The Gallbladder meridian (Zu Shao Yang Dan Jing) is one of the twelve principal channels of Chinese medicine, the network along which qi is held to circulate through the body. It is a Yang channel, paired with the Gallbladder, and belongs to the phase of Wood in the five-phase (wu xing) scheme.
Function in the tradition
In the theory of the channels this meridian is concerned with decision and judgement, the yang partner of the Liver. The twelve principal channels are arranged in yin-yang pairs and in a daily cycle through which qi is said to pass from one to the next, and the points along them are those used in acupuncture and related therapies.
The meridian is described here as a concept of traditional Chinese medicine, a system of ideas and practice with a long documented history, rather than as an anatomical structure of Western physiology.
Its Path, and the Daily Cycle
The Gallbladder channel is usually described as the most convoluted of the twelve, zigzagging back and forth several times across the side of the skull from the outer corner of the eye before descending behind the ear, across the shoulder and down the flank and outer leg to the fourth toe, and it carries more points on the head, forty-four along its full length, than any other channel. In the Ziwu Liuzhu timetable, worked out in the Jin and Yuan periods from the older Neijing idea of sequential qi circulation, the Gallbladder governs eleven at night to one in the morning, the midnight hour, paired with the Liver channel that follows it as the Wood phase's two channels.