Awakening Destiny: Horary Acupuncture for the Spring Equinox
The Spring Equinox isn’t just a shift in seasonal temps, it’s a moment of perfect balance, yin and yang in equal measure, before the great surge of growth. At this pivotal time, we meet the feral, electric pulse of transition through horary acupuncture, working with the precise timing of Spring’s corresponding energetics:
Gallbladder (11 PM - 1 AM) and Liver (1 AM - 3 AM)—the meridians governing vision, decision-making, and movement.
The Wood Element—representing growth, transformation, and the courage to move forward.
As the Dao De Jing describes:
“I do not know its proper name but will call it Dao.
If forced to give it a name, I shall call it great.
Great means ‘moving away.’
‘Moving away’ means ‘far away’ (yuan).
And ‘far away’ means [ultimately] to return.”
What is Horary?
Imagine your body as a living ecosystem, mirroring nature’s rhythms. Just as dawn sparks alertness and night invites rest, each organ system follows its own natural cycle. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), each organ has a peak time of activity, a moment when its energy is most potent. Horary acupuncture harnesses this precise timing to enhance healing.
Between 11 PM and 1 AM, the Gallbladder reigns, guiding decision-making and the courage to move forward. From 1 AM to 3 AM, the Liver takes over, responsible for vision, planning, and emotional flow. These two meridians work in tandem: the Liver dreams, and the Gallbladder executes.
When blocked, this system leaves us feeling stuck: indecisive, frustrated, unable to progress. Sometimes it feels like no matter what we do we can’t get ahead. Or ask questions like “why does it never work out for me?” However how it may feel, life is benevolent to our small minded pea brains. By working with these meridians at their peak, we clear stagnation and restore natural movement, just as spring energy pushes new growth into the world. Allowing us to release the confines of perspective to connect with what matters most.
The Points We Use
We will work with specific ‘wood points’ on the ‘Wood’ channel: Liver 1 (Dadun, “Big Mound”) and Gallbladder 41 (Zulinqi, “Foot Governor of Tears”), two points that initiate and guide the Wood element’s unfolding.
LV1 Dadun
• Liver 1 (on the inside of the big toe) is the first spark of the Liver meridian. It’s where the energy of spring first stirs, the deep underground push of a seed breaking dormancy. This point clears stagnation, awakens vision, and sets the direction.
GB41 Zulinqi
• Gallbladder 41 (on the lateral foot) is the master point of the Dai Mai, the Belt Vessel: a meridian that holds the tension of old patterns. This point clears constraint, releasing the body’s stored resistance to change. If Liver is the dream, Gallbladder is the execution, turning possibility into movement.
The Five Element Perspective
Five Element theory is an ancient way of understanding the world and the body, based on the idea that everything is connected through five fundamental energies or “elements”: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. These elements represent different aspects of life, from growth and change to balance and reflection. Think of them as qualities that shape everything around us, and also inside us.
Spring is the season for Wood. It’s the perfect time to break through old habits and move forward, just like nature wakes up after winter. By working with certain points in the body at the right time of year, we can help release those blocks and free our energy, resetting both our body and our mindset, so we can start seeing things clearly and move with purpose.
In this theory, Wood is all about growth, vision, and taking action. It’s the energy that drives trees to grow upward toward the sun, or the part of us that looks to the future, sets goals, and moves forward in life. Wood is about starting new things and asserting yourself, like pushing beyond obstacles to reach your potential. It is our vision of things, our perception, our inward reflection, that creates the phenomenal universe and illuminates all of destiny.
The virtue of Wood is benevolence. Key to the lock. Often this is represented as the ability to perceive beyond our limitations or obstacles without superiority, without arrogance — with empathy to elevate all things.
However, just like a tree might get stuck in rocky soil, our Wood energy can also get blocked. If the Wood energy isn’t flowing, we might experience things like frustration, indecision, irritability, or the feeling that we’re stuck in life, unable to move forward. This can happen when the parts of our body responsible for vision and decision-making, like the Liver and Gallbladder, are out of balance.
Cultivating Qi Through the Year
“The Difference Between Destiny and Fate:
He who comprehends the greater destiny becomes himself a part of it. He who comprehends the lesser destiny resigns himself to the inevitable.”
The cycle of Wood in spring sets the stage for the seasons to come. How we rise in spring influences how we shine in summer (Fire), gather in autumn (Metal), and restore in winter (Water). If we meet this moment sluggish, tangled in old frustrations, that pattern ripples forward. But if we meet it with clarity—vision in the Liver, courage in the Gallbladder—momentum is effortless.
The natural expression related to the Wood element is Wind. Unpredictable and rapidly changing, wind makes it absurdly difficult to navigate through life. The duty of the Liver and Gallbladder is to make crucial decisions and implement change as necessary part of staying on the path. I like to think of it as sailing, utilizing the winds that create possibility of change. However, harnessing the wind like an experienced sailor means all the difference between staying oriented and being disoriented.
Wind may manifest internally just as it manifests externally in nature. Just as anger blows up within us like a Spring Storm, we must alter our plans in order to accommodate the circumstance. Often anger obscurs our vision, so that we are unable to view the horizon of our destiny. This is dizzying; wherein many of us have felt this vertigo-like sensation wherein ‘where we are going’ is at odds with ‘where we want to be’, as life changes so rapidly and unpredictably. Poor planning, indecisiveness, lack of action, being pushed around leaves us feeling like we are banging our heads against a door, or blown through life “like a leaf in the wind.”
Why Now? Why 1 AM?
Because this is the moment when Wood’s energy is at its peak. The equinox amplifies the transition, and we meet it in stillness before the world wakes. We don’t force movement, we listen for it. We don’t fight change, we align with it.
The message of Wood’s energy is to promote the vision of self. This in turn supports self-esteem. When in contact with this supreme destiny we prune unnecessary branches of the self for growth to bloom more prosperously. However, the roots shall never be compromised. Knowing the difference between our roots and our branches is essential. This is where discernment and judgment come into play. Where we can act without belligerence and with benevolence.
Through horary acupuncture, we awaken to this clarity. Stepping into the season not with resistance, but with intention, vision, and connection.