The user manual for Women (Part 3/8) Women in Chinese medicine (EDITED)

“This is the third article of eight about women. This article focuses more on the Yang Fire stage, pre-puberty, puberty, hormonal cycles and comfort. The angle of the article is a combination between Chinese medicine, Chinese psychology and Western science. Remember that the article is provocative to stimulate growth. The references will be published on the seminars “Women and TCM”.

Welcome to read The user manual for Women part 3. Enjoy.”

Nils Volden

Yang Fire period – Pre-Puberty

The Yang Fire stage lasts from seven to fourteen years in girls and between eight to sixteen years in boys. Puberty might be defined as a period when hormones start to increase after the juvenile pause. Yang Fire indicates that she has entered a cycle that is dominated by heat and circulation. Two central hormones that increase and move in a woman are estrogen and progesterone. She will begin with a hormonal cycle of 28 days that will dominate for the rest of her reproductive life, commonly known as the menstruation cycle.

According to where she is in the cycle we will find variations in the amount of hormones. One of the main indicators for this variation is a dramatic and acute change in mood. For many girls we find this to be the beginning of a very turbulent period. The brain of the girl starts to transform again. Qi circulate and Yin/ Yang adjusts. The new hormonal levels in the brain will create changes in the hippocampus (the center of memory and learning), the hypothalamus (organ control) and the amygdala (the center of emotions).

Elevated estrogen levels activate oxytocin in the brain and with that also the brain areas for flirting, talking and connecting; mostly with other women. Estrogen is characterized as Yin in relation to testosterone, Yang. When estrogen reaches its Duliang (tolerance) we find the body creating oxytocin. Oxytocin might be seen as a way to yanginize Shen (the mind). Notice this fact: Young fertile women want to connect with other women, and not men! All women get a brain upgrade when they leave juvenile pause and enter puberty. She is vitalized with more Qi than before. Noticeable for outsiders is a type of mental reorganizing. Relatively new topics enter the sphere of importance like a focus on looks, and her internal thinking of feelings, how to act and what to think. We might see this as an activation of Yi, the mental aspect of Spleen zang. A Spleen yin xu or a Spleen yang shi situation will create an increased thinking to overthinking. Here we simply observe a focus on thinking and a gradual change of themes. This is a Girl in transition to become a Woman! The main subconscious goal for the young woman is to become as attractive as possible for the best possible man; to manage that she need to look the same or better than the other women, and sometimes push away some competitors. This new focus on men is the main problem in this life phase, because this is a major reason to social stress and – competition. The new paradigm “MEN” is emerging stronger at the root to her new behavior. In a way, besides being attractive nothing else really matters. We find a strong focus on communication and she is working hard to create – and maintain social bounds. On top of this she will also work hard to take care of – or nurture related important persons. The stress response changes drastically in this period in women. Women react more to stress than men. Remember that women are Yin and men are Yang. Yang is more compatible with stress than Yin, making women suffer more than men. We will soon see that men need some stress to function, and women switches off when stressed. The worst trigger for stressing a woman is related to her relationships and for men it is related to his feeling of authority. Relationship connected issues in women stresses them as an atomic bomb, and for men a loss of authority will trigger him as a medium firecracker. Women will respond far stronger than men. When triggered we find Yin inter-transforms to Yang. This is the fourth Yin/ Yang-law in practice.

Yang Earth period – Puberty

The Yang Earth period lasts from 14 to 21 years in girls and between 16 and 24 years in boys. The newly initiated hormonal cycle will make the woman even more sensible to emotions than before. Her emotional intelligence, considering reading emotions, will grow in this period. In this period of life the most important are to be a part of the correct group and the approval of others. The worst that might happen to this young woman is disapproval and rejection from the Group. It does not matter much why and who they really are, what they represent or if they are good or bad. As long as she is accepted in it the only thing that really matters for her is to be a part of it and not what the group really does or stands for. Again, the reason for this deeply founded group association wish is multiple: The best looking woman in the group normally gets the best man, and a group will help you to raise your children and provide security for the offspring. Men enters groups with other intentions and – motivations. They frequently want authority and experience some sort of power. Being part of a strong group will pull you up in your experienced reality and in the social world where you circulate.

The menstrual cycle lasts 4 weeks. The first two weeks we find estrogen to be high. A high estrogen relaxes woman and makes her socially more at ease and interested. In the end of the two weeks, the ovulation that changes her last two weeks in the four weeks cycle, will have a high progesterone and low estrogen. This new mix makes her more likely to react harder and to be irritable, aggressive and the chance that she wants to be left alone increases dramatically. This has to do with her and seldom with an actual external reason. When estrogen goes up again and progesterone goes down we know that another cycle is beginning. This is the basic variation of hormones in a female brain. An important aspect is that at the beginning of every new cycle the brain is reset. Depending on where in the cycle a woman is, she will get emotional variations. Since the cycle is not comfortable for the woman, she will search for ways to lose some stress.

All women have an extreme in born urge to be socially accepted by others; no exception. One of their biggest problems possibly occur if nobody likes them or if they are pushed out as a punishment to live in Wai (external) and not in the more comfortable Nei (internal). The main female stress response is directly related to rejection from a social group. She prepares her complete childhood to fit into a social group. Just remember the glue in social relations is conversation, language, words and chatting. Aspects she has trained to master all her life. This is where the woman is the expert, the professional, and the man partially blind. When observing the conversation Champion we might notice that girls increase their speaking speed when they are in a social interaction. On top of this we also know that a woman speaks in average 3 times more words than a man. The faster a woman speaks, the more at ease she will be. The speaking woman is normal, but sometimes we have super speakers (“radios”) and mute (timid) speakers. Normally we might say that the speakers are the Alpha, the leaders, and the mute, a submissive, an assistant. First if the speaker/ Alpha is not present longer we might get the mute to speak. If she speaks she might be considered a Pinocchio; a person that rises when the Alpha leaves. A cascade of words follows a relatively fixed pattern. A woman will practice a type of oral trade where she is gossiping in general about many different topics to create connection. She will become more private and gradually more intimate into the topics as the relation grows deeper from Wai to Nei in considered important topics. It is common to add aspects from their private live and intimate secrets as a way to connect to important others. The dance of this social interaction goes like this: If I tell you something private, then you have to tell me something similar. As a result we have created a special relation; an intimate bound between two persons. Intimacy and the sensation of sharing something special creates an increased secretion of oxytocin. When a woman speaks, the pleasure center in the brain activates and sparks of wellbeing is sent out. This might be seen as an increase of Qi in Shen. In the case of women, we might state that words work as a drug in their brain. Women speaking about intimate details with sexual aspects or romantic qualities get their pleasure center even more lid up. Frustrating as it might sound for men; women become turned on from words and less from physical action. Chemically she experiences a mix of dopamine and oxytocin trigged by words, only to be surpassed by a real orgasm. Audio information is connected to kidney zang and thereby also intimately related to sexuality as kidney essence is in charge for this aspect.

When entering puberty, women find great stimulation and comfort in other women. Her complete focus/ World are the moments they share, connect, bounds, gossip, shopping, or simply killing time together. Remember this has nothing to do with being lesbian; this is pure bounding and nothing else. Anyhow, it is interesting to know that women experience semi-orgasms through speaking with other women about sex, men and sharing intimate detail about their husband. Women relax and might be considered addicted in the stimulation of communication that their female friends gives them. Boys are different. Boys start to pull away from others instead of grouping together as testosterone reduces the interest of a social life. The only times a man groups is because of an activity or a sexual fantasy. Normally boys are ashamed of their erections and their pubertal masturbation, and tend to keep it private. As we might have understood that the direction of puberty for a girl is to encounter a man, the father to her future children. Evolution has made her to prepare her body to become pregnant with the best qualified willing male, all well programmed into the congenital essence.

In this process she seeks advice from her friends and together they will create bounds to help her to take care of her children. In a way that the future children belong to her and her friends more to the father. Soon you will understand why!