Not too long ago, I received an email from a prospective student:

“I am not interested in learning Qigong as I read a book about it, tried the exercises associated with it and decided that it was not comprehensive as there are more than 6 organs in the body.”

Apparently, whatever book she read didn’t explain this very well. It’s also a good reason not to just read a book about this stuff!

In Qigong, we sometimes refer to certain exercises as working on certain organs, such as the Liver, or the Spleen, or the Lungs. But let me ask you, when I mention your internal organs, such as your heart or your lungs, what do you think of?

If you are like most people, you think of the physical organs in your body – the actual living tissue structures, such as the heart that beats, or the lungs that fill with air. We think of these organs as “things” that surgeons operate on, or that we can see on x-rays.

But the “organs” in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Qigong are quite different. These energy arts use a “process-oriented” viewpoint rather than an “object-oriented” viewpoint. As such, in Tai Chi, Qigong, and TCM, the internal organs of the body are not “things”, but “abstractions” that describe processes that happen inside the body.

This causes a lot of confusion for Westerners. For many Westerners, we are used to thinking of the organs as “objects” – the physical living tissue structures in your body.

For example, we think of the kidneys as those “bean-shaped” organs near the middle of our back just below the rib cage. But as Chinese medical references point out, when a TCM doctor talks about your “kidney”, he’s not talking about your “bean-shaped” tissues. He’s talking about a process that includes these tissues, plus the entire urogenital system … as well as the endocrine system, part of the immune system, and part of the higher nervous system! The “kidneys” in TCM are much more than what most Westerners think of as the kidneys.

So what I’m about to say may seem odd to you, but it’s crucial to understanding Tai Chi and Qigong: A doctor can’t open you up surgically and point to your TCM kidneys! The same is true of other TCM organs. They too refer to processes, not just the physical objects or structures in the body.

This “abstract process” orientation also explains why TCM has some “organs” that can’t be found by Western doctors. For example, TCM doctors include in their list of organs one called the “Triple Burner”. But the “Triple Burner” doesn’t appear on any x-ray. Ask any group of surgeons, and they will tell you they’ve never seen a “Triple Burner” organ inside any patient.

But the “Triple Burner” is an important organ in TCM. While not a “physical organ” by Western standards, the “Triple Burner” represents parts of three important bodily processes: respiration, digestion, and elimination.

So concentrate on thinking of organs as representing the “processes” in your body rather than the “objects” in your body. When a Tai Chi or Qigong master say “lungs”, think of breathing. When we say “stomach”, think of digestion. When we say “heart”, think of blood circulation.

So a Qigong “organ” usually includes several organs. I’m sorry no one ever explained this to the woman who emailed me. Qigong is much more comprehensive than she was led to think.