I have now reached the last pair of the 8 Extraordinary Vessels in my series. These are the Girdle (Yang) and Penetrating (Yin).

In some ways, they are the most profound, forming a link between the inner and outer families and so between our inner and outer natures!

They were the first pair of Vessels I discovered through my work with maternity clients, but their power extends far beyond pregnancy, offering support to everyone.

If you’d like to connect with them through some movements I have a video on my YouTube channel. I already have several talks about the Penetrating Vessel, but tomorrow I will put up a new talk on the Girdle Vessel.

How can they help you?

Girdle Vessel (Dai Mai)

The only horizontal Vessel, the Girdle acts like a belt or girdle wrapping around your body. It regulates the areas it intersects, which include:
🔸 Pelvic floor and lower back stability
🔸 Pelvic and digestive organs health
🔸 Connection between your upper and lower body: A balanced pelvic girdle supports both your legs/feet and your shoulder girdle.
🔸 Helps release tension in the hips and lower back while grounding the body’s centre.

Penetrating Vessel (Chong Mai)

Known as the “Sea of Blood,” this Vessel holds the essence of Yin energy, nourishing us physically and emotionally. It connects deeply with:
🔸 Blood and nourishment: Governs all tissues that circulate blood, including blood vessels, fascia, muscles, bones, and cartilage.
🔸 Reproductive health: Regulates cycles and nurtures your connection with your mother and Mother Earth.
🔸 Anchoring and grounding: The first energy to move into the legs, helping you feel stable and connected.
🔸 Supports organs like the Spleen, Liver, Heart, and Kidneys—vital in maintaining emotional and physical well-being.

A Pair of Deep Connection

Together, the Chong Mai and Dai Mai remind us of the interconnectedness of your body. The Girdle grounds and stabilizes, while the Penetrating Vessel nourishes and empowers. They hold the potential for healing, growth, and anchoring into the cycles of life.

They form a Yin/Yang pair, but are more complex in their pathways and nature than Conception and Governing Vessel. Each contain both Yin and Yang, although Penetrating is more Yin than Girdle Vessel. They represent the movement away from the midline/spine, out into the limbs, defining the left and right sides of the body. Their regulating points are in our feet indicating our connection to earth and how you can draw in nourishment from the outside.

They appear physically in our body as the bilaminar disc becomes the trilaminar disc 3 weeks after conception. Penetrating is the third germ cell layer, mesoderm, and this is why it is sometimes considered as a third branch of Governing and Conception. Girdle does not have such a direct physical correlation embryologically, but is within many of the spaces both inside and outside our body and connects with the fetal membranes.

Penetrating is the movement of the Heart opening from the midline into the horizontal axis, through its breast channels. Girdle is the movement from the centre out around the pelvis. It is the only Vessel which lies wholly on the horizontal axis. Regulating movement along both our horizontal and vertical axes, they intersect at our pelvis, forming a crossroads.

A crossroads represents a meeting place and symbolically this is where we decide which direction to travel in our journey through life. It is also where two realms meet – a threshold or liminal space. This pair are important in facilitating our movements through the different gateways of our life. They are the branches and the roots of the tree. The meeting of the warp and the weft, they physically anchor us to earth and yet also enable us to open our Heart and Palaces and then gather them back in.

• Mudra

Touch the pads of your thumb (L), middle (HP) and ring (TH) fingers together and join them with the thumb, middle and ring finger of your other hand to make a figure eight. Extend your index and little fingers. Depending on how you feel you can either have the pads of the two index fingers touching each other and the pads of the two little fingers touching each other or you can have them apart.

Penetrating Vessel – Chong Mai: Vessel of Bonding and Sea of Blood

As the overall regulator of Blood, it is intimately connected to our Heart. It enables our Soul/Spirit (Shen) to come into physical incarnation as we implant in our mother’s womb around one week after conception and then, 2 weeks later, as our heart is drawn into our body. Anchoring Conception and Governing Vessels, it is our roots burrowing down into the earth, drawing in nourishment to fill out our body and align with our destiny.

Points along its pathway such as Great manifestation, (KD12), Spirit Gate (KD21), Spirit Seal (KD23), Spirit Ruins (KD24) and Spirit storehouse (KD27) show its relationship to our Shen. When it is flowing well, we feel connected to our basic purpose in life, even if this brings challenges. When it is not flowing well our spirit may lose its way.

Blood is Yin and through Blood we nourish ourselves physically and emotionally. Together with Conception Vessel it regulates our reproductive cycles. Our first Blood comes from the cells of our mother’s womb and then from her blood flowing through our placenta. Once we are born, we take in nourishment through our mother’s breasts, whether through her milk, which is a transformation of Blood, or simply by being held against her and feeling her heart. This is why Penetrating Vessel is called the Vessel of Bonding. As we grow, we learn to take our physical and emotional nourishment from other people, but the nature of all our relationships is profoundly influenced by our relationship with our mother.

Its leg branch enables another level of arriving physically in our body, connecting us to earth. It is about how we make a connection to a place: our home. When we feel safe we can draw nourishment up from the earth, like the roots of a tree, and from others we share the earth with.

Penetrating Vessel is complex in its pathway, acting as a double crossroads, the chest and pelvis, to influence our whole body. This is not only through the movement of Blood but all tissues which circulate blood – blood vessels, connective tissues and fascia, bones, cartilage, muscles, lymph vessels, Spleen. Liver, Heart and Kidneys.

• Meaning of its Chinese name – Chong

The Chinese character for “Chong” has two parts. The outer part (radical) is a symbol split in two parts to the left and right side of the centre. It represents the left and right feet in a walking movement as well as an ability to circulate. This expresses the importance of its leg branches and connection to the earth and outer world along with its role in the circulation of Blood and Qi .

The inner part represents a person repeatedly trying to raise a heavy weight up from the earth. We can see this as representing our potential to become stronger through our relationship with the outer world. There is also the idea of nourishing an arid earth.

The whole character includes the idea of a meeting place: a powerful route with lots of crossings and tributaries where people can meet and continue walking. This shows how we can be enriched in our life through our interaction with other people. In the Daoist texts this indicates the transformational nature of the Chong.

• Affirmation

I create a nourishing relationship with myself from which I can create nourishing relationships with others.

I feel at home in my body and in my place on earth.

• Activity

Stand and imagine that you are a tree. Feel your legs like roots going down to the earth. Feel your feet pushing downwards into the earth and anchoring you to her centre. Allow yourself to feel the support of the earth and how you can draw up nourishment from the earth back into your centre. As you are nourished, feel your heart being able to open to others and you can open up your arms to the space around you.

• My resources

I am mother earth.

I invite you to be your own creation.

I am the sap of the tree, flowing through the roots, trunk, to the branches and leaves.

• Common patterns

Its main expression of imbalance is heat rising from the abdomen, creating strong upward movement to the chest, throat and brain. This can create feelings of oppression or suffocation in the chest and throat, heat in the heart and head, nausea, emotional instability, anxiety, fear, shock, hot flushes, headaches. This is often accompanied by coldness in the extremities, especially the feet, showing that its anchoring aspect is weak.

Girdle Vessel: Dai Mai – Vessel of containment and release

It is the only horizontal channel in the body, encircling and wrapping around the whole area between the lower border of our ribs and pelvic floor. Broad and three-dimensional, it regulates all the spaces, organs, structures and energies contained within it. These include most of the major organs in our body along with core muscles (abdominal muscles, pelvic floor, lower back and hips) and bones (pelvis). Regulating what is above and below it, as well as all the spaces around us, it envelops and protects our whole body, like a cocoon or a robe. All of the other 7 Vessels pass through it, so it includes many of their points. Six of the 12 channels also pass directly through it.

Embryologically it doesn’t arise as a germ cell layer, like the other 3 Vessels of this group. It exists more in the spaces around and within our physical body, and so arises around the same time as the other 3. It connects our yolk sac and amniotic sac and eventually our body and placenta.

It passes through many Conception and Governing Vessels points from GV1 to GV5 and CV1 to CV14. All energies intersect at the Girdle. The core of our being it is the origin of all our energies as well as our capacity to create new life. This is shown by the names of its points: Linking path (GB28), Completion Gate (LV13) and Capital Gate (GB25). It is our centre, as well as our internal compass. We orientate around it to find our direction in life.

It has a dual purpose of supporting and releasing, physically and emotionally. It releases through daily elimination, sexual connections and, for women, during menstruation and giving birth. Good muscle tone helps it give support.

Like a rope wrapped around a bundle of sticks, if it is too tight then the sticks don’t move. In the body things tend to become blocked as we are not able to eliminate. There is likely to be a disconnection between our upper and lower body – someone who looks cut in half, almost like two different people. If the rope is too loose, then the sticks fall apart. Our muscles may be too weak. We become muddled. This is someone who seems “all over the place”. They have lost their internal compass and sense of purpose.

Anything which is not processed by the rest of body ends up here. Some people call it the “spare room”. It is often bloated and overfull – like a “pregnant belly” on a non-pregnant person.

Related to the North Star, it guides the lost traveler and so helps us orient in life.

• Meaning of its Chinese name- Dai

“Dai” means a belt or girdle with things hanging from it. This can be any kind of band assuring continuity, like a chain of mountains. It means to be able to lead, guide, connect and bind things together as well as to release. This explains its importance of regulating everything in the body: Yin and the Yang, all emotions, energies and structures.

• Affirmation

I am stable, I contain, I release.

• Activity

Be aware of your hips and pelvis. Gently move your hips like a belly dancer. Feel the release in your pelvis and notice how you want to move your arms and legs. With your arms feel into the space around you. With your legs become aware of your connection to the earth. Now you have released, pause and see if you can feel how to gather back into your centre again.

• My resources

I am space and gather space within me.

I form a crossroads at my pelvis and support the route between my upper and your lower body.

I am a guest room: I can choose to invite others into my life. I prepare the space for new guests to arrive – new projects, new ideas, new aspects of my being, sexual partners, new children.

I am my inner sanctuary for the new aspects of myself which are longing to be expressed. In the heart of my sanctuary I hold my deepest secrets and desires. I have a special place within this sanctuary where I connect with the deepest sense of who I am and where I can fully be myself. This is my true space.

I am your compass.

• Common Patterns

Overactive

My room is cluttered up with things I no longer need. I can’t let the new in. I can’t digest new experiences or digest my food.

Women – I find it hard to release my menstrual blood and may have fibroids or polycystic ovaries. I may have issues conceiving as there is no physical or emotional space to welcome in a new being. I may find it hard to let go of pregnancy and open to birthing and to move into new experiences.

Men – I may have issues with fertility, especially with lack of movement of sperm. I may have blockages in my abdomen almost like having a pregnant belly!

Underactive

My room is cold and uninviting. No one wants to visit me. I feel alone and disconnected. My abdomen and lower back feel cold, (and possibly my heels, which are connected to my pelvis). I may have stress incontinence. I may have weak pelvic floor and abdominal muscles, pelvic laxity and issues with prolapse.

Women: I may have issues with conceiving or maintaining a pregnancy.

Men: I may have fertility issues linked with poor quality of sperm.

I hope you enjoy reading this, and if you have any questions, please ask me…