empty heat with Qi or Yang Xu +insomnia

[Guest guest]

I apologize for this being a little unformed, I've been thinking about this

lately but it hasn't quite gelled yet:

 

I think there is a habit of using astringent medicinals for shen/hun/po issues

without attributing the action of directly astringing the spirit, but rather

fobbing off the function on astringing blood or fluids to nourish the ground of

the spirit. Grasping functions are related to qi and yang, while ballast is a

function of the " mass " of yin. When yin is vacuous then yang is not well

grounded and rises. When yang/qi fails yang breaks away because it cannot hold,

the grasp becomes too weak, and in that case the shen/hun/po would be " let go "

by its storing viscera. My understanding is that this is the nature of the old

diagnosis of " floating corpse " or problematic talking to the dead, which is seen

when the body becomes weak enough to fail to restrain the po. When liberated the

po tends to wander about and chat up other yin spirits, which are typically

hungry for essence, triggering either sexual dreams, or leading the person into

a seductive dream world while their body withers. Daoists made a point of

restraining the po in the body in meditation, as it is seen inspiring bodily

desires, even the movement of the hun was to be regulated in sleep so more

orthodox and useful dreams were had.

 

Proper sleep and dreaming requires the shen to be submerged in its substrate of

blood ( " the shen rests and the hun and po fly up " is the traditional description

of the dreaming state), but it must also be contained by the appropriate qi (as

with the blood itself, which might indicate an aspect of gui pi tang's fairly

rapid function on the heart and shen, since it boosts spleen qi, which has a

direct effect on blood containment and a possible spill over effect of

containing the shen?). The vast majority of insomnia patterns are heat related,

but what does heat do to qi, or other subtle substances? It excites them to the

point that they are no longer contained and then drives then out of their normal

functional relationships, spilling blood out of its pathway and generating wind

by driving qi off of the blood. The shen is more subtle than qi, so perhaps it

is even more prone to injury in this manner. In yang vacuity the qi of the heart

is too weak to house the shen, but because the shen is also crippled by a lack

of qi and yang, theoretically the nature of the insomnia would be different,

perhaps more listless and less edgy, there being no heat to lend the shen that

frenetic quivering quality.

 

I'm sure there's another way or two of thinking about it,

 

Par

 

-

Stephen Bonzak

Wednesday, March 14, 2007 8:58 PM

Re: empty heat with Qi or Yang Xu

 

 

Jason-

 

I have heard of the below excerpt and always assumed that the

" deficiency yang effusing outward " was parallel to the idea of floating

yang in yang vacuity. Now that I think about it, I understand how

BZYQT would not really work for that idea. BZYQT is definitely about

supplementing the center and moving constraint than anchoring any

floating qi/yang.

 

Now I am thinking about other ideas that seem similar to this in my

mind. How would you (or others) explain how Heart qi and yang vacuity

can lead to insomnia?

 

-Steve

 

On Mar 13, 2007, at 9:42 PM, wrote:

 

> " spleen and stomach deficiency and central qi insufficiency, leads to

> the qi

> mechanism sinking downward and deficiency yang effuses outward. "

> Stephen Bonzak, L.Ac., Dipl. C.H.

 

sbonzak

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