Seven Surprising Signs You're a Water Element Person
A Quick Overview of 5-Element Theory.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is built upon a very simple science: Nature. Unlike Western Medicine, its approach is based on a nonlinear, integrative understanding of how life flows in a cycle.
Plants demonstrate the natural flow of life by their life cycle. A seed gestates and then sprouts, growing upward toward the sun to blossom and bear fruit with seeds for the next generation, before declining, dying and returning to the soil.
As life moves in a circle, it has a rhythm. There are five distinct stages of the cycle, each with its own distinct pattern and quality of energy. Each of the five elements describes a phase of change: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal. The element doesn’t represent the literal substance, it is rather, a way of describing the nature and the particular characteristics of the energy as it moves through the change cycle of life.
Your Elemental Nature
You’re constantly experiencing the five elements as you flow in the cycles of your life. This can be on the macro level – whether you’re in the ‘prime of your life’ of the Fire element or in the ‘ageing gracefully’ stage of the Metal element. Or on the micro level – whether you’re starting a new project (Wood), sitting with loss (Water) or settling after a big event (Earth).
You might have already noticed that there are elements or stages of change that you are more comfortable with and stages that you resist or even avoid.
Within your own energy system, you’ll have a natural tendency toward expressing a particular element. A way of being that feels familiar and easy for you, a stage of the change cycle that feels more comfortable to you and that perhaps you’d like to stay in! For example, you might really like the beginning of a new venture. Brainstorming ideas, entertaining possibilities and planning for success. In other words, you’re in your element in the WOOD phase of the cycle.
Of course, you know where this is headed. You also have an aversion to a phase of change, a way of being that doesn't feel pleasant or comfortable to you. For example, perhaps you hate dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s, you loathe the task of editing your work or you find it difficult to throw way things. In other words, you’re not at home in the METAL phase of the cycle.
Being out of flow in your life is often simply a result of an elemental imbalance. Getting to know and deeply understand your elemental nature is an invaluable skill. Rather than battling with yourself or trying to force, you can find your flow by ‘working’ with your elemental strengths and weaknesses.
Identifying characteristics of the Water Element in You
Are you primarily a water person? Before reading through the list, see if you can connect with the element within you.
Think about the qualities of water. How does it feel? How does it move? What does it do? What are its strengths?
Jean Haner describes it this way:
Water Element is the energy of night, when it’s dark and silent, and we’re sleeping, off in dreamland and not in touch with the realities of daytime life. It represents winter, when animals hibernate, and seeds hidden deep in the cold wet soil are soaking in rich nutrients and developing their strength. It’s the mysterious land of the afterlife, but also of the time before birth, when the baby quietly grows as it floats in the amniotic fluid.
Water can be understood by observing its own nature too. What are the qualities of water? The ocean is deep, dark and powerful, the waves relentlessly pounding the shore over and over, unstoppable. When a river encounters a boulder, it isn’t blocked; it just flows around it. Water is an incredibly strong but at the same time effortless force. It just keeps going. The motion of Water is floating, yet it possesses enormous unseen potential.
Seven Signs you have a Strong Water Element:
You sometimes feel alone in the world, or very different from other people.
You can feel constrained if you have to watch the clock or have regimented work hours.
Sometimes you fear that if you fully opened to your psychic ability, you wouldn’t be able to turn it off, or you’d find out things you didn’t want to know.
You believe your brain works differently than most people’s, and there have been times when you’ve felt misunderstood.
When you compare yourself to other people, you feel you have a deeper sense of the infinite, or a greater interest in the unseen world.
You tend to base your decisions on an inner knowing that you can’t always explain rationally.
Sometimes when you’re around people, you feel like you’re on the outside looking in, not really part of the group.
Taken from: The Five Element Solution - Discover the Spiritual Side of Chinese Medicine to Release Stress, Clear Anxiety, and Reclaim Your Life. Jean Haner.