MERIDIAN OF THE MONTH - LARGE INTESTINE

The meridian for this month's exploration of the "web that has no weaver", is the Large Intestine, so I'll be focusing into this channel during our remote group session on 7th November.

The Large Intestine Meridian runs from the tip of the index finger up the arm to the shoulder where it splits into two branches. The first runs down inside the body through the lung and diaphragm to the large intestine itself. The second branch runs up the neck, through the cheek to the lower teeth and gum, and around the upper lip to the side of the nose.

The large intestine, (just a different name for the colon), is generally doing wonderful work for you without you even having to think about it, not just reclaiming water from your food waste stream but also making K and B vitamins for you. Trillions of gut bacteria produce them by fermentation. Like any other part of the digestive system, the workings of the large intestine can be disrupted by restrictions of the vagus nerves. CranioSacral treatment can often help this as the physical restriction involved may be at the cranial base and eased out with gentle techniques.
Any of the major curves of the colon can become trouble spots. The one by the liver, the hepatic flexure, is particularly troublesome, I guess because there's so much going on in this area, including the liver, gall bladder and the ducts for these and for the pancreas. I generally check this area in a hands-on treatment as a matter of course along with another trouble spot, the ileocecal valve between the large and small intestine. It's important that this valve doesn't let material return from the large intestine back into the small intestine as they are quite different environments. It's interesting that both these trouble spots are on our right hand side, I think that's maybe part of the reason I've noticed that sciatica is maybe in eight times out of ten on this side, something other therapists have noticed too.

There can be all sorts of stuff going on in the Large Intestine emotionally. Chinese medicine has recognised this for thousands of years and yet in the West we treat it as if it was just a sort of drain. When you combine this attitude with the not-food gunk of the industrial diet and tidal wave of medication what do you get? Industrial scale digestive problems. A hands-on emotional release CranioSacral treatment gives patients an opportunity to explore the deeper levels of what they're holding here, maybe the real roots of their stress, eating disorders and the sort of stuff that is maybe just too much to take on board. In this category I'm thinking of our non-reaction to Climate Emergency and Mass Extinction, and how we generally seem to be sleepwalking over a cliff - is it just too much to get our heads around and what are we holding deep down inside?

That's a cue for a link to my Radical Solutions blog where I've been writing about some environmental ideas: Tree-conomy, Access to Land, Natural Wealth, Plan Z etc. If you're near Perth I have a Climate Brainstorm event coming up on Saturday 9th of November, see you there.