Chinese organ networks: The Kidney

Welcome to the next installment of Chinese organ networks.  Just to be extremely clear in giving credit where credit is due, virtually all the material in this post and in the whole series on each of the 12 organs comes from Dr. Heiner Fruehauf’s Chinese cosmology class at NCNM.  This series is in part a project for that class, a way for me to integrate the material by presenting it to the public eye.  The other things I have chosen to do for the project is a large-scale rendition of the “organ clock,” a 12 sectioned wheel that lays out the organs along with various symbols associated with them.  It is a multivalent calendar and a reference sheet for the organ networks.  It will also look extremely cool when I am finally finished putting in all the hexagrams, animals, Chinese characters and other symbols.  I will upload a photo as it develops.

In preparing this batch of organ network posts, I had do decide whether to proceed in the order of the organ clock or to switch it up slightly.  It made sense to present the Heart first (although it is actually associated with the fifth month of the Chinese character) and the Small Intestine afterwards because of their relationship, but this is also the order on the clock.  With the next two organs, the Bladder and Kidney, I am reversing the clock order and discussing the Kidney first because it is the more essential organ, the archetype of its water phase-element, and the Bladder is best understood in the context of water in general and the Kidney in particular.  So here we go: the Kidney.

At the heart of the Kidney network is a string of associations that I will simply spout out here and unpack as we go along: kidney-water-storage-lowness-north-winter-black-essence-sticky.  We could add more: humility-fear-awe; bones-ears-lower body; determination-memory.  Chinese medicine, like other traditional medicines of the world, works this way, through interlocking resonances.  This makes it hard to explain one part without the whole, but then, once the whole is sketched out, all the parts fit in beautifully.  Once fully fleshed-out, such a system gives rise to great explanatory and, ultimately, clinical power.

The kidney is the organ most closely associated with winter.  The phase-element (one of 5 stages in cycle of nature, which proceeds from water to wood to fire to earth to metal and back to water) of winter is water.  Not the water that courses and rushes, overwhelms, or even refreshes on a sunny day, but the deep, salty, source water we come from.  The ocean.  This water is what we rest in, what connects us to vastness, to the past of our ancestors and, through our own bodily “waters” to our genetic futures.  The key qualities of water in this sense--let’s call it Water--are its depth and lowness.  It seeks always the lowest place and quietly fills it up.  Winter is Water season because of this inward, downward turning.  In yin-yang terms, yang has long since peaked (at midsummer) and declined (during autumn) and now yin rules: the passive, dark, quiet, interior side of nature.  Summer was fire; winter is water.  What nature is doing at this time may be passive, but it is not nothing: rather, she is biding her time and stowing away her resources, for out of the stillness and depth of winter’s Water will spring the new year’s woody growth.  But in order for this to happen, Water must fulfill its function of storage.  At this time of year, the upper parts of plants have died off, and their life force descends into their roots or lies waiting in seeds.  Humans mirror this activity in taking the fruits of our agricultural labors, gathering them up, and preserving them.  It makes sense, then, that the scent associated with Water would be that of fermentation; I picture crocks of kim chee ripening underground, or barrels of miso quietly bubbling in a dank basement.  This is storage, holding the seed of new (yang) growth in the root cellar until the time is ripe. 

People would be well advised to heed this rhythm of nature, to honor the winter season by slowing down, conserving their energy, resting and recharging.  But we also need to do so on a smaller time-scale: nighttime is our daily winter, the time when yang (fire) descends into the embrace of yin (water).  Our society’s epidemic of insomnia and anxiety is one reflection of a deep imbalance here: our stores are depleted.  Without a healthy amount of water down below, there’s nothing to keep the fire of the heart-mind (the Kidney’s partner in the Shaoyin layer, from the perspective of the 6 layers/conformations model) from flaring out of control.  So our minds race, hearts palpitate.  But the relationship between fire and water is not quite what it sounds like.  It isn’t that the Kidney’s water somehow quenches the fire; rather, and somewhat counterintuitively, the water of the Kidney feeds the fire.  Water is not the right word to express this aspect of the kidney’s substance; fat or oil is more like it, or wax.  A candle flame sputters and flares when the wax has burned low; our consciousness reacts similarly when our energy reserves are depleted.  In order to keep the flame steady, we need to assure it that there is adequate fuel waiting in the tank.  

In naturopathic medicine there is much talk of adrenal depletion; the adrenal glands are situated directly on top of the kidneys, and their function is very much part of the sphere of the Chinese Kidney.  The adrenals can shift us into and out of the fight-or-flight adrenaline/cortisol response, i.e. they dictate whether it is appropriate to rev up the afterburners, to “burn the candle at both ends,” as it is sometimes necessary to do in order to overcome a challenge.  With the stresses of modern life, however, many of us are stuck in this sympathetic nervous system/adrenal stress response mode most of the time.  Our waxy, watery reserves are in jeopardy as we fuel the fire with endless cups of coffee, late nights, adrenaline-junkie behavior.  The antidote is as simple as “nourish, rest and relax,” but who has time for that?  Indeed, who even really knows how to get out of the careening, adrenaline-fueled vehicle that thrills us even as it hurtles us towards the cliff of burnout, nervous breakdown, thyroid crash?

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Perhaps the most apt modern metaphor for the Kidney is a battery.  Throughout life we run off both the “post-natal” energy we derive from food and drink and from the air, and the “pre-natal” energy stored in the Kidney.  Even without taxing lifestyles, the Kidney energy slows drains as we age.  This is reflected in some of the common ailments of old age: back pain, knee pain, hearing loss, greying of hair, thinning of bones.  All of these aspects of anatomy and physiology are associated with the Kidney: the lower parts of the body, the bones and teeth, the luster and color of head hair, the ears.  And perhaps the most essential of all: the gonads.  The Chinese word for kidney, “shen,” also means testicle, and to a great extent the sexual functions (of males especially) fall under the realm of the Kidney network.  Semen, the very water of life, sticky, fatty, precious, is the quintessential kidney substance, the closest physical correlate of kidney essence, jing.  There is no quicker way for men to deplete our jing, the very essence of kidney water, than by overindulging in ejaculatory sex.  Nutritionally, we can understand this when we consider that semen contains large amounts of precious nutrients like zinc and omega-3 fatty acids.  It is the final, distilled end product of nutrition, a form of energy so concentrated that it has condensed into a physical substance.  Taoist longevity practices teach techniques for conserving semen, while using kidney-tonifying substances to supplement the jing.  Following the logic of our string of associations, such substances are sticky, dark or black (the color of water and winter), heavy.  Steamed Rehmannia root, an extremely dense and sticky sweet black root, is the classic example from the Chinese pharmacopeia; Ayurvedic tradition uses different terminology but could be said to tonify the Kidney using Shilajit, a highly revered, black, tarry substance that oozes from cracks in the Himalayas during the summer.  The origins of Shilajit are uncertain; it may actually be an extremely condensed form of decomposed plant matter.  It resonates with the Kidney by this fact of its being rotted down, concentrated, as well as by its blackness, stickiness, and heaviness.  Good quality Shilajit is even said to smell like cow urine; it also bears a certain resemblance to crude oil.  A partial list of ailments Shilajit treats: weak bones and fractures, diabetes, infertility, impotence.  Kidneys indeed.

              ^^ Kidney territory: Shilajit bubbling away quietly in the basement.  According to Ayurveda, Shilajit needs to be processed with triphala.  Singh Durbar Vaidyakhana, Kathmandu.  

The Kidney’s animal totem is a bird, either a chicken or an owl.  The chicken is a “slave bird,” as humble as they come, who stays low to the ground selflessly provides eggs.  The more mysterious owl’s night vision is symbolic for the mystical ability of the Kidney to “see in the dark.”

Emotionally, the healthy Kidney ought to manifest humility and awe, and the watery ability to “go with the flow.”  Pathologically, then, arrogance and rigidity can be seen as Kidney pathology.  The Kidney’s chief virtue is said to be zhi, determination or will power.  Kidney people (people who strongly express the positive qualities of the Kidney) include shamans, diviners, physicians, and artisans.  All of these paths carry a certain risk of arrogance, but it is only in making themselves low like water can true mastery be achieved in any of them.