Five Element Acupuncture
The focus of your treatment is not only on addressing an isolated complaint, but engendering vitality in your whole being. This is the perspective of integrative-or holistic-medicine that arose naturally out of Chinese Classical Medicine and philosophy. Five Element Acupuncture is a unique and treasured tradition within Chinese Medicine.
Five Element Acupuncture views your body as a microcosm of the natural world. Using the movement of the elements in nature, we can see how nature is moving in health and disease within you. Each element – Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal- has a specific and essential energetic movement, and each is crucial to vibrant health. Each element has a set of correspondences, for example: an associated color, which can be seen in a patient’s complexion, a sound, which can be heard in the voice, and a corresponding emotion, (i.e. grief, fear, anger, etc.), an organ system, and a physiological function.
These signs from your body, as well as other phenomena gathered from Chinese pulse-taking, palpation, and tongue diagnosis provide a picture of your health that is inherently grounded in phenomena. This medicine is inherently practical and grounded in signs from your own body-in what is showing up in front of us right now.
When the movement of one of these elements is “stuck” or complaining, this element shows up as “out of balance” (i.e., constant digestive upset, or upper respiratory issues.) This is the body’s way of providing us with signals to make a change. Acupuncture fosters the appropriate movement of qi, and heightens our awareness of these signals, making us better managers of our own wellness.
Five Element is also called Five Phases, because all are interdependent throughout life. However, there are often one or two elements that stand out as a patient’s dominant constitution, an element that, with treatment, will have the greatest positive effect on their wellness. Elemental diagnosis is unique to 5 Element Acupuncture. By treating a person based on their constitution, the greatest movement and healing can be achieved, allowing the individual to move through the seasons of life with greater ease and freedom.
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