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tx
nervous system
chorea
psychospiritual approaches

metaphors and correlations

Chinese psychophysiology:
Liver ~ Gan is the home of the Hun (Ethereal Soul); it relates to decisiveness, control, and the principle of emergence; maintains smooth flow of Qi and Xue (Blood); controls the muscles, especially their contractility; reflects emotional harmony and movement; and expresses itself in the nervous system.
» Healthy expressions are kindness, spontaneity, and ease of movement.
» Liver Xu (Deficiency) signs include impotence; frigidity; pain in thighs, pelvic region, and throat; ready tendency to "the blahs" (Seem, p. 28); timidity; depression; irritability; vertigo; pruritus; dry skin and/or tendons; asthma; aching at the waist; hernia; and difficulty raising head up and down.
» Liver Qi Stagnation reflects and accentuates emotional constraint as the Liver's function of facilitating smooth flow in the body is constricted. Stagnation is associated with frustration, irritability, tension, and feeling stuck. With time this pattern tends to produce a gloomy emotional state of constant resentment, repressed anger or depression, along with tightness in the chest, frequent sighing, abdominal tension or distension, and/or a feeling of a lump in the throat with difficulty in swallowing. (Maciocia, p. 216)
» Liver Wind
derives from Liver Yin Xu (Deficiency) and/or Liver Xue Xu (Blood Deficiency) and their subsequent inability to embrace the Yang, and can manifest as joint stiffness, dizziness, tremor, paralysis, convulsions, and neurological problems.

Kidney ~ Shen stores Jing (Essence) and governs birth, growth, reproduction, development, and aging; houses the Zhi (Will); expresses ambition and focus; controls the bones, particularly the lumbar spine, and displays the stresses of aging and chronic degenerative processes
» Healthy expressions are gentleness, groundedness, and endurance.
» Kidney Xu (Deficiency) signs include indecisiveness; confused speech; dreams of trees submerged under water; cold feet and legs; abundant sweating (Seem, p. 28); hearing loss; fearfulness; apathy; chronic fatigue; discouragement; scatteredness; lack of will; negativity; impatience; difficult inhalation; low sex drive; lumbago; sciatica; and musculoskeletal irritation and inflammation, especially when worse from touch.
» Intense or prolonged fear depletes the Kidney. Often chronic anxiety may induce Xu (Deficiency) and then Fire within the Kidney. (Maciocia, p. 250) Overwork, parenting, simple aging, and a sedentary or excessively indulgent lifestyle all contribute significantly to Kidney Xu (Deficiency).


therapies

process paradigm: (experientially oriented)
• What is the symptom preventing me from doing? What is the symptom making me do? (see process interview: psycho/neurological system)

related materia medica listings:
the shadow and physical symptoms
converting a symptom to a signal
process paradigm


footnotes

Reprinted from The Foundations of Chinese Medicine, Maciocia, Giovanni, 1989, by permission of the publisher Churchill Livingstone, a division of Elsevier Limited.