Our kids have 6 grandparents. When I try to think about who has the best relationship with them, who is supportive, and who is insulting or insulted, what seems to matter most is: being young enough to play with them, knowing and respecting your own limits (so you don’t overdo it and take it out of the kids), working through your issues (so you don’t blame the kids for what you don’t/didn’t have), and trusting their parent (your child) to do a good job parenting your grandchild (because the grandparent is supposed to support their child, not try take over their job, thinking that their child is incompetent). They say, when the parent organ is tired, get a babysitter for the child, so the mom can rest and recover (parenting is her job, she needs support and help, not criticism).
My kids can be difficult, but they only turn on their grandparents when their grandparents are judgmental or trying to control them.
I share this because of the insulting pathway amongst the organs in TCM.
I have clients who are affected in the “normal” way - parent to child:
And then I have clients (could be the same client) who are impacted through the grandparent-child relationship, with the parent organ caught in between:
They say that indications of how (peri)menopause will be for you include: how it was for your mom, how you felt when you started your period, and how you were in pregnancy.
I had really hard pregnancies (all 5 major organ pairs were impacted): 24/7 nausea, worse as the day and pregnancies progressed, sinus congestion (kidney, spleen, see below), flu/bronchitis (lung), and acid reflux (stomach). One child was induced because my blood pressure increased beyond my resting low (heart), and then we both swelled up and became itchy after birth (liver), impacting our ability to bond.
They say strong pregnancies symptoms are a sign of a viable pregnancy, and the consequence of strong hormones. I don’t know if the last part is true, given that sinus pain presents itself around the time of my periods during perimenopause, although, it is possible that hormones are higher in perimenopause to get the same effect that less hormones could do before this time when things are shutting down. I do think the body is putting the child’s needs first, and this is why the mother feels so sick, the body is having to deal with more of her own toxic load, to keep as much as possible away from the developing child.
I share the above because I want to share the impact on the (organ) parent in the middle.
A kirlian photo of our thumbs show the relationship amongst our major TCM organ pairs. When you see phenomena on the diagonal, you have a potential insulting pathway:
…here the stomach/spleen worries so much that it insults the liver. The liver (tendency for the person to get mad, the grandparent) first has to be weak then, when worry (the grandchild) becomes unstable, this impacts the liver’s ability to grow (liver is wood). This is how we self-sabotage. The parent in between, in this case the heart (their ability to feel joy), is impacted.
As mentioned, I tend to have sinus issues around the time of my period. When the issue starts on the left, it will often be more prolonged and severe, and then more briefly to the right, before clearing out. If we take the maxillary sinuses as an example:
…the left is kidney (grandchild) and the right is spleen (grandparent), with the lungs caught in middle.
As mentioned above, coughing, as part of the flu and bronchitis that I experienced in my last two pregnancies, and following the sinus issue that I am recovering from now during perimenopause, resulted me to pee myself due to a weak pelvic floor (from having my epidural turned too high for too long with the birth of my first child, who sat engaged for hours, until I bled through the catheter, I didn’t know I needed to push, this can be temporarily remedied with RestoreChi supplements, but I may try the anesthesia release track as well, along with liver gallbladder pancreas enhance and spleen dampness, to strengthen up my pelvic floor, because, after almost 13yrs, I would like to be able to move more without peeing myself, because it is use it or lose it, and I don’t want to lose any more of my mobility).
The movement of illness into my lungs (parent organ) was because the grandparent (spleen, muscles/pelvic floor, right sinus) was weak, and insulted by the unstable grandchild (kidneys, hormones in pregnancy and perimenopause).
The diagrams above are from: https://yinyanghouse.com/theory/theory/chinese/five_element_acupuncture_theory/
My teacher (a doctor of acupuncture) used this website to supplement other material, to teach us about the proper placement and effect of meridian points, on the major primary organ pathways.
The website has a table of correspondences (i.e. emotions, tastes, seasons etc for each major organ pair). Take a look and see what makes sense for you.
Unlike science, which takes apart to try to prove the whole, TCM, the iching, and more, use the whole to explain the parts. I hope this gets you curious and is helpful.
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