| Every back-shu
point seems to refer to a single organ, a specific
anatomical unit. So, a question arises: does the Dumai
channel have its own corresponding organ, and if so what
is it?
I discovered what it is, while I was
studying a method to fix in my memory the names and
positions of the back-shu points.
In the picture above you see the back-shu points listed in
the same way you have already seen them many times in
acupuncture book tables.
Like the items on the menu of a good restaurant, every
back-shu point must correspond perfectly to its related
organ.
What is immediately evident in the picture on the right is
that the organs in the thorax are arranged according to a
concentric, onion-like criterion, while in the abdomen the
organs are arranged according to a stack-like criterion, one
on top of the other.
The characteristic movement of the
principal thoracic organs (lungs and heart) is that of a
sponge: taking in and releasing air and blood. Pleura and
pericardium help this movement by the means of negative
pressure. The oesophagus is clearly not a real thoracic
organ because it makes the same movement as the abdominal
organs: they push something downward. Of course I am purely
focusing on the mechanical aspect of the organs physiology.
Geshu (back-shu point of the diaphragm) separates the two
different containers and criteria.
The back-shu points of the thorax list the organs on the
basis of their progressive internal position: so first you
meet the skin, the ribs, the pleura (that apparently have
not a point back-shu), feishu (the lung), then jueyinshu (the pericardium),
then xinshu (the heart), then dushu (dumai) and finally
geshu (the diaphragm), the base against which all organs in
the thorax are leaning.
Since the onion-like criterion of the thorax organs
arrangement is anatomically exact, what is the organ
situated within the heart that corresponds to the dumai
back-shu point?
The answer is the "electrical conduction
system of the heart", with its sinoatrial and
atrioventricular nodes, its right and left bundle branches.
It is the "Brain of the Heart".
Sincerely I don’t know if any classic or modern author has
already made the same observation.
In every case it is in tune with both western anatomy and
the Chinese description of the dumai channel path, the
second branch of which "rises inside the lower abdomen,
goes to the umbilicus and ascends to the heart".
So it is easier to memorize the back-shu points in the
thorax. It is enough to remember that feishu, the first one,
is between the 3rd and the 4th thoracic vertebrae, the others come
subsequently. You just follow the onion-like criterion:
the
lung, feishu BL-13 (T3-T4) wraps the pericardium,
the pericardium, jueyinshu BL-14 (T4-T5) wraps the heart,
the heart, xinshu BL-15 (T5-T6) wraps the dumai.
The dumai, dushu BL-16 (T6-T7) or the sinoatrial node "governs" the
heartbeat, the primitive rhythm of life. In a certain sense
it is the most important organ in the body, because it
generates the first sound you can hear in the foetus, when
the person exists but is not yet breathing.
At the end of back-shu points in the thorax there is the
basis, the diafragm, geshu BL-17 (T7-T8).
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