This week I hope to try to give an understanding of our digestive process from a Chinese traditional perspective. The Chinese give the digestive process a central role in our well-being. They name this process Pi or the Spleen. Just as the earth is the centre of the cosmos from the viewpoint of the human being, “Earth’s Organ.” the Spleen or Pi, is seen as holding a central place in the human body.
Our well-being can be seen as dependent on our ability to absorb and process nourishment. Through the transforming action of the digestive process, food becomes nutritional substances; from a Chinese perspective, the Spleen or Pi also digests information to transform into knowledge and sensuous experience is received and transformed into a core sense of well-being. Therefore the digestive process from the Chinese viewpoint encompasses the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of ourselves.
Spleen/Pi: the Physical Realm: The Spleen/Pi is responsible for nourishment. A strong Spleen/Pi ensures that a person is well-nourished. A weak Spleen/Pi may result in being undernourished. At the physical level, it is possible to a get a good diet yet not be strong enough to convert the food into proper nourishment. At the emotional level, one may be in an apparently nourishing situation yet be unable to receive the available nourishment.
The Spleen/Pi transformative action is best embodied in the digestive process and it may be taken to refer to the whole digestive tract from mouth to anus and all the various juices and transformative agents released along the way. One measure of the Spleen/Pi strength is the vigour of the digestive system.
The nourishment generated by the Spleen/Pi is transformed throughout the whole body, supporting the strength of the soft tissues and muscles. Soft tissues support the structure of the physical body, keeping things in place, holding up the body and giving it shape. With poor tone in the soft tissues, a body feels and looks “saggy,” and in extreme cases may suffer from prolapse. When the Spleen/Pi is strong, however, physical vitality is also strong and the soft tissues provide the body with good support.
Spleen/Pi: the Non-Physical Realm: The Spleen/Pi is said to house the power of thought - from a Chinese perspective, the power to concentrate and apply the mind. This is an odd concept to the Western mind, so what does it mean? The digestive process is mirrored at the mental level by the thinking process. Digestion brings with it a desire to eat, which then leads to the intake of food. The food is then sorted into that which is usable and sent to where it can be used or stored in the body. What cannot be used is excreted. The thinking process follows a similar path: the desire for knowledge leads to the intake of information which is then sifted and sorted. Whatever can be put to immediate use is applied and the rest is stored for later. Irrelevant or unusable information is rejected and forgotten.
Our everyday language reflects just how similar and related these processes are. We talk of “food for thought,” of being “unable to digest certain information,” of “verbal diarrhoea,” of “eating our words,” of “chewing over an idea” and so on.
The Latin proverb, Mens sana in corpora sano (“A healthy mind in a healthy body”), underlines the relationship between physical vitality and mental alertness.
If the Spleen/Pi governs the power of thought at the mental level, at the emotional level it governs feelings of concern both for oneself and others.
Next week I’ll look at how to nourish the Spleen/Pi.
David Foley
MNIMH, MRCHM
Medical Herbalist
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