Acu. | Issue #31 | Summer 2021
Inspiration
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Shen & ling point is of course unlikely to solve the issue, but frozen by fear, fired up in anger or bound by despair, the heart is in danger of being held captive in its own city, a pathology in and of itself, and we should try whatever we can to free it, to restore calm vision, integrity of speech and authenticity. We have looked at some outstanding aspects of HT 5, the go-to point for speech disorders, able to treat all the emotions, calming the shen 神 and stabilising the heart. We have not touched on its ability to cool fire and clear heat, especially in the head and eyes, or its role in treating excessive menstrual bleeding and uterine haemorrhage. It is a deep and wide-ranging point. No wonder Ma Danyang, revered 12th century Daoist physician, chose to include HT 5 tong li 通 里in his Song of the Eleven Heavenly Star Points, rubbing shoulders with such perennial favourites as LU 7 lie que 列 缺, LI 4 he gu 合 谷 and ST 36 zu san li足 三 里. Unfortunately, eclipsed by its celebrity brother HT 7 shen men 神 門, I doubt it would be in most acupuncturists’ top eleven today! Our loss. Peter writes: This is a photo of my wife’s Tibetan Medicine Buddha that she bought in a street market in India - rather beautiful I think and illustrating that deep connection within that is both the name and a key aspect of the point
CHINESE LESSON
Sandra Hill Acupuncturist & Author: London The Chinese characters shen 神 and ling 靈 may both be translated as spirit, spiritual, spirit-like; both have the original meaning of influences coming from heaven and their etymology conveys their rooting in ancient shamanism. The character shen is made up of two parts – that on the left 示 represents an influence coming from heaven, an auspicious sign, a revelation; and that on the right 申 is to extend, to expand, to unroll. In the oldest texts, the shen are often related to the spirits of ancestors, or those attributed to natural forces. They later came to be more closely associated with an embodied presence within the human being (jing shen 精 神), and the way that heaven is able to manifest itself within us (shen ming 神 明), the illumination of the spirits, or enlightened consciousness. Ling is more complex. At the bottom is the image of two shamans – or shamanesses – (wu 巫) and it is suggested in Dr SL Wieger’s translation of the second century etymological dictionary, the Shuowen Jiezi, that they are situated between heaven and earth, providing a link between the two (工) – and possibly dancing. Above the two figures are three mouths (口) suggesting that they are singing or praying, and at the top, the character for rain (yu 雨). So the character represents a kind of shamanic rain dance. But rain also has the wider meaning of all kinds of beneficial influence from above, and the character became more commonly used to refer to spiritual power or efficacy, the numinous or sacred, but also the embodied realisation of the spirits, and one’s inner spirit. The character ling is seen in the Lingshu, the second part of the Neijing which refers primarily to needling. The ling shu (靈 樞) or spiritual pivot, as it is usually translated, is said to refer to the needle itself – acting as an intermediary between heaven and earth, spirit and matter. In the Xici, the commentary on the Yijing, the shen are considered to be above the influence of yin and yang, constant and unchanging. A ‘shen disturbance’ is therefore a disturbance of the heart/mind (xin 心), and an inability for the shen to be housed. The shen were often likened to birds, which will rest and roost in a tree if it is still and calm. But if the tree is shaken by the wind the birds will scatter. The same is true of the spirits. They require the stillness of the heart/ mind to settle. The wind of the emotions will unsettle the heart/mind and scatter the spirits. In modern Chinese the term shen jing (神 經), pathways of the shen, refers to the nerves, and various modern ‘shen disorders’ are actually disorders of the nervous system – such as anxiety and the kind of ‘jumpiness’ known as jing (驚), which is often caused by a separation between heart and kidneys. Maybe in this time of panic, we have never been so much in need of repairing the vital heart/kidney, jing/shen connection.
