| We find ourselves on the cusp of the winter solstice, that sacred time of year when the yang returns. The winter solstice is governed by the Gallbladder Meridian. Here we see yang’s return represented in the single yang line at the bottom in Hexagram 24 (Fù). The title of this hexagram is variously translated as The Return, Turning Back, or The Return of the Light. It represents the so-called tidal hexagram for the Gallbladder system, meaning that the structure of this graph captures both the quantity and quality of Gallbladder energetics by correlating it to the ebb and flow of yin and yang at the time of the winter solstice. With the return of the yang, slowly, imperceptibly at first, activity returns to nature. Day by day, the light grows longer. It is still a time of year to safeguard our precious yang. Outside in the northern hemisphere, it is still bitterly cold, and we need to be conservative about spending our energy, but underneath yang is again stirring and starting to do its job of warming and creating movement in nature. The Gallbladder is described as the Officer of Zhongzheng (righteousness emerging from the center). Quoting from Heiner Fruehauf’s brilliant Introduction to The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Transmission of Acupuncture by Yang Zhenhai and Liu Lihong: As the early Daoist classic Guanzi exclaims: “Zhongzheng is the root of all restoration.” Zhongzheng thus designates the most powerful medicine a human being carries within: one’s innate capacity to return to a state of health, balance, and “rightness”—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Some texts go so far as calling Zhongzheng the “central virtue” of humanity. This is already enough to surprise those with only a basic TCM education. Nowhere in our sadly truncated training is the Gallbladder spoken of in this manner, but this is how scholar-physicians thought in the formative period of Classical Chinese Medicine. Then in Chapter Eight of the Huangdi Neijing Suwen: The Gallbladder is the Officer of Zhongzheng—returning us to the right way of being that lives inside of us; the ability to evaluate and make the right choice stems from it. So, let us all celebrate the return of the light, the return of the yang. We are all a part of nature, not separate, despite our modern economy’s best effort to convince us otherwise. From an economic standpoint, nature is merely a collection of resources waiting to be plundered. Classical Chinese Medicine always recognized the unity of the human realm, the heavenly realm, and the earthly realm. |
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