Resonance Through Storytelling

The Extraordinary Vessels & Self-Nourishment

• Melanie Adrianna • Season 1 • Episode 9

Share episode

Unlock the secrets of traditional Chinese medicine's extraordinary vessels and transform your well-being journey. From the ancient energy channels that influence our emotional and physical balance to the connection between fertility and aging, this episode promises to offer insights that will resonate with both healthcare practitioners and curious listeners alike. By exploring the intricate dance of yin and yang energies, you'll gain a deeper understanding of how to maintain essential bodily functions and harness the Chong Mai's role in life's stages. In resonance with this theme, I share a heartfelt story about the pulse changes that occur at the end of life, revealing the profound link between our energy and existence.

Celebrate the importance of self-care with a list of Kidney energy nourishing foods and my special recipe reveal that will invigorate your daily routine. Combining the rich flavors of black tea, raw cacao, honey, lion's mane mushroom and maca powder, this recipe is designed to uplift and rejuvenate. Join me in contemplating how we can embrace nourishing practices and empower our well-being with self-care.

Thank you for tuning in and creating this space with me.

To learn more about me or to work with me 1:1 online, please visit http://MelanieAdrianna.com or contact me at soundcreatrix@gmail.com.

Melanie Adrianna


Music credit: 

Thank you to Den from Pixabay for the first background song and to music_from_video from Pixabay for the second background song in this episode.

Support the show

Speaker 1:

I'm creating an energy field for storytelling. I'm creating an energy field for storytelling Aligning my central channel, taking a breath in Closing any open doors, leaks, back doors, hidden and secret doors. I'm inviting in the audience who is here to resonate in this field. I'm asking that, through my source connection, the words, the ideas, the stories and the insights come through to support the listeners in their greatest remembrance of self. There are a lot of healthcare practitioners in the audience today Energy medicine facilitators, shamans, medicine women and men, herbalists, hobbyists, experimenters Welcome.

Speaker 1:

Today I'm going to talk about the extraordinary vessels. This is a topic that really interested me in the beginning of my studies of oriental medicine and five element theory. The extraordinary vessels are the deepest primordial vessels within the body. It is taught within the system of traditional Chinese medicine that the extraordinary vessels are the first energetic meridians or streams of energy to form in the womb space. They include the essential essence and resources that we use throughout our lives when we are in need of deeper nourishment, when we are in need of deeper nourishment particularly on an emotional level, and also in circumstances of chronic stress, fatigue, pregnancy and sudden shock and trauma. There are eight main extraordinary vessels that are commonly talked about in Chinese medicine, and then there are also additional vessels that are spoken about in other specialty systems and modalities that focus exclusively on these extraordinary vessels. This is also a common topic in Qigong, which includes hundreds, if not thousands, of traditions of movement with breath in order to self-regulate the functions of the body and access the resources and flow of the energy within the meridian system and the entirety of the biofield.

Speaker 1:

In Chinese, the names of these vessels are the Yin Wei, the Yang Wei, the Yin Chao, the Yang Chao, the Ren Mai, the Du Mai, the Dai Mai and the Chong Mai. The Ren and the Du Mai correspond to the Yin and the Yang of the body. There's an idea of the universal circuit or central circuit that runs through the front and back of the center lines of the body, on the front and the back sides of the spine. The yin is in the front side of the body and the yang is in the back side of the body, the yin corresponding to nourishment, introversion, emotions, stillness, darkness, receptivity, mothering and the nighttime. The yang, central channel on the backside of the body corresponds to active outward energy, the daylight, extroversion, expression, movement, sunlight, taking those resources from the yin and utilizing them to metabolize the bodily functions and express creatively out into the world. A balance of yin and yang is essential as they feed each other in a constant loop, literally and figuratively, within the energetic rhythms of our bodies, as well as throughout the seasons and the cycles that we move through, the seasons that mirror the metabolic functions and psychological and emotional processes within the human body and psyche. The yin and the yang also establish an essential polarity in the body. The yin comes up through the feet, from our connection to the earth as negative electrons, and moves up the front of the body to the top of the crown and connects above, while the yang comes from above the celestial energies or the codes from the Sun that stream through the crown and move through the back side of the body back down into the earth. In a state of balance, our bodies discharge any excess or imbalance of positive and negative frequencies. This polarity is essential to the functioning of all of our body systems, as the organs in each of the energy centers, which are known as chakras to many, have their own polarity of positive or negative frequencies.

Speaker 1:

The extraordinary vessel called the Chong Mai or the conception vessel is connected deeply to the blood, to the menstrual cycle, fertility, menopause and hormonal balance in both men and women. It is deeply connected to the energy of the kidney, holds the essence or the Jing in Chinese medicine, which is said to have a finite resource. When you're born you have a certain amount of essence that is stored in the kidneys and its meridian system, and as we age that resource is slowly depleted and in later years of life, when there's a little bit less kidney essence, you see things like the graying of hair, hearing loss, dry skin, nails and hair, decreased libido and a potential depletion of the marrow of the bones, causing issues like osteoporosis or osteopenia or memory loss. That's why it's so important to nourish the kidney energy, not just later in life, but throughout our lives. Foods that nourish the kidney include fish, especially white fish, and salmon, shrimp, dates, leeks, nuts particularly walnuts, macadamia nuts, brazil nuts, lentils, beans, fresh berries and tropical fruits like pineapple, mango, kiwi and pomegranate, although pomegranate, I'll add, is more for the heart. But the kidney and the heart work together fire and water in their own dance. This is a little-known fact in Chinese medicine that I think you'll find interesting.

Speaker 1:

There are 12 pulse positions on the wrists that represent the 12 energy meridians, or energy lines present the 12 energy meridians, or energy lines that are connected to the meridians that rise to the surface of the body to access the acupuncture points that you all know of. And in a healthy state the pulse has an even quality. You can feel the definition of the pulse it's not weak, it's not too strong, it has like an even keel flow to it. And when someone's body and spirit is getting ready to transition to the non-physical, the last available resources from the kidney, energetic, all of the pulse positions become empty within the hours or minutes before somebody transitions, except for the kidney pulse position. That pulse actually gets large and flooding because the body is using its last available resources to keep itself alive. This is actually something I witnessed when my grandmother transitioned. Me and several of my family members were sitting in her hospice room talking to her, sharing stories and holding her hand. I flew out to Arizona from Denver at the time and I was scared and worried. I hadn't expected her sudden decline in health. One of my teachers in Denver connected me with his Navajo friend, a beautiful spiritual woman who learned from her parents the old ways, and she was praying for my grandmother and in the hour leading up to her transition. In the hospice room in Arizona, I could hear the Navajo woman praying in my right ear as if she were sitting in the room with us. I knew that she was assisting her soul to get ready to move on and it was beautiful.

Speaker 1:

The extraordinary vessels hold precious resources that allow us to navigate life at a very deep, intuitive level. They help us to establish and reform our relationship to ourselves and to the outside world, the boundary between what feels safe and what doesn't. How do we nourish ourselves within and without? Whether it's through an internal introspective or meditative practice, or eating nourishing foods or cultivating nourishing relationships with others? We each have our own ways of coming back into balance and of accessing our deepest resources. How do you do that for yourself? What do you do to nourish yourself or to create that balance between your inner world and your outer world, between your relationship with yourself and your relationship to the outside world, to the outside world?

Speaker 1:

In that process of unfolding these deep ways of relating, it's very common for traumas to come up, or early memories or feelings within the body that aren't necessarily connected to memories but create a sense of limitation or blockage. Sense of limitation or blockage. I invite you to slow down when that friction arises in your life. Slow down and tune in to what your body and what your energy is really trying to tell you. What are your needs and how can you be there for you to acknowledge them and, when you're ready, take steps to get them met?

Speaker 1:

I just noticed that there are some mothers in the field with young children and it made me smile. I'm not a mother, but I can't imagine what it's like to nourish your own resources when you have to constantly give to a little one or multiple little ones. I think it's really a superhuman power that mothers have, but somehow they find the way. Before I close the field, I'm going to give you my secret recipe for my nourishing tea drink. I like to use a Somme tea or any form of black tea that's tasty, and I add a tablespoon of raw cacao powder, a teaspoon of honey or more to taste, and about half to one teaspoon of both lion's mane mushroom powder and maca powder, and it makes me feel so good and so nourished. So, in the light of tuning in to self-nourishment and the extraordinary vessels, I thank you for joining me today in this field of resonance and hope to see you next time. Thank you.