and to find out more about the Reiki Shares, visit http://markbarwell.co.uk/workshops_reikishares.asp

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