SI-19 Tinggong - Listening Palace

Palace is approached with deep reverence: the dwelling of the Emperor or God, a place we take the patient, concerned with healing spiritually rather than physically. To be able to listen, we must have pure thoughts and a pure heart, in order to discriminate what is good and what is not. Close to the ear, it has everything to do with hearing, and there are many different levels of hearing someone: physical hearing, the outside world and inwardly. We hear something, and we don't listen. The Emperor is our final speaking, so give it respect, and listen to what our heart says. This point helps the person find the inner truth of their heart and wisdom as it relates to the outer world, and assists transformation, a subtle shift in perception. It carries a sense of listening by intuition, knowing the nature of things straight away in one's Heart and bypassing the analytical mind; listening from the Heart, and to its impulses, which is compassion. It helps a person hear pure sound, clears away the background drone and brings clarity to confusion. This point embodies the relationship between the Heart and the Small Intestine. The character for listening is related to the one for Virtue, the rectitude of the Heart and our original nature, and it pictures the ear of a disciple listening closely: by listening attentively the Heart can be set right. True listening hears one's own Heart and the Hearts of others without distortion; the old teaching is to listen not with the ears, nor even with the mind, but with the spirit, which stays empty and waits upon everything. The Small Intestine is the Emperor's closest minister, telling the Heart the essence of what is happening in the nation and telling the nation the essence of the Emperor's intent.

Location: In front of the tragus, in the hollow (mandibular fossa) that opens when the mouth is opened, behind the zygomatic process's articular tubercle.
Needle depth: 2-3 fen
Moxa: 3-5 cones

• When the person does not get the message or is not listening to themselves, choosing to do things that are not good for themselves
• When sounds go no deeper than the physical ear and the person cannot hear spiritually or mentally
• When the person needs to be able to listen to themselves and to others
• When fear makes it hard to hear what their own heart, or another person's heart, is saying
• When the person mainly feels unheard or misunderstood
• When the person cannot accept life as it happens in the moment
• When the Small Intestine is uninspired and sadness needs lifting
• When a person is difficult to reach or contact
• When a person needs help sorting out what others are saying
• When the person is easily distracted, can't concentrate, can't work out what is being said, or stares blankly in mental confusion
• When the person can't hear accurately what is said to them, or can't sort out what is in their own Heart or in the Hearts of others
• When what you say as the practitioner does not seem to reach the patient: it opens them so the words land on the mental and spirit level and not just in the ear

• Exit point of the Small Intestine; use on the Small Intestine to Bladder (SI-19 to UB-1) Entry-Exit block so energy is flowing
• Connects to the Bladder: a Water and Fire connection, the strongest relationship between two elements
• After you sort things out at SI-19, you can see things clearly at UB-1 Eyes Bright
• Concerned with hearing at the spirit and mental level
• Transforms matter, separating the pure from the impure
• With UB-1, one of the most powerful points for accurate perception of reality, inner and outer
• Helps the patient cultivate virtue by attending, with eyes and ears, to the heart of life. Practitioners should remember that their own attentive listening can help heal another's Heart
• The sage's path shows the stages: first the will is set on learning, later the decrees of Heaven are known, then the ear becomes an obedient organ for receiving truth, and at last one can follow the Heart's desire without straying from what is right