Chakras & Chinese Medicine Hours: Lung

I often use the Chinese medicine hours to help me diagnose a physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual mystery, especially if someone is waking up again and again at the same time of night, for example. When time features prominently in the narrative of what’s happening, the Chinese medicine hours have never steered me wrong, especially the emotional associations with the elements of each organ/time slot.

We’ll take them one at a time, connect the meridian to the chakra system, and outline the emotions that tend to match the two-hour time slot.

First, some basics:

Each Chinese Medicine meridian is associated with an organ.

Each organ has a Yin or Yang designation. In that Tai Chi binary (think the Taoist circle,) ancient designations would make Yin feminine and passive, and Yang masculine and active. I prefer to think of Yin as magnetic; and Yang as dynamic. Yin draws things to it; Yang goes and gets things.

After the Yin/Yang designation comes one of the 5 Elements: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal. Each of these has a major emotion attached thereto:

Water = fear
Wood = anger
Fire = joy
Earth = worry
Metal = sadness

Now let us begin with:

3–5 AM is Lung. Lung’s element is Yin Metal. It is associated with the Fourth Green Heart Chakra whose Grace is Love.

We know immediately that Liver is magnetic and related to sadness. It breaks down to grief, guilt, sorrow, betrayal, sadness, loneliness.

This could play out in several ways. One, you could be low-level sad with everything all the time. Two, you could be drawing sadness to you all the time, and it will seem to come out of the blue. Most often, Lung is affiliated with grief — ungrieved grief. To heal, grief must be felt.

Or, you could remember the function of the lung is to respire? The OED says respire comes from Latin roots: respirare ‘breathe out’, from re- = again + spirare =breathe. Grief often feels like a weight upon the chest. What’s needed? A deep breath. What’s in your world that’s causing you grief right now?

Here is a possible fix: Wear green, remember what you appreciated initially about whatever’s causing you grief now, figure out where the grief sources in you, take the time to grieve it, and make a new choice.

A reminder: here is where chakras come from: When a being incarnates, there is a burst of brilliant light. I’d call that The Divine Spark. It animates all your systems. If you’ll view that burst of light, that Divine Spark, through a prism, you will see the eight major chakras.