The Concept of Balancing - Muscles, Tissues, Organs, Personality and the Conscious and Unconscious

Balancing is the central concept behind all the stretching and wellness work that we've created. This is how it started. There are muscle groups on either side of your body that balance each other in function. So for example the muscles on the outside of your hip, when they contract, generally bring your legs sideways and the muscles on the inside of your legs bring your legs in towards you. So those are complimentary movements for each other. In Western anatomy, they call them agonist and antagonist, but in Chinese they call them balancing or complimentary muscle groups.

 

So when you're stretching a muscle group, as we've talked about it before, the balancing muscle group is essential for that being successful. So when you're stretching your bicep, your tricep has to be flexible enough to shorten. And when you strengthen your bicep, your tricep has to be flexible enough to lengthen. So that's where the balance started to happen when I first started stretching. There are balancing muscle was groups on either side of the bone: on the front of your leg and the back of your leg, the two outside of your legs, and then the two angles. And that's the same thing in the upper body: the muscles that lift your arm up, the muscles that take your arm back, the muscles that lift your arms sideways, the muscles that bring your arm in, the muscles that take you diagonally up or diagonally down or in the opposite diagonal up here and down there. Those are balancing vectors of muscles when they contract and when they stretch.

 

So that's when it all started and I found that it was so important that, say if I wanted to stretch my hamstrings, the muscles on the other side of the bone, in some cases my quad, would have to be flexible enough to shorten so I could stretch my hamstring. But then one day I was stretching and I was stretching my lateral hamstring and my bladder contracted. That made no sense to me whatsoever. And I tried to figure that out, and I called a friend of mine who had lived in California, where they knew much more about Chinese medicine at the time than they did on the East Coast. And she said "Oh, that's the Bladder energy channel." And I said, "I don't really want to know that." And then I got off the phone and then I stretched my lateral quad and my stomach contracted. And then I called her on the phone I said, "Hey Evelyn, do they have a Stomach Meridian?" And she said, "Yes they do." I said, "Is it on the back of the shoulders?" And she said, "Oh no, it's on the front lateral part of the quad." and I said, "Yeah, that's where I found it out too. Let me call you back." And then I stretched muscle groups on the inside back of my leg, and my pancreas area contracted. And I called her up and I said, "Do they have a Pancreas Meridian?" And she said, "Oh, they have a Spleen-Pancreas." And I said, "Oh, I don't remember where my spleen is, but the pancreas, that area started contracting inside of my body."

 

So I don't really know how the Chinese at that time had figured out muscle groups and their association with organ function, but all I knew was that when I stretched certain muscles I got an effect in those organs. Now most people might find that a little strange, but if you're hit by a car at 70 miles an hour, you're much more organ sensitive. And you have some serious work you have to do to repair your organ function. So I was already very happy about; that I knew that muscles naturally had to contract when they are elongated to get a stretch. And that allowed me to start to fix my body and repair and remove the dense fascia and scar tissue out of my body. But when it also could affect my organ function, that was really a good idea for me. And so I kept doing those and discovering having been very close minded (and still am). When I was closed minded, I didn't want to read Chinese medicine literature. I wanted to find out in my own body. And so I would stretch a muscle group until that organ would show up, and then I'd be like, "Where do the Chinese think the Heart Meridian is?" And then I'd find it [and] it was in the same muscle group that I discovered.

 

A decade later I discovered two muscle groups that were not identified in Chinese medicine with a meridian yet. These I associated with my internal immune system (my thymus on the back of my neck and shoulders going down the back of my arm) and my appendix (coming up the front of my arm, into my cheek and into my temple). So that gave me 16 meridians instead of what's now known in Chinese medicine. So we have muscle groups that balance each other when they contract and stretch and then you have organs. So for example the muscle group on the outside of your leg. In Chinese medicine and in my experience is associated with the functioning of the gallbladder. But on the inside of the leg, the balancing muscle group, is associated with the liver. So the liver produces the bile and your gallbladder releases the bile. So they're kind of partners in terms of that or complimentary in function. The muscles on the front outside of the thigh are associated with your stomach, which digests the food, and then the muscles on the opposite side of the bone are associated with your pancreas (on the back inside of your leg). The pancreas and spleen produce the enzymes to digest food that's been prepared to digest. And so they're partners again for digestion. And all muscle groups are actually like that.

 

Another one that I think most people are aware of is that if you ever find that you're going to get a cold, one of the first symptoms is that your bowel movements change. You get too loose or constipated in your bowels. And so that's the Lung and the Large Intestine meridians and those are balancing muscle groups also. So in Chinese medicine, they have this concept of balancing the organ physiological function. I found that to be true also. But then I was stretching muscle groups down the front center of my body and I at the time I was living in Boston. I think it's pretty obvious to most everybody that I don't look like Mel Gibson. But that's what they're attracted to in Boston. They liked that handsome really emotionally deep, very likable person. I mean that's not normally what I am presenting. And so I went outside after stretching these muscle groups down the front center of my body every single person, man and woman, hit on me. That had never happened in my whole life. And so I ran home, I open up a Chinese medicine book and that was what they call the Conception Vessel going down the front center of your body. Sexual is what it really is. I was being much more intimate and sexy, which is not what I knew how to do most of the time. I was like, "Oh my God, these stretches are affecting me psychologically."

 

So then I started staying in stretches for long periods of time. I mean, most people go to the movies for two hours and sit in the same position. If you went to that same movie and sat in a different position, you'd see a different movie. So I would sit in like a Gallbladder stretch for the side of my leg all day long, except when I was doing all the basic necessities people need do, for a month. And if you did that and you wrote down on a piece of paper how your perception changed and how your insights into yourself changed, you would start identifying psychological changes and perceptual changes that happened to you among other things. And that became a theory of personality types because every time I would stretch the same muscle group, it would generate certain personality characteristics for me. And those characteristics ended up being balancing for the ones on the other side.

 

So when I stretched the Gallbladder muscle group, I became more decisive. I became more dependable. I became a better decision maker. But when I stretch muscle groups on the inside of the legs, I became more free and less repressed and more likable and helpful. And those qualities balance each other. When I stretched muscle groups on the back of my shoulder, instead of being more depressed, I became more upright and more creative. And then the muscle groups on the front, which is associated with the heart, I became more unconditionally loving and more able to take right action; knowing just the right thing to do with the right person at the right place at the right time. And those qualities balance each other. This comfort level and this reality check of the Heart Type, balances the high creative state of the emotional Small Intestine Type.

 

So I found out that we have muscle groups that balance in action, we have muscle groups that balance in terms of organs, and now you have muscle groups that balance in terms of psychological personality traits. So balancing became the central concept that started to emerge from all the stretching. 10 years later, I made the discovery that I'm very happy about. I found out that the muscle groups on the outside of my leg that were associated with decision making and the muscle groups associated on the inside of my leg that were associated with freedom and likability, they weren't just balancing. Each one of those personality types were the conscious and unconscious of each other. So what the Gallbladder Type, associated with the outside the legs and the genius of decision making is unconscious of, the Liver Type, associated with the inside of the legs and the genius of freedom and humility is conscious of. And so as you stretch balancing muscle groups, you get connected to the unconscious of yourself or that muscle group.

 

So if you're stretching your muscle group for your genetic type, say your genetic type is associated with the Pancreas and muscles on the back inside of the legs. As you stretch that, you realize the muscle group on the front outside of the leg that balances the Pancreas has to work well in order to stretch and strengthen that Pancreas muscle group. And when you realize that you have to stretch the Stomach first, on the front outside of the leg to make the strength and stretch good on the inside back of the leg, you start to develop the traits of the Stomach Personality Type which balance those of the Spleen-Pancreas Type on the inside back of the leg. And then sooner or later, you start to realize that your conscious personality, the source of it, isn't your personality. It's the balancing personality type. So if you're a Pancreas Type and your type is associated with peacefulness, the source of that is the Stomach Personality Type, which is associated with self expression and knowing how to get things to work.

 

So now you have this concept that a person is a genetic type. That the moment the sperm and egg join, you get a genetic foundation of the personality and also an unconscious type that's the source for that personality type. So if you're a particular genetic type, your balancing type is your unconscious on the inside. So your unconscious is a personality type, that's the same type as somebody that balances your outside. And the more your balancing type is developed, the more you develop as a person. In fact, your success is completely reflective of how much you've developed that balancing part of yourself. So I call those balancing types, or your balancing unconscious type. And if you're male, the unconscious type is a female, and if you're a female, the unconscious type is a male. That's how it works. So it turned into this whole concept of balancing and then it spreads wider into being balanced in your life.

 

Are you balanced physically in the same sense that you have you developed yourself psychologically? That you've developed yourself emotionally and spiritually? How do you balance what you've developed with the parts that aren't developed yet? And develop those other parts so you become more whole and balanced as a person? There's a way to do that. Just by stretching different muscle groups and getting other people to help you stretch those muscle groups. That's why balance is the central concept behind everything that we do at The Genius of Flexibility. Have a great day.