Of the many Energy Medicine tools to balance the body and mental energies, sedating the triple warmer meridian may be the most practical and the simplest for addressing panic, stress, trauma, energy drain and helping hyperactive children. This is the Brain Gym exercise to use if the day has been stressful and you can’t take the time to relax or meditate, but you desperately want to quiet your spinning thoughts. It’s also an easy, quick technique that you can use on yourself, your friends, kids, and even on upset animals to calm them down.
What is the Triple Warmer meridian?
The “triple warmer” or “tri-heater” is one of the 14 energy meridians from Chinese medicine. In the Chinese system, every part of the body is correlated to one of the meridians - an invisible line of energy flow. The health of an organ or system is affected by the corresponding meridian and has an direct impact on the strength and energy of the meridian. By clearing and balancing the energies of the meridians, health can be established in the body and the psyche.
The triple warmer meridian corresponds to the most important glands in the body, including the thyroid and the adrenal glands. It regulates the metabolism and is related to aspects of the immune system - but in energy work, the triple warmer is most well known for its connection to the stress response.
What can throw the Triple Warmer out of balance?
The triple warmer meridian is activated whenever your body or your emotions are stressed. In tandem with the adrenaline response, it wakes up when your heart is racing, your blood pumping, and your nerves jangling. The stress response is ingrained in our bodies for physical survival. Unfortunately, it kicks in too quickly for our needs in the modern world and it can be difficult to shut it down once the time for urgency has passed.
Does this sound familiar?
- An executive needs to stay calm and collected in front of a tough room of potential clients, but can’t keep his hands from shaking
- A high school student with an exam the next morning is so nervous she can’t close her eyes to sleep
- Kids who haven’t eaten sugar or watched tv in weeks still go tearing around the house making noise and won’t calm down
- A mother who crashes in any free moment because she is so accustomed to multi-tasking and being continuously busy
All of these are examples of an over-energized triple warmer that won’t turn off. Many children with diagnosed or suspected ADD, as well as most insomniacs, are chronically over-energized - which means that their triple warmer is too strong. An over-energized triple warmer is one of the most common energy imbalances, as one might imagine, since the “fight or flight response” is in our DNA. Thankfully, there is a simple exercise you can do to help calm this energy down.
Triple warmer over-energy is often connected to conditions involving a hyperactive thyroid, but it can also be related to energy depletion, chronic fatigue and the weight gain and sluggishness of hypothyroid conditions.
How to relax and calm stressful energy by sedating the Triple Warmer meridian
"Running" a meridian in its usual direction strengthens its energy, and running a meridian backwards weakens, sedates, or calms it. When the triple warmer is over-energized, the goal is to calm it.
To run a meridian backward, touch the end point, then glide your hand over the area through which the meridian passes, finishing by touching the beginning point. The exact path of the meridian is not important: only that you touch the exact start and end points.
Sedating the Triple Warmer: Use the opposite hand to touch the outside edge of the eyebrow, furthest from your nose. Then pass your hand back (away from your face), over and around your ear, down the back of your neck, across the back of your shoulder, and down the outside of your arm and the back of your hand. Touch the fourth finger (the “ring finger”) at the base of the nail.
Now repeat this motion, gently, at least three times on each side of your body.
That’s it!
Long-term impact
Like most chronic challenges that are related to the body's energy field, the triple warmer meridian does not “like” being sedated and will take any stressful opportunity as a chance to flip back into over-energy. This correction may need to be done frequently for a while until the body’s balance is restored.
Long-term sedation of the triple warmer can have a positive impact on groundedness, self-esteem, and may assist in weight loss thanks to the thyroid’s role in regulating metabolism.
Related articles: What are Meridians? and the Watch Batteries and the Heart Meridian
