Exploring an Acupoint: Stomach-41, for "Loosening the Knot of Addiction"
I’d like to “peel back the curtain” and reveal a bit about an acupoint (a point for acupuncture or acupressure) to the layperson.
I tend to view acupoints as “eddies” in the flow of a channel, as dynamic hubs of psycho-neuro-endocrine-immune activity. One teacher of mine refers to acupoints as “living events.” These are information centers where the practitioner has the opportunity to give the body-mind system a supportive suggestion, a nudge toward balance.
A favorite acupoint of mine is “Stomach-41” (the 41st point on the Stomach channel). This point is found on the front of the ankle, between the two large tendons that sit between the inner and outer ankle bones. It’s about where you tie your shoelaces (more on that in a bit).
Feel free to probe this area with your finger. Look for a depression between the sinews at the front of the ankle joint. (For thos of you who are anatomically inclined, it’s between the extensor digitorum longus and extensor hallucis longus.) Rotating your ankle in circles might help you find the point.
***
Given that this point resides on the Stomach channel, let’s talk about the Stomach’s role in traditional East Asian medicine.
The Stomach governs our material desires, our earthly cravings. It’s about feeling hunger and satisfying that hunger. Accordingly, the Stomach carries the themes of desire, appetite, and sensual pleasure.
The earliest Chinese pictograph of the Stomach, shown here, depicts a pouch divided into four compartments. On a literal level, this refers to the cutting up of food: the digestive process. Indeed, problems with digestion can often be traced back to the Stomach, including nausea, reflux, dietary allergies, and appetite and weight issues.
On the psycho-emotional level, the Stomach governs one’s ability to navigate the world by “splitting it up” and making it “digestible.” It governs the mental patterns we use to make sense of life. Those who have difficulty assimilating their experiences likely have a sub-optimal Stomach network. This can include those dealing with chronic anxiety and worry; problems with memory and concentration; and obsessions and compulsions. These are disorganized mental patterns that distort our perception and reception of the world around us, making it difficult to smoothly absorb and integrate our experiences.
For many of us, our sensual, intellectual, and emotional cravings can easily become excessive. The Stomach’s needs, which should be subordinate to those of the Heart (the center of Spirit), can overwhelm our more lofty, spiritual desires. Accordingly, the Stomach-41 acupoint is an essential point for addiction, whether to material and sensual pleasures (sex, food, drugs, shopping, and so on) or to patterns that are more purely cognitive (like being hooked on ceaseless mental churning) or emotional (like craving approval from others or being overly clingy).
But how do we know that Stomach-41, of all the forty-five Stomach channel points, is an especially good location for treating addiction? It’s all in the name! Long before this point was dubbed “Stomach-41” (the numbering system was introduced to help students remember the points), it was known as 解谿 Jiexi. Investigating these Chinese characters will give us insight into the nature of this point. Let’s dig in!
***
First, let me just mention that Chinese characters evoke fields of meaning. They do not simply refer to one thing. Rather, they tell a story. After all, they’re pictures, and we all know how many words pictures are worth!
解 Jie is the first of the two characters in the name. It’s pronounced “jee-yeh.” The character features a horn 角, a knife 刀, and an ox 牛; it’s a picture of an ox’s horn being sliced off with a knife. So, 解 Jie means to cut off, to separate, to release, to untie, to liberate.
The second character of 解谿 Jiexi is 谿 Xi (roughly pronounced “shee”), which represents a stream, brook, or creek. The right side of Xi is 谷 Gu, meaning “valley.” The left side of the character is written 奚 and is also called Xi; it was originally a picture of a hand holding a rope around a person’s neck, and carried the meaning of “servant” or “bond.” The Chinese traditionally viewed water as playing the role of humble servant—beholden to its master (gravity), seeking the lowest place (the valley floor). Water is soft and its shape is malleable (and yet its flow can manifest with great power); we would do well to emulate those qualities.
And so, with the above themes in mind, Jiexi could be translated as “Liberation Stream” or “Freeing the Slave,” suggesting a relinquishing of what we’re enslaved to. Jiexi could also be rendered as “Liberation via Servitude” or “Freeing the Stream through Compliance,” pointing to a path of freedom that is found only through flexibly “going with the flow.”
To refer to a point on the Stomach channel as “Jiexi” is to tell the story of gaining freedom from the shackles of addiction by subordinating one’s base cravings to the something loftier, by becoming like a stream of water, letting go of our attachments, flowing in attunement with the changing world around us. Jiexi is about taking in and seamlessly transforming the “outside” (other) and making it “inside” (self), while keeping the pleasures of that process subservient to the higher joys of the Heart and Spirit.
It’s noteworthy that Jie also means “to analyze” and “to organize.” (I told you these characters carry a wealth of meaning!) With this in mind, Jiexi might be translated as “Stream of Analysis” or “Slave of the Intellect”—a relevant point for those who are hyper-analytical, who have difficulty turning off their intellectual thought-streams and actually feeling the embodied reality of their moment-to-moment aliveness.
Lastly, we know that Jiexi is located at the place one would tie and untie (Jie) one’s shoes, and the crevice between the tendons is a sort of “valley.” So, as a mnemonic device for its location, we could translate Jiexi as “The Valley Where the Laces are Untied.”
See? Unpacking an acupoint’s name can give loads of insight!
When I stimulate Jiexi in my acupuncture sessions, I’m nurturing the Stomach’s capacity for dis-integrating substances and experiences, so that we can then properly assimilate (or eliminate) the constituents, without any excessive rumination (the “rumen” being a cow’s stomach).
In activating Jiexi, I’m also supporting the Stomach’s affinity for descent—the Stomach guides food down the GI tract like a mountain stream. Indeed, stimulating Jiexi can provide a powerful descending message to the body and mind in cases of “upward counter-flow”: reflux, anxiety, hot flashes, nausea/vomiting, belching, asthma and cough, headache, mania, and hypertension. In these cases of pathological ascent, we can stimulate Jiexi to help “liberate the stream” so that it can properly flow downward—thereby rectifying digestion and subsuming the Stomach’s cravings to the will the Heart.
***
If you find yourself overwhelmed by your Stomach network—having difficulty integrating food or sensations or experiences; stuck in a pattern of addiction, obsession, or worry—consider doing this meditation:
Start just by noticing that you’ve got a body here, a body that’s breathing, pulsing, gurgling, living.
Now, become aware of your solar plexus (the Stomach region). Let your breath soften and caress this area. You could imagine bright golden light infusing the area.
Let the face, jaw, and neck (areas traversed by the Stomach channel) similarly soften and release as the breath is received and transformed into nourishing Qi that spreads and soothes. Do this for a few rounds of breathing.
Then let your awareness sink down, down, down, descending the front of the body—from the abdomen down to the thighs, from the thighs down to the shin bones, from the shin bones down to the front of the ankles.
Start to rotate your ankles in circles, first in one direction and then in the other. Then extend the foot upward (stretching the calf) and downward (stretching the top of the foot). Feel for an ankle movement that best helps to liberate the mind from its worries and the body from its tension. All while maintaining flowing, nourishing breaths.
Good. Now, let your awareness expand to fill the entire body, letting your attention soak into the body like fluid into a sponge. Just breathing, allowing the rhythms of the body and mind to rise and fall.
***
I hope this exploration gives you a sense of the textured fields of meaning that our acupoints lie within. They’re very much alive and complex, not just some static targets to mindlessly poke and prod. And now you’ll have a sense of what I’m doing the next time I’m stimulating the front of your ankle!
***