Chinese Five Elements: Wood

The 5 elements start with the Element of Wood, as this is traditionally the starting point of each year.

The season of Spring, generally seen as starting in February, is also represented by the element of Wood.

Wood quite simply is connected to the trees, and every other kind of flora that exists on earth. Thus that can be everything from seaweed to grass, to trees and daffodils.

Wood is connected to the wind, which tends to blow most strongly in Spring time. Spring time is the time when everything starts to grow again after winter, and this is characterised by the thriving, flourishing, literally springing forth of growth after the period of hibernation. It’s the time that seeds planted start to open up and push their shoots out, upward and outwards. It is represented by birth. Thus, in human nature, Wood represents the kind of qualities we see represented in Spring time and by the flora’s characteristics.

This means that the attributes of flexibility, gentleness, expansion, resilience, growth and so on are the characteristics we see for the Wood type of behavior patterns we can see in humans.
Those ancients also determined that the liver and gall bladder organs were also connected with the element of wood. Thus, when the liver (the main wood organ) is out of balance, the person can be very resistant and become literally a ‘stick in the mud’ type of person, who finds it hard to uproot themselves and adapt to changes. Thus they can be inflexible, irritable and nervous and even become angry.

This is when you can also see that liver disease will start to set in, if they don’t change and learn to develop and heal their livers.

When someone has liver blockages and or weakness, it was discovered that they can get eye problems, nail problems, sinew and ligament problems, liver diseases like Jaundice, twitching, sharp headaches, their right side of their bodies can have problems, problems and pains will move around the body like the wind moves, and they will generally be experiencing a lack of flow and smoothness in their lives.

In older times, the doctors used to describe people who were irritable as liverish, so you can see that not just the eastern peoples were clued into these observations, but it was there that they developed such a deep and complex understanding, that helps us today through energy healing and other such natural healing methods, to cure our ills and bad characteristics.

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Next week post will be about element of fire.