Jul 12, 2013
My understanding of the Chinese five elements comes from local acupuncturists Ian Florian, Andy Prescott and Lori Fendell and from Between Heaven and Earth by Beinfield and Korngold, Acupuncture Energetics by Joe Helms and Nourishing Destiny by Lonny Jarrett. Clinical application of these principles is illustrated in my July 2013 Let Magic Happen newsletter Physician Acupuncture at Duke. A general approach that you can use for your own health issues is summarized in the 9 minute video below.
Excerpted from the Appendix of Let Magic Happen.
3. The Chinese Five Elements - clinical chart
The steps are as follows:
1) Consider the cyclic progression in nature, with water growing into wood, burned by fire and falls to earth as ash, out of which comes metal that dissolves back into water.
2) Pick your favorite season of the year, from winter to spring to summer to fall, which is split into the two distinct seasons of harvest and autumn.
3) Pick your favorite color for clothes or decorating, from black/dark blue to green to red to yellow to white.
4) Categorize any organ illnesses according to water (kidney/bladder), wood (liver/gall bladder), fire (heart/small intestine), earth (spleen/stomach), and metal (lung/large intestine).
5) Pick your favorite time of day, the hours when you are most productive, from night to morning to noon to afternoon to evening.
6) Pick your favorite flavor, from salty to sour (citrus) to bitter (dark chocolate) to sweet (milk chocolate) to spicy (ginger).
7) Categorize your baseline psychological state/pathological exaggeration, from willful/fearful to anxious/angry to joyful/manic to introspective/worried to melancholy/depressive.
8) Categorize your role/skill on a team, from philosopher/imagination to pioneer/initiative to wizard/communication to peacemaker/negotiation to alchemist/decisive.
Jan 08, 2026
POSTED BY Larry Burk
My original 2019 online chakra course focused on the lower 4 energy centers, since that is where much of our childhood trauma is stored. When I got invited to teach a Shift Network course this summer on The Chakra Self-Healing Protocol, I decided to include the upper 3 energy centers because they have a 7-module business model. Now, I have distilled the essence of the teachings into a 7-hour intensive Saturday workshop, Spring Cleaning for Your Chakras, on 3/21/2026, the day after the Vernal Equinox.
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