A map of how every part of the body talks to every other part. Start with what you feel: see where it leads, what it usually means, and how Chinese medicine, Ayurveda and yoga tell the same story.
Imagine your body is a puppet. Its strings don't stop in one place. Each one runs from the head all the way to the feet. Pull one string at the top, and the whole line answers, right down to the foot. That's how a tight jaw can talk to a hip, and a worried belly can talk to a shoulder.
Start here
What do you feel?
Tap what you notice in your body or your mind. You will see where it leads in the body, what it usually points to, and how Chinese medicine, Ayurveda and yoga describe the same thing in their own words.
The body map
Tap a spot, or follow a string
Turn the body to see the front or the back. From the front, the person's left is on your right. From the back, their left is on your left, just like yours.
Every dot is a spot you can tap.
Channel paths are drawn simplified, to show where each river runs and what it connects, not every point on it.
Wind, fire and mud
Three ways the body gets out of balance
Ayurveda names three forces in the body: vāta, pitta and kapha. Think of them as wind, fire and mud. Each one feels different when it goes out of balance, and Chinese medicine describes the same three pictures with its own words.
Wind
Vāta · air and space
It jabs and wanders.
Qualities
Dry, cold, light, rough, always moving
In the body
Pain that jumps from place to place. Cracking joints, dry skin, cold hands and feet, gas, bloating, constipation
In the mind
Racing thoughts, fear, worry, scattered attention. Light sleep, waking between 2 and 4 am
Lives in
Large intestine, pelvis, low back, joints, ears, nerves
Chinese medicine
Wind, and qi that can't settle. Water running low: dryness, cold, fear
Calms it
Warmth, oil, rhythm, rest, warm cooked food, a regular day
Fire
Pitta · fire and water
It burns.
Qualities
Hot, sharp, piercing, oily, sour
In the body
Sharp pain in one clear spot. Inflammation, redness, rashes, heartburn, acid, loose stools, sweating, strong thirst, red eyes
In the mind
Anger, impatience, criticism, "it must be done now and done right". Waking around midnight to 2 am, too hot
Lives in
Small intestine, stomach, liver, blood, skin, eyes
Chinese medicine
Heat, and Liver fire rising up to the head
Calms it
Cool (not cold), slowing down, sweet and bitter food, letting it out in words
Dampness and phlegm. Spleen qi that sinks instead of lifting
Calms it
Movement, warmth, light warm food, spices like ginger, getting up early
Wind jabs and wanders. Fire burns. Mud presses and stays.
What isn't digested stays
Sickness as something that came in and was never digested
We digest more than food. Every day we take in words, news, looks, moments. If the body can feel something all the way through, it takes what it needs and lets the rest go. If it can't, that piece stays inside. It isn't bad. It is only raw and unfinished, and it gets in the way, like trapped air.
When the fire can digest itIt comes in→It is felt all the way through→It becomes part of you, and the rest goes back to the earth
When the fire is too weakIt comes in→It is neither taken in nor let go→It sits as a heavy leftover, and the wind carries it around the body
That last step is the snag from the body map: movement meets something stuck. The leftover is heavy, so it sinks. The wind pushes against it, so it spreads to the edges, to a shoulder, to the face.
Same idea, different names
Ayurveda
Āma
The undigested leftover that stays when agni, the digestive fire, is weak. Agni digests food and also feelings and experiences. The classic text Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdaya says all illness grows where agni is weak.
Ayurveda, the heart
Sādhaka pitta
The fire in the heart that digests what you live through. It sorts what is true, what is yours, what to keep and what to let go.
Chinese medicine
The Spleen
It digests food and thoughts. Thinking in circles is a thought that was never digested. It knots the middle, then makes it sink.
The Andes (Q'ero)
Hucha
Heavy energy. Not evil, only unprocessed. The energy belly, the qosqo, can "eat" it and hand it to Mother Earth, who takes it as food.
The same food can be medicine or a burden. In Ayurveda that depends on whether the fire can digest it. Sweet is one of the six tastes the body needs; too much of it only burdens a fire that is already weak.
Five feelings, five stories
Each feeling pulls the strings its own way
Chinese medicine ties each feeling to an element. Each one moves energy in its own direction: fear drops down, anger rises and spreads, overexcitement flies up and out, worry knots the middle, grief closes the chest. Step through each story and watch the body answer.
Read your body
What do you notice in yourself?
Mark what you see in the mirror or feel inside. The map shows which spots light up, which feelings they point to, and which strings may tie them together. An example set is marked to start with.
This is a way of looking, not a diagnosis. The same sign can have more than one story, and a real body is best read in person.
Many traditions, one body
Different words for the same things
People who looked at the body and the world closely enough, in places that never met, kept finding the same structure: an axis, two poles, a middle that digests, a life force that has to keep moving. Here is how each tradition names it.
Life that moves
Chinese medicine
Qi, flowing through the rivers
Ayurveda, yoga
Prāṇa, moving as five winds
Andes (Q'ero)
Kawsay, the living energy in everything
Amazon (Desana)
The Sun's energy that circles through people, animals and plants, and must come back, or the circle dries up
The middle that digests
Chinese medicine
Spleen and Stomach; the center spot, Zhongwan
Ayurveda, yoga
Agni, the digestive fire, and samāna, the wind that gathers; Manipura
Andes (Q'ero)
Qosqo, the energy belly that eats heavy energy
What stays undigested
Chinese medicine
Dampness, phlegm, stuck qi
Ayurveda, yoga
Āma; saṃskāras, impressions that stay
Andes (Q'ero)
Hucha, heavy energy
The axis
Chinese medicine
Du and Ren, the two seas along the spine and the front
Ayurveda, yoga
Suṣumnā in the body; Mount Meru in the world
Costa Rica (Bribri)
The center post of the cosmic house, joining the upper world and the world below
Siberia
The world tree the healer climbs up and down
Two poles
Chinese medicine
Yin and yang
Ayurveda, yoga
Śiva and Śakti; Stone's plus (head) and minus (pelvis)
Costa Rica (Bribri)
A male clay pot on top of the house, a female one on top of the house below, one axis between them
Mind comes first
Chinese medicine
Where the mind goes, qi follows
Vedic
Consciousness comes first; the world is its expression
Colombia (Kogi)
Everything existed first in Aluna, in thought, and only then became matter
Healing means the flow returns
Chinese medicine
Move stuck qi, warm what is cold, lift what sinks
Ayurveda, yoga
Kindle agni, digest āma, let prāṇa move
Andes (Q'ero)
Give hucha back to the earth
Panama (Guna)
In a hard birth, the healer sings a path through the woman's body to where the force is stuck
Sound makes the world
Vedic
Vāk and śabda: sound creates, mantra keeps
Australia (Aboriginal)
The ancestors sang the land into being; songlines are map and law
In this map
A low "auuu" on the out-breath lets the drop finish
Two bowls on one stick
The head and the pelvis are twins
Your head is the top bowl. Your pelvis is the bottom bowl. The spine is the stick between them. Dr. Randolph Stone, who founded Polarity Therapy, saw that they mirror each other, bone for bone. Two ends of one current: move one, and the other feels it.
These pairs come from Stone's own table. He built his work on Ayurveda: the five elements, and currents flowing between a positive and a negative pole.
The face is a little picture book
A tiny body lives on your face
In Diện Chẩn, the Vietnamese face method of Bùi Quốc Châu, the whole body is drawn small on the face. Tap a part of the little body to see which part of the big body it stands for.
A jaw lifted on one side points to the lower half of the little body on that side: hip, leg and foot. Different face maps place the body a little differently. Treat each one as a lens, not the only truth.
How to work with it
Six rules that work for every string
Work on the snag, not the feeling
A feeling is energy pressing on a snag. Open the snag, and the movement finishes by itself.
Start at the other end
The spot that hurts is often the end of the string, not its root. A lifted brow lets go when the heels and calves let go.
Untie before you lift
If you strengthen on top of a knot, you only tie it tighter. Soften first, then build tone.
Breathe low
The breathing dome touches almost every string. A slow, low out-breath is the one move that reaches all of them.
Help the middle, not the edges
A shoulder, a jaw or a foot is often only where the pull shows. Warm and lift the center, and the edges let go.
Digest, don't store
What you feel all the way through can pass. What you swallow stays. Give it breath, sound, words or tears, and it can move on.