Difficulty 38

The viscera are only five in number, yet the bowels alone are six. Why is this?

It is answered: The reason the bowels are six is because of the existence of the upper burner, middle burner, and lower burner (collectively called the triple burner). The triple burner has a distinction of prenatal qi, and it governs and leads all types of qi throughout the body. It has a name but no specific form; its channel belongs to the hand shaoyang channel. This is a bowel outside of the regular bowels, and therefore it is said that there are six bowels.