Every weekday morning my friends and I do our "energetic walk" for an hour around 5am. After the walk when I return home, do you know what my body naturally urges me to do besides having a shower? It takes me naturally toward the bathroom. Bowel movement came easily at that time. Every mother training her young ones toilet knows that morning is the best time to let them go. If she checks the Chinese clock, she would know that between 5am and 7am is the Large Intestines time. That's when our body energy works most efficiently in the Large Intestine channel.
We all know that, in ancient time, people used rooster's growling at sunrise as an indicator to get up from bed and they stopped working in the field when the sun came down. In China's older days a day is split into twelve equal sections. A copper "time pot" which is designed to drip equal one-twelfth amount of a day's water serves as a clock to signify the break from one time section to the next. At this time, the village time-keeper would walk all around town striking a wooden board with a wooden stick to inform people about the time change. This practice is similar to the medieval church bell rung by a clerk at the end of each hour. Chinese medical professionals believe that the energy in our body also flows through our entire body systematically with a stronger force in certain section according to the nature's time. In Ming Dynasty (almost a thousand years ago) a well known scholar Hsu Feng developed the rule of Chinese Clock based on ancient Chinese Classic "Yellow Emperor's Inner Classics".
You don't have to know the Chinese clock to follow its principles. Have you ever wondered why mothers always ask their children to go to bed well before midnight? I bet she does it without knowing the Chinese clock. I can tell you something about it. You see, the Liver time is 1 am to 3 am. It's absolutely essential that we rest completely during that time. Why? The liver, the organ and its channels, functions to restore our blood. It replenishes fresh blood for our body. If we let ourselves stay awake at that hour, we jeopardize our Liver functions of providing fresh blood for the next day.
Subsequently we will feel groggy and disoriented after we finally go to bed and wake up later. Our blood has very little time to get refurbished during the night. The quality and quantity of the blood is insufficient to sustain the energy we need for our activities. The Gall Bladder is a paired organ or channel to the Liver. The energy runs through Gall Bladder channel preceding the Liver time around midnight. The blood is such an important substance to our health and life that we really want to take care of it by going to sleep before 11pm.
Acupuncturists apply this principle of Chinese Clock into their clinical experience and help diagnose and treat their patients. However, the theory is very complicated to master. Only exceptionally good practitioners who have mastered the art of the Chinese Clock can use one needle and only one acupuncture point for every patient no matter what the illness is. You have to travel to China to find him/her.
This article was written by Eugenia Lai, who owns the copy right of this article. If you are interested in sharing this information, please feel free to do so. And, you are welcome to participate in our workshop held in Wakefield High School on Monday nights during school year. If you are interested, please click for details in: Eugenia's Workshop .