The Book of the Way and its Potency (or Virtue) attributed to Laozi is one of the most important texts of Daoism. It is also one of the most prominent works ever written on how to find enough meaning in the universe to conduct a personal life based on what is behind and beyond this life. It is a text that can be fruitfully studied and meditated even today, and it still inspires the many people's lives.

Images of water permeate the book with metaphors that show how suppleness, apparent weakness, and the ability to yield and to endure can overcome force and violence. 'The strength of weakness' is presented as a way to succeed and to nurture life, for which one must shift internally and adopt another view on human relationships and on how life proceeds. When this change is achieved, 'The Way of Water' reveals its richness and its marvelous efficiency, bringing us close to the source of life.

During the four webinar lectures, this perception will be demonstrated through several selected Daodejing chapters. Several other texts of the same period (the turn of the 3rd century BC) that share the same approach will also be presented.

Handouts provide the Chinese text (with pinyin) for the selected chapters, along with R.G. Henricks’s translation, which is one of the several good available English translations. The participants are of course welcome to use their own favorite translation and eventually question about dissimilarities. All the same, it is not necessary to know Chinese to follow the lectures.

The first video is a general presentation of the emotions in Chinese medicine and thought, and the following five videos present:

Anger - nu 怒
Elation - xi 喜 and joy - le 樂
Obsessive thought - si 思 and worry - lü 慮
Grief - you 憂 and sadness - bei 悲
Fear - kong 恐 and fright - jing 驚

In a human, the first manifestation of Heavenly Yang (Dumai or Governor Vessel) and Earthly Yin (Renmai or Conception Vessel), allows a powerful fusion, creating the surge of life (Chongmai); this efferverscence is controlled, as if girdled (Daimai) to enclose a vital space. Two couples come to regulate the yin-yang (blood-and-qi) relationship in an intrasystemic (yin and yang Qiaomai) and intersystemic (yin and yang Weimai) perspective.

This course is an in depth study of each of the Eight Extraordinary Meridians as they appear in the Neijing and the Nanjing, including their development as a unique group of meridians. Each extraordinary meridian will be studied in detail, and its underlying philosophical statement will be explored. The detailed presentation of the major associated Classical texts will deepen and enrich our knowledge.

The course includes: A general presentation, a detailed presentation, the Dumai, the Renmai, the Chongmai, the Daimai, the Qiaomai and the Weimai.

Based on the study of Suwen chapter 44, Jinguiyaolüe and other classical Chinese medicine texts, Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallée presents the main characteristics of Wei, often translated in English by "wilting", "atony", "wasting" or "limpness".

The course videos include:

A general presentation. Analysis of the character wei. What is called wei in pathology. Structure of Suwen chapter 44. The five parts of the body as composing a body of qi, a body in motion.

The effect of the lung internal heat and how it is the first to be responsible for limpness and for a wei symdrome. Lung wei in the Jingui Yaolüe. Beginning of the heat of the heart.

The internal heat in the heart, in the liver, in the spleen and stomach leading to various wei syndromes: wei of the circulation (or vessels), of the muscular movement (or sinews), of the flesh.

The internal heat of the kidneys causing a wei of the bone. Presentation of the primary causes : how emotions produce and internal heat in the lung, the heart and the liver, creating specific wei.

Discussion on zong jin (ancestral muscle, converging of muscular forces) and more on the inner heat of the liver. Dampness harms the spleen, heat harms the kidneys, producing specific wei. Diagnosis according to the five zang organs.

Why the wei pathologies are always treated at the Yangming. More on the zongjin. Relation with Chongmai and Daimai. Treatments at the brook (ying) and transport (shu) points.

In traditional Chinese cosmology, clear qing 清 and turbid zhuo 濁 are the two fundamental qualities that initially emerge from undifferentiated primordial matter. Light, subtle and inclined to rise, the clear dissipates, expands and moves; its movement is yang and forms Heaven. Heavy, thick and inclined to settle, the turbid stays in place, concentrates and congeals; its movement is yin and forms Earth.

Clear and turbid form a yin–yang pair. Opposite yet complementary, they exist neither in isolation nor as pure terms: they are relative qualities within a process. Nothing can definitively be qualified as exclusively yin or yang, clear or turbid.

In Chinese medicine, the couple of 'clear and turbid' is found in different contexts and at different levels. Understanding what is clear and what is turbid always depends on the context.

For example the thin, light and centrifugal fluids (jin 津) are called clear in comparison to the dense and centripetal fluids (ye 液), even as the ye fluids rich in essences are themselves clear compared to the turbid residue of food.

Ji 幾 is the almost imperceptible beginning that determines the direction to be taken by the course of events. It is the inner spring of movement not yet visible on the outside that triggers the passage from one state to another. It is the the subtle inception of a movement (of the mind and of events) that has already begun. Hence, its importance for the diagnosis of the great practitioner.

Those penetrating incipience see where all phenomena and events come from and foresee their developments; they know the intrinsic causes of change in things.

Ji 幾, incipience, is the passage from the formless, that which is hidden and not yet manifest, to the form, that which has already started to become a specific thing, a phenomenon, an event.

The art of the great practitioner lies in the ability to grasp these passages, to perceive the imperceptible beginning of a disorder, to anticipate its potential development by understanding correctly the smallest signs. Then one is able to make a subtle diagnosis and to treat before the disease has settled in deeply.