CONNECTIONS to HEALTH

The Fire Element The last article I wrote to introduce the five elements concentrated on the Wood element. This month I will look at the Fire element, the next element along from Wood on the Shen cycle. This cycle, shown in the diagram below, is also known as the 'mother-child' cycle, because each element in the cycle generates, or gives birth to the following one. I will examine this relationship later in this discussion. Last month I described how each element relates to a particular season. The season that corresponds to the Fire element is summer. Fire represents warmth and light; the sun is the ultimate fire in our world, and thinking about summer is a good way to start to get a feel for the Fire element. Summer is the most expansive time of year, the time of flowering. The first rapid, directed, energetic growth of spring is over, and there is a sense of ease and fulfilment. For many people and animals it is the time when they are most active, and many people find that they are also at their most social at this time of year. People tend to appear happier and to smile at each other more when the sun is shining than when the weather is wet and cold. They find the time to sit in the sun, to chat with friends and neighbours. Within our body/mind the Fire element enables us to enjoy and be nourished by human contact - to give and receive warmth on an emotional level. The emotion associated with Fire is joy. In Chinese there are two separate characters for this emotion. The first, xi, describes the ability to enjoy yourself and have fun - the partying kind of joy. It could also be translated as elation. The second character for joy is le, which denotes internal harmony and unity. When our Fire is balanced, we can regularly and appropriately experience both types of joy. Interacting with friends at social gatherings, talking about an event that gave us pleasure, being in close contact with a soul-mate or lover, listening to beautiful music - all these may be occasions for joy in varying degrees. If our Fire becomes imbalanced, our experience and expression of joy will suffer. Maybe you have had the experience of being in a group of people who are all laughing and having a good time, but feeling unable to join in yourself - somehow you can't generate the feeling inside yourself, and though you may laugh along with everyone else, really you are just going through the motions, and your heart is not in it. This situation illustrates what a five element acupuncturist would label as 'lack of joy' due to a Fire element imbalance. Another way in which an imbalanced Fire element may manifest is in the erratic or inappropriate expression of elation. Here a person's joy will tend to flare up uncontrollably, and they become over-excited or laugh slightly wildly, their elation either becoming excessive for the situation, or rapidly fading away leaving no residual warmth. The person may appear joyful, but often they feel agitated rather than feeling good. You can see from the above descriptions that the Fire element is essential to our health and happiness. As with all of the five elements, when the element is balanced, we can experience the related emotions appropriately in whatever situation we find ourselves. The ability to receive warmth from others and to give it in return requires the ability to be open to others to an appropriate degree. A healthy Fire element enables us to know how open or closed to be with others in different situations. Of course we learn this with experience, but if we have a constitutional fire imbalance, this is something we may always find difficult. The model of five element acupuncture states that we are born with an imbalance in a particular element. Other elements can (and probably will) become imbalanced in us, but the one we are born with is most fundamental and profoundly influences our experience of life. This is because an imbalance in one element rather than another manifests in differences in a person's emotional state. So two people with different imbalances will often react to similar situations in very different ways. In the case of Fire, I have said that this element gives us the capacity for giving and receiving love and warmth, and for being open with and close to other people to an appropriate degree. An imbalance of the Fire element gives a predisposition to feelings of not being loved, of being hurt or abandoned. A child who feels rejected easily can learn to protect themselves by overcompensating, by closing their heart to others to avoid getting hurt. When you are closed to other people, it is hard to take in warmth and enjoy intimacy. This happens at a subconscious level, and the child's experience may simply be that they feel that people don't like them, that they are unlovable. The more this happens, the more it reinforces the original Fire imbalance, and the person's need for warmth and closeness increases, so that they can feel quite desperate for love and attention to compensate for their feelings of not being loved. They may develop beliefs such as "I must be happy and funny to be liked", or "I feel terrible when I am alone". Sometimes, rather than being closed down, someone with a Fire imbalance can be inappropriately open, so that the smallest offence causes them to feel hurt. They may be in a group of people and be ignored for a moment, or be left out accidentally, but feel very hurt and rejected. Someone with a healthier Fire element would not take such things so personally, and the vicious spiral of feeling rejected, closing off and becoming more excluded would not develop. There are various ways in which a Fire imbalance can manifest in our behaviour. One of the commonest is that people swing between extremes of happiness and sadness. What often happens is that the Fire person will appear to be constantly happy, because they keep the sadness out of public view. These are the people who are always cheerful, and who can often have great enthusiasm and fill others around them with warmth and excitement, or cheer other people up when they are down. They are often the life and soul of a party. Cheerful behaviour can become compulsive, so that fun becomes the most important thing, and the Fire person finds it hard to believe that anyone wouldn't want to be jolly all the time. But this kind of happiness is not the same as real joy, and many Fire people find it very difficult to experience real joy in their hearts. Extending the idea of cheering people up, many Fire people are good at performing to an audience, especially making people laugh. This is another way of getting the warmth and attention they need, and can make the Fire person feel more loveable and worthwhile. Playing the clown can be a way of getting people to like you, but again, the Fire person's sadness is often private. Famous examples of talented comedians who also suffered with depression, such as Tony Hancock or Spike Milligan, illustrate this aspect of a Fire imbalance. Another way in which a Fire imbalance can affect our behaviour is in the balance between being open and sociable, and being closed and isolated. Some Fire people are open with everybody, treating anyone they meet like an intimate friend, 'wearing their heart on their sleeve'. Often they are very good at quickly making contact with other people, and can chat with whoever they meet, or talk to strangers and make deep connections. Other Fire people may find it difficult to relate to other people at all, and are inwardly closed off and withdrawn even if they seem outwardly friendly. Meeting new people can be a real strain, making the Fire person feel unsure of themselves, and they prefer just to be with a few trusted friends, who are less likely to hurt them. You can see that there are many ways in which a particular elemental imbalance affects our internal state, and our behaviour. Really in this article I am only scratching the surface, but I hope this has given you a flavour of the Fire element. To conclude, I mentioned the Shen (mother-child) cycle at the beginning of this article. This describes one of the ways in which the five elements relate to each other. The mother of Fire is Wood. On a physical level this is quite obvious: wood burns to make fire. In terms of health, it is common to find that symptoms manifesting in one element have their origin in the preceding one on the Shen cycle (i.e. the mother of that element). The Heart is related to the Fire element, and acupuncture practitioners often find that heart problems have originated in the Wood element, particularly with unexpressed anger, resentment and stress, which can lead to high blood pressure and heart disease. I will write more about the Shen cycle when I have discussed the other elements. Meanwhile, the way to look after your Fire element is to give yourself time alone, some fun, some time with others - and socialise with people who make you feel good about yourself. Of course there is a lot more you can do - self-help measures may appear in another newsletter! Next time, the Earth element.

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