Stephen Hunter
Acupuncture, Massage and Stretching
Serving Nelson, Castlegar, Trail, Slocan, Kaslo and area
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Five Element Essences
Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal.
Working with the Five Elements within Chinese Medicine is absolutely fascinating! Stephen's extensive training was largely in traditional Chinese medicine and the five elements were taught as a part of that. But his main study of five elements has come after his initial formal training and is a passion he shares with his wife, Becca.
Five Element theory works with the idea that all things can be explained in terms of five different elements, each of which has specific attributes. These elements are Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal.
Everything means something in Five Elements theory.
Each of these elements has a time of year, a time of day, a food, an emotion and so on attached to it. The five elements can be used to describe all of life – our activies, our emotions, the season of the year and more. It’s great fun to study! For example, if your Wood is out of balance, you may be struggling with anger issues and either love or hate green. Or perhaps you always wake up at 2am, feel full of grief and are generally disorganised, suggesting a Metal imbalance.
Ideally the elements are all in balance.
In general life, the energies of these five elements are very much inter-linked and have an effect on the way our lives are going. Ideally, all the elements are in balance and work together in a finely tuned way to provide us with all that we need to function successfully.
In a nutshell that would include intuitive understanding and inner reflection to grow spirit (water), great abilities with planning and overview (wood), enough fire and energy to carry it all through (fire), healthy levels of comfort, warmth and sustenance (earth) and the wherewithall to clear out old things to make way for the new along with maintenance of healthy boundaries (metal).
However, often these energies are out of balance causing different elements of our lives to be more difficult than we would like. For example, if our Earth energies are deficient, we are not getting the deep comfort and sustenance that we need to function well. This can lead to a lack of energy, a feeling of being ungrounded and general feelings of ill-health. We can use flower essences or acupuncture along with lifestyle advice to help to address this deficiency.
We combine Five Elements theory with flower essences.
The Five Element set of flower essences is a great way to begin to change and balance our lives through this system. There are 12 essences. Ten of them reflect the elements in either Excess or Deficient states. So there is Wood Excess (for when our Wood energies are in excess) and Wood Deficient for when they are deficient, and so on for each element. Then there are two essences designed to move and balance energy – Yin/Yang Balancer and Energy Liberator.
This set was co-created by the two of us along with Arthur Bailey (founder of Bailey Essences) and his wife Chris. The set was actually brought into existence on Stephen's request since he found it too over-whelming to work with over 100 different essences and was looking for a more simple system that reflected the way he already worked.
Stephen has had enormous success with these essences.
As part of his diagnosis, he takes a person’s pulse at the beginning of the treatment and from this he can tell what is happening with their energies. When testing these essences initially, he would take a pulse, then place a drop of the relevant essence directly onto the pulse point. He would then re-take the pulse and the difference was incredible! He could feel a change for the better instantly.
Now Stephen uses these essences in his practice where it feels relevant. Essences are sometimes used within the session directly on acupuncture points, and sometimes an essence bottle is made up to take away and take between sessions.
It is our belief that when treating the whole person it makes sense to address emotional and spiritual issues as well as any physical symptoms. In many cases, there is an underlying pattern of behaviour that can be radically shifted to ensure a new and more healthy way of living.