Today I saw Dr. Liu for my acupuncture treatment. She took my pulse, after which she never says much. So I ask how it is. She says it is getting better but that I have been very depleted. Depleted in the kidney meridian, which is causing my bone, vision, memory and breathing problems. “Kidneys rule the bones” is what they say in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
I have always thought she was treating me for the exhaustion that followed my husband’s hospitalization last year. Today she says my level of depletion happens at birth and she asks if I was a preemie. This level also happens with children who have suffered starvation. She says she was born during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, when 20 million Chinese people died. She was lucky, her parents were university professors, but even so she had no hair on her head until she was three years old. It was the wish of her parents that she study acupuncture so she could heal herself.
Tears start flowing down my cheeks. I am crying for China and for Dr. Liu and for my childhood full of respiratory illness. I remember now about the stroke I had at birth; I must tell her this fact.
Later I recall this mysterious dream from three years ago, before meeting Dr. Liu:
Kidney Dream 04.24.09
I had the strangest dream last night. I awoke in a kind of bed made of old wooden planks (like an old farm wagon), filled with snow. I was being operated on to replace a kidney. The snow was somehow numbing me to the pain; there was no anesthesia. Then I turned over and a transplant was performed on the other side of my body. I was fully awake.
At the time of the dream I made this comment: “Kidneys filter toxins from the blood and build red blood cells, I suppose it is a purification dream.” I also uncovered this information:
“Kidney function in the body is described as Yin Water in Zang Fu theory. This can be seen as the Yin of the Yin, and should be noted as the time in nature when things are congealed, condensed and covered. A great symbol for this is the seed buried beneath the snow. It holds the memories of all the plants that have produced it through the ages, and in this memory lies the pilot light of its species. The Yin within Water is the time of rest during which this seed sits and waits. It is the will of the seed, the fidelity it has to its origins that is really stored inside.
“Zang Fu theory connects the Kidney to the storing of the Zhi spirit, which is often translated as ‘memory’ or ‘will’ or ‘fidelity.’ We can see this connection in the seed, the winter and the ocean. The Kidney is also connected with the reproductive function of the human being, and this is easy to see with the seed metaphor. Through the controlling of the water metabolism, the Kidney also plays a role in separating the clear from the turbid, which is a major function taking place during the winter time.”
