So just to start off with let’s kinda look at the channel orientation and look at sort of a planer approach to the channels.

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Hi, my name is Brian Lau. I’m with the Sports Medicine Acupuncture Certification Program. I also do a lot of work with something called jji Movement Training, where I look at Sinu channel movement patterns. So we’re gonna be talking about that a little bit today. And I wanna first of all start by thanking the American Acupuncture Council for having me.

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So it’s always nice to come and talk about this type of stuff. This particular. Webinar will feature some exercises. You could use these exercises for patient exercises and I’ll give you some indications for that. But they’re also great exercises used for your own wellness program. Let’s go ahead and jump right into it.

We’ll go ahead and look at the slides.

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So just to start off with let’s kinda look at the channel orientation and look at sort of a planer approach to the channels. You have several channels that basically line up along the sagittal plane. If you had a sagittal plane going in the midline, the mid sagittal plane, it would go right in through the Remi and out through the do my, but if I were to move that channel over, I would start accessing things like the stomach channel, the spleen channel.

The lung channel, the large intestine channel, the kidney channel too on the abdomen, but most of the kidney channel would be on the back part of the body with the urinary bladder channel, the heart channel, and the small intestine channel. Those more line up on that sagittal plane in the back. If those channels primarily do flexion and extension type movements, a lot of Qigong patterns feature those channels quite a bit. A lot of ’em ebb and flow between those flexion and extension of the torso, stabilization of the spine, this growing and expanding and a whole bunch of movement patterns associated with that.

I’ve done some webinars on those movement patterns. Maybe in the future we’ll do a few more, but today I wanna bring the attention to the, the frontal plane alignment. So those plane, that plane would go through the body on the side, along the San Ciao channel and the gallbladder channel, and it would exit through the medial part of the thigh, along the liver channel, or the middle of the arm along the pericardium channel.

Those. Sinus of the channel, so to speak. They attach in a way that does primarily side bending type motions and rotational type motions. So let’s look at a little bit of anatomy with that and that’ll set us up for doing a few of the exercises. So here’s a kind of a representation of the gallbladder sinu channel.

You can see that these line up mostly along the lateral aspect of the body. Some of the structures, like the IT band go kind pretty much straight up and down. But other ones you might notice have a little bit more of a diagonal position. Maybe down and out like in the obliques, or you have lat the lats, which primarily just go straight up and down.

There’s a little bit of an angle to ’em. So these are aligned in such a way that they can do side bending, abduction, or, excuse me abduction type movements. So movements in the frontal plane. This is the representation of the liver sinew channel. Classically, it ends at the groin, but I take it up into this continuous myofascial plane through the iliacs, quadratus lumborum and SOAs.

So these structures, again, they kinda line up along that frontal plane. A frontal plane would exit out through this area on the thigh, and they do things like abduction, a deduction. But a lot of the sinus, like I’ve alluded to already. Do spiral around the body. So even though they can do side bending type motions, like side bending of the trunk, they can also do rotation, like the external obliques rotating the ribcage in a contralateral direction away, rotating it to the opposite side or the serous anterior, the pericardium sinu channel involves or includes the serous anterior.

But then it also kinda wraps around following that myofascial link into the rhomboids, it creates a sort of sling that helps rotate the shoulder girdle. We’re gonna look at a lot of shoulder girdle rotation aspects today. So that just gives you a little summary of the anatomy. So then what’s the benefits?

What’s the goal? What do we wanna accomplish by doing movements in this frontal plane or the transverse plane, side bending type motions or rotational type motions. First one is this gonna build Qi in the Shao yang and Dian channels? We’re gonna look at a quick video in just a moment that’ll show some examples of that.

It’s gonna balance the position of the shoulder girdle, rib cage, and pelvis. So we want to work with aligning those those three major centers of the body. The shoulder girdle, rib cage, particularly the lower rib cage. ’cause there’s a lot of movement potential in the lower rib cage and then the pelvic girdle.

If we move those, really what we’re doing, ’cause there’s a lot of sinus that connect those to the spine. So we’re basically mobilizing the spine. Things like the sacroiliac joint and the pelvis. And then if we’re moving those structures, we’re also mobilizing and massaging the internal organs. We’re working with these particular channels.

It’s the case that those are primarily gonna be mobilizing things like the liver, the pericardium, the San Jiao. And the gallbladder, but particularly the liver and the pericardium will be something that we look at. So let’s start with the first goal, basically the first benefit to build chi in the XO Young in the jo y channels.

That’d be gallbladder, San Jiao liver and pericardium channel. And let’s go to a short video and just look at these types of motions to give a kind of an example of what these movements look like.

All right. Let’s look at the second goal, which is the balance, the position of the shoulder girdle, rib cage, and pelvis. I’m gonna use a model, this tensity model. Some of you might have seen this type of model before. It’s a really good representation of the human body and the form of the human body. I think in the past people might have just looked at layers of things like a brick, bricks on top of bricks to like a wall or something to describe the alignment of the body.

One bone stacked on the next bone, which is stacked on the next bone, very much like a brick is stacked on the brick. Those are really more of a compression structure where the force goes through the wall and great for a building. Great for those types of things. It’s not a great representation for the body.

For instance, if you were to move that. Wall into an angle, the thing would come crumbling down. It needs to kinda have that stacked alignment. Our body’s more like this tensity structure where our bones, like these wooden dolls are floating in the sea of continuous tension, which is formed by our myo fascia.

And it’s the myo fascia that gives the form to the structure, so if I were to. Misalign it or shorten one of these wires, one of these elastic bands, it distorts the whole structure. Maybe the person comes in complaining of pain somewhere away from this problem, and as we release this or change the tone here, that kind of helps ign the whole structure.

So our body’s much more like this. So if you were to bring your attention to the bands along the lateral aspect, that would be a good representation of the Sinu channels. Of the gallbladder and San Ciao channel, for instance, and the tone of that has a nice ebb and flow between one side and the next.

You saw this with the movements that we were doing where one side shortens the other side shortens. There’s a nice ebb and flow if I were to bring the Dway Yin channels into it. There can be nice rotation between these structures too, but there’s a communication that happens. Between the, in this case the wooden Dow on top and the wooden dow on the bottom between say the shoulder girdle and the pelvis.

They’re gonna communicate with each other through this continuous tension network. So if we can work on getting movement in the shoulder girdle, that’s gonna help pull on the rib cage and move the rib cage, and it’s gonna pull on the pelvis and move the pelvis and vice versa. If I move the pelvis. It’s gonna communicate through this continuous tension network via the myo fascia.

So we’re gonna be educating and aligning the structures through these XO yang and DY channels. So it’s a nice model. We’re gonna look at some exercises in just a little bit. You can keep a sort of a visual of this nice tensity model ’cause it’s a really good model for understanding movement in the body.

So let’s go back to the presentation. So we’ll go to the third benefit and goal, which is to mobilize the spine, the sacroiliac joint, and the pelvis. You can look at this this kind of ribcage structure and the spine structure, and note that there’s a lot of. Coupled movement of rotation and side bending.

But what I really wanna consider is that the structures, the myofascial sinus that attach the shoulder girdle to the spine, thoracic spine in particular, if those are moving and mobilizing, that’s gonna pull on the spine, that’s gonna contribute to a nice, movement in the spine, it’s gonna, it’s gonna help that rotation and side bending of the spine.

Same thing with those structures like the serus anterior that attach the shoulder girdle to the rib cage. That’s gonna pull on the rib cage. That’s gonna help mobilize that thoraco lumbar junction region. And then there’s sinus that attach the pelvis to the spine. Quadratus lumborum. SOAs, the obliques.

These are all structures that would be part of the network of channels we’re looking at. Those are gonna help communicate movement from the pelvis into the spine. It’s very hard to picture movement of every spinal level when you’re doing a Qigong or a therapeutic exercise. So I kinda like to put my focus on the shoulder girdle, rib cage and pelvis and allow the sinus to pull on the spine and mobilize the spine through that network.

Image on the right shows the enate bone movements and things like walking, but there’s a lot of Qigong patterns that involve that sort of spiraling, contralateral, sort of torsional type movement through the pelvis to help normalize that movement in the denominate bones. And create good healthy movement in the sacroiliac joint.

So the exercises we’ll look at in just a moment will really feature a lot of these types of movements. So the final benefit then, and the final goal will be to mobilize and massage the internal organs. So the image on the left is showing the pericardium. You can take note that the pericardium has attachments onto the spine.

It has attachments on the rib cage, it has attachments on the sternum. So if I were to think about this tensity structure and that pericardium was sitting in the middle of this, attached to all of these structures, as they’re moving and stretching and pulling and turning, that’s gonna help pull on the pericardium.

So it’s gonna create a mobilization and a kind of a shearing force into the pericardium. Same thing with the liver and the image on the right. It has a movement in the frontal plane. So as I’m going into this side, bending type motion. Expanding and stretching one side and shortening one side that’s going to take the liver into a nice range of motion.

It also has a transverse plane motion. So there’s a rotational type forces are gonna pull on that liver and kind of help take it into a nice range of motion. So that’s what I wanna look at with these groups of exercises. I’m gonna take you through a couple exercises. You can follow along with ’em.

And like I said, these can be your own exercises you do for your own wellness program, but they do make really nice patient exercises. So let me go and get set up for that. We’re gonna be in a slight different position. I’m gonna be standing and I’ll walk you through two exercises that can be used for patients or for yourself.

So we’re gonna look at a therapeutic exercise for the San J Innu channel along the lateral aspect of the arm and up into the shoulder girdle. It’s paired pericardium channel on the medial aspect of the arm into the ribcage. From there, it actually wraps around the ribcage. Both of these channels influence rotation and side bending type motions.

So when you’re doing those rotation and side bendings, that helps mobilize the thoracic spine, the sinus pull on the thoracic spine, and that helps massage the internal contents of the thoracic cavity, particularly the pericardium organ. So let’s look at this exercise and I’m gonna do it mirror to you.

So what I call out will be opposite so you can follow along. So the right hand will be on top, fingers facing in the opposite directions. Turn to the left open, turn to the right and close. Turn to the left open, expand. Turn to the right close, compress. Turn to the left open. Turn to the right close. Turn to the left open.

One hand is higher than the other hand. That helps move the shoulder girdle on the ribcage Turn. They become level and they change. So it’s mobilizing the shoulder girdle on the rib cage. Turn open, expand, turn close, compress, turn open, expand, turn close, compress, turn open, expand one hand higher than the other.

They become level and they change. Turn, expand, turn, compress. Change directions. So left hand on top fingers facing to the opposite directions. Turn right, expand, turn left. Compress, turn right. Expand. Hands move away. Turn left. Compress the hands. Start coming together. Turn right, expand, turn left. Compress, turn right, expand.

Turn left. Compress. Turn right. Expand one hand higher than the other. Turn, the change comes around. Turn right one hand higher than the other. Turn. They change, turn, expand, turn, compress. So we’re massaging the rib cage thoracic spine pericardium organ. San Jiao organ, at least in the upper port, upper Jiao, and we’re creating mobility and fluid motion throughout that region.

Open, turn, expand,

open up the stance. We can do another exercise. This one starts to involve much more of the whole body, so including the liver channel. The gallbladder channel, so reach up. They still has that opposite opposing motions. So it’s working the sha yang and the joy in channels in rotation and side bending hands separate.

One arm pulls back, the other hand pushes out. Hands come together. Turn. One hand pulls back. The other one pushes out. Balance, reach, expand. Turn,

turn, reach across. Turn one arm pulls back. The other one pushes out. Turn. Change directions. Reach across. Pull the arm back. Push the arm out and change.

Pull the arm out. Push the arm out. Change.

Pull the arm back. Push the arm out. Turn.

Hope you enjoyed the exercises and you found those useful. Again, I wanna thank the American Acupuncture Council for having me on. It’s always a pleasure to be here and work with work with the American Acupuncture Council and with everybody who’s taking part in the webinar. I’ll see you guys next time.

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