KI-25 Shencang - Spirit Storehouse

Spirit Storehouse is a reservoir, a larder: the reserves must be filled now for the coming year. An empty storehouse brings fear and desperation. Here quality and volume can be combined, a very special place, like visiting a deep spring inside the person. It is a reservoir of will that strengthens the spirit when the person's spirit is alive yet undernourished. It is also about listening to your own depth with your own awareness and silence. It holds perseverance and determination. If you are unsure what the patient needs more of, this gives a little of everything, and body, mind and spirit will know how to use it and bring it forth. Spirit food: it nourishes and restores the spirit from its own reserves, gives the will to carry on, strengthens spiritual resolve and works more directly on the mental level. The character for storing also means to hide or conceal, and a related character pictures an Official kneeling before his master's authority; so this point can reach a hidden reserve of Shen, and also help the Heart-mind, the Emperor, have its commands carried out with the respect it deserves from the other Officials.

Provides an exquisite reservoir of life force that supports the presence of spirit within us; without it, our provisions for life's eventualities dwindle, life loses its shine and we may struggle, feeling dragged along rather than flowing. Lacking the buoyant quality of spirit, we compensate in exhausting ways that deplete other reserves, but this point can restore us by accumulating and storing the essential reserves of spirit, so we revive and bubble with enthusiasm deep within.

Location: On the chest in the 2nd intercostal space, 2 ACI from the midline, level with REN-19.
Needle depth: 3 fen
Moxa: 5 cones

• When the spirit is there, but really depleted; you want to reach the reserves
• When the person has spirit but you want to build on it and give them reserves
• When the spirit is especially hurt and depleted, hurting more than the body
• When things are difficult and you can tell they are challenged; if you do not do something, their spirit will become buried
• When a person is utterly depleted, or spends their stores the moment they receive them
• For worry, anxiety and insomnia
• For people who find no joy in being alive and are in a mental rut
• When a person is unsure what they want, or why not receive love
• As the patient starts getting better: as treatment gives them access to vitality, they may spend it as a quick fix
• When depletion shows as powerful fears, significant anxiety or strong depression (also KI-27)
• When the Shen is deficient or hidden

• KI-24 Spirit Burial Ground followed by KI-25: strengthens the spirit once it has been unburied
• KI-27 Storehouse with KI-25: works well together, especially for a Fire Causative Factor (CF)

• Especially good for vulnerable patients
• Has a special relationship with a Fire CF
• The Yin spirit, the Jing, of the five organs is transformed by Heart Fire into Shen, which is then stored in the Heart; the name reflects the point's place near the Heart, the true storehouse of the Spirit