Thursday, June 07, 2007

CCMClock

In Classical Chinese Medicine the body is governed by the operation of 12 organ networks that are active at different times of the day according to their differing physiological characteristics. For example, the Large Intestine represents the explosive energy of the sunrise. When you take a 24 hour day and divide it by 12 you get 2 hours per organ. But not really, because this method doesn't take into account the longer daylight hours during the summer and shorter daylight hours during the winter. What you really want is a clock that calibrates to this.

After talking with a couple of my teachers, and thinking it might be more clinically relevant to know which organ network was currently most active, I devised a widget for Mac OS X. It calculates sunrise and sunset based on a given location (longitude and latitude) and maps the current time to the energetics of the correct organ. Here's a sample:



Email me if you're interested in obtaining this. I'm offering lifetime support for $20. It requires Mac OS X 10.4 or above.

7 comments:

Eric said...

Dude, how awesome is THAT? I freaking LOVE the intersection of tech and CCM. It makes me happy - well, in most cases.

Anyway - thanks for bopping over to my blog. I've subscribed to your feed and will be reading every day.

I'd love if you would come over and do a guest post sometime - about whatever.

Eric

Brandon Brown said...

You beat me to it. I just posted a comment to your 12 organ posting about this thing. When time becomes a loop ...

Anonymous said...

Hi, I was wondering if you’d have something to say, according to the organ clock, regarding a sleep struggle I’m having lately, for quite a few months.
I wake up every two hours, usually in the half hour, like 2:30am, 4:30 etc. yesternight it was 1:30, 2:00, 3:30, 5:30. It seems like the sleep quality gets better actually after 4:00 am.
It really clicks for me your thought about the difference that comes into this clock with the different seasons, and different world locations.
Thanks
juditta

My residence now is Israel
and it's summer

Brandon Brown said...

Hi Juditta,

Thanks for your comment. First I would say, it would be best to seek help from a licensed practitioner who can see what situation you whole body is in and work on that, anything I would say would just be speculation. With that said, in Chinese Medicine, typically waking up frequently during the night indicates a certain amount of yin deficiency that can be treated with herbs and acupuncture. The theory is that the Shen (often translated as consciousness) is yang in nature, and at night it is enveloped by the yin of the body. When the yin is insufficient, the Shen cannot go inside of it and thus it stays outside and you are awake.

best of luck,
brandon

Bluesky said...

Love the clock, What is your email? I must be studying too much I can't find it here on the site. Bluesky

Brandon Brown said...

Hi!

Thanks, I've just updated my blogger profile to include my email.

And anyone watching, I've got a new version of the CCM Clock on the way that will allow you to enter your location so it will work outside of Portland, OR.

stay tuned!

Dafina said...

Hi, Brandon,

Great clock! I'm a practitioner of TCM and would certainly like to connect with your CCMClock! I'll be redoing my website soon. Does your clock work on PCs as well?