changing seasons in ourselves
I’ve been thinking of doing a series about the Five Element theory for months now, but I thought it would be best to start at the beginning. And here we are at the beginning— fall.
Whether you’re a client, friend, family or colleague, you might have heard me nerd out about the Five Element theory before. I started weaving it into my understanding of the nervous system’s threat response cycle and my touchwork practice last year, around the beginning of winter.
I don’t want to flood anyone with a list of information, but I thought I’d share about each part of the cycle in my newsletter each season. It’s helped me understand my own healing process more deeply— and really just my own humanness.
My understanding of the cycle’s integration with trauma healing comes from Kathy Kain and Alaine Duncan, two special healers and teachers who co-wrote the book The Tao of Trauma: A Practitioner's Guide for Integrating Five Element Theory and Trauma Treatment.
Their approach interfaces the Five Elements and the Five Seasons of the Chinese agricultural calendar with self-protective responses found in animal predator-prey relationships described in western neuroscience. Before diving into the first Element and Season— Metal and Fall— I’ll start with some background about these two models of understanding.
In Somatic Experiencing (SE), there are five universal steps animals (including us) move through as they detect and survive danger: arrest/startle, defensive orienting, specific self protective response (fight, flight or freeze), completion, and integration. A self-protective response would be moving through the entire sequence.
One of the core concepts of SE is that interruption of any step leads to an incomplete survival response, which shapes how we respond to future situations and environments. When we can complete all five phases, there’s a lower chance we’ll feel the negative effects of trauma. If we aren’t able to complete the full response cycle, our trauma symptoms depend on where we were interrupted.
SE’s self protective response cycle runs parallel to the five elements and seasons in Asian Medicine and Acupuncture (AAM):
Fall and Metal and align with arrest/startle; Winter and Water align with defensive orienting; Spring and Wood align with specific protective response; Summer and Fire align with completion or restoring coherence; and Late summer and Earth align with integration.
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In fall, the growing season is over, and we get a chance to pause and reflect. If nothing breaks our pause, we just get to enjoy the crisp air and inspiration of autumn’s beauty. Our sense are relaxed, curious and available but not “activated”.
If we sense something is amiss, we awaken arousal and become alert and focused to assess whether there’s a potential threat. Our focus narrows, we might have goose bumps, our hair stands on end, and our breath catches. We stop and make use of our guts to gather information.
Unlike the Western view of a linear protective response cycle, AAM reminds us that each phase is part of a continuous cycle. Our ability to awaken arousal depends on the clarity that comes from returning to a deep inhale and exhale after we’ve fully completed any previous responses to threat.
Duncan writes in The Tao of Trauma, "Our capacity to experience this arousal rests in our ability to pause and reflect on our previous success. Like the dead leaves that break down and add critical trace minerals to a compost pile for next year’s garden, our previous life lessons are broken down to help us prepare for our next growing season. Extracting our own “trace minerals” and eliminating any remaining waste from our experiences helps us start fresh the next time we need to respond to a potential threat.
“Like the agricultural calendar, which finds both its first and last breath in autumn, the protective response cycle comes full circle in autumn’s Metal Element. From the AAM perspective, this is both the beginning and the ending of a cycle.”
When our threat response cycle has been interrupted during fall’s phase of arrest/startle, we might have a tendency to be overly responsive to novelty in the environment, like startling when a door slams. It will be difficult for us to settle, soothe, and quiet.
Our body’s organ systems are also associated with each part of the cycle. In the Metal Element, the Lungs are paired with the Colon. Together they support the balance and connection between each taking in and letting go, our inhaling and exhaling. When our Metal is healthy, we can take in aliveness and let go of life’s imperfections. Our Metal supports our capacity to make connections with others, despite the toll that loss and grief can extract as a cost of loving.
If our capacity to receive inspiration and let go of imperfections has been wounded, we may find ourselves full of grief. When you’ve experienced deep grief you know how hard it can be to find a fresh breath— to inhale and receive the gifts of the present moment, or to exhale and let go of the past. It becomes hard to allow a new reality to form, like renewed value in ourselves and connection with others. It’s hard to let go.
Working with the Metal Element in trauma healing can focus on restoring more curiosity around our interoceptive awareness, thus building more trust in our capacity to move through challenges with both strength and tenderness. This can include (but isn’t limited to) creating more embodied awareness of the skin as a protective container and restoring regulation in the diaphragm system after traumatic stress.
There are so many modalities to process trauma, but this theory has expanded my understanding of SE and led me toward ways that also include using touchwork. This spring, I start a year-long training, Touchwork for Trauma Therapists with Kathy Kain, and I’m so stoked!! As winter approaches I’ll continue to explore the next Element with you here.
Some archetypal questions to ask ourselves this season of the cycle are:
Can I let go and allow breath to penetrate?
Can I tolerate imperfection?
Yours truly (and happy fall equinox this weekend),
Katie
cover art by Mark Stebbins