Anyway. Sanjiao is usually translated as ”triple burner” in English. Literally, ”three burners”. It is a curiosity: an organ that has no physical, one organ linked to it.
The body has three main sections. Upper burner – head to diaphragm. Middle burner – the diaphragm to belly button. Lower burner – everything beneath that. The function of the Sanjiao is making the flow and function between them smooth and balanced. This is one of many things that the Sanjiao meridian itself can work with. It´s a Yang meridian, where, for example, the Pericardium meridian we spoke about before, is a Yin meridian. They are a pair: Pericardium and Triple Burner.
It is one of our first longer meridians, and covers a total of 22 points. The meridian itself starts at the ulnar (outer) side of the ring finger. From there it goes up the arm on the outer side, makes a brief jump over the shoulder and then goes on up to the side of the head, around and to the ear and touching eyes and throat. Part of this main channel also continues all the way through the body, through all the three burners, internally. There is another branch that touches the tounge, but this is the main one.
Treating the Sanjiao meridian weaves the three burners together with remarkable speed and smoothness. It can also treat problems with internal heat, balance the function of energy to the outside of the body, work with Wind in the body, and with certain kinds of ear- and eye-problems.
Treating it is also one way of indirectly working with and balancing the Pericardium, Fire Element and shen. In the older texts, the Sanjiao is seen as one of the conduits for yuanqi, the original qi of the body, which rests in the kidneys and lower dantian. and it can be worked and balanced to activate this when it has gone down or become inactive.
We are going to talk more about the Five Elements in a future post, and do the same with the concept of Wind in Chinese medicine. Wind is one of the liuxie, six evil influences, six major ways the our external environment can affect the health in our internal one. Of these, Wind is seen as the most important to protect against.
...re-reading this I realize that I will have to write some explanations to this. I sometimes forget that people read this blog who don´t know something about Chinese medicine from before. I´ll write an annotated version of this post in a little while to remedy that...
