The way one’s own body is perceived, is a very curious daily experience. We tend to hold our bodies in the predominant routines in our lives. Whether, we consider ourselves an athletic person or not, these routines over the year shape and form our body, or are even they are predetermined by our body type. Nature or nurture shapes and are shaped in the form we keep or are kept in. Our genetic disposition makes us according to polymorphic types- endomorph, exomorph, or mesomorph, predisposed to playing the particular sports that we find ourselves easily playing. As someone with a runner’s build would be more apt to become a runner, rather than one who has the genes of a linebacker. In aging we are more apt to choose those routines that fit our comfortable body types that we have found ourselves settling in, and likewise find ourselves with the aches and pains that come also with those routines, body types and dispositions.
In Classical chinese medicine, Element theory breaks it down into 5 elements, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. Each element has a different phase of intensity in the wheel of life, as well as a disposition. Similar to Hippocrates’ four temperaments and its variations, the 5 elements reflect the seasons of the year, and likewise one’s temperaments during those periods. The body evoke images that would pertain with the element. A woody person, as the element would be expressed is one that springs forth into action, very forthright, and assertive. The could be tall, lanky, and sturdy. A Fire person in the similar fashion would be passionate and forth-warming. The could be effusive, vigorous, strong, and swarthy. Each of the elements conjures up their own image, correspondence, and type. Originally derived from the I Ching, the book of changes, the elements chart the progress of the seasons. Viewing the body as a microcosm in a macrocosm, and following the adage as above, so below, the internal landscape of the body was an projection of what was also outside of ourselves. The body also followed its own seasons with its changes.
Each organ of the body therefore has a predilection for a particular element, as its functions, and actions are characterized as such. The heart, and its warm, effusions belongs to the fire element, and the kidneys with its discharging belongs to the water element. As each organ is intertwined with in a network of communication within the body. Each one is in a particular system in the greater functioning of the body, reaching forth extending its influence. The communication of the organ to the great extent of the body, came to be know as a meridian in Chinese Medicine.
Categories: Acupuncture, Qi gong
Edwin Alvarez 