Theories: Five Elements

Five Element Theory is another most popular theories of Traditional Chinese Medicine. This theory helps people understand how natural changes within body and outside environment affect people¡¯s health. Proponents of this system use the relationship of five elements and the meridians or channels of energy in the human body to bring forces back into balance.

The five elements are wood, fire, earth, metal and water. They were selected based on the observations of ancient oriental philosophers who theorized that the natural world embodied these elemental characteristics. Oriental Medicine uses this time-tested, diagnostic model to analyze how the various parts of a person's body and mind interact to affect health. 

These relationships are illustrated in the Five Element Chart below, which shows how each element is related to specific aspects of your body and mind.

The above chart is a static illustration showing the different body/mind relationships associated with each organ. To get a sense of the dynamic nature of these interactions, let's look at how these elemental forces generate and regulate energy (qi) in nature, and by extension, in the human body and mind.