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Today we’re going to wrap up our series on the Chinese Clock – a concept in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) whereby each organ has a two-hour period of the day when it does its best work. (At the end there are links to the previous three articles in case you missed them.) Often you can experience a sense of alignment or improved health by doing certain activities during each time slot. But several of the organs peak while you’re sleeping and you won’t always be able to schedule your life around this system, so the important part is simply to recognize and appreciate that you have these amazing capacities.
11:00 PM to 1:00 AM – Gallbladder Time
In China, a brave person is sometimes said to have a “big gallbladder” – while a timid person has a small one. The TCM view of the organ is a bit more specific – the gallbladder doesn’t preside over all forms of bravery, but specifically the courage to be decisive in accordance with one’s plan. In order for you to understand the role of the gallbladder among our society of organs, I need to tell you a little about the liver.
The liver has the role of the general or chief planner. The general uses her keen vision to strategize and plan – everything from the many tiny plans that make your day work to the big Life Plans that make your life feel productive and gratifying. We might even think of the liver as the architect, in which case the gallbladder would be the foreman – the guy (or girl) on the ground overseeing the implementation of the plan and making all the minute-to-minute decisions about how best to bring the plan to life.
The gallbladder acupuncture meridian covers the sides of the body – the sides of the head, the sides of the torso, and the outer side of the leg. Once I had a patient who had been experiencing pain in this area of his leg, and offhandedly I mentioned the gallbladder’s association with decision-making. “Sometimes people experience discomfort along this pathway when they’re blocked around some important decision,” I told him, barely expecting it to mean anything.
With great excitement, he responded that he had been contemplating quitting the band he played drums for, and he now realized the pain began the same day he started thinking about it. In that moment, lying on my table, he decided to leave the band, and in an instant the pain was gone from his leg.
The best way to spend Gallbladder Time is sleeping. There’s a lot of energy in the decision-maker, and if you stay up until this time, it’s likely that you’ll get a second wind which will take you the whole way to 1:00 AM. But at the end of the day, you’re probably experiencing “decision fatigue” from all the day’s decisions, and this energy is likely to be squandered. If you’re asleep, the mind can work things out without interference, and you’ll wake with a freshness that’s ideal for good decisions.
Biologically, the gallbladder is a small pouch attached to the liver that stores and releases bile to help us digest fats. Gallbladders are prone to get inflamed and painful when we chronically expose ourselves to food that we’re sensitive to. Many gallbladder removals could be avoided through identifying and removing these foods while taking Chinese herbs to dissolve gallstones and reduce inflammation (the most common formula is called Li Dan Pian and it’s often miraculous).
1:00 to 3:00 AM – Liver Time
As I explained, the liver is the general or chief planner. It’s considered to be closely connected to the eyes, which gives the general the faculty of keen vision, allowing for a clear life plan and goals, as well as a view of the “big picture.”
The liver’s weakness is a tendency to become frustrated or angry when it encounters obstacles to its plans – like an overly rigid general – and in the presence of anger, its vision is lost and growth becomes stagnation. It loses sight of the big picture and instead sees only the obstacle at hand, which is perceived as an injustice.
We need flexibility and perspective to get back on track. By stepping back, we can see the larger scheme of things, remember where we were headed, appreciate the enhanced growth that obstacles promote, and recognize there are more important things than being “right.”
Like Gallbladder Time, Liver Time is best spent asleep, so the mind can clean house and restructure our plans without our interference. But this is a common time for insomniacs to awaken, as the planner, like the decision-maker, often has a powerful, even domineering, energy. Sometimes this can be avoided by writing down unresolved plans and decisions before bed, so the mind doesn’t feel it needs to keep track.
3:00 to 5:00 AM – Lung Time
The lungs are associated in TCM with the fall season. After the robust growth of spring and summer, fall is about letting go, especially of outward appearances (like leaves), and the certain bareness that results. For some, this part of the cycle feels like loss and evokes grief. But there’s a lesson in this loss – it causes us to focus on what’s left: the intangible and eternal Oneness that connects everything.
Every act of letting go (exhalation or expiration) is paired with a filling up (inhalation of inspiration). And "inspiration" is a perfect word for this phase of the lungs' work - to make within us a rich spaciousness.
The lungs remind us of this as they take in and let go of the intangible all day long (which actually consists of the atoms of the world around us, including those breathed by virtually everyone else in history). The rhythm of the breath is a mantra that offers a perpetual opportunity to connect with our expanded self – to remember.
Most people are asleep during this time, which makes it easier for the mind to let go without our conscious clinging, but yogis have long considered these hours ideal for their morning practice. The crispness of early morning is much like the crispness of fall air, and it can be especially conducive to meditation, breath work, letting go, and tuning in.
Again, my intention in writing this series wasn’t so much to convince you to build your life around these two-hour time periods but to give you a look at the cycles you move through each day. So many wondrous things are happening in your body, mind, and spirit. I hope these articles have made you aware of the tremendous opportunity for healing, connection, and expansion that’s always available.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S. In case you missed them, here are links to Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
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http://www.thedragontree.com/2017/02/14/tick-tock-part-three-follow-clock-life/
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In 1984, followers of the spiritual guru Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, 1931-1990) sprinkled salmonella bacteria into the salad bars of ten restaurants in Oregon, sickening 751 people. A few years earlier, Osho had left his commune in India due to pressure from authorities and purchased a defunct ranch in the Pacific Northwest. Thousands of his students moved in, but the land wasn’t zoned for that volume of habitation. They ran into more trouble with the law because of it, and had to find ways to conceal how many people were actually residing there.
Hiding the expansion of the community was difficult as their numbers grew because they wore highly visible red robes – plus they built an airstrip, restaurants, and fire department on the property. It probably didn’t help that they occasionally drove into town in a Jeep with a machine gun mounted on it. They clashed with locals, government officials, and environmental groups, but eventually hit upon a solution: this would all be legal if they could establish the ranch as a city.
There was considerable resistance from the community, however, and this is what led to the salmonella plan. Through what has been called the largest domestic act of bioterrorism in the U.S., they hoped to incapacitate enough voters to secure wins for their own candidates in the upcoming county election. But despite the sickened population, local voter turnout was high enough to keep Osho’s supporters (AKA “Rajneeshees”) from succeeding.
During this time, the guru was observing a long period of seclusion and had ceased contact with all but a small number of close attendants. However, his devotees bought him a collection of 93 Rolls Royces, and each day he would slowly drive one of these luxury cars down a long dirt road where they waited to catch a glimpse of him.
About a year later, Osho himself reported the salmonella attacks to the authorities. The attacks, it turns out, were just the most visible expression of a chaotic fanaticism that had developed in a portion of his followers. Osho claimed they acted without his knowledge or blessing; they said he sanctioned it.
It’s difficult to discern the truth from all the stories, partly because his form of teaching came with an apparent delight in shocking people. He enjoyed cursing, had an irreverent sense of humor, championed free love, and proposed such offensive measures as euthanizing disabled children. He was both scorned and revered. Many intelligent people regard him as one of the greatest contemporary spiritual teachers, and probably millions would credit him with making a positive impact on their lives.
When most people encounter such a button-pushing issue or figure, they feel compelled to take a side. We like things to be black and white. If we can frame something in terms of good and evil or right and wrong, it makes our lives easier. It feels good to have strong, unwavering convictions. But the truth doesn’t usually conform to such convenient categories. Almost everything falls somewhere along the gigantic spectrum between the extremes. And accepting this requires the work of deeper contemplation and possibly the discomfort of admitting that our position isn’t completely correct.
A recent study showed that people who know the least about a subject are the most likely to take a strongly polarized position on it – perhaps even a zealous, foaming-at-the-mouth position. The corollary to this finding is that the more we really understand a person or issue, the more neutral our position becomes, and the more accepting we tend to be of different viewpoints.
In the case of Osho, my opinion is that he was charismatic, brilliant, enlightened, and also manipulative, self-serving, offensive, and extremely eccentric. I also think, as is so often the case with powerful people, he attracted followers who believed they were living in accordance with his teachings and acting on his behalf without really understanding what he stood for. They were intoxicated by his mojo and used that feeling of power to justify their own convoluted drives. My intention isn’t really to pick on Osho and his disciples as much as it to point out the dynamics that occur on the inside and outside of such a phenomenon, which I’ll summarize here:
Tapping into power tends to amplify not just the presentable aspects of ourselves, but our shadow side, too. It partly explains why so many high-level teachers, artists, and executives end up sleeping with their students and employees, or succumbing to some other vice. Perhaps it’s why a guru might enjoy having 93 Rolls Royces. And it’s also why many traditions, such as yoga, emphasize purifying or balancing one’s mind, actions, and senses before attempting the practices that are likely to unleash a bunch of energy. (Did your yoga teacher introduce you to the yamas and niyamas that traditionally come before undertaking asanas or "poses"?)
Potent ideas tend to be degraded as they are transmitted through human minds. It’s like the children’s game operator. Moreover, we like latching onto such ideas – whether we find them enticing or horrible, or both – and running with them, even though the trajectory they carry us on may not be altogether healthy for us. And again, we favor positionality, even though (or maybe because) it implies conflict. That is, taking a fixed, polarized position necessarily engages us against the opposite position. In order to maintain such positionality, we’re best served by keeping ourselves ignorant.
In light of all these analyses of human behavior, I offer you this homework assignment for the week: Innocence. Be innocent, open, and humble. Feel the compulsion to take positions, and instead, be innocent, go deeper, and learn more.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S. For those who haven't encountered any of Osho's teachings, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from Undone Tao, a series of talks he gave on one of my favorite books, the Daoist classic, Dao De Jing:
"Enlightenment is not a search, it is a realization. It is not a goal, it is the very nature of life itself.
As life is, it is enlightened. It needs nothing to be added to it to improve it. Life is perfect. It is not moving from imperfection to perfection. It is moving from perfection to perfection.
You are here to attain something – that is functioning as a barrier. Drop that barrier. Just be here. Forget about any purpose. Life cannot have any purpose; life is the purpose. How can it have any other purpose? Otherwise you will be in an infinite regress: then that purpose will have another purpose, then that purpose will have another purpose… Life has no purpose and that’s why it’s so beautiful.
Hindus have called it leela, a play. It is not even a game. Now in the West, the word “game” has become very important. Hundreds of books have been published within two, three years with the word “game” in the title: The Master Game, The Ultimate Game, Games People Play, and so on. But there is a difference between game and play. Hindus have called life “play,” not “game,” because even a game has something as a purpose: a result to be attained, victory to be achieved, the opponent has to be conquered. When play becomes a game, then it becomes serious.
Grownups play games, children only play. Just the very activity is enough unto itself. It has an intrinsic end; there is no goal added to it. Life is a leela. It is a play. And the moment you are ready to play, you are enlightened.
…
Then you start a totally different way of life. You start being playful. You start being alive moment to moment with nowhere to go. Whatsoever life gives, you accept it with deep gratitude. Grace happens to you."
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Last week I introduced the Chinese Clock – a principle from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that states that each organ has a two hour period in the day when it has an abundance of energy and does its best work. I also explained that the roles of the organs in TCM include psychological and spiritual capacities as well as physiological ones. Besides helping us to understand how to best utilize each time period, this system can sometimes be diagnostic. For instance, if you always feel tired at a certain time of day, or always wake up in the night at a particular time, there may be an imbalance in the organ that presides over that time. Now, let's continue our discussion.
11:00 AM to 1:00 PM – Heart Time
In TCM, our heart is the core representative of the fire element in us. Fire’s qualities include lightness (meaning both luminous and weightless), warmth, expansiveness, animation, and inclusiveness – all virtues of a healthy heart. The heart is the portal through which consciousness enters our body. Naturally, the time of the heart is when that giant fireball we call the Sun is highest in the sky.
Among the community of our organs, the heart is referred to as the Emperor (or Empress), and it presides over the kingdom of You through its vast network of vessels. By the power of its love, it endeavors to spread warmth to every facet of your life, to have all parts of you feel included within its benevolent reign, to illuminate and enlighten the darkest folds of your mind. Beating out every moment for us, it aims to keep us always in the present.
The heart and its vessels work best when they’re open. Yet one of our most common reactions to uncomfortable experiences is to “close” the heart and its vascular network in an attempt to avoid feeling or accepting. Vascular disease – the hardening, blockage, and failure of the vessels (especially those that serve the heart muscle itself and the brain) – is the biggest cause of death in the U.S., and I have long wondered if there’s a connection between our psychological “closing” and this physical expression of closing.
During Heart Time, I invite you to do something good for your heart. You could engage in exercise that elevates your heart rate. This encourages the heart muscle and its vessels to remain strong and elastic and it helps facilitate a lightening of our mood. You could consciously extend love to someone or to a neglected part of yourself. You could practice choosing light-heartedness. You could practice staying in the present, repeatedly choosing not to depart into the past or future.
1:00 to 3:00 PM – Small Intestine Time
These twelve organs are grouped into six pairs. Sometimes the pairings are obvious (like the stomach and the pi which I described last week); other times not so much. The small intestine is the heart’s partner, and here’s how it works.
The digestive tract is like a tube of the outside world running from the mouth to the anus. Although it’s not a straight line, it makes the body something of a cylinder, and you can throw all manner of nourishment or garbage in there. The bulk of this tube is the small intestine, which is where most absorption takes place – not just absorption of food, but also of life experience.
In TCM, the small intestine has the task of “sorting the pure from the impure.” As it samples the heart’s kingdom firsthand, it must discern what is “pure” and worth incorporating into oneself versus what’s “impure” and worth letting go (sending along to the large intestine for elimination).
Besides being a good time to absorb your midday meal, Small Intestine Time is good for practicing discernment. What expressions of “purity” – of truth, love, and awareness – would you like to partake in to feed your heart? What expressions of “impurity” exist in your life that serve mainly to cloud your consciousness, or keep you engaged in conflict? What long-held grievances are impeding your heart’s work? (Let them go.)
3:00 to 5:00 PM – Bladder Time
To understand the bladder in TCM, we have to understand its partner, the kidneys. The kidneys are thought of primarily as a reservoir of energy – of our life’s potential, in fact. And the bladder (besides storing urine) presides over the utilization of this potential and its transmission into the world through our works. The TCM bladder also has some overlap with the functions of our nervous system and our primal drive for security and survival.
Fear is the factor that most disrupts the bladder’s work. In the presence of fear, we often default to our animal brain and the fight-flight-freeze mechanism. If we fight, we tend to throw all our reserves at the issue at hand (perhaps drinking coffee and working ourselves to the bone). If we freeze, it’s like there’s a hold on our bank account – rather than risk using up our life, we withdraw. If we flee, it’s like being in a relentless marathon to some idealized future.
Many people feel tired during this time of day because of the habitual engagement of these survival mechanisms. Instead of pushing through, be respectful of your limits. Slow down. Reflect on how much energy you spend versus what you do to replenish yourself. Be with the stillness – it’s not going to kill you; just the opposite – it stands to save your life.
5:00 to 7:00 PM – Kidney Time
The kidneys and bladder are the two organs of the water element. As I said, the kidneys represent the storage of our life’s potential (jing), like the water in a deep well. Life ends when the well is dry. When treated in a healthy way, we only draw up enough water to feed the seeds we have planted in the world (and we’re conscious about the seeds we plant). By this, I mean we don’t take on obligations thoughtlessly, we don’t give away our energy unconsciously, we “go with the flow,” and let life unfold at its own pace. Meanwhile, the replenishing things we do – getting good sleep, eating good food, loving interactions – act like rain that falls into the well to restore it.
When fear comes in, like a cold wind, it can alter our relationship to this well. Sometimes it makes the surface of the water choppy. When we look at our reflection, we see a distorted picture and we act from this distorted sense of reality. The choppy surface also makes it impossible to peer down into the darkness and get an accurate sense of our potential. Maybe we’re in mortal danger and we should start bringing it up by the bucketful to try to overwhelm the odds! Other times, fear freezes the well entirely, making it inaccessible to us. Fear has thus diminished many a life.
What’s the counter to fear’s cold irrationality? The warmth and radiance of the heart. This is the balance of fire and water within us. The heart’s love melts our fear and its light of consciousness illuminates the truth that fear has obscured. The heart’s ability to pull us back to the present gives us a chance to regard our fear in a rational way. It’s not realistic to wish for fear to go away forever, but it’s entirely possible to feel it without being controlled by it.
During Kidney Time, consider replenishing your well with a small, nourishing meal. Ask yourself how you can get things done with less investment of personal energy. Reflect on the fears that may be running you from “below the radar,” and use the light of your consciousness to see them clearly – to see how insubstantial they are. Look into the well of your potential and ask yourself how you can more effectively bring this gift into the world. Meanwhile, for your anatomical kidneys, protect against dehydration. A good general guideline is to divide the number of pounds you weigh in half and aim to consume this many ounces of water over the course of each day (e.g., 150 pounds body weight means 75 ounces of water).
Thanks for reading. Once again, I chose not to give you everything at once so that you’ll have time to consider these concepts at a pace that better supports your ability to integrate them. Check back next week for more.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S. Again, in case you missed last week’s article, you can read it here.
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Today we’re going to wrap up our series on the Chinese Clock – a concept in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) whereby each organ has a two-hour period of the day when it does its best work. (At the end there are links to the previous three articles in case you missed them.) Often you can experience a sense of alignment or improved health by doing certain activities during each time slot. But several of the organs peak while you’re sleeping and you won’t always be able to schedule your life around this system, so the important part is simply to recognize and appreciate that you have these amazing capacities.
11:00 PM to 1:00 AM – Gallbladder Time
In China, a brave person is sometimes said to have a “big gallbladder” – while a timid person has a small one. The TCM view of the organ is a bit more specific – the gallbladder doesn’t preside over all forms of bravery, but specifically the courage to be decisive in accordance with one’s plan. In order for you to understand the role of the gallbladder among our society of organs, I need to tell you a little about the liver.
The liver has the role of the general or chief planner. The general uses her keen vision to strategize and plan – everything from the many tiny plans that make your day work to the big Life Plans that make your life feel productive and gratifying. We might even think of the liver as the architect, in which case the gallbladder would be the foreman – the guy (or girl) on the ground overseeing the implementation of the plan and making all the minute-to-minute decisions about how best to bring the plan to life.
The gallbladder acupuncture meridian covers the sides of the body – the sides of the head, the sides of the torso, and the outer side of the leg. Once I had a patient who had been experiencing pain in this area of his leg, and offhandedly I mentioned the gallbladder’s association with decision-making. “Sometimes people experience discomfort along this pathway when they’re blocked around some important decision,” I told him, barely expecting it to mean anything.
With great excitement, he responded that he had been contemplating quitting the band he played drums for, and he now realized the pain began the same day he started thinking about it. In that moment, lying on my table, he decided to leave the band, and in an instant the pain was gone from his leg.
The best way to spend Gallbladder Time is sleeping. There’s a lot of energy in the decision-maker, and if you stay up until this time, it’s likely that you’ll get a second wind which will take you the whole way to 1:00 AM. But at the end of the day, you’re probably experiencing “decision fatigue” from all the day’s decisions, and this energy is likely to be squandered. If you’re asleep, the mind can work things out without interference, and you’ll wake with a freshness that’s ideal for good decisions.
Biologically, the gallbladder is a small pouch attached to the liver that stores and releases bile to help us digest fats. Gallbladders are prone to get inflamed and painful when we chronically expose ourselves to food that we’re sensitive to. Many gallbladder removals could be avoided through identifying and removing these foods while taking Chinese herbs to dissolve gallstones and reduce inflammation (the most common formula is called Li Dan Pian and it’s often miraculous).
1:00 to 3:00 AM – Liver Time
As I explained, the liver is the general or chief planner. It’s considered to be closely connected to the eyes, which gives the general the faculty of keen vision, allowing for a clear life plan and goals, as well as a view of the “big picture.”
The liver’s weakness is a tendency to become frustrated or angry when it encounters obstacles to its plans – like an overly rigid general – and in the presence of anger, its vision is lost and growth becomes stagnation. It loses sight of the big picture and instead sees only the obstacle at hand, which is perceived as an injustice.
We need flexibility and perspective to get back on track. By stepping back, we can see the larger scheme of things, remember where we were headed, appreciate the enhanced growth that obstacles promote, and recognize there are more important things than being “right.”
Like Gallbladder Time, Liver Time is best spent asleep, so the mind can clean house and restructure our plans without our interference. But this is a common time for insomniacs to awaken, as the planner, like the decision-maker, often has a powerful, even domineering, energy. Sometimes this can be avoided by writing down unresolved plans and decisions before bed, so the mind doesn’t feel it needs to keep track.
3:00 to 5:00 AM – Lung Time
The lungs are associated in TCM with the fall season. After the robust growth of spring and summer, fall is about letting go, especially of outward appearances (like leaves), and the certain bareness that results. For some, this part of the cycle feels like loss and evokes grief. But there’s a lesson in this loss – it causes us to focus on what’s left: the intangible and eternal Oneness that connects everything.
Every act of letting go (exhalation or expiration) is paired with a filling up (inhalation of inspiration). And "inspiration" is a perfect word for this phase of the lungs' work - to make within us a rich spaciousness.
The lungs remind us of this as they take in and let go of the intangible all day long (which actually consists of the atoms of the world around us, including those breathed by virtually everyone else in history). The rhythm of the breath is a mantra that offers a perpetual opportunity to connect with our expanded self – to remember.
Most people are asleep during this time, which makes it easier for the mind to let go without our conscious clinging, but yogis have long considered these hours ideal for their morning practice. The crispness of early morning is much like the crispness of fall air, and it can be especially conducive to meditation, breath work, letting go, and tuning in.
Again, my intention in writing this series wasn’t so much to convince you to build your life around these two-hour time periods but to give you a look at the cycles you move through each day. So many wondrous things are happening in your body, mind, and spirit. I hope these articles have made you aware of the tremendous opportunity for healing, connection, and expansion that’s always available.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S. In case you missed them, here are links to Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
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Do you Sir know of a book called 10 Reasons Too Take Care of Myself? I cannot remember whom the Author is. The Book was published in the 1990s.