What Is Wood?!

🪵 This week Ben asks Gabriella What Is Wood?! As winter retreats and nature awakens, Gabriella explains how Wood symbolises the season of Spring, marked by a flurry of activity and growth. Contrary to common belief, Spring doesn't begin on a fixed date but is heralded by the increasing light after the winter solstice, sparking life's resurgence even amidst lingering chill.

Through vivid descriptions, Gabriella paints a picture of nature's exuberance in Spring, from the emergence of delicate flowers to the gambolling of spring lambs. Engaging in lively banter with Ben, she unravels the symbolism of the colour green, the sound of shout, and the emotion of anger associated with Wood. Their conversation highlights the element's role in birth, flexibility, and determination, mirrored in the unstoppable force of life pushing through obstacles.

Exploring further, they discuss the sensory aspects of Wood, from its rancid odour to the sour taste of unripe fruit, and its association with the sense organ of the eye. As they wrap up part one, Ben reflects on the significance of understanding Wood's essence for holistic health and the practice of acupuncture.

Stay tuned for part two, where they delve deeper into the nuances of Wood's expression and its relevance to acupuncture therapy. Embrace the energy of spring and join Gabriella and Ben on this journey of discovery through the elemental forces shaping our world.

Transcript

Pt.1

Ben: So Gabriella What is Wood?

Gabriella: Last time we talked about the Water element and the season of winter, where life retracts to preserve energy and build reserves. Everything is hidden, quiet, below ground. It’s the most Yin time of year. We talked about the seed germinating, awaiting its moment, and here it is - spring!

Wood is the element associated with the season of Spring. Here in Britain we are well known for complaining about the weather. Every year in the middle of April, I hear someone saying “It’s so cold! When will Winter be over?”

Now hold on a second! I always thought that the “first day of spring” was March 21st - it was my grandfather’s birthday and so always a memorable date for me.

Ben: So does spring actually start on March 21st?

Gabriella: There isn’t a particular date that nature looks at the calendar and says ‘right, here we go, let’s switch off winter - better do spring now’! Nature however is acutely aware of the changes in light, which starts to increase gradually after the winter solstice around December 21st. Temperatures may remain quite chilly but the increase in light signals it’s time for nature to start to emerge from the bleak winter. I saw snowdrops and daffodils emerge when it was just the second week of February this year. While it wasn’t quite yet full blown spring, the movement had definitely started.

Those people who are complaining about the cold in April are so pre-occupied with temperature that they forget what Spring really is - an abundance of activity! And it starts much earlier than people like to think.

The word - Spring - is dynamic in itself. You know that cartoon sound, boingggg! Ben, you’re good with sounds, have you got a boing for me?

Ben: I sure do, here it is!

Gabriella: Yes that’s it! That’s what nature is doing, it’s going boinggggg all over the place.

The spring flowers! Snowdrops, crocus, magnolia, surely you can’t miss the bright yellow boom of the daffodil? Or that thin veneer of bright, fresh green covering the trees as new leaves emerge from their austere winter silhouettes.

Ponds are full of frog spawn Spring lambs gambol in fields A line of several goslings eagerly waits to swim behind its parent Did anyone notice the buzz of insects in the air?

Spring has sprung, the season of Wood. The time when nature goes bonkers, pushing upwards out of the stillness of winter.

Ben: So is the colour of wood brown?

Gabriella: Remember our episode on CSOE, when I talked about Wood?

Ben: Oh yeah, I think you said it was green? But shouldn’t it be brown, like the bark of trees?

Gabriella: Silver birches and Aspen have white bark.

Ben: groan… so pedantic!

Gabriella: Now, what we mean by wood isn’t just the thick bark and wood of trees. It’s all vegetation. From the tiniest single cell algae to the giant sequoia, we all know wood in the many forms of plant life we have here on Earth, the majority of which is one shade of green or another.

So the colour of Wood is GREEN - which happens to be my favourite colour! FYI… emeralds in particular… just in case anyone’s got any spare ones knocking around… I was so thrilled at age 11 when I went to my new school. Not only did they offer Latin as a subject, the uniform was a lovely bottle green!

Ben: So what kind of green is Wood?

Gabriella: Any kind! The colour of the Wood element can be any shade of green from the palest minty white to the darkest browny green. You can have yellowy greens, blue greens, olive greens, inky dark greens, like any shade of colour there’s a wide spectrum.

Ben: I’ll pop down to B & Q to pick up some swatches for the latest range of greens then!

Gabriella: I’m green with envy!

Now, each element has a particular power, and the Power of Wood is Birth. And as we’ve said, in spring, all over the place new life is bursting out, shooting up, pushing out. All kinds of birth have a similar thrust of energy, whether it’s a seed bursting out of its husk pushing up towards the light, a chick cracking out of the delicate yet robust shell of an egg, or an animal baby emerging from its mother’s womb. Labour is so called because it is just that - a physical labour demanding great effort, a dynamic process of contractions pushing a baby out into the world.

The direction associated with wood is East. The sun rises in the East, the birth of a new day! I remember one early spring morning particularly well: February 20th 1997. The sun rose in the East to a new day. I’d given Birth just hours before to my first child. I could hear the Wind howling outside, rattling the windows of Queen Charlotte’s hospital. My mum appeared with a tiny posy of delicate white snowdrops, the first flowers of spring! With each new life, plant, human or animal, we envisage the future. As I held this tiny new life in my arms, I gazed down at this little face I’d been so curious to see for the best part of the past year, and tried to imagine the future: what would she look like as a child? As an adult? What would her voice sound like? What would her passions be? Her challenges? What would she do with life?

Ben: Yeh I can understand that, but plants? I don’t see many people cradling a baby parsnip in their arms, wondering how it’s going to turn out…

Gabriella: Okay granted, we may not spend so much time wondering what parsnips, Brussels sprouts or runner beans will do with life, but we have a vision of how they’ll turn out when they’re planted, and can look forward to them being part of a yummy, nutritious meal.

Ben: Mmmm, roast parsnips!

Gabriella: Have you ever had roast Brussels sprouts? Mmmm…

Ben: When’s dinner?

Gabriella: You WOOD ask that, Ben… Now, back to plants… The seed itself, it knows exactly what to do. There can be a single-mindedness in wood energy. All those different seeds, shoots, buds: each one has a mandate, it ‘knows’ what it’s meant to be, and just does it. Babies and children too, in time they learn to respond to concepts like ‘yes’ and ‘no’ but before that they just ‘do’. A bit like my cats, although they never actually learn ‘no’: they understand they’re not supposed to, but they just go ahead and do what they want to anyway… In Kathmandu, I remember a little temple or was it a tree? A seed had planted itself there right in the middle of this beautiful stone shrine. It didn’t care that someone had constructed the little temple for a purpose, it rooted itself firmly and decided, ‘Right, I’m growing here regardless’. The tree and the temple were so entwined with each other that you couldn’t really call it one or the other - it was both!

Pt.2

Ben: The sound associated with Wood is Shout!

Gabriella: Oi! Nicking my line again! Get back into line, Worsley!

Ben: So bossy…

Gabriella: So as BEN was saying, The sound of wood is SHOUT. When we talk about the sound of each element, what we mean is how that energy expresses itself in the voice of a person. And note: shout doesn’t necessarily mean loud! But it has that force, like a shoot pushing out of the ground, a shout is like a burst of energy, coming at you. Sometimes it’s like you’re being punched in the face. It can be enunciated like - I - need - to - make - a - point - of - every - single - word or talking at you. The commands of an army captain or a clipped voice, like the staccato sound of a violin when plucked. Remember, that upward movement of the element, dynamic, moving, growing.

Ben: Well with all this shouting it sounds a bit angry!

Gabriella: And indeed, the emotion of wood is ANGER

Ben: What? Mother sheep saying to their lambs ‘Oi! Stop having fun gamboling in the fields?’

Gabriella: No, B…

Ben: Daddy duck shouting ‘Get into line you annoying little brats?’

Gabriella: Well… no.

The emotion anger can get a bad press, but like all emotions there are times when it’s appropriate. Like all colour, sound, odour and emotion, it’s what’s jarring, what’s inappropriate that we’re taking note of when our senses detect these signs from a person.

Let’s go back to that seed germinating in the ground over winter. This little seed found the perfect place to winkle its way down into the earth and prepare to shoot up at the right moment.

Our little seed senses it’s time to emerge. It starts growing upwards. And then…

Some idiot comes along and plonks a whacking great slab of concrete right over the spot.

What the f….??? I mean, what the - flip says the seed.

Does that stop it? No bloody way!

The frustration of being stopped in its tracks, the flexibility to try a new route, the vision of what it could be, the determination to get there in the end.

This little seed has a mandate and grow into a big tree it damn well will. So what does it do? It twists and turns and like a little miracle, it finds its way into the light through the nearest crack in the concrete. And one day it might grow so big and strong that it’ll break up that nasty bit of concrete that tried to stop it in its tracks.

Frustration, flexibility, determination can all come from the emotion anger. Now, whether or not a seed actually feels anger I can’t say, but if it did, this would be an appropriate time to feel it. In diagnosis, what we’re looking for is the inappropriate expression of an emotion. That person in the office as one example - you come in every day and cheerily greet them with a ‘good morning, how are you today?’ and their response every day through gritted teeth is ‘fine’ - you feel a knock back which doesn’t seem an appropriate response to your good intentions.

Ben: Oh yeah, Mrs. Miggins from next door, know her well…

Gabriella: Or the infamous Basil Fawlty, we laugh at what an angry man he is, but imagine if you had to live with him or work with him - it’d be a nightmare! Now we don’t want to fall into the trap that there are types but this is just to illustrate an example of inappropriate anger.

I mentioned flexibility - our seed’s instinct was to grow upwards but when it came across a hurdle that stopped it, it had to have the flexibility to change its plans. It needed strength to push through and adaptability to find a new route.

Ben: Your puns are punishing Gabriella

Gabriella: Oh I didn’t mean that one actually, I said route, not root! Well of course it needed roots AND a new route! Without flexibility, determination and vision it would have just given up. Wood is about co-ordination, motion towards a purpose or a goal, movement.

Ben: But… plants don’t move, they have roots

Gabriella: Wood requires strong roots for stability and it also needs to be flexible above ground too. Plants may be rooted in the same spot, but boy do they move! Plants need to be able to sway in the breeze, too brittle or stiff and branches could break off in the wind. Without strong roots they could be uprooted by the force of the wind. And in fact the climate associated with wood is wind. I mentioned the wind howling the night my daughter was born, there’s a saying that mentions March winds and it often is very windy in the spring. The winds of change! Wind is a dynamic force. It’s unpredictable, it changes direction, it can be a huge force, in hurricanes and tornadoes or it can even be the gentlest breeze. So not only is there tremendous movement in the growth of plants, there is movement, night and day. There’s nothing static about a plant, even though it remains in the same spot. In us, the wood element is responsible for our tendons and ligaments. These hold together our structure, they’re the link from muscles to bone, and so help to drive movement. Our skeletons don’t just hold together themselves, and if muscles didn’t attach to the bones, we wouldn’t be able to flex or extend anything!

Ben: And what about other Wood correspondences?

Gabriella: The odour of wood is RANCID

Ben: Rancid? But you’re talking about fresh Spring Life, what do you mean rancid?

Gabriella: The odours we’re talking about occur when nature goes out of balance in the body. So when a function is not operating as it should, an odour is emitted. Nowadays, people are using the word rancid in a generic way, to describe something as bad, but this is incorrect. The precise definition of rancid is ‘smelling or tasting unpleasant as a result of fats or oils being old and stale’.

Ben: How does that come from Wood?

Gabriella: Well, it’s to do with the function of the organs of the wood element, one of whose jobs is the processing of fats and oils. When they’re not being broken down properly, they become stagnant and therefore emit a rancid odour. So hold onto that thought for now, we’ll cover it in more detail when we talk about the organs of the wood element, the Gall Bladder and the Liver. It’ll make more sense to you then.

The taste associated with wood is sour. The sourness of unripe fruit for example. Sour is often associated with acidity, so citrus fruits, rhubarb or gooseberries are a good example of sour. Natural yoghurt is sour, as is milk that’s gone off. Pickles are also sour due to the acid used to preserve them in.

The sense organ of wood is the eye. Wood helps us to see where we’re going. It gives us vision, starting at the planting of seeds in spring that we’ll harvest later in the year. It helps us to see where we’re going, it gives us directions to aim for. Mentally, our mind’s eye helps us to think, plan, judge, create, and in the grand scheme of things it’s imagining our hopes, dreams and purpose.

Ben: I spy with my little eye, something beginning with ‘E’…

Gabriella: The endless streak of pesky questions?

Ben: No the end of the episode!

Conclusion

Ben: OK, so What’s the point? What does the nature of Wood have to do with putting acupuncture needles into the body?

Gabriella: Well Ben, tell me, what have you learned?

Ben: I’ve learned that Spring is not just about the changing temperatures but the burst of life and energy all around us. The colour green, the action of growth, the sound of shouting and even the emotion of anger, they all come together to represent the essence of Wood. And also it's about the energy and determination of life to overcome obstacles and reach for the light. And let's not forget the importance of flexibility and balance, which are key aspects of Wood. Just like the need for a tree to sway in the breeze without breaking, we must adapt to life's challenges with resilience.

Gabriella: And as with all the elements, I’m assessing the overall balance and flow of energy in a person and what I’ll be wanting to treat is the imbalance within that person. Remember, restoring nature to how it’s meant to be, will give the greatest potential for health. So if I see signs that the wood element is out of balance in a person, I can treat it and the person feels better. The signs that lead to this are ones I detect with my senses. So if someone is displaying an inappropriate level of anger and I see the colour green on their complexion, I’m starting to build up a picture of where the imbalance may be.

Ben: And with that we’ll say goodbye. So, until our next episode, embrace the energy of spring, and remember that growth often requires a little push from within.

Gabriella: Next episode we’ll be heating up while we discuss the hot topic of the fire element.

Ben: Hot Stuff!

Gabriella: Don’t forget your hazmat suit!

Ben: Til next time!

Gabriella & Ben: Bye!