How the Back Shu points and Outer Run/Pathway of the Urinary Bladder channel regulates the Seven Emotions and Wu Shen

In this blog, I really wanted to post a presentation I did a few years ago at a Chinese medicine conference. It discusses the Urinary Bladder channel, in particular the ‘Back Shu’ points and the ‘Outer Run’ points, and their relationship to the ‘Wu Shen’ and the ‘Seven Emotions’.

Here is the link to the slides of my presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/DieselDave8/urinary-bladder-back-shu-points-discussion

What I found of particular interest as I researched this area was two-fold:

1)      That there are Back Shu points for aspects of the human body separate to the twelve main Chinese medicine organs. For example, there are Back Shu points for the pancreas (not one of the twelve main Chinese medicine organs), the spine, the Dan Tian, just to name a few. There are even Back Shu points for points located on the front of the body, which I thought was super cool.

2)      That the Outer Run of the Urinary Bladder channel has points that treat the ‘Emotion’ and ‘Spirit’ of the organ they are related to. This applies in relation to the Back Shu point it lies further out from. For example, BL23 is the Back Shu point of the Kidneys. BL52 lies a further 1.5 cun lateral to BL23, therefore is effective at treating the emotion (Fear) and spirit (Zhi – Will) of the Kidneys. This will be discussed further in the actual slide presentation.

The hope with this blog is for us all to comment and discuss further. The Outer Run points are of particular interest. It’s what I call a ‘Loaded Topic’ in the sense that a lot of Chinese medicine practitioners/students seem to have a strong opinion about this topic, and these opinions are not always the same. This generally leads to some engaging debates where arguments are laid down to support your view. It’s a bit like if we had a conversation about childhood immunisation, or whether fluoride should be in our water supply. It’s bound to generate strong discussion.

I look forward to hearing from you. Take care!

David Hartmann