Moving In The Direction Of Relevance

See last week’s post for part one of the introduction to the Wu Xing (Five Phases) philosophy (and why I’m not calling it the Five Elements theory.)

This week I’m going to describe one more aspect of the theory, and then, finally, I’d like to explain how it can be helpful in everyday life.

Relationships – Part 2

Last week I gave two examples of the kinds of relationships that you can have between the different phases:

Creative:

• Water enables Wood to grow
• Wood is the fuel of Fire

Controlling:

• Water puts out Fire
• Fire softens Metal

And so on.

(Obviously there are more ways the phases can interact, but in the interest of brevity, and sanity, I’m not going to give the complete collection of lists in this post).

By Parnassus – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Now let’s learn about another, completely different kind of relationship that exists in the five phases framework: the relationship of sharing a phase.

Why do we eat sweets when we’re worried?

Ancient Chinese philosophers divided up human experiences according to the five phases theory, and left us with extensive lists of corresponding phenomena.

For example, anger, the feeling that drives people to move, grow and make changes, belongs to the Wood phase. As does the sense of sight, and the faculty of imagination (you need to be able to see ahead to move and act, and imagine the future in order to effect change).

Communication is a way to spread ideas and transform with emotions and thoughts of other people. Spreading out in all directions and transforming other objects are properties of Fire.

A good performer almost always has a strong Fire aspect.

Earth represents the parenting stage of life, and the emotion of Earth is worry. The sound associated with Earth is a sing-song, calming tone of voice, or an annoying whining voice. And the flavor of Earth is sweet.

Things which share a phase are considered to be connected in a very specific way, like the same musical note being played on different instruments. One thing belonging to the Earth phase will resonate with another Earth phenomenon, which is why we crave sweet foods when we are worried.

Why does being scared make us angry?

The relationships that exist between the five phases can also occur between the phenomena that are associated with the various phases.

Just like Water allows trees to grow, fear left on it’s own will eventually grow into anger.

Creativity (Wood) can allow good communication (Fire) which can lead to intellectual involvement and learning (Earth).

In this way, five phases theory gives us a very powerful tools for understanding how things can relate to each other.

And, finally, why should you care?

As I said last week, the point of the five phases theory is to describe ways things can change, and relate to other things (or people).

As a general rule, if you are unhappy about anything in life, the solution is going to be to change something, or change your relationship to something.

And when you are trying to decide what and how to change, a system for describing and qualifying change can be a very powerful tool.

I find the five phases to be very helpful when working with people on motivation and habit change. Understanding the different types of changes we can make, and which ones will feel more natural to us, makes actually following through and taking action much easier.

If you know that you feel better with Wood-like changes, that what you child is missing in school is Earth-support, or that your team needs more Metal-structure in order to hit deadlines, it is much easier to take action and fix the problem.

And how are you supposed to know any of that?

Starting next week we’ll be taking a deep dive into each of the phases in turn. You can find out what the characteristics of each phase are, what kinds of actions and change are associated with each, and how to motivate people bases on their personality type. Don’t miss it!

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If you were sent this post by a friend and have no clue what’s going on, Hi! I’m Havva Mahler, practitioner of Chinese medicine, acupuncture, herbs, tuina, reflexology, massage and stuff like that. You can normally find me at one of my clinics in Be’er Sheva or Sderot, or reading something about health and/or motivation. You can find out more about me here. Get in touch with me here. Rather see a giant panda get acupuncture? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. 🙂