A Non-Needle Strategy For Releasing The Abdomen

04/13/2022,

We want to explore a strategy that can be used to release tension held in the abdomen. This type of tension hinders a fuller experience of breathing and organ function.

Ziwu Polarity Treatment

It is established in some styles of medical qigong that the use of the pinky can be a stand-in for the negative pole of a magnet and the thumb can be used as the positive pole. This polarity effect allows us to create a sort of circuit in a patient’s body that can be utilized to good effect. What we do is place the pinky on a point of tension in the abdomen, and we then place our thumb on a point on the same-side forearm. (I am assuming here that the tense point is a little off the anterior midline, so that a sidedness can be determined.) These fingers rest very lightly on the patient’s skin.

Now we need to establish WHICH point on the forearm to use for our thumb point. Ziwu refers to the use of the Chinese meridian clock—each meridian is assigned two hours of a 24-hour clock. (ZIwu is midday-midnight.) We utilize those pairs that are 12-hours apart; we call these “clock opposite pairs.” We need Stomach-Pericardium, Kidney-Large Intestine, Spleen-Triple Warmer, Liver-Small Intestine, Gall Bladder-Heart.

What we do is gently palpate the abdomen to locate points of tension. When we find one, we determine which meridian it is closest to and put our pinky lightly on the point. We assess the forearm clock-opposite meridian utilizing Richard Tan’s imaging concept. In this, we map the head to the hand, the waist to the elbow. If we find, for instance, an abdominal tight point near ST 24, we look on the PC meridian (the clock-opposite pair) relatively closer to the elbow crease than to the wrist crease, because ST 24 is closer to the waist than it is to the head.

When we find an interesting point on the arm, we put our thumb on it. This is VERY light in terms of how much pressure is applied. Maybe 5-10 grams and no more. If we then become quiet in our touch, we will start to notice a subtle sort of motility under our fingers. The type of movement under our pinky and thumb should be initially quite different. We simply follow the motility without imposing ourselves on it. Over a few minutes the motility of these points will tend to slowly synchronize. When the movement feels more or less the same under both thumb and pinky, we can come off the point. The point in the abdomen now will be much less tense.

We repeat this technique as many times as we need to accomplish the release of the tension in the abdomen. It is best to do some points on both sides.

Kind regards all around,

Bob Quinn