. . . [I]f one pays close attention . . . shen, the spirit, becomes clear to man as though the wind has blown away the cloud.
—The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, trans. Ilza Veith
The phone rings. I pick it up and it's Michael. After studying in our mentorship program for three years while attending acupuncture school, he graduated and launched a fast-growing Alchemical Healing and acupuncture practice in Manhattan. “Hey Michael,” I say. “What's up?”
At first, all I hear on the other end of the line is laughter. And then in his deep former opera singer contralto, I hear him say,
I'm getting it . . . (Pause.) . . . after all these years . . . (Pause. Breath.) . . . it's real. I'm understanding what you've been talking about. It's been happening more and more. I put the needle in a point and it's like a powerful wave is released. Even my patients are like “Whoa, what just happened?” It's as if a door opens. And everything shifts.
I smile and nod out the window to no one in particular. This is the moment I love, when trying to explain it is over. When it stops being an idea and becomes a Body Felt Sense knowing, when there is no longer any doubt. That you can put a tiny needle in an invisible point on the skin and watch as a person's subtle body radically transforms. He continues:
It's amazing. Regular people, body builders and dancers, accountants and lawyers, people coming in for sprained ankles, headaches, or tight shoulders who have never heard of archetypes or alchemy or inner sensing or any of the stuff we talk about. They say, “Wow, I've had acupuncture, but this is something else!” They are feeling it. Emotions. Energy. Moving. Sensations they don't have names for. Their bodies talking, coming back to life.
“Yes, this is what keeps me in after all these years,” I tell Michael. It's why I never want to quit. That feeling . . . like surfing, when I get it just right and ride in on that wave of qi . . . in that one brief moment, the whole world changes.”
It can't be forced. You're never certain the magic will happen. It takes faith and devotion and it comes as a kind of grace. But Michael has experienced something that ancient Taoist alchemists knew millennia ago. Just as spirit is alive, here and now, in every particle of the cosmos, on a microcosmic level an infinitesimal speck of spirit is also present at the center of every acupuncture point. Spirit is the potent spark that ignites the movement of the qi when the point is alchemically quickened with a needle, an oil, a flower essence, an image, or a word. When you open the eyes of your heart and activate your alchemical imagination, sometimes the divine alights like a butterfly on the waiting tip of your finger.
Michael is a trained acupuncturist who has dedicated his life to learning to stir the qi, release energy blocks, and support his patients in discovering their own Tao, but you too can learn to move the life force through the body, mind, and spirit using the simple, self-regulating strategies described in these pages. The palette of points presented in this chapter, along with the archetypes, flower essences, essential oils, and other practices presented in this book, is meant to help you open the door to your own inner alchemical laboratory and develop a relationship to your subtle body that can support you in living and feeling differently. Call on these points when you need an ally in challenging or exciting times, for emotional first aid, or to transform a piece of prima materia. This introductory alchemical point palette is not meant to be a replacement for Western medical treatment or treatment by a licensed professional acupuncturist with years of advanced training, but it will support you in engaging with your care more effectively. As you learn to work with your own qi, you improve your overall health and will indirectly support the optimal functional integration of your body, soul, and spirit. And if you continue to explore the points and meridians and open your eyes and your heart to the subtle body, you will one day feel the qi and ride in on that ephemeral wave.
Every acupuncture point on the body is associated with a meridian or channel of energy that runs along specific tendons and muscles and through a particular physical organ. In contemporary styles of acupuncture, each point is numbered and categorized. Each point is connected to clearly defined sets of physical symptoms and energetic imbalances.
In addition to its meridian and number, each point has a name that has been passed down over thousands of years. In many modern Chinese medical colleges these ancient names are not emphasized; however, for an Alchemical Healer the characters and imagery that make up the point name offer invaluable information. Each name carries psychological insight, spiritual wisdom, and critical clues about the usefulness of the point. For me, spending time in meditation on these names is like sitting beside a sage, a mentor who has come to me directly from the mists of time to share secrets about the inner alchemical nature of the point.
Following in the footsteps of my early teacher J. R. Worsley, I refer to the complex of imagery and meaning expressed in the point name as “the spirit of the point.” When I choose to include the spirit of the point in planning a treatment, I make the wisdom and beauty contained in the name a part of the treatment process. Names such as Cloud Gate, Kunlun Mountain, Bubbling Spring, and Dove Tail have symbolic and archetypal potency. Their poetry endows sacredness to a symptom. Effectiveness then relies not only on the accurate placement of the needle but also the accurate placement of the word.
The points can attune us to the energies of the Seasons and Elements. They call our souls back to our bodies. They open us to our own potential growth. They shift the way we feel on physical and emotional levels. By relating to the points with the proper attitude and vision, they transform resentment into forgiveness, scarcity thinking into gratitude, hyper-control into acceptance. In order to bring this kind of potency to the points, you must care deeply about them. You need to re-envision your connection to them and touch them with reverence.
This chapter is not meant to be a cookbook or a how-to manual but something more akin to a letter of introduction to beloved and trusted friends. I have chosen to introduce points that sing to me and that I have come to know intimately during many years of practice. You do not have to be a trained acupuncturist to explore this simple palette of fourteen points. It takes many years of training and self-cultivation to use acupuncture needles skillfully and safely to work with complex physical and psycho-emotional symptoms, but if you bring an open heart, clear intention, and enlivened sight to your encounter with a point, it will respond to your touch and caring. If you stick with this exploration, you will gradually develop an embodied connection to the qi and facilitate positive shifts at the soul level in yourself and others you care about.
No one really knows how many acupuncture points there are on a human body. Some sources say 365. Some say 2,000. I say we'll never really know, and it doesn't really matter. The human body is a microcosmic reflection of the vast cosmos. Along with the mapped meridians and recognized acupuncture points, mysterious point portals appear and disappear like stars in the infinite galaxies. From the perspective of Alchemical Healing, it is not the number of points you can identify that matters, but the quality of your relationship to the points you work with. What is important is that you develop a set of points that you get to know personally, that you relate to as reliable allies.
The following entry-level point palette will allow you to begin your alchemical lab work with the points and portals of Chinese medicine. I present two points for each of the Five Elements (with an extra two for Fire), one associated with the Conception Vessel channel (the sea of yin) and one associated with the Governing Vessel channel (the sea of yang). All these points are bilateral—identically located on both sides of your body—except the Conception and Governing Vessel points, which are located on a single line that runs up the front center (Conception) and spine (Governing) of your body.
At the end of this chapter, there is a Spirit Point Map that shows the location of all fourteen points on the body. I also offer five basic protocols that include spirit points and medicinals that you can use to work alchemically with your prima materia as well as other issues in your life. I have carefully curated these points and developed these protocols for their capacity to touch the soul and to address some of the most common psycho-emotional issues I encounter in my own practice.
Spend time with these points until you feel that you have an embodied sense of who they are and what they do. Activate them with attention, imagination, touch or pressure, a flower essence, or an oil. Work with the protocols so that you can get to know the points from within your own being. I often tell my students to spend an entire Season getting deeply acquainted with just one or two points. If you work with these fourteen points as a practice over time, you will be surprised by how far they will take you!
The points are organized by Element and each Element is associated with two anatomical organs or, as they are called in Chinese medicine, two Officials. Each Official is named for an organ (for example, the two Wood Element Officials are named Liver and Gallbladder). However, in Chinese medicine and Taoist alchemy, the Officials do not express physical function in the same way that they do in Western medicine. For the ancient Chinese, the organs were not simply fleshy physical structures, but rather domains of alchemical process where psychic energies—instincts, emotions, and thoughts—are tended, regulated, and transformed.
Each Official has a specific area of jurisdiction in your inner kingdom and is responsible for carrying out the soul concerns of its corresponding Element. Wood regulates the energy of sprouting and growth in you—your healthy aggression, determination, vision, and planning. When your Wood is blocked, you may feel angry, irritable, frustrated, or depressed. The Wood's two Officials, the Liver and Gall Bladder, are charged with making sure your Wood's capacity for sprouting, visioning, and planning are carried out effectively so that you can feel at ease, directed, and hopeful rather than frustrated, blocked, and hopeless as you move forward along the path of your life.
As you get acquainted with the Officials and their associated points, you may discover one or more that stand out and feel particularly relevant to your prima materia. By all means, work with the Officials that call to you but remember that an Official is not the same as an anatomical organ in the Western sense. A weakness, vulnerability, or hyperactivity of function of an Official at the alchemical level does not imply that there is pathology in your physical organ, and it is definitely not a Western medical diagnosis.
The Water Officials—the Bladder and Kidney—work together to ensure you have the resources you need to become the person you are meant to be.
Your Bladder Official is in charge of regulating your fluids and energy reserves. It is responsible for the quality of your jing—the life essences you inherit from your parents, grandparents, and all your ancestors, the genetic memory passed from one generation to the next. The Bladder's appropriate preservation and quality control of your fluids and essences allows you to make good use of the resources you were born with as well as those that you cultivate throughout the course of your life.
This point is named for the mythical mountain that was the center pole of the world, the axis of the Taoist cosmos. From high in the sky, Polaris, the North Star, pours its radiance down on Kunlun's peak where the peach tree of immortality blooms. Deep below in the mountain's labyrinths and caves, the yellow springs of life, death, and resurrection shoot upward from the dark depths. Ancient Taoist alchemists viewed Kunlun Mountain as the connecting link between Above and Below and a symbol for the Self, stabilized by the Earth and illuminated by the Heavens.
I call on this point when I feel a person's emotional spine is weak, when they don't have the resources to stand up for their own needs, or lack courage and confidence when starting a new chapter of life (leaving a marriage, beginning a new job, becoming a parent). This point also has the special ability to drain heat and overactivity from your head down through your feet. It can help when your mind is racing, your head is achy, or your shoulders and neck feel tight. Place a drop of Balsam Fir essential oil on this point, take a deep breath and receive the medicine of the tall, straight evergreens whose top-most branches scratch the stars and whose roots reach down to the reservoirs of life in the aquifers and streams of the underworld. When you need the support of Water to nourish, stabilize, and root your soul, bend down to touch this point and imagine the mountain in you rising toward the sky.
Your Kidney Official is responsible for filtering toxins and impurities in your body and making sure that clear, vital water gets to every part of your being. In addition, your Kidney Official is responsible for the storage of your jing. Through the storage, protection, and appropriate dispersal of jing, the Kidney Official safeguards your life force and helps you to live in accordance with your authentic destiny.
Bubbling Spring is a center of energy for your entire body. It is the place where your feet stand, where every journey of your life begins. It is the point where the earth's revitalizing energies spring joyously up to replenish your soul. Imagine the power of sunlight melting a crack in the late Winter ice and then clear luminous spring water bubbling up from below and you will get a feeling for what this point can do.
I go to this point when a person is feeling ungrounded and hyperactivated or, conversely, dehydrated, drained, or exhausted. It is also a point I consider when someone is trying to move forward but is tentative about their own emergence.
When you touch Bubbling Spring, you tap into a powerful renewing stream of Water wisdom that will root your spirit and invigorate your entire being. This is a point of origin, a point of courage, that can connect you to the wisdom and power of your ancestry. As you touch this point, imagine you are opening to a vast river of life force, an entelechy that has flowed through your lineage and is now flowing into you from the eons of time.
The Wood Officials bring your vision into manifestation. The Liver Official is like the architect and the Gallbladder Official the head carpenter who work together to build a house.
Your Gallbladder Official is the site foreman in charge of reading the blueprint and executing the plan of your life. Choice is a key function of this Official who makes decisions and knows what direction to take next. It makes sure you have the tools, schedule, and skills you need to make your visions and plans real. Just as the twigs and branches weave the overall shape of a tree, your Gallbladder twists and turns the threads that come together to form the shape of your biography.
In late Winter, the antlers of the deer push upward, gathering the wisdom of the dark night and making way for the aggressive movements of Spring. Root of the Spirit is your “antler point.” It allows you to know which way the wind is blowing and to judiciously decide when to move forward and when to rest. Root of the Spirit helps you choose the way to turn at each fork of the forest path as you move forward on your life journey.
This point can be used to relieve tension-related physical symptoms such as headache, visual dizziness, and neck tightness but these physical-level expressions represent only the most superficial aspects of the point's full nature. As its name implies, this point is a place where the spirit settles down into the body. It can be used any time you feel that your spirit has become uprooted—when you are destabilized by shock or unreasonable attacks of jealousy, worry, or confusion. As your spirit roots, you can more easily access your courage and capacity to persevere in the face of challenges. For this reason, Root of the Spirit is a very useful point for children in your life who are timid or frightened at the prospect of starting something new. This point is responsive to gentle touch and especially appreciates the application of a drop of Bergamot essential oil to relieve head tightness and open spiritual vision.
Your Liver Official is like an architect or expert military leader, constantly assessing circumstances and making plans accordingly. Your Liver carries the vision, initiates the projects, and leads you into the creation of your future. It designs the overall shape of your tree, the blueprint, and the big overarching plan that allows you to bring the products of your imagination into form.
Where I live in Downeast Maine, just when you think it might never happen, Spring returns. The first courageous plants shoot up from the wet ground and soon the smell of green fills the air. As the Gate of Hope opens, your diaphragm relaxes and you take a deep breath as a sense of possibility returns.
On a physical level, stimulating the Gate of Hope relieves tightness in the diaphragm and the chest. On an emotional level, it relieves feelings of tension, irritability, and resentment. On a spirit level, it invites you to imagine a positive future. I like to apply a few drops of Gorse flower essence directly to this point when a person is feeling stuck, resigned, or hopeless. I will never forget the time I opened the Gate on a patient who had no knowledge of the point name and was facing the reality of her husband's alcoholism, overwhelmed with the uncertainty of whether to leave or stay in the marriage. After I needled the point, her body relaxed, she smiled, and said, “There is hope after all.”
As you work with this point, visualize repressed anger transforming into healthy aggression, procrastinating fantasy into activated imagination, and acquiescence into the capacity to face adversity as you move forward into the adventure of your life.
The Fire Officials—Triple Heater, Heart Protector/Pericardium, Small Intestine, and Heart—regulate the warmth and intimacy of your relationships. They allow you to connect to yourself and to others in safe yet enlivening ways. All relationship issues are in some way connected to one of these four Officials. If you imagine the heart as a monarch seated on a throne at the center of your being, the other three Fire Officials are like the ministers charged with protecting and maintaining the heart's well-being.
Your Triple Heater Official is not related to an actual physical organ but is connected to the entire regulation of warmth in your body. The Triple Heater also helps you regulate your emotional fire as you connect to yourself and to others.
Imagine a great moat surrounding and protecting the kingdom of your body, mind, and spirit. At the doorway to your castle, there is a wide oak drawbridge that you can lift for privacy and safety or lower when you are ready to welcome in the resources and energies of the outside world. The Outer Frontier Gate is your energetic drawbridge. It allows you to regulate how much warmth and life force you extend to the world and how much you take it. When this drawbridge is functioning, you feel that the heat of your relationships is well-regulated, that you are receiving what you need in order to replenish what you are giving to others.
This point functions as the doorway of communication between your innermost being and the outer world. On a physical level, this is a point to turn to at the first sneeze when you feel your castle may have been “invaded” by a cold. It can help release a tight shoulder or a stiff neck so that you can more easily reach out to the world. On an emotional level, Outer Frontier Gate can help you know when you need the company of other people and when you need to be alone. It helps you assess what you actually need with regard to closeness and distance in relationships. On a spirit level, a drop of Holly flower essence on this point reminds you that you have what you need to protect yourself and that you do not have to enter an uncertain or challenging relationship encounter with the door to your heart wide open.
Your Heart Protector Official is related to the pericardium, the protective layer of tissue that envelops and protects the heart and acts as the Heart Monarch's guardian. Presiding on a more internal level than the Triple Heater, this Official's job is to act as a semi-permeable membrane that opens the way for love, warmth, and other energies that support and vitalize your heart. In health, it also effortlessly closes when negative energies approach. The smooth boundary regulation of your Heart Protector allows you to feel a sense of trust and openness to others and to yourself.
At the high point of Summer, a crimson poppy bursts from its green bud and brings to fullness the promise of its minute black seed. In Chinese Medicine, this is the medicine of Fire—the capacity of the yang to expand, to open, and to move us outward into life. And yet, in order to fulfill its promise, the seed, like our own hearts, needs the protection of the bud. I envision the Palace of Weariness as the bud of the heart or as a ruby-colored dome of protection around the soul. It is also a place of convalescence where you can heal after betrayal, exhaustion, or loss, a place of preparation where you can gather your energies before moving out into the world.
This point's wisdom forms a protective, semi-permeable membrane, a shield around the heart that allows positive energies and love to enter the chamber of the Heart while effortlessly deflecting toxic or negative influences. This is a point I turn to often when a person is raw after an argument with a family member or feeling threatened in the face of a difficult meeting at work. I often use this point at the end of an initial session when a patient may feel vulnerable after speaking at length about his or her life story.
You can turn to the Palace when beginning or ending a relationship or when you want to go deeper but are feeling afraid. Of all the points in the body, this is the one that I have found most supports the paradoxical human desire to open to Self and others simultaneously.
The Small Intestine Official discerns the energies and relationships that nourish and support your heart and filters out what does not belong in your life at any given time. Like a private secretary who appraises every piece of correspondence to determine if it is worthy of the heart's attention, the Small Intestine must be able to sift through the cacophony of impressions to discern what input will actually support you in being you. The healthy Small Intestine Official listens carefully, culling out what is truly necessary, the pure from the impure, and then letting go of what doesn't serve.
Listening Palace is the point I rely on when someone has forgotten how to hear the music of their own heart. Touching this point is like bringing a small shell to your ear and hearing the sound of the ocean. It opens us to the virtue of deep listening, the capacity to discern what we truly feel and need.
I use this point when a patient is overwhelmed with input from other people and having difficulty sorting out what is truly good, nourishing, and necessary for their own heart. It is also my point of choice when a patient is having a hard time finding empathy—feeling into another person's experience without losing touch with their own truth. When you need to hear the message beyond another person's words or clarify your own heart's desires, open the door to the Listening Palace and wait in silence.
Your Heart Official is the monarch of the kingdom of your body, mind, and spirit. It is the sovereign ruler who maintains the rhythm and integrity of every other organ and activity in your body. In addition, your Heart Official is responsible for regulating the shen. It is the Official in charge of sustaining your conscious connection to your divine purpose and mandate.
At the moment of human fertilization, when the father's sperm meets the mother's egg, there is a spark that modern science now has the technology to detect. Taoist alchemists knew about this flash of fire at the moment of conception and they called it the “arrival of the spirit.” From a Taoist perspective, this light organizes the development of the embryo. Eventually, it settles in the heart and directs the path of your life until the moment of your death. However, during times of upset, crisis, or emotional excitement, the shen, like a frightened bird, may fly off back to the stars from where it came. Spirit Gate opens the way for the light's return.
This point is the doorway to the innermost chamber of your heart. I call on it when trauma of any kind results in a spirit disturbance that leads to confusion or dissociation. Consider this point when your shen is agitated, when your sleep is erratic, or when you are awakened by strange dreams. When you feel anxious, disoriented, or restless, or even overly excited by joy, a drop of rose essential oil on this point will calm your shen and call the scattered birds of your spirit back to the nest of your heart.
Your Earth Officials—the Stomach and Spleen—work together to digest and assimilate the nutrients, ideas, impressions, and experiences you take in from the outer world.
Your Stomach Official breaks down and digests the physical food as well as the experiences and ideas that you take in so that the essential nutrients can be used in service of your embodied life.
Abundant Splendor gathers up the spirit of Late Summer and distributes it through your being. It stabilizes, clarifies, and nourishes your intention and supports your capacity for thoughtful, measured, and potent action.
I call on the wisdom of this point when the garden of life has gotten out of hand and too many good things are happening at the same time. It was the point that transformed one patient's wedding from a perfect storm of overwhelming details, emotions, and family members into a graceful feast of beauty, joy, and love.
When your plate is overwhelmingly full and yet there is much to be grateful for, Abundant Splendor will help you remember how to celebrate the harvest. A drop of coriander essential oil on this point will support you in receiving, digesting, and distributing the bounty of your life. It will calm you, liberate you from worry, and bring both clarity and movement.
Your Spleen Official is like a traffic director who stands at the center of a crossroads and directs the nutrients obtained from the food that the Stomach has digested. It is in charge of transforming the information you receive into potent ideas and clear thought.
In a low, damp place in a field, water accumulates, becoming stagnant and murky. The roots of the field flowers rot and invasive marsh species move in to replace them. But if a small channel opens, the water drains and is distributed into the surrounding earth. The balance of life restored, native wildflowers once again proliferate.
Yin Mound Spring is the point that opens the flow channel in you. Turn to this point when the energies in your body have become stagnant and heavy, when your mind has been invaded by worry and obsessive thoughts, or your spirit is unable to digest and assimilate the experiences of your life. Invite this point when it's time to cultivate your own growth and well-being rather than giving over your life force to others. When you find yourself invaded and strangled by the needs of others, a few drops of Centaury flower essence on this point will support you in saying no when appropriate in order to establish more healthy boundaries.
The Metal Officials—the Lung and Large Intestine—work together to help you let go of what is obsolete and devitalized in your life in order to make space to receive what is new, inspiring, and enlivening.
Your Lung Official directly regulates the rhythm of your breath and indirectly regulates the rhythm of your entire being, including heart rate, blood flow, peristalsis, and cranial rhythms. Through its regulation of the breath, this Official controls the unfolding of all your unconscious autonomic processes.
When Autumn becomes heavy with rain and darkness wraps the edges of the day like a woven quilt, Cloud Gate opens a small passageway in the clouds so that we can catch a glimpse of the expanse beyond. After loss, depression, oppression, and death, Cloud Gate clears a way for the soul to move on, to prepare for the next stage in the journey of life.
This Metal point opens your lungs and allows you to breathe more freely. It invites you to rest in the spaciousness of grief and to rediscover your faith in emptiness. Consider Cloud Gate when you are mourning or when your soul is shrouded in depression, confusion, or despair. Consider this point when you have forgotten your own preciousness or the preciousness of others.
Your Large Intestine Official is like a good father who encourages you to leave behind your heavy suitcase of memorabilia, old books, torn clothing, and other extraneous stuff so that you can move unencumbered onward in your life. This Official disposes of all that you no longer need, on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level.
Like any hidden pond or pool that you find when walking along a crooked path in the forest, this point is a gathering place for spirits and ghosts. We come here to help these lost beings find their resting place and help the soul let go of what it no longer needs to carry. This point allows you to release grief, trauma, and outmoded holding patterns.
Pool at the Crook opens you to your depths and allows the life force to flow. It is a point of release for both acute and chronic holding patterns. It brings Metal's medicine of deep surrender. On a physical level, this point can help relieve the discomfort of an acute sore throat and laryngitis. On an emotional level, it calms agitation and relieves tightness and oppression in the chest. On a spirit level, a drop of Rock Water flower essence on this point is like coming across an unexpected sacred spring with the power to cool, clear, and renew your life force.
Dove Tail is the mother point of the Heart Protector. It allows you to directly access, raise, and gather the wisdom of the pericardium. It clears and protects the heart in the face of emotional turmoil, uncertainty, and change.
I turn to the wisdom of this point when a patient is experiencing an emotional impasse, especially when he or she is struggling with the opposing impulses to be both vulnerable and remain safe. Dove Tail offers support when a person needs to hold the tension between trusting the self while trusting another, feeling the joy of love and the grief of loss, desiring connection while longing for protection. Dove Tail is a point of resolution and synthesis. Here, at the center of the chest, contradictions dovetail and converge.
When you are recovering from loss or betrayal, Dove Tail will bring a sense of forgiveness, acceptance, and release. When you are dealing with intimacy issues, relationship-related states of anxiety and worry, as well as feelings of overwhelm and hysteria, this point will bring a sense of trust and calm.
One Hundred Meetings is located at the highest point of your body. It is the opening where the starlight from the Milky Way was poured into you at the time of your conception and it is through this point that your shen will fly back to the stars at the moment of your death.
On a physical level, this point helps to relieve headaches, sleepiness, heaviness in the head, as well as dizziness and brain fog. On an emotional level, it can help with feelings of depression, sadness, hyperactivity, and an inability to relax. On the level of spirit, this point helps you align your life with your authentic Tao. Touch this point when you need to get in touch with your inner compass. Invite the spirit of this point to assist you when you feel you have gone off the track of your destiny and you feel uninspired in your daily life. Visualize a gossamer thread of silk extending upward from One Hundred Meetings all the way to your personal North Star, watch your dreams, and open to the messages of Heaven.
When applying the essential oils and flower essences indicated for these treatments, the medicinals should be used in undiluted form. Place a drop or drops of the medicinal on a cotton swab or your fingertip and apply directly to the designated points. Hold the swab or your finger on the point for a minimum of thirty seconds to one minute to allow the point to absorb the energetic of the oil or flower essence. I've found that cotton swabs work best with flower essences due to their watery nature, and often I apply the essential oil drops directly to the points from the dropper and then apply finger pressure to the point. Avoid touching your fingers directly to the bottle or applicator to prevent contamination.
Emotional shock leaves your body jangled and destabilized and your psychic nerve endings fried. Your shen flies out of your heart and you feel “out of it,” disoriented, and confused. This treatment helps root your shen, calm your nerves, and settle your emotions after a family crisis or argument, unexpected news, a minor accident, or even when you experience excess joy and excitement after falling in love, getting engaged, or having a baby. It can help relieve shakiness and anxiety when preparing for an important presentation at work or an intimate gathering with friends. As a side effect of rooting the shen, the treatment can also relieve restlessness at night, help you fall asleep when you are overstimulated, or get back to sleep after waking from a dream.
Medicinals: Rose Essential Oil and Rock Rose Flower Essence
Spirit Points:
Imaginal Practice: As you apply the essence and the oil, visualize the Body Felt Sense feeling of shock being absorbed and transformed by the Earth and the birds of the shen settling back into the waiting nest of your heart. Once you have applied the medicinals to the points, rest quietly for at least five minutes and practice the Heart Meditation from chapter 4.
When your inner data processor overloads, your brain circuits clog, and your mind is filled with fuzz and fog, this treatment reboots your mental-emotional body back into smooth working order. It helps you move the sludge of trivia coming in from the news machine of the outer world and compute the information that is actually useful. It can help relieve overthinking and mental indigestion. In addition, it will help you recognize your own needs and responsibilities and clarify your intention when you are bombarded with other people's wants and demands. Last but not least, this combination of points and medicinals can help you transform worry—the unskillful use of your imagination—into a clear-headed response to present circumstance.
Medicinals: Coriander Essential Oil and Centaury Flower Essence
Spirit Points:
Imaginal Practice: As you apply the oil and the essence, imagine a stream of light pouring down through the top of your head, washing through your entire body, carrying away stagnant thoughts and useless worries. As the light streams through you, it leaves behind a fresh, vibrant clarity like a sunlit morning after rain. Imagine a conduit of connection opening between your mind and your heart and ask yourself, “What do I need right now?” Pause, wait, and listen for the answer.
You walk away from a conversation with a colleague and dread creeps up your spine. The keen idea you came to discuss has lost its shimmer. You feel dull, dumb, and depressed. What just happened? Maybe you have been hit by another person's envy or unconscious anger. Although your colleague probably doesn't know he's envious or angry, the toxic energy still impacts you. This treatment will help clear and disperse toxic emotional energies, awaken your healthy instincts of self-protection, and create a semi-permeable shield of positive energy around you after a difficult interaction with another person, exposure to extreme emotion, or being in the presence of suffering. Touch these spirit points with the sacred balm of Frankincense and call on the protective wisdom of Holly before facing a challenging encounter with a critical boss, after a traumatic encounter with an angry friend, or when you need spiritual protection as you recover from addiction, emotional invasion, betrayal, or loss.
Medicinals: Frankincense Essential Oil and Holly Flower Essence
Spirit Points:
Imaginal Practice: Once you have completed the treatment, shake your hands and arms and then your whole body vigorously for three to five minutes. Imagine negative energies rushing out of your body, dispersing and transforming.
There is a good tiredness that comes after a day's work that is restored by a night of sleep. And then there is the bone tiredness that comes after intensive overuse of your inner resources—tending to a dying relative, completing an advanced course of study, or caring for a newborn baby after a difficult birth. This kind of fatigue can feel bottomless, as if your inner well will never be replenished. In these cases, the following combination of points and medicinals, along with time and rest, can help revitalize you. This is the treatment of choice for exhaustion after travel, emotional upheaval, or illness. It helps build depleted essences, supports appropriate self-care, and brings you back in touch with the strength of your inner mountain.
Medicinals: Balsam Fir Essential Oil and Rock Water Flower Essence
Spirit Points:
Imaginal Practice: After completing this treatment, sit quietly for a few minutes and visualize roots growing downward from the point at the center of the soles of your feet, seeking, discovering, and absorbing the yin fluid life essences that course through the streams of the underworld. Imagine these essences rising upward from your feet, enlivening every cell in your body as you lean back into the imaginal mountain behind you and take in the gift of deep, restorative rest.
As you move forward with your exploration of alchemy, you will encounter moments when it feels ridiculous to imagine that the lead of your life will transform to gold or to believe that the world around you will heal. There will be days when the suffering feels too great to bear and the weight of human fear, hatred, suspicion, and greed seems to suffocate every intrepid green sprout of hope that emerges from the darkness. In these moments, how do you return to a place of wonder? How do you find your way back to the birthright of “Wow!” that is your authentic nature?
Turn to this treatment when your imagination has gone dim and the path to the future is shrouded in impenetrable clouds. This is a treatment to remember, to offer as a gift to yourself and to your friends, and to hold in your back pocket and call on as you risk the audacity of hope.
Medicinals: Bergamot Essential Oil and Gorse Flower Essence
Spirit Points:
Imaginal Practice: As you anoint these points, bring your awareness to Stomach 40: Abundant Splendor and feel the qi move upward to Liver 14: Gate of Hope. Finally, release the energy with an inhalation and exhalation as the lungs receive the benefit of the Gorse.