The Healing Power of the Five Elements

This article is by Robert Abramson, DDS, MD, M.AC. , from the Worsley Institute web page. It is one of the best explanations of Five Element Chinese Medicine that I have found. This approach is at the heart of much of the work I do. Enjoy! Janet

Why do we seek out the mountains, forests, rivers, desert and seashore? Why do we have a sense of well being and serenity when around the works of nature? What is it that attracts us to these natural environments?

The answer to all these questions is the same. These natural surroundings strike a chord in us, they remind us in the deepest most basic way that we are an integral part of the natural world. When we forget that we are nature we suffer. This simple, yet profound, realization that we are part of the natural world, is at the heart of the Five Element System of Chinese medicine. The Five Element System provides for us a beacon that we can use to illuminate our path, especially when our path appears overgrown and torturous.

The Five Element approach reflects the unity that we share with the natural world. Its teachings give us a way to understand our lives in the larger context. I have been a student and practitioner of the Five Element System as taught by Professor J.R. Worsley for over 25 years. In that time I have seen this system help a vast number of people on the Body, Mind, and Spirit levels. In my work with patients I have observed that when we have the experience of being part of the natural world we feel at peace. We do not have to learn this way, only to recall it.

I would like to share with you the Five Element System and show how by remembering who we are we can begin healing ourselves and the world around us.

The Five Elements are Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. These elements were the way the ancient Chinese saw the world. The early masters realized that these elements were also within us. One of the laws explaining the Five Elements is the law of Mother-Child or the Sheng cycle. This cycle illustrates how each element is connected to the other elements in a never ending cycle of Birth-Growth-Harvest-Death-Rebirth. This cycle is clearly manifested in the external world by the seasons. Wood-Spring (Birth) feeds the Fire of Summer (Maturation) creating the Earth-Late Summer (Harvest). Out of Earth comes Metal-Fall (Dying back, letting go) continuing on to Water-Winter (Quiet Rebuilding Reservoirs), which goes on to support Wood.

The power and relevance of the Five Element System is that it places us in the reality of ever changing nature and the impermanence of life. Take a walk in nature at any season and you will see life springing forth and life dying back. It is no different for us. We are part of the dance. The greater our acceptance of this dance of change the greater our experience of peace and serenity.

The Five Element practitioner acts as a farmer, tends to his or her (crops) patients, seeing what they need. The practitioner discerns which element is the most out of balance, which element is the most damaged, and where the blocks are along the cycle that are not allowing for change. Supporting and nourishing the element that is the most damaged, the practitioner begins to unblock the patient’s energy, strengthens the flow of the sheng cycle thus bringing the person into balance.

There are numerous ways a practitioner can support the patient's energy: acupuncture, acupressure, herbs, moxa, giving the patient homework to do, giving the patient an understanding of where they are, where they are blocked, and a vision of their future.

Every aspect of our life whether the smallest, seemingly inconsequential, to the construct of our entire life can be seen along the continuum of the Five Element cycle. For example, you decide to create something, a relationship, a painting, a report, etc. It begins with the seed, the idea, the beginning that bursts forth. This represents the Wood energy of Springtime, a season of birth, beginning, planning, organizing, and decision making. When the Wood element is healthy it grants us the ability, like a strong tree or sprouting seed, to be upright and strong yet also to bend. As Lao Tzu tells us, "yield and you need not break."

The seed germinates and begins to grow nurtured by the warmth of the Fire element, the Summer. Fire energy is about sorting out what to keep and what to throw away, what to give love, passion, and energy to, when to open your heart and when it is appropriate to close your heart. Fire grants us the ability to mature and experience joy.

After Summer comes the season of Late Summer, the Earth element. This is the time to rejoice in the harvest, to feel fulfilled in your work, to see that you have taken the idea and brought it to completion. The Earth energy is about nurturing and caring, as Mother Earth provides sustenance and a home for us, and ideally, as our own mothers provided for us.

Harvest time is followed by Autumn, the Metal element, a time of letting go. In the natural world sunlight, leaves, and warmth all are on the decline. We often feel sadness and grief at this time. In the larger context this letting go is vital, change is inevitable. We would not be able to bring in new ideas if we did not have the ability to discard old ones.

The Fall, Metal season, gives way to the Water-Winter season. A time when the outer world is cold, seemingly inert. Beneath the surface, nature is resting, regenerating, rebuilding its storehouses in anticipation of the coming Spring. The Winter-Water season is as vital to our health and well being as is the birth of Spring. We must honor in us this time to rest and give it its proper place.

You can begin to see the innate wisdom of this system. It is the way the world flows and the way our life flows when healthy in Body, Mind, and Spirit. This system of medicine is an experiential one. We can talk about it but as Lao Tzu says, "the real Tao cannot be talked about in words." This system is alive in each one of us. How do I know this? "It all begins in me," said Lao Tzu. I encourage you to partake in this wonderful system of healing.

When part of all of your life is not flowing, meditate on the Five Element cycle and see where you are blocked or off balance. What don’t you have enough of? Too much of? What are you not able to access? Using the Five Element System as a framework lay your situation upon it and begin to provide yourself with the quality and essence of the elements that will restore harmony and flow to your being. Trust your vision and inherent wisdom to understand the validity of the Five Element System.

Ask yourself how do you experience Fire? What are your associations with Summer? Do this for each element. Allow yourself to have direct contact with the elements. They are ever present to us in the natural world. Fire blazing in the sun or controlled in a fireplace, Earth, the varied soils beneath our feet, the center of our world. Metal, the trace elements that are so precious and fundamental to life, rare in quantity but of irreplaceable value and quality. Water, the elixir of life. Water in all it’s manifest forms granting power and the ability of flow. Wood the energy of growth and of the resilience of life. Can you be flexible with life’s challenges?

Work with the elements, become sensitive to them, friends with them. In so doing you reacquaint yourself with what is within you. Experience the seasons as they inevitably change. Welcome in the changes. The essence of life is movement and flow. Watch what nature does and learn.

Medicinal Herbs in the Alley

This morning I woke up early after a profoundly healing sleep. I looked out the front window and saw the sun flooding the garden, waking up the green in EVERYTHING. I felt the plants calling me to go outside and walk the alley, looking for their medicine.

I love alleys. Glen (my spouse) and I have a history of walking the alleys in the west side of Olympia, looking at the back sides of other people's yards. Alleys are full of profound insights and deep gifts.

For example, the plants. Behind our house is a dead-end alley and it is rare that any vehicle drives it. Our neighbor regularly mows the road part (he loves an excuse to use his riding lawn mower). But he leaves the verges alone. And it is here the plants flourish.

So outside I went, my bare feet, cold in sandals swashing through the wet grass and my head getting hot from the early morning sun.

First I found the clover, closely packed and still heavy with dew. Clover shows a fertile soil; around it you can see dandelions, also a sign of fertile soil. Clover is what we herbalists call an alterative: it clears the blood of toxins, and helps clear skin and painful joints.

Then there was a seedling oak, its bright new green leaves shiny with the sun's promise. Oak has many uses; primarily we call it an astringent or diuretic, helping to clear excess moisture from the system. It is also antimicrobial; you can mash the fresh leaves and apply to a weeping infected sore and the oak medicine will help clear the infection and dry up the oozing.

There was mullein, one of the premier healing herbs. It heals inflamed skin: think of a warm fuzzy green blanket laying its comfort on itchy skin. It has the same effect on inflamed, scratchy lungs with cough: its herbal mucilage calms and soothes the inflammation in lungs. An infused oil from the leaves is often put in inflamed ears, helping the ear canals heal from swimming ( and too many q-tips).

Then there is bleeding heart. I do not use the chemicals in this plant, instead relying on flower essence made from the lavender flower hearts to capture the spirit of bleeding heart: this helps the wounded heart to heal from heartache, loss and grief.

There is broad-leaf plantain, lining the tracks where the occasional car does try to come down the alley. Plantain for some reason likes to be trodden on. Native to Europe, the Indians called it "white man's footprint" because wherever the European settlers showed up, so, too, did the footprint of this herb. This is a powerful vulnerary, made into an infused oil or salve, an herb used to heal skin.

Then there was the fennel, a real surprise to me. I smelled it before I saw it, the trace of anise/licorice floating up the alley. Beloved by bees and herbalists alike, it is used as a digestive tonic, and has specific uses for flatulence.

And finally, there is the mugwort, the magician of the plants. This variety is white mugwort. Planted at the west end of the alley at some point in the past, it has marched its way up the edges and particularly likes to grow along the fenceline of the neighbors who have beautiful rich garden beds. For Plant Spirit Medicine practitioners, Mugwort is a command remedy, a sacred plant which works as well as the acupuncturist's needle to clear energetic blocks. It is one of my premier plant allies.

J.R. Worsley was a Five Element acupuncturist, who with others brought this version of Chinese Medicine out of China and shared it in the west. He also had deep insight into the power of beauty of plants. He said that local plants, growing locally, were 1000 times more powerful than other plants. From him I learned: the medicinal plants that grow in our alley have powerful, deep medicine to share. We don't need to go to Hawaii or South America or Australia; we only need to look in our own back yards. Today, these local plants are the first ones I look to for healing.

Janet
Resources: Photos of plants from our alley
Caution: plants growing in an unused alley can be safely collected for medicine. However, if cars regularly use your alley, the plants are collecting the exhaust, etc. and concentrating it in their leaves and roots - NOT safe to use.

Yerba Buena Medicine

In 2001 I began my formal healing practice. I took all the appropriate steps: I developed a vision statement, I attended a class on running my own small business and applied for a business license. I also thought long and hard about what would be a good name for my healing work. I chose the name Yerba Buena Herbal Consulting. A lot of people have asked me what this means. Herein lies a story...

Some of my earliest work as a physician assistant had been in the Yakima valley of eastern Washington state. It was here in 1980 I found my first work in a migrant clinic, and began working among the campesinos from Mexico. Most had recently come from the mountains of Michoacan, to find work picking the cherries, the peaches and the apples from the orchards that flowed over the valley.

From them I learned Spanish and a different culture and worldview. From some of the older women I learned about curanderas (the traditional healer-shamans of Mexico who blend indigenous Indian medicine with the healing arts of the Spaniard conquistadores). I learned about the curanderas who cleared mal de ojo (evil eye) and treated invidia ( the envy disease) and did limpias ( cleansing the human energy field with prayers and branches of rosemary brushed top to bottom). It was a remarkable view into an ancient healing world. I had just completed my medical training and was still very locked into my western medicine culture. I did no further explorations of alternative healing at that time. But seeds were planted in me of another vision of healing.

It was twenty years later, in 2000, that those seeds finally sprouted, growing in me a vision of the kind of healer I wanted to be. I started to read a book by Elena Avila, called The Woman Who Glows in the Dark. In her book, she talked about her own long journey from an RN with a master’s degree in nursing, on the fast track to academia and well-paid work in western medicine, to tracking back into her family roots in Mexico to become a curandera.

She described a daily work where she sat down and talked at length with clients - a plactica sort of talking when you open your heart and spill out your worries and the person listens to you in a deep way. There is no judgment, only a deep listening presence and someone like a grandmother/elder who holds you with respect and love, helping you find your way out of your own particular briar patch.

Then Elena went on to talk about using massage, using healing hands in a caring way on suffering bodies. She talked about her relationship with healing herbs, and the powerful presence of plants as medicine. using herbs to help. Sometimes she would go cut fresh rosemary branches from her garden and use it to sweep out the person’s energy field, clearing away the constrictions, the blocks, the funky foreign energy. Throughout this all, Elena acts as a kind of hollow bone through which the wind of Great Spirit can flow.

Elena described her work as Yerba Buena medicine - a kind of loving medicine given by an elder woman- an aunt, a grandmother, giving you time to tell your story, always holding you in deep respect and love, working with the elements of Nature and with Great Spirit to help you mend your broken places.

As Elena wrote about her work, I could feel the deep presence of the Sacred. I finished the book, clapped it shut, and said: “Now that’s the kind of healer I want to be”.

So that’s where I got the name for my healing practice. And that is the kind of healer I strive to be.

Janet

Resources:
Photo of Manuel Guiterrez picking apples in Yakima: Yakima Herald
Photo of the Curandera of Patzcuaro: Mirenchu Fernandez
Photo of Yerba Buena by Ben Legler.

Yerba buena (Clinopodium douglasii) is a rambling aromatic herb of western and northwestern North America, ranging from maritime Alaska southwards to Baja California Sur. The plant takes the form of a sprawling, mat-forming perennial and is especially abundant close to the coast. It is an aromatic plant used as herbal medicine worldwide. The word Yerba Buena is Spanish for “good herb”.

What is Healing Touch?

Healing Touch is a modern reinvention of the “laying on of hands” that Jesus speaks of. It is based on the belief that we are not only dense physical bodies, but have layers of electro magnetic energy flowing next to the body, up to several inches away from the body. Healing Touch is a healing modality designed to work in this energy field, clearing blockages and bringing relief from suffering.

Kirlian photography is a specialized type of photography that can take pictures of this electromagnetic field. In the photo below you can see the diffuse light blue energy rays surrounding the fingers. This is what energy healers feel and work with when they do their work.

It was in 1995 when I first experienced Healing Touch for myself. At that time, I was a fully committed physician assistant, working in modern medicine (see blog" The Path of the Healer.) I was also deeply resistant to any healing modality that had not been run through a prospective, randomized, double-blinded research study.

However. I also had severe inflammatory arthritis and after three years of trying a range of toxic and ineffective prescriptions, I had reluctantly come to the conclusion that I was going to have to look in some other directions. I had heard for years about some wacko healing modality called Therapeutic touch; I happened to run across a brochure about a nurse named Elly LeDuc who was blending Therapeutic Touch and a newer modality called Healing Touch in her private practice. I was truly skeptical. I was also deeply, profoundly suffering. So I made an appointment.

The day I walked in to see Elly was a particularly bad day. The arthritis had caused severe damage to my left knee, and that day, I could barely walk, even with the assistance of the cane. My pain level was also very high that day, perhaps an 8 on the scale of 10. I limped in, gave a brief history of my problem, and with difficulty got on the massage table.

I don’t remember much of the next hour. Elly quietly went to work and did some stuff waving her hands over me. I conked out into a deep, profoundly restful and relaxing drooler of a nap. When I came to some 50 minutes later, I noticed immediately how much more calm I felt.

I cautiously got off the massage table. My pain was now down to a 2. I found I was able to walk normally, with minimal pain. I did not need the cane. These effects lasted for 5 days. Every time I went back to Elly, I got similar relief.

It was a revelation. Suddenly I knew, with a deep sense of inner knowing, that there are modes of healing that were never, ever covered in my medical training. My eyes/mind began to open, as if from a drugged sleep. I had experienced a miracle of healing, a gift from Spirit. I was never again the same kind of healer; and today, Healing Touch is one of my own favorite healing tools.

Janet

Resources:
• Kirlian photography from Fullspectrum.org.uk
• Healing Touch International

The Bowl of Pachamama

Shamanic healing is a new concept to many Americans. For me, it's odd to go to parties and have people try to pin me down on what exactly I do. While I am pretty clear on what I do while I am in the healing room doing it, it's much harder to explain outside in the cold harsh light of ordinary reality.

So I thought I would share a healing visualization that I use. It creates a profound sense of sacred space all around us. It calls upon the elements of holy Nature to bring us balance, wholeness and peace. This is at the heart of shamanic healing: helping people find their way to a deep sense of connection to the beautiful world around us, and in doing so, to find peace.

A few words of explanation: Pachamama is a Quechua word that refers to the Great Mother, the Earth Mother. My shaman teachers from the Q'ero traditions taught me about Pachamama; she holds the world in unconditional and forever love.

Find a comfortable, safe place to do this visualization, making sure you are warm enough, and that the phone is turned off. You can make a cassette tape of the visualization, so you can listen to your own voice guiding you through it.

Finally, not everyone finds visualizations helpful. If it works for you, great. If not, let it go.

The Bowl of Pachamama

• Give this visualization a trial, as a possible sacred practice for you. It is deeply healing personally, and can also be used to create a listening presence for your loved ones. It calls in the deepest forces of nature, bringing them into the space, with a deeply powerful listening/healing.
• First, close your eyes and get comfortable. Find/imagine a beautiful open meadow: it could be at the mountains, the ocean, along a river, in the desert: someplace you know in out in the world, or in your dreams- a beautiful and special place.
• Now imagine in this space that there is an open bowl on the land, full of fresh-turned earth, maybe ten feet in diameter. You can see the fresh, rich clumps of earth, and savor the wonderful smell of healthy soil. Place yourself in this bowl, knowing that you are completely warm and comfortable, feeling the earth beneath you as it totally supports you. It is late afternoon.
• Now imagine the beautiful rain comes falling down, like a soft spring rain blessing you. Even though it is raining, you are still completely warm and comfortable.
• See the blue sky above, with fat white clouds providing the rain. Notice how the sun is now breaking through the clouds, shooting sun rays into the bowl and giving you its beautiful fire and heart warmth.
• Notice the wonderful rainbow that is created by these conditions: this rainbow bends and arches itself to land one end in your bowl. Let the beautiful colors fill you up.
• There is a soft wind blowing; it comes to your bowl and swirls around you, creating sensations on your skin.
• Off in the distance you see a dark cloud. Thunder and lightning show up in this cloud and they too bless your bowl. Remember that you are completely safe and grounded. Now notice the mountains in the distance: one of these mountains is a special guide and advisor for you. It sends a beam of love and beauty into your bowl.
• Now the late afternoon is turning towards dusk. Notice that the full moon appears out of the east and pours its healing light into your bowl. The stars are coming out, and they too shine in your bowl.
• All the elemental forces of nature are now in your bowl. They gift you with quiet, peace and love. They hold you now, and they hold you forever.
• Rest in your bowl until you are ready to come back. Thank these elemental forces of nature for their work.

Janet
Photo of Mima prairies by Dave Schiefelbein

The path of the healer

People often wonder how it is shamanic practitioners find their way into this world of healing. Here is how I got here ( the short version):

In 1996 I was a physician assistant (PA) in family medicine, immersed in modern medicine. I’d been in active practice for 20 years and I was drained. I had some serious health issues arise out of that chronically overworked, over-stressed and undervalued place. In talking with a friend PA who’d been working as many years as I had, she said bitterly “A trained monkey could do this job.”

I felt the deep truth of that: the way that the practice of modern medicine is shaped by so many external forces and how disappointing it is to both patients and practitioners. I began to ask Great Spirit: “Please show me another way to be a healer”. That heartfelt appeal did not go unheard.

So in 1996, I began my long apprenticeship into other ways of healing. Great Spirit led me down many paths as I started exploring the world of plants as medicine, learning about both the chemistry of plants that enables them to help us, but also the living spirit of the plant that holds deep healing for us. I sought out some wonderful herbalists/elders who helped me find my way into the plant kingdom.

I explored a wide variety of energy healing modalities: Healing Touch, Acupuncture, Reflexology, Acutonics, finding great teachers and mentors along the way.

By 2002, after the Nisqually earthquake, and the death of my mother, I left the “golden shackles” of reliable employment, good benefits, and a retirement plan. I retired from my physician assistant work and opened a practice as an herbalist and energy healer.

It was also around this time I started exploring the work of the shamanic healer. I studied with several great teachers in the shamanic healing traditions of the tribal peoples of the Peruvian Andes, the Amazon, and the San Pedro river.

I also studied Plant Spirit Medicine, a powerful blend of Five Element Chinese Medicine and plant medicine, which Eliot Cowan brought back to the light.

Most recently I began exploring my own European-American heritage and the healing traditions found within it. I studied Celtic Shamanism with Tom Cowan, and found deep connections to my past, my ancestors, and also a way into my future.

Throughout it all I use these gifts and work with clients, helping them find their own way. The work and the learning continues. It is the path of the healer, and I am deeply grateful and privileged to be able to walk this road.

Professional education & training:
• Two years - Celtic Shamanism with Tom Cowan
• Faery Doctor Healing Traditions of Ireland - Tom Cowan
• Two years - Shamanic Healing School - Mary Blankenship and Wiracocha Institute
• Two years Inka Initiation Program - Jose Luis Herrera and Rainbow Jaguar Traditions
• Two years Healing the Light Body Shamanic Program with Alberto Villoldo - Four Winds
• Two years in the Spirit of the Plants program - Joyce Netishen
• Acutonics - Judy Barnard & Kate Fehsenfeldt
• Reflexology - Jade Shutes
• Healing Touch International - 120 hours of training
• Eleven years of herbal medicine study with KP Khalsa, Michael Tierra, David Hoffman, Tierona Low Dog, Kurt Schnaubelt, and others.
• MPAS in Physician Assistant Studies from the University of Nebraska.
• Professional member in the Society of Shamanic Practitioners & American Herbalist Guild.

Janet

Season of Dandelions

It is the season of dandelions. This year they are especially fat, luxuriant, dripping with milky essence, dense with green spears of leaves and fluffy gorgeous yellow bundles of petals. The bees are all over them, the mason bees and bumblebees both gathering their rich golden pollen. This is the sort of thing that makes the heart of an herbalist sing.

Yes, I am an herbalist; one of that tribe of people who loves plants, even the so-called weeds, who uses them for medicine, who listens to the spirits of plants talk. And I am also one of the people who find deep healing from the plants; at night when my joints ache with arthritis, it is the golden light of dandelion that brings me ease.

Dandelions are native to Europe and it is thought that they were "accidentally" brought over to America with the first settlers. This I doubt; the earliest European settlers knew well the medicinal value of dandelion, and I am certain those earliest herbalists made a point of bringing these seeds as one of their most important medicinals.

In the last century or so in American life, most of us have lost our connection to plants, and also to a sense of how they can help us. I remember vividly as a child in the '60's, watching my dad go out to his green lawn, armed with a long screwdriver and a deep sense of insult, stabbing those damned weeds to the heart and removing every last one of those persistent, obnoxious pests.

Today I am one of the people who finds the sight of dandelions a gift from Great Spirit. And it is us, the herbalists who are trying hard to keep the old knowledge and the dandelions alive. We know that dandelions have roots which help our bodies clear out the gunk, while the fresh green leaves are not only a tasty addition to a salad, but help support the kidneys as they clear out the gunk.

It also turns out that dandelion can provide a wonderful infused oil which can be rubbed on painful muscles or joints. For myself and for clients both, I can attest to the pain relieving power of dandelion flowers.

This is how I make it: every April I watch carefully for the first dandelions coming to full bloom. I wait for a sunny morning and pick them before noon, as this is when the flowers are open andmost full of their essence. I lay them out on a window screen and let them dry overnight. I then place them in a jar, filling it with olive oil to at least 2 inches above the wilted flowers, cap the jar tightly and place it in a sunny window. Each day I shake the jar, mixing the ingredients. At the end of 2 weeks, I strain the oil/flower mixture through cheesecloth or paper towels, and squeeze out the last bits of healing oil. I store in a clean jar in the frig, being careful to label and date the jar. When the muscles spasm, the joints ache, the feet hurt, a rub with dandelion oil can help me find my way though the pain.

So here's to the season of dandelions! May they forever bless our lives.

Janet Partlow