Your body’s record keeper
I hope you enjoyed my blog on the Yin and Yang Stepping (Qiao) Vessels. This week I have been exploring the Yin and Yang Linking (Wei) Vessels which are the other pair in the group of the 4 Vessels of the Outer Family or Macrocosmic Orbit. These Vessels help us to bring our experience of our outer world, people, places, experiences, back into our body. They are about how we open our Heart up to others, creating relationships and how we navigate longer transitions in our lives.
The affirmation I have created for these Vessels is:
I access the wisdom in my body’s memory and can release what no longer serves me.
The Linking vessels store the memory of our lived experience in the tissue of our body – like a cloth. If our cloth is strong yet spacious we have an opportunity to change its pattern without being stuck or limited by our past. They direct the 12 channels through regulating the slower changes of the annual seasons, spring, summer, autumn, winter and supporting us in the longer transitions we make in our life. These can be changes in our outer world like moving house, changing jobs, beginning or ending relationships to people or places. They can also be changes within our body as we live our longer cycles of 7/8 years, passing through the gateways of change, growing and then ageing.
Key areas are the muscles and tissues of our shoulders and our pelvis. Our pelvis protects and supports our Palaces (reproductive organs) and Kidneys and connects with the Inner Family. Our shoulders protect and support our Heart. It is not by chance that when we are faced with a big change our shoulder or pelvis can become blocked.
Their regulating points are on our wrists (HP6 and TH5) hands, indicating their primary connection is with Space and our Heart. They have more points in our shoulders and upper body than the Stepping Vessels. Our shoulders and arms are like our wings, connecting us back to the Source and the space around us. Our wings can open up our Heart to space (Yang) so that we can connect with other people but also gather in and protect our Heart (Yin).
Most texts say that their pathways begin close to our feet at KD9 (Guest House) and BL63 (Golden Gate) but I now see them as beginning in the wrists with their regulating points. These Vessels are not as connected to the Earth in such an immediate way as the Stepping Vessels. They bind us to the earth in a slower and more spacious way by weaving a net around us. They are how we find our place in the world over time, enabling us to adapt and change longer term patterns of behaviour.
The Yin Vessels are about how we receive new experiences and people in our lives, especially through the point Kidney 9 (Guest House).
They anchor, gather and protect our Heart. In doing this they nourish our Blood, Qi and the inside, Yin, of our body. They are intricately linked with the Penetrating Vessel and can be seen as its outer layer.
The Yang Vessels are about how we can open our wings and our Heart into space and how we regulate our immune system and defensive Qi. They are intricately linked with the Yang aspects of the Girdle Vessel, the Governing Vessel and Gall Bladder. Like the general (Gall Bladder) they help us to be able to reflect and make appropriate decisions, weighing up all the different options over time to then to mobilise our resources in the most appropriate way.
Meaning of their Chinese name – Wei
The character for Wei has several meanings. The left is a thread of silk woven to create a net with fire in its lower part. This indicates the way that things are attached. It represents how our heavenly nature becomes fixed to the earth: the Linking bind and contain our Heart.
The right part is a bird with a short tail. This shows how our shoulders and arms are like our wings, giving us the capacity to reach space and our heavenly nature while still being lightly connected to the earth like a bird.
Mudra
Touch the pads of your thumb, middle and ring fingers together and extend your index and little fingers. Palms can be up or down, depending on what you feel: whether more to connect with the earth or space. These are the same fingers as for Penetrating and Girdle, but the hands are held apart.
Activity
Feel your shoulders and arms like wings and feel how it is to open and close your wings. How does your heart respond?
If you feel you are flying away into the space too much, then become more aware of your abdominal muscles and your breath. Cross your hands on the edge of your recti muscles and gather in with your fingers back to your midline.
I’ve made a couple of videos with exercises for these Vessels
My Resources
I am Father Sky and Mother Moon and the slow-moving rhythms of the annual cycles of the elements, the longer cycles of 7/8 years and the even longer cycles of the celestial beings in the universe.
I am the growth rings in the tree – recording how the outer world influences my life experience.
I keep my body’s records. I hold the memory of all I have lived in the tissue of my body, especially my muscles and tendons. My tissue is my memory cloth but I can remake my remake the cloth at any moment.
I regulate longer term transitions: going to school, leaving home, moving house, changing relationships, starting a new job, marriage, becoming parents, retirement, divorce, loss of loved ones, death.
Common patterns
Overactive
I am unable to move forward in my life because I hold too tightly my past. I am stuck looking back and cannot imagine new possibilities. I repeat the patterns of my family without evolution. I am afraid that what has happened before will happen again. I resist the ways the world is changing and long for a golden past. I may hold trauma, physical or emotional, in my body. I find it difficult to accept my ageing process and want to hold onto my youth. I am inflexible in my attitude and don’t respond appropriately to the needs of the hour. Ultimately I feel depleted because I am not able to be present. I overprotect myself. I feel overburdened.
My body is tense, and I feel restricted. I hold the cloth of my body too tightly – there are areas of tension in my muscles and tissue, often in my shoulders and hips.
Underactive
I reject my past and my ancestral line. I wish I had different parents. The past has nothing to teach me. I fly away too easily into space, easily losing my centre. I allow myself to be too influenced by others. I may self-sabotage. I forget who I am. My heart feels vulnerable and lost. I don’t accept who I am. I live in a fantasy world. I may escape reality through mind-altering drugs.
I am an overstretched cloth and can’t support myself physically or emotionally. I may have weak abdominal muscles and pelvic organ prolapse. I tend to hypermobile conditions.
I have also made a talk about these Vessels on my YouTube channel. Here is the link
