What Is Acupuncture? (5)

The Flow of Qi in Meridians and organs

Each meridian is connected with an organ.

In acupuncture, or Traditional Chinese Medicine, the body is thought to be a whole, rather than a sum of individual parts. All the 12 meridians are connected, so are the 12 organs they connect to.

As you can see in the picture above, not only the Qi flows in the 12 meridians in order, each organ also has its own time in a day. What it means is that when an organ is at its time, its function is at the strongest point. For example, the liver is the organ that governs the smoothness of our emotions. If a person is suffering insomnia, in which he wakes up during sleep, then it is likely to happen between 1-3 am, which is the time of liver. This is often seen in people with a lot of stress.

This chart tells us that for each organ to function at its best, we need to do thing on a timely manner. A good examples is: breakfast should be consumed between 7-9, when the stomach is at its best, so we can have good energy to start a day (think about brunch, have you ever felt sluggish after having brunch, which is way past the stomach time)