emsenn

SKILL

3 min read

What you will be able to do

  • Define the Three Treasures (Jing, Qi, Shen) as three layers of system vitality — stored substrate, circulating energy, and reflective awareness — and explain what each describes that Western medical vocabulary does not.
  • Apply the Yin-Yang framework as a tool for describing dynamic balance (not static opposition) — identifying complementary aspects of any phenomenon and recognizing when the balance has shifted.
  • Describe the Zang-Fu organ-function systems as functional relationships rather than anatomical organs, and explain why the TCM “liver” is not the biomedical liver.
  • Explain what meridians describe — channels of functional connection linking interior organs to the surface and to each other — without reducing them to anatomical structures or dismissing them as metaphor.
  • Use TCM vocabulary diagnostically: given a description of a person’s condition (energy, mood, digestion, sleep, pain patterns), identify which TCM categories are relevant and what pattern they suggest.
  • Articulate why TCM categories are diagnostic rather than ontological — they describe how a situation presents, not what the world is made of — and why forcing correspondence with Western biomedical categories distorts both systems.

Prerequisites

  • No formal prerequisites. The reference documents are self-contained.
  • Familiarity with basic anatomy (particularly the digestive and nervous systems) is helpful for understanding how TCM categories relate to — without reducing to — biomedical structures.

Reference documents

Scope

This skill covers using TCM vocabulary as a diagnostic and descriptive framework. It does not cover:

  • TCM clinical practice (pulse diagnosis, tongue diagnosis, herbal prescription, acupuncture point selection)
  • The Five Phases (Wu Xing) in depth, beyond their role in Zang-Fu relationships
  • TCM treatment principles or herbal pharmacology
  • The history of TCM’s development and its relationship to Chinese philosophy and statecraft

Verification

You have this skill if you can: (1) describe a person’s condition using the Jing/Qi/Shen framework, identifying which level of vitality is affected; (2) explain a Zang-Fu pattern (e.g., “Liver overacting on Spleen”) in functional terms without mapping it onto biomedical anatomy; (3) articulate what TCM vocabulary names that Western medical vocabulary does not — specifically the intermediate condition of animation without adaptivity; and (4) explain to someone why comparing the TCM liver to the biomedical liver misunderstands both systems.

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