Читать книгу Healing Your Emotions: Discover your five element type and change your life - Angela Hicks - Страница 12

The theory of the Five Elements was originated by a Chinese philosopher, Tsou Yen, a few hundred years before the birth of Christ. Tsou Yen is thought to be the founder of Chinese scientific thought. In his first writings, he described the movement from one Element to another. This was especially with regard to the change in power from one dynastic ruler to another. His political advice and insights became highly sought after. He was consulted by the various powerful lords, emperors and feudal rulers at a time when China was a group of warring states.

Over time, however, the Five Element theory was used in agriculture, war-making, and many other practical arts as well as political organization and medicine. Some of the uses may seem rather unusual to us today, but for the Chinese they were always practical and useful in everyday life.⁵

In medicine, the Five Elements were used in a similar manner to the Yin-Yang theory. This was to determine the underlying causes of acute and chronic illnesses. We believe, however, that one of the Five Elements’ most successful uses lies in determining the patient’s deepest Elemental imbalance or ‘constitutional type’. This helps us to deal with chronic illness.

The way we, the authors, have been taught to determine constitutional type involves careful observation of the person’s emotional state and an understanding of the emotion associated with each Element. Hence the connection in this book between the Element types and the emotions. So where did this system of finding an underlying imbalance originate?