growing season
Each season since fall, I’ve been writing about the connection between the western idea of our physiology’s five step threat response cycle and Asian medicine’s concept of the five elements. You can read more about the melding of these worlds of wisdom on my past blogs about Fall and Metal and Winter and Water.
In Five Element theory, the Wood element is associated with Spring. It’s also associated with the liver and gall bladder in our physical body, along with hope and anger in our emotional body. In the threat response cycle, Spring aligns with our ability to mobilize a response. Our ability to believe in ourselves, hope for change, and defend others makes it possible to identify a threat and implement a mobilization response like fight or flight.
When we’re experiencing hyperarousal within this element, we can have rigid impulses, thoughts, emotions, and tissues. One may feel constantly mobilized for threat, get stuck in chronic anger and suffer from tight and painful tissues. We can feel so much tension that we can’t use our own creativity when confronted by a new threat. We may not even check to see if the door is unlocked before breaking it down.
When we’re experiencing a hypoarousal imbalance, we may have passive impulses, thoughts, emotions and tissues, little initiative to respond to threat, and a sense of not taking up space. We’re unable to protect ourselves or defend others.
In either manifestation, growth toward our own ultimate purpose—our personal “spring”—is compromised. Both imbalances may feel familiar to you. We are living through collectively intense, overwhelming times together. And I am firmly holding onto the belief that a degree of wellbeing is still possible and accessible during these times. A felt sense of wellbeing gives us the energy we need to take action, and the safety we need to rest after that action is complete.
The archetypal question that Spring asks is, “How do I navigate obstacles as I sprout and grow?” “Is there hope for my growing season?”
What helps us restore hope in our own felt sense of spring starts with being able to recognize safety as well as danger. It seems basic, and it is—it’s foundational. Wood (our ability to mobilize) builds off the Water element (our threat signaling system). This might look like noticing you’re feeling rage and then somehow expressing it, like doing some lunges or squeezing your fists tight until you can’t squeeze anymore. It could look like noticing your anxiety and letting yourself shake and bounce, go for a walk, or imagine yourself running to a place that feels like home. Anxiety and rage get stuck when those feelings have nowhere to go. What’s not completed is repeated, as they say in Somatic Experiencing.
Because there’s so much you might feel helpless about right now, especially when you’re not surrounded by community, it’s essential to find ways to express this stuff often. It helps our nervous systems shift into different, softer states, and makes hope and creativity more possible. If we can pendulate between action and rest, we’ll be able to creatively respond, instead of instinctively react to life’s challenges.
Successful completion of the Wood element feeds the Summer’s Fire element. A successful mobilization response will send a clear message of success to Fire, which communicates restored coherence to our heart and pulse. To be continued next season…
Yours truly,
Katie
art by Lia Lepre