KI-21 Youmen - Dark Gate

A person cannot thrive by living in the sun alone; part of healing means we need to go into the darkness. Here fears are confronted: a palace of darkness, where hidden fears live. At times a patient must relive something and return here: it is like returning to a dark place once visited and opening the door of a black cave that hides something. It gives the will and the strength to face fear. It keeps the balance of work and rest, laughter and crying, day and night, light and darkness. A gate can go either way; this one brings light into the darkness. Everyone needs times of going into darkness and quiet in order to rest.

Offers a secret, miraculous passageway, so every situation always has a resolution if we are willing to look within for every possibility, even the hidden, avoided or suppressed ones, with determination and the conviction that an opening exists. Dark Gate grants these qualities, and the chance to emerge from shadow and darkness into the light, honoring the great union of Yin and Yang, light and dark, and the times we need to retire into the deeper, darker, inner parts of life.

Location: 1½ ACI from the abdominal midline and 6 ACI above the umbilicus level, beside REN-14.
Needle depth: 5 fen
Moxa: 7-10 cones

• When the person is afraid to go into the darkness and is avoiding it; it helps take them there
• For the person who lives in the dark a lot, with no joy, who cannot see the light
• For the darkness of depression: they cannot see there is light, cannot come out, have given up hope, feel suicidal; it helps bring the light in
• For mental torment
• When the gate is stuck closed and the person can only think negative thoughts: evil, hostility, mistrust
• When the gate is stuck open and the person feels exposed, gets no peace or tranquility, and their mind never turns off
• When the person cannot switch off and rest from life's blazing joy; this gate may need closing
• For patients in hell who can see no way out, in the middle of great change, perhaps fearful or stuck and trembling
• When the patient is holding on to the raft to survive
• For someone full of fear, 'spooked' or caught in it, who is suicidal or near death
• When the gate is jammed open and the person never stops: hyperactive, stuck in fifth gear, unable to stop and reflect
• When someone has been ill and feels trapped behind a dark gate; opening it lets love and warmth in to the spirit

• KI-21 (first) with KI-20 Through the Valley: for grief

• Meeting point of the Chong Mai with the Kidney meridian
• Works in either direction: it can take a person into the darkness or bring light into it
• The dark night of the soul need not be negative; it gives a bounce between night and day
• The Penetrating Vessel meets the Kidney channel here, making the point doubly Yin; the character 'you' conveys the dark, mysterious side of Yin