Liver and Gallbladder Wind-Wood: Planning, Upright Judgment, and Decision

Liver

The East gives rise to Wind; Wind gives rise to Wood; Wood gives rise to sourness; sourness gives rise to the Liver. The Liver is “the official of the general, from which planning and strategy emerge.” All sinews belong to the Liver, and it stores the hun. Its trigram is Zhen; in the body it corresponds to the sinews; its color is blue-green; its tone is Jue; its voice is shouting; its emotion is anger; its movement-change is grasping; its orifice is the eyes; its flavor is sour. Its fluid is tears, its odor rancid, its external luster the nails, its number eight, its grain wheat, its domestic animal chicken, its creature the furred class, its fruit plum, and its vegetable chive. The Liver is paired with the Gallbladder and is controlled by the Lung. It dislikes Wind; grief, anger, and counterflow of qi may injure it. Liver disease may cause pain beneath both flanks extending toward the lower abdomen and may make a person prone to anger. In deficiency, vision may become dim and hearing reduced; fearfulness may arise, as though someone were about to seize the person.

Gallbladder

The Gallbladder is “the official of impartial judgment, from which decision-making emerges.” The classical tradition states that the eleven other zang-fu take decisions from the Gallbladder. Ye Tianshi observed that Bupleurum (Chai Hu), being light and clear, can raise and course Gallbladder qi; once Gallbladder qi is freely coursing, the other zang-fu can follow it in transformation.

Tang Zonghai wrote that people with abundant bile may be less fearful, and that vigorous Gallbladder Fire may likewise produce fearlessness. But excess loses the middle and therefore loses correctness, leading to over-bold action; insufficiency or unruly weakness may instead produce timidity and still fail to achieve balanced impartiality. When Gallbladder qi is neither too rigid nor too yielding, it fulfills the role of the “official of impartiality” and can make decisions as circumstances require.

A classical passage states that Gallbladder disease may cause frequent sighing, bitter taste in the mouth, vomiting of retained fluid, palpitating unease below the Heart, fear as if someone were about to seize the person, a constricted sensation in the throat, and frequent spitting.