The Wood Element in You: Vision, Anger, Passion for Justice, Flexibility and Compassion (a few minutes of Healing Season)
I love hosting Healing Season. One of my favorite parts is sharing the poetic science of the Five Elements, as applied to the body, mind, and emotions in Chinese Medicine. Here you can see a few minutes of the course video about the Wood Element.
If you're curious about Healing Season, a 12-week small group journey about emotions and physical health, showing up for these times we're in with your full self, Chinese Medicine and Deep Ecology, click here to read more, or click here to contact me and we can explore whether this is a good fit for you right now.
Click Play to get a glimpse of the connections between a little green sprout in the spring, your vision for the future, your angry objections, your tendons, and more.
Transcript:
"...our vision for the future and what we're headed toward, like the destiny that a seed has inside and begins to enact when it's growing up and out. Our sense of vision and purpose is a Wood capacity in us.
So, we actually say that the liver channel comes to the eyes. So our literal vision, and also the same way we use the word "vision" metaphorically in English - our vision for the future is about Wood. So if you think about walking the path toward your vision, moving forward and activating your Wood energy, what happens if something gets in your way, or blocks you or actively tries to stop you? Or even sometimes just accidentally maybe bumps into you and throws you off?
The response to that emotionally, the energy of that emotion, is anger.
It's an objection. The anger is an objection to what's happening right now. So it's healthy and normal to have anger at certain times. Just like we've talked about in the Work that Reconnects, anger reveals our passion for justice. Anger shows us where we perceive something has been violated and we're mobilizing energy within ourselves to take action, to right that.
So anger comes up naturally and healthfully, but it can also happen in excess or at times that it doesn't really make sense for the situation. And that can be an imbalance in Wood.
So, we want to be able to make a stand, to take a stand and, and keep our forward momentum going. But we also want that flexibility, like a new green sprout has, and some of the Wood tissues in the body - or the, the Wood tissue in the body is the tendons. So you think about how we want tendons to be flexible and moist, able to stretch and contract and not get too tight or too dry to where they can strain and tear. So the same way with our wood energy emotionally: we want that forward momentum, that purpose that drive, along with flexibility.
Compassion is also considered a virtue of Wood. It's that balance to anger, that balance to a blame that can come with anger, or wanting to cause harm in anger. We also need that balance of compassion..."
If you're curious about Healing Season, a 12-week small group journey about emotions and physical health, showing up for these times we're in with your full self, Chinese Medicine and Deep Ecology, click here to read more, or click here to contact me and we can explore whether this is a good fit for you right now.