How to use the Yin Qiao Mai in treatment | Traditional Chinese Medicine | Acupuncture | Episode 46

Everyone, Dr. Richard Lai here with Study Acupuncture With Me. So today's episode is on the Yin Chao Mai. Now the Yin Chao Mai is one of the extraordinary vessels. So before we get into all that and more, let's hear a quick word from our sponsor. This episode is sponsored by me. Please go to www.studyacuwithme.com to sign up for my email list. When you sign up for my email list, you get free study guides right to your email. So go to www.studyacuwithme.com to sign up today. All right, and we're back. So in this episode, we're going to be talking about the Yin Chao Mai. Now this episode is broken up into four different parts. So first, we're going to talk about the general theory of the Yin Chao Mai. And then second, we're going to talk about the pathway of the Yin Chao Mai. We're also going to talk about all the points that the Yin Chao Mai shares. And then third, we're going to talk about the three ways that you can use the Yin Chao Mai with your patients. And then our fourth topic, our last topic, we're going to end the episode with the Yin Chao Mai topic that's related to board exam prep. So make sure you get to the end of the episode for that one. So this episode is on Yin Chao Mai, which you probably heard as the Yin Motility Vessel, or the Yin Stepping Vessel, or even the Yin Heal Vessel. In Chinese, it's called the Yin Chao Mai. Now with that word Chao, I went down a rabbit hole with that word Chao because I was confused as to which word it was actually translated into. Is it motility? Is it stepping? Or is it heal? So I went and looked at the Chinese word for it. And some of you may know that I'm an American born Chinese person, but I do speak Mandarin. And that's because of my mom. She spoke to me in Chinese when I was younger. And actually, when I went to school, I actually had to go to ESL classes, which means English as a second language class. So I went to school not knowing how to speak English. Now, when I was researching this word Chao in Chinese, I have to look at the pinyin version of it, which is the word spelled out in English. Now with Chinese, there's four tones for every word in Chinese. So one word can have four different tones and can mean four different things. So in Chinese, when you spell out mother in pinyin, it's M A. And then you add a tonation to it. So for example, you can say ma or ma, which one of them is mother. And then the other one is horse. So I'll let you take a guess in the comments, which one is mother and which one is horse. My point is Chinese is pretty confusing. And when I saw this yin chao mai, I thought it was the word chao that I knew, which is chao qi lai, which just means like to prop up or to tilt up. But if you look at the pinyin for the word in yin chao mai, this chao is actually the first tone of the four tonations, which is the same tone as the one that you would use for mother. So mother in Chinese is ma. And then this chao is chao. And this chao actually means to raise one's foot. So that's why some of our English reference books will call it the stepping vessel. All right. Now, overall, from an extraordinary vessels theory sense, we already know that the extraordinary vessels have a lot of different functions. Now, one of the main functions is that they act like reservoirs. Now, what do reservoirs do? They absorb excesses. So for example, if it rains and a river floods, there's a reservoir that's connected that can absorb some of the excess water. So when it comes to the yin chao mai, it also acts as a reservoir. In fact, the yin chao mai is actually the first line of defense when there's an excess of yin. And the yang chao mai is the first line of defense when there's an excess of yang. So the yin chao mai acts as a reservoir for yin, especially from the abdominal area. And then the yang chao mai acts as a reservoir for yang, especially from the head. All right. So next, let's talk about the overall pathway of the yin chao mai. So the yin chao mai, it originates in the heel. And from there, it goes to kidney two. From kidney two, it goes up to the medial malleolus, where kidney six is. From there, it goes up to kidney eight. Now, kidney eight, we have to know, is the she cleft point of the yin chao mai. Now, from kidney eight, the yin chao mai goes up the inside of the leg, goes all the way up to the groin, to the genitals. It goes up over the abdomen. It goes up over your chest. And it goes directly to stomach 12. And stomach 12, we know, is in the supraclavicular fossa. And then from stomach 12, it goes up into our throat. And it actually emerges at stomach nine. From there, it goes up over our jaw, over our mouth, around our nose, to get to the inner canthus area, where bladder one is. And this is actually where it also connects with the yang chao mai. Now, after it connects with UB1 and the yang chao mai, the yin chao mai is going to go up over the forehead, and it's going to enter into the brain. So overall, the yin chao mai, it shares points with kidney two, kidney six, kidney eight, stomach 12, stomach nine, and UB1. All right. Now, let's talk about how you can use the yin chao mai in treatment with your patients. And there's three ways that you can use it. Now, number one, you can use it for sleep issues. So first, we saw before how the pathway of the yin chao mai ends at the eye. Now, it's because of this pathway that both the yin chao mai and the yang chao mai have a lot to do with our sleep cycle. And that's because the yin chao mai flows yin energy up to our eyes. And yang chao mai flows yang energy up to our eyes. Now, this just means that the yin chao mai is going to help close the eyes because it brings yin energy up to the eyes. But if there's an issue with the yin chao mai, for example, maybe the yin chao mai is bringing too much yin energy up to the eyes. So then what's going to happen is that the patient's going to experience somnolence, which somnolence is just when someone's really drowsy and they're falling asleep all the time. So on one end, you can have insomnia where you can't sleep. And then you have somnolence on the other end where you're sleepy all the time. So now in terms of the yin chao mai and the yang chao mai, because one brings yin energy to close the eyes and the other brings yang energy to open the eyes, you can use them to treat insomnia and somnolence. So for example, with insomnia, the eyes are staying open, right? You can't fall asleep. So you can use the yin chao mai to bring yin energy to close the eyes. Now, how do you do that? Well, you have to activate the yin chao mai. How do you activate the yin chao mai? You do that through its opening point and its coupled point. So the opening point of the yin chao mai is kidney 6, and the coupled point is lung 7. And you would tonify kidney 6 to activate the yin chao mai so that it brings more yin energy to the eyes, especially for the case of insomnia. Now, if there's somnolence, you could do two things. You can either reduce the amount of yin energy that's going to the eyes, and you can do that by reducing kidney 6, or you can increase the amount of yang energy that's going to the eyes. So how do you do that? You tonify the yang chao mai to use the opening point for the yang chao mai, which is UV62. All right, and clinical application number two of the yin chao mai is with atrophy syndrome. Now, atrophy syndrome is also known as Wei syndrome. So Wei syndrome, that Wei means flaccidity. With this syndrome, there's atrophy, which is wasting away of the muscles, and there's also flaccidity of the muscles. Now, this Wei syndrome can happen for a lot of different reasons. The primary reason is deficiency-related. Like, for example, if there's a deficiency of qi and blood. It can also happen if there's trauma to the limb. Like, for example, if someone hurts their arm, someone hit it with a baseball bat. Now, there's qi stagnation, there's blood stasis, and that can actually lead to a deficiency in nourishment of the muscles, which would then result in atrophy syndrome. Atrophy syndrome can also happen if there's something invading the body. Like, if there's dampness or heat invading the body. Basically, something is causing a blockage to the muscles. So the muscles are blocked from getting the nourishment they need, and that would result in atrophy syndrome. So yin chao mai can be used to treat this syndrome. And with the yin chao mai, it's strongest when you use it in a very specific set of conditions. And these conditions are when number one, the muscles of the inner aspect of the legs are tight, and number two, the muscles of the outer aspect of the leg are loose, which just means that the muscles on the outer aspect of the leg are atrophied, and the muscles on the inner aspect of the legs are tight. So that means the legs are going to draw in, the feet, the heels are going to be drawn in. In other words, your foot is going to invert, or it's going to supinate, which there's a difference between the two. So you can use the yin chao mai to balance the inner and outer aspects of the legs. And you can do this again by using the opening point and the couple point, which the opening point is kidney six, and the coupled point is lung seven. All right, now the last way you can use the yin chao mai is you can use it to treat abdominal pain. Very specifically, you can use it to treat unilateral abdominal pain, which means single-sided, one-sided abdominal pain. Now this can be any type of pain that's just one-sided, that's unilateral. For example, maybe the patient has bloating on one side, maybe the patient had a surgery on one side, maybe they have growths on one side. So any abdominal pain that's unilateral can be treated using the yin chao mai. All right, now it's time for that special topic that's related to board prep with the yin chao mai. Now, I know that some of you listening are prepping for the boards. And on the boards, it's going to ask you a lot about the clinical manifestations of the patterns and the channels. So with the yin chao mai, we have these clinical manifestations here. And I took these references from both Machiocha and from Camp. If you look at it, they look different, but they're really the same manifestations. It's just that one uses different words. It's just that they use different words to mean the same thing. Now I've also bullet pointed them in a very specific way so that they're easier for you to understand. So for example, first we have from Machiocha, we have sleepiness, we have epilepsy. Now with Machiocha, it actually specifies that these epileptic episodes happen at nighttime, which nighttime we know is yin time. So that's specifically related to the yin chao mai. Now, both of these clinical manifestations have to do with the yin chao mai's function of bringing yin energy up to the eyes. So if there's an issue with that function, that can result in the sleepiness or it can result in those epilepsy episodes for your patient at nighttime. Next, we have pain in the back and hip, radiating to the groin, radiating to the genitals. We also have abdominal pain, we have hypogastric pain, and we have abdominal masses. Now all these have to do with the pathway of the yin chao mai because we saw before how the yin chao mai, it goes to the groin, goes to the genitals, goes to our abdomen. We also went over how you can use the yin chao mai to treat unilateral abdominal pain issues in our patients. The next set we have is the foot turning inwards. We have tightness of the muscles on the inner aspect of the legs, and then we have flaccidity of the muscles on the outer aspect. We also have tremors in the legs. So all this has to do with the atrophy syndrome that we were talking about before, which this presentation is a pretty classical presentation or a classical indication for the yin chao mai. That's where the inner aspect of the muscles are tight, the outer aspect of the muscles are loose. So that's why the foot is going to turn inward because the inward muscles are tight. And then next we have myomas. We have difficult delivery, and then we also have placental retention. Now these have to do with the classical indications of the yin chao mai and they also have to do with the pathway of the channel. Now, mostly with these, you see that there's a theme there, which is that they have to do with the reproductive system. Because what's a myoma? A myoma, for example, is a uterine fibroid. A uterine fibroid is a growth in our uterus. So the yin chao mai can be used to treat these growths. And then we also have difficult delivery, and then we have placental retention, which is energetically, they're related also to the classical indications for the yin chao mai. All right, next we have the manifestations from can, which again, they're pretty much the same thing, just can uses different words. For example, can just says epilepsy. It doesn't specify nighttime epilepsy. Can also uses lethargy, whereas machocha says sleepiness. And then can says lower abdominal pain, whereas machocha says hypogastric pain. So again, they're the same things. Can also has here lumbar hip pain radiating to the pubic region and spasm of the lower limbs, which machocha uses tremors. So again, pretty much these are the same as the manifestations in bullet point three. And then can says inversion of the foot, which again, as a physical therapist, I can go on and on about how inversion is similar, but not exactly the same as supination. And I'm not exactly sure if the translators of can went that deep into the differences between supination and inversion. But regardless, if the foot is drawn inwards because of that tightness of the inward muscles and looseness of the outer muscles, then that's related to the yin chao man. All right. And that brings us to the end of this episode. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you found value out of it. Leave a comment for any other topics that you want to see on this channel. And hey, if you found some value out of this episode, someone else will probably too. So get some good karma and share this episode with a friend. And until next time, God bless and happy studying.