The 12 Chinese Hours and Traditional Chinese Medicine

I'm sure most of you are familiar with the 12 Earthly Branches. This is commonly used to represent the "Chinese hour" or 時辰。So what has this got to do with our body in relation to Traditional Chinese Medicine?

There are recommended time periods for our activities, in accordance to TCM theories. This corresponds to the Chinese hours represented by the Earthly Branches. Qi is present, not just in our environment, but also within us. The Yin-Yang theory applies here too. Qi has its peaks and its troughs for each of the 12 organ meridians.

The big picture here is to have a way of life that is in sync with the universe and nature - performing the right activities at the right time ensure that the Qi flows properly and hence leads to optimal outcomes. Sounds familiar? :)

子 Zi  (11pm to 1am) - Gall Bladder 膽 － Best time for deep sleep

丑 Chou (1am to 3am) - Liver 肝 － Best time for deep sleep

寅 Yin (3am to 5am) - Lung 肺 － Best time for deep sleep

卯 Mao (5am to 7am) - Colon 大腸 －  Best time to wake up, exercise, moving bowels

辰 Chen (7am to 9am) - Stomach 胃 － Best time to have a sumptuous breakfast

巳 Si (9am to 11am) - Spleen 脾 － Best to have had breakfast earlier; avoid cold drinks

午 Wu (11am to 1pm) - Heart 心 － Best time for lunch and interaction; folks with heart diseases beware

未 Wei (1pm to 3pm) - Small Intestine 小腸 － Best to have had lunch; good for problem solving

申 Shen (3pm to 5pm) - Bladder 膀胱－ Best to drink tea and lots of water; good for efficient work

酉 You (5pm to 7pm) - Kidney 腎 － Best time for (light) dinner and avoid sex after dinner

戌 Xu (7pm to 9pm) - Pericardium 心包 － Best to soak feet in warm water; some reading; sexual activity

亥 Hai (9pm to 11pm) - Triple Heater 三焦 － Best time to start going to bed

Traditional Chinese Medicine

Chinese Metaphysics never fail to amaze me. When we talk about Chinese Metaphysics, we are mostly talking about the Five Arts. What are these Five Arts? They are :山 醫 命 卜 相

Loosely translated, they mean: Mountain, Healing, Destiny, Prediction, Appearance. These literal translations don't help much. Perhaps you can relate to the following examples (not exhaustive):

Mountain - Kung Fu
Medicine - Traditional Chinese Medicine
Destiny - Ba Zi,
Prediction - QMDJ
Appearance - Feng Shui

While I continue my pursuit of knowledge in Mountain, Destiny, Prediction and Appearance, I have lately come to realize my interests in Traditional Chinese Medicine. All of these take significant amount of time to master, and I'm definitely risking over-diversifying and not paying enough attention to each of the arts. But then again, all these are interrelated and are based on the same fundamental ancient knowledge, and should find synergy in learning, right? I don't know for now.

There are many who are skeptical of TCM. And yet none of the doctors that I have spoken to have rejected TCM; their full acknowledgement of its effectiveness is only hampered by the absence of empirical evidence as in Western medicine.

Yin-Yang theory. Five Elements. Sound familiar. TCM takes these to a new level, from a different perspective, but the fundamental core knowledge remains the same. Think you'll be able to relate to them? I sure hope so for myself, as I start this long journey of getting to know this ancient knowledge.

I have started to visit a TCM practitioner regularly. She completely enjoys her work. Charges differs according to the patient's earning power. Same philosophy as me. She helps out on a charitable basis one day out of six in her work week, and this makes her really happy. She told me that learning TCM is something that is beneficial to oneself and others. I couldn't agree with her more.

Inspired by her, I will try to write on the topic as I find out more about TCM. Definitely not a qualified Chinese physician yet, so I'll not write on remedies and deductions. Will share more about the fundamental knowledge along the way.


Have a great weekend!

Reflections

It gives me great pleasure to see that I have close to 10,000 views on my humble blog.

Some viewers have asked - "Why do you not contribute on a regular basis? We have been looking forward to your posts, but sometimes you go missing for 2-3 months before the next post."To all those who are following my posts, my deepest appreciation to you for first of all trusting in what I write, and finding them useful in your pursuit towards wellness and harmony.

To be completely frank, I don't wish to write for the sake of writing, as some do. I'm blessed with a good full-time job, though I'm pursuing my interests in Chinese Metaphysics as a hobby, but with a profession-level of standard and approach, minus the necessity to make a living out of it. Some extra bucks in my pocket is definitely nice, but as my existing clients and friend can tell you, the remuneration (which is definitely much lower than market for the level of services and expertise) is never ever my key concern.

I started out the blog with introducing some of the most basic fundamental concepts of Chinese metaphysics, and had since received great feedback for their originality and clarity. Subsequently I've also helped to promote (for free) some of the courses offered by my teacher GM Francis Leyau, for they have helped to benefit me tremendously and I hope that they will help my viewers too. In them, I have tried to embed some 'secrets' for the advance practitioners while ensuring that new learners gets to benefit from the simplicity and clarity. Most recently, I've started to provide some useful information on the blog for my viewers.

Crossing 10,000 views is a great milestone to me and my humble blog. Thank you for all of your support and interests. Some might laugh at me for posting such a message for just 10,000 views (some popular sites get that in just a day). But then again, it far exceeded what I had thought was possible with the limited contents that I had. So once again, thank you!

Please feel free to email me to provide me with ideas on the next topic you would like to see on the blog. In a busy and hectic lifestyle like mine, inspirations come knocking rarely, so your suggestions will be really helpful. Can't promise I can write about everything that you suggested - it could be that I'm not familiar or not able to write them due to the sensitivity of the topics, but will definitely try to satisfy your requests as much as I can.


With best regards,
Ken