My Vedic Life

• To better understand the arrangement and effect of the five elements in our body and to recognize which properties of the elements are effective in our body, in our organs and organ energies, it is useful to look at the appearance of the elements in nature and in to look at our everyday life.

Five Elements in TCM/The Human Body:

• Like in Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine sees the human body as a small microcosm that is not only interconnected internally but also with the world around it. This means that emotions are important, as is the interrelation of organs and interaction with the environment.
• The five elements are matched with organ systems that have specific effects on each other. In the so-called "production cycle" it is said that the elements generate themselves: wood produces fire, fire creates earth, the earth brings out metal, metal produces water and water again creates wood. When you think about nature it makes sense and that is why the ancient Chinese doctors made use of the system within the body with relevant relations to the organs liver (wood), heart (fire), spleen (earth), lung (metal), and kidney (water).
• A second important cycle in nature and TCM is the "controlling cycle" that guarantees the balance between the elements and the self-regulation of the human organs. Here, wood controls the earth but the earth creates a metal that again controls wood. In medical terms, the equivalent would be that the liver controls the spleen, whereas the spleen is the mother of the lung and the lung again controls the liver. What might sound complicated at first is actually very logical in the correlation with the organs’ processes and functions.