Reply To: Acupuncture Bootcamp
Amanda,
What a great question!
You are SO correct that the Liver organ opens into the eyes. Often, when a patient has Liver-Blood Deficiency, we’ll see eye concerns such as dry eyes or floaters in the eyes.
When we say, “Using the eyes,” we are referring to something else. I’m going to borrow from Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English’s translation of the Tao Te Ching to illustrate a point:
Twelve
The five colors blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavors dull the taste.
Racing and hunting madden the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.
Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.
He lets go of that and chooses this.
Do you see how the “five colours” blind the eye?
Do you see how “racing and hunting madden the mind”? (Another word for mind could be Shen/spirit which is found in the eyes.)
“The sage is guided…not by what he sees.”
Perhaps a modern idea would be all the material possessions we are bombarded with. We search for a vacuum on Amazon and then it shows up in our Facebook and Instagram feed. Or another way to see this could be how both men and women are bombarded with images of what some “industry standard” says is attractive. And this causes us to always be looking, looking, looking for something. Hunting, searching. It’s maddening — according to the Tao Te Ching. 😉
So what we’re talking about here is using the eyes/Heart/Shen responsibly. Just as we guard our mouth (“Disease enters through the mouth, disaster leaves from it.” — Chinese proverb), we should guard what our eyes see.
Again, great question. Don’t let this beautiful embodied life-lesson of not using the eyes too much derail your Liver-eye association for diagnosis and treatment.
Sincerely,
Kenton