The Twelve Main Meridians

🔊Chinese medicine describes twelve main meridians, one connected to each of the six zang and six fu organs introduced in the last unit. Each meridian runs along either an arm or a leg, linking a limb to its associated organ deep inside the torso — the Lung meridian, for example, runs along the inner arm, and the Stomach meridian runs down the front of the leg. This is why an acupuncturist might work on a point far from where a symptom is felt: the meridian connects that distant point to the organ in question.

🔊The twelve meridians are organized in a system of three yin and three yang meridians on each limb, six on the arms and six on the legs. Yin meridians generally run along the inner, more protected surface of a limb and connect to zang organs; yang meridians generally run along the outer surface and connect to fu organs. This is not an arbitrary naming choice — it follows the same yin-yang logic from earlier in this course: interior and storing (yin) versus exterior and processing (yang).

🔊None of this needs to be memorized point by point to be useful. What matters is the underlying idea: the twelve meridians form one continuous, connected network rather than twelve separate, isolated lines, and qi is said to flow through all twelve in a fixed sequence over the course of a day, passing the "baton" from one meridian to the next. A blockage or weakness doesn't stay isolated in one line — it can affect the flow reaching every meridian downstream.