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Five Phase Types

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Five Phase Types W HO A M I? F IVE P HASE T YPES Chinese cosmology sees the world as arising from the dynamism of yin-yang and the five primordial powers (wu de) or phases (wu xing). From the macrocosm to the microcosm, the organization of all natural phenomena is described by the five phase theory of systematic correspondence: as above, so below. The seasons, internal organs, body substances, mental faculties, and emotions mirror each other according to five lines of correspondence. People embody the same relationships within them that prevail in the universe at large. Just as the phases of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water organize Nature, so the five organ networks of the Liver, Heart, Spleen, Lung, and Kidney organize human life. The ancient rudiments of psychological inference exist in correspondence thinking in the sensory, mental, and emotional manifestations of organ network function as well as in the dynamic activity associated with the seasons. For example, Wood corresponds to both the Liver and spring. The Liver governs visual clarity, purposeful thinking, and intensity of feeling. Physiologically, the Liver governs the upward and outward movement of blood and the ability of the body to mobilize for action. The Liver shares the initiatory, arousing, surging, and the unpredictable qualities of spring. FIRE: HEART • SOUTH • HIGH NOON • SUMMER • GROWTH • JOY WOOD: LIVER METAL: LUNG • EAST SHEN • WEST • RISING SUN • SETTING SUN • SPRING • AUTUMN • BIRTH • DEGENERATION • ANGER • SORROW EARTH: SPLEEN • CENTER • TRANSITION BLOOD • MATURITY QI • RUMINATION MOISTURE WATER: KIDNEY • NORTH • MIDNIGHT • WINTER • DEATH/GERMINATION ESSENCE • FEAR This model describes how the life force pulsates, inspiring and expiring, generating and degenerating, charging and discharging. Just as the magnetic needle of a compass always represents North and South, so Water always represents the force that stores, accumulates and germinates; and Fire always symbolizes the endpoint of expansion, consummation. Metal represents contraction, centripetal inward motion; and Wood represents expansion, centrifugal movement outward; and Earth represents the balance point, the axis around which the other forces revolve. © 2007 Chinese Medicine Works www.chinese-medicine-works.com Five phase theory, modified and reinvented to conform to our culture, affords a particularly comprehensive schema for self-understanding. Our expansion of five phase theory into a typology postulates that each of us is organized by a core phase--Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, or Water--which we know as our type. This core phase characterizes each of us and is the source of our deepest impulses. It functions like the hub of our wheel, while the others serve as the spokes. One phase fashions the context within which we evolve and acts as our primary frame of reference, guiding our instincts and how we live them. In short, it organizes us, body and mind. FROM COSMOLOGY TO TYPOLOGY Our typology derives from yin-yang and five By learning to recognize our organizing force--how phase theories. This provides a framework our soma and psyche are expressed—our nature is for linking the disparate components of revealed. When we know ourselves, we can behave biology, temperament, emotion, character, accordingly. The language of five phase theory and symptoms into one unified picture. shines a light upon existential issues of identity (Who Rather than relying solely upon a am I--how am I put together?), of purpose (What pathological premise of inherited or acquired am I here to do?), and of destiny (who will I predispositions to dysfunction and disease, become, and how can I make the best of it?) we subscribe to an ontological premise that there is an intrinsic formative power called li that engenders personal identity. This li, or the inborn pattern of a person’s true nature, is embodied in the five viscera (wu zang) of the Liver, Heart, Spleen, Lung, and Kidney. The concept of li suggests that the primary intent or mission of a human being is teleological: to shape itself and its environment in such a way that its life is both an expression of its imagination and intelligence (shen) and an engine for actualizing its purposes and destiny (ming). Constitutional typing classifies people according to an established set of criteria, incorporating and synthesizing knowledge about such categories as the composition, structure, formation, and organization of human mental and physiologic processes. Formulations of human typologies have been a part of many medical systems, including Ayurvedic, Unani, Hippocratic, Galenic, Homeopathic as well as Japanese, Korean and Chinese variants of Chinese traditional medicine. Modern Western typologies include Jung’s psychologically based archetypes and Kretchmer’s somatic types. KNOWING YOUR TYPE Our typology suggests that there are five distinct constitutional patterns that represent five basic styles of being in the world. To know our type is to gain insight into the goals we set, the risks we take, the competence we manifest, the postures we adopt toward people and projects, the expectations we hold, the things that most threaten us, and the satisfactions from which we derive the greatest rewards. To learn about our patterns and identify our type is to increase our capacity to forestall ailments, upsets and quandaries. Each type has physical, mental, emotional predispositions. For example, the Wood type does well under the intense competitive pressure that upsets the Earth type and paralyzes the Water type. Water types prefer to have time to think things through, and the Earth type feels most comfortable when people are cheerfully working together. So the Wood type thrives on the challenge and fast pace that threatens he Water and Earth types. The Metal type appreciates the same order that can hastily be cast aside by the impulsiveness of the Wood type and the excitability of the Fire type. Earth types can be hurt and discouraged in attempts to be warm and friendly with Metal and Water types who remain detached and withdrawn. Yet Earth types may also be just the animated, imposing social force these types need to be included in events that would otherwise pass them by. © 2007 Chinese Medicine Works www.chinese-medicine-works.com Just as bamboo bends readily in a stiff The ancient medical sages were not merely attempting to breeze, so the Wood type is vulnerable communicate a set of intangible ideas, but to induce in the to the gusts of change and sudden rage. The Wood type is fiercely reader an apprehension of the nature of reality through independent and exerts leadership images that evoked actual bodily experiences. Every easily but is at risk of being bossy and description of natural phenomena establishes a somatic having a difficult time being a team link with internal processes, and every description of player. Fire easily flares, so the Fire internal phenomena establishes a link with external type is prone to becoming overly processes in which the procession of the five seasons (wu excited and prone to high anxiety. shi) and the movement of the five viscera (wu zang) are Earth becomes easily oversaturated, viewed as mutually interacting and intermediating via the so the Earth type is subject to inertia, agency of the five phases (wu xing) or powers (wu de). edema and mental quagmires. Metal Accordingly, it is axiomatic that what is observed and cuts away and restricts, so the Metal experienced outwardly is mirrored inwardly, and vice type can excel at pruning the versa. unnecessary but may become stiff and insensitive. Water freezes and hardens, We chose to develop a formative typology that is based so the Water type is dogged and pa- tient, but prey to sclerosis and isolation. on ontological and teleological principles as well as pathological patterns. The purposes of a successful Each type thrives under certain typology are twofold. First, it should have prognostic conditions. Whereas raw juicy fruits power: assisting us in our capacity to make general and salads cool and moisturize Wood, statements about groups and individuals that are Metal, and Fire; drier, cooked foods predictive of both functional and adaptive trends as well are better for Earth and Water. Metal as dysfunctional and maladaptive ones. Second, it should can barely tolerate the flamboyant enable us to describe groups of individuals and to some intensity of Fire, and Fire feels degree explain the nature of their formative process. inhibited by the controlled cool calm of Metal. Wood does well under the pressure that Earth shuns, yet Wood does not have the patience of Earth. Water has great tenacity, but less of Wood's ambition or Fire's spark. Everyone marches to one of these five drummers. Understanding these types reveals how people handle relationships, their symptoms and remedies, what foods best suit them, and areas of aptitude and weakness. OUR VIRTUES CAN BECOME OUR FRAILTIES Our strengths, exaggerated, can morph into our weaknesses, and our virtues can become our frailties. We gravitate toward an environment that suits our character; similarly, it's easiest to develop in areas where we have natural talent. Maslow's phrase, "When the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything as if it were a nail" describes typical fixations of character. For Wood it is easy to interpret any circumstance as requiring audacious action. Fire might perceive gratification as the end-goal of any situation. Metal adheres to rules and protocols even when these have Pathology and ontology are both expressions of our become a hindrance. Water may intrinsic self-organizing process--one undermining, prefer to cogitate, perhaps losing the fragmenting, overwhelming, devolving, and the other opportunity to realize or fulfill those affirming, integrating, enlivening, and evolving. That is visions. And Earth may be so why the five phase system can be used to simultaneously concerned with establishing balance to examine not only the pathogenesis of sickness but also and harmony that the dynamic the ontogenesis of health.
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