Gall Bladder Energy and Your Child

The gall bladder energy circuit works in conjunction with the liver energy circuit and plays an important role within your child's energy system.

These two circuits together combine to help us deal with stress in all of its many forms.

Because children are less mature and have obviously less life experience to draw upon than adults, this tends to be an area where they are more vulnerable to imbalances and problems.

This figure shows the interdependence of your child's gall bladder energy system with the other three contributing circuits, the liver, the pericardium and the triple heater. The surrounding functions on the puzzle pieces are a small fraction what these four organ and energy circuits are in charge of, according to the Chinese medicine system.

From an energy perspective, we have the ability to talk about interactions and contributing factors in a much more open ended way, because energy is more fluid and interchangeable. If you think about it, one's energy state can change in a matter of seconds. Just think of how fast a toddler (or teenager) can lose control and become angry at the drop of a hat.

It just so happens that the gall bladder circuit, along with the liver, is supposed to help us make smooth transitions, to be flexible and to make sound decisions.

I'll bet you never thought your liver and gall bladder had anything to do with your own decision making!

This is just one example of how all encompassing and useful the Chinese medicine system is and how indispensable I think the energy or consciousness based approach can be for you and your child.

According to the Chinese medicine system, the following functions are mostly the responsibility of your child's gall bladder energy circuit:

Gall bladder energy related functions are important for kids in many different areas including cognitive, emotional and physical categories.

Gall bladder energy related symptoms are shown below and these are some of the things I look out for when learning about a child's history and current situation.

The gall bladder and liver energy systems work closely together, so you will notice how their functions and symptom patterns overlap. Common gall bladder energy related symptoms in children are such things as getting overwhelmed by stress, headaches, temper tantrums, poor decision making, and ankle and eye issues.

The information that can be gleaned by having this framework or foundation in mind is so key to your understanding.

It has been very satisfying for me to be able to educate and in many cases comfort parents by giving them the tools they need to understand more fully what is going on with their child.

Let's look at an example of a teenager with a history of chronic sprained ankles. It is paradoxical that a teenager in the prime of their lives could have a problem with healing up ankle injuries. How can this come about?

By looking at the other functions of the gall bladder energy, we can start to come up with an explanation that makes sense.

If a teenager has trouble making decisions about daily activities as well as long term goals (like going to college versus getting a job), this will take away an important energy allotment that otherwise would be available for healing up musculoskeletal injuries like a sprained ankle.

In addition, maybe this teenager has had frequent infections in the past, experienced some stressful and traumatic events, and has difficulty with muscle tension and headaches.

Because the same energy reservoir, which happens to be the gall bladder meridian, is expending more of its energy on decision making, the immune system's defensive energy, and dealing with stress, muscle tension and headaches; this gives us a plausible explanation as to why the teenager's ankles are slow to heal.

This makes sense because their ankles are much lower on the priority list compared to those other functions of the gall bladder energy.

This is a very simplistic explanation of a complex process, but I just want you to know how the energy medicine perspective helps us to uncover some of the likely causes of a chronic problem like repeated sprained ankles.

By taking a more holistic approach to the question of what might be causing this imbalance, we have opened up many more possibilities and increased our chances of getting to the bottom of it.

In my experience, there are many other contributing factors which can come from both the liver and gall bladder energy circuits as well as any other organ and channel in the Chinese medicine system.

This is where getting an opinion and advice from a practitioner who has experience with this way of evaluating your child can be beneficial.

My main motivation for bringing you this information is so that you will understand why your teenager, like in the example above, might have a problem with sprained ankles. I believe it is inappropriate to assess the situation by simply saying they have "weak ankles" or "loose tendons" or "flexible joints".

This does not really answer the question of why, and I have found that most teenagers and parents want to know "why" above all else.

Keep in mind that your child's gall bladder energy is not the only part to pay attention to, nor does this circuit only have an effect on teenagers.

We must keep in mind the age and stage of development that your child is in, coupled with the Chinese medicine involvement of the relevant organs and meridians like the liver and gall bladder energy pathways.

We should also be open and aware of other systems and methods of gaining information which could contribute to your child's ultimate solution.

I encourage every parent to explore and learn more about the energy medicine and Chinese medicine paradigms because they are so helpful in understanding the causes at play in any child's condition or set of symptoms.