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A very common occurrence of this is Liver Chi Congestion. A huge responsibility of the Liver Organ System is to regulate Chi flow, especially Chi in the chest. When the Liver Organ System becomes weak, it ceases to regulate Chi the way it is designed to. When Chi is not being regulated, you get imbalances of Chi flow, much like how a damn affects a river. You’ll get pooling of Chi on one side of the blockage and a decrease of Chi on the other. When Liver Chi stagnates, it often congests in the chest. If the Chi continues to persist in this manner, and never opens up and moves, it will then often overflow and infringe on another organ systems, creating problems there too.
Stagnant Chi can overflow into the Spleen Organ System, or digestion, making problems such as with nausea and low appetite. Another very common manifestation is when the Chi creates Heat (after all friction creates heat) and what does heat like to do? Heat rises! How is this heat commonly released? The answer is by your exterior-a.k.a.-your skin!
Stagnant Liver Chi can often create skin problems that manifest as heat-dryness, oiliness, redness and phlegm. Can you imagine what common things are created when you pair and combine dryness, redness and/or phlegm? Does this sound familiar? Does Acne, boils, carbuncles, rashes, scaly skin all sound like manifestations of these environmental factors? Of course they do!
This is one reason why naming problems in a bio-metric way just does not have the same weight or defined clarity Chinese Medicine brings forth. If heat, combined with phlegm manifests as acne or a boil, it doesn’t quite matter. Similar problems are usually seen as varying degrees of the same environmental factors and will often be treated with the same Chinese Herbal Formulas-though doses may differ. This is how an environmental view of the human body really contrasts with the mechanical one.