My approach
My approach to self-awareness coaching and yoga teaching fuses together ancient wisdoms and modern living, offering hands-on solutions to daily ‘’self-struggles’’.
A little history
The 5 Elements wisdom is rooted into Chinese Medicine Tradition; the basic idea is that everything in nature is governed by the energies of the Yin and the Yang, the feminine and the masculine. These energies, Qi, and the 5 Elements (water, wood, fire, earth, metal) explain how the natural forces can be understood and utilized to reach harmony and balance.
Tradition took it a step forward and started to implement and adapt the same system to understand how the body, the mind and the soul experience general ailments, emotional discomfort, stress, unbalanced living, in relation to the natural process of aging and the environment.
Yin does not exist without Yang, light does not exist without dark, the day does not exist without the night; the whole principle is based on the opposition of these two energies, yet on their complementarity, on the fact that they are inseparable and interdependent.
“…more than two thousand years ago Chinese physicians categorized all of the life into five elements or five phases or five seasons. This model was the basis for understanding how the world works, how societies organize themselves, and what the human body needs to maintain health. It is an elegant framework for sympathetically appreciating human character, temperament, cycles and imbalances”
– Dondi Dhalin –
Although the concept is steeped into tradition, there is also a simplicity to it.
How does it work?
Each and one of us embodies the Yin/Yang energies and the 5 elements. A simplistic view of the system is that we live in balance, free of any illness, limiting beliefs, self doubt, negative self talk when these energies and elements are all working in harmony. In today’s world it almost sounds like a utopic state of being to accomplish, however, tradition has given us the tools to harness our own energy and adapt it, grow it, transform it through the different phases of our life. In order to harness our on energy, we need to know it, to learn to see ourselves and accept ourselves fully.
Also, each element and each energy have been associated to an organ, a color, a sense, an emotion, a season, a purpose. Hence, by knowing our own energy, which forces are moving us to our core, we can also address physical & emotional discomforts.
Think of the 5 Elements like magnifying glasses which allow you to look deeper into yourself, scratching off the surface. Using the 5 Element wisdom to analyze yourself, your imbalances and your lifestyle, will allow you to understand who you truly are, what you should eat, how you should adapt your life to support your physical, mental and emotional needs. This system allows you to understand your strengths and your weaknesses, your ailments, your relationships. It allows you to dive deeper into yourself, getting to know YOU for the person you are and giving you the tools to understand why you feel a certain way about yourself, why you act they way you do and how people perceive you.
I discovered the 5 Elements method a few years back and it made a huge different in my life. I lacked of self-awareness and of a direction in life. I mostly felt I didn’t belong to a specific place or lifestyle and I was constantly jumping from one thing to the other one, both personally and professionally, leading to nowhere. All this while suffering of all the possible digestive track issues. The 5 Elements wisdom supported me to get clarity and discover my purpose. It’s not a magical tool which will transform you from dawn to dusk, but it will hold your hand while you discover joyful ways to care for yourself.