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Harmony: Radical Taoism Gently Applied

by Eulalio Paul Cane

420 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0362; ISBN 1-55369-549-6; US$31.50, C$35.95, EUR26.00, £18.00

This book makes explicit the mind-body connection by teaching the art of reading one's own body and mind in terms of the Taoist five elements (Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal), followed by specific ways to address imbalances--based on how the five elements are also expressed in the world around us.

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About the Book      About the Author      Sample Excerpts and Table of Contents      Catalogue Info

For more about the harmony theory of the five elements, or to contact the author, please visit us at www.harmony5.com.

About the Book

This book is for everyone who yearns for well-being. It will take you on a journey to the heart of the ancient Taoist five element theory in order to reclaim the concept of naturalness as a valid reference point for human life, even in the modern world. You will learn that when Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal are in balance, when none of them is in a state of excess or deficiency within you, then harmony with the flow of the universe, the Tao, is achieved.
HARMONY offers the reader a complete course on the first significant developments in five element theory since the Neijing (Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine). Eulalio Paul Cane dove deeply into traditional Chinese medicine to find answers to his own enigmatic health troubles—and indeed he found the personal answers he sought. But his strong interest and philosophical background enabled him as well to recognize novel universal connections lying hidden within Taoist thought, connections that linked the previously separate systems describing the five elements, yin and yang, and the notion of the Tao itself. When the dust had settled, what emerged at the core of these discoveries was something wholly original: a rigorous model for translating directly between what goes on in the mind and what takes place in the body.
HARMONY presents its ideas with remarkable clarity. The reader will come away fully appreciating and understanding Taoism both in terms of the book's radical new conclusions about the universal and in its gentle applicability to the personal struggles with harmony and naturalness in which we all engage. This latter task will be explored by means of a detailed "five element profile" which the reader will construct based on his or her own unique symptoms, quirks, feelings, and experiences. Learning to interpret the messages inherent in the states of the mind and the body empowers one both with self-knowledge and with a personal map that can be used to chart a course back toward harmony, using a tailored approach of Taoist yoga, beneficial diet, meditation, and self-massage of acupressure points.
Features of the book include:

57 detailed acu-point charts, on 23 pages
19 illustrations of Taoist yoga postures
More than 400 descriptive terms, physical features of the body, and emotional states of mind, and the element (Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, or Metal) associated with each one
A Quick Interpretation Guide
Several helpful worksheets for creating a personalized five element profile
Glossary and complete index

About the Author

Prior to becoming ill in 1997, Eulalio Paul Cane devoted his free time over the previous twenty years to exploring the nature of human realities and possibilities, through philosophical enquiry, meditation, martial arts, Taoist yoga, qigong, and by learning to live with the earth in the way of the Native Americans. Through the wisdom he found in the traditional Taoist concepts of yin and yang and the five elements, he was able to regain his health and resume all of these practices. He continues to learn and grow today in the high desert country of the American Southwest.

Table of Contents and Sample Excerpt

INTRODUCTION
To die at 120 is to die young.
                      —Taoist saying
It is natural that the body should be healthy. It is natural that the mind should be clear. It is natural that the spirit should be vital. Yet in our complex modern world, the meaning of naturalness often slips through our fingers when we grasp for it.
The ancient Taoists wrestled with the same problem. For although one may say that they studied nature, it would be more accurate to say that they studied the concept of naturalness. And what they discovered has been passed down to us as the five element theory. Woven into the fabric of a simple but profound metaphor, Taoism gave to the world a working definition of naturalness. This definition says that when Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal (the five elements) are in balance, harmony with the flow of the universe is achieved. Recognizing that such a balance exists is the first step toward understanding how it can be lost, and how it can be regained. Far from being merely a fanciful philosophical construct, this definition of naturalness bequeathed to the world the foundation of Chinese medicine with its eminently practical arts of acupuncture, herbalism, and qigong.
Harmony is, therefore, a synonym for naturalness, particularly as it applies to humans. The notion of having to understand or to seek naturalness is relevant to us, because it seems that, unfortunately, it does not come naturally! Rather, we drift easily into patterns of disharmony that may lead to health problems, personal problems, or emotional problems of all types. Suddenly, the question of harmony is no longer just a matter of clever aphorisms and armchair philosophy. My own wake-up call in this regard came a few years back.
The Chinese have a saying that when you become ill, you have already been ill for a long time. In the fall of 1997, disharmonies that had been building in me for many years surfaced in the form of an acute condition. One afternoon I began to feel very uncomfortable. I had the sense that my heart was beating too slowly, as if it were moving in a sort of viscous liquid. I considered the possibility that I might be having some sort of weird heart attack. The world took on an odd, surreal quality. All that day I lay in bed hoping to get past these strange sensations. The next day a fever set in which ended up lasting over two months. My mental state worsened as extreme anxiety became a constant companion. I had no appetite at all.
I am a firm believer in holistic medicine and because of a lifetime interest in Taoism I was particularly attracted to Chinese medicine; but no acupuncturist was within even a hundred miles and I truly felt that I could not make such a long trip. So I began studying on my own as much as I was able.
The most traditional Chinese approach classifies the systems of both the body and the mind in terms of five elements: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal. In this sense, the Chinese system does not distinguish physical and mental systems but recognizes that when there is imbalance in the body, the mind also suffers, and vice versa. One of the first things I learned was that the heart is related to the Fire element. Since some of the worst experiences I had with my illness were those strange heart sensations, I took the connection between the heart and Fire seriously—if I had a problem with my heart, then by definition, I had a problem with my Fire. And certainly, I reasoned, my fever had to be a Fire problem as well. I knew that certain febrile illnesses, such as rheumatic fever, are sometimes known to cause lasting heart trouble.
Feelings of anxiety or fear, I next learned, stemmed from problems with the Water element. My reading had taught me that the five elements are organized into two cycles, the nurturing cycle and the governing cycle. For each element, one other element nurtures it or helps to build it up, and a different element governs it or helps to control it or calm it down. From the governing cycle I noted that Water normally governs, or calms, Fire. I reasoned that the fever (Fire) might be overtaxing my Water element as it attempted to control Fire's excess, and that my constant feeling of anxiety was one result. So I began altering my diet and lifestyle in ways that were said to help build up the energy of the Water element and achieved a small measure of relief in this way. Most importantly, I began to feel some hope in the few small threads of explanation that I was finding.
Eventually, after two months, my fever began to abate. Unfortunately, my mental state was becoming more complex. In addition to anxiety, I was now feeling an extreme sense of depression and lethargy, tempered somewhat by my sense that I was making progress with my dietary approach. Then I began to experience something even more bizarre. Just as I was nodding off to sleep at night, I would suddenly wake up again with my heart beating so ferociously that I thought it would surely burst. Strangely enough, even though I was very frightened by these attacks, I had an intuitive sense that they were not a bad thing. When I would creep shakily to the bathroom to splash water on my face, I noticed deep red vertical lines on the sides of my forehead. They almost looked like red lightning bolts. I could not even guess what all this might mean. I was so physically and mentally worn out that I thought I might die soon; at times I wished I would.
Another odd symptom I had been aware of for some time was a sort of soft protuberance on the ulna (the outer bone of the arm). It was perhaps a quarter inch high and stuck out strangely when my wrist was bent. I read that the bones of the body are traditionally related to the Water element, so it seemed that it might be related to my anxiety, which was also associated with Water.
Delving further, I discovered a deeper link: with the qi (pronounced "chee") meridians. The qi meridians are like specific channels or energy currents that crisscross the body at or near the surface. Key points along these meridians can become blocked when there is imbalance in the mind or body. Stimulation of these blocked points, such as with acupuncture needles or massage, can be used to restore proper qi flow. This idea is a key concept in Chinese medicine.
Although I knew very little about acu-massage, I studied the numerous drawings in my traditional Chinese medicine books, showing the paths of a human's qi flow. A certain sharp jog in the path of one meridian close to the wrist caught my attention. I wondered if there might be a connection between that and the bony mass on my own wrist. The meridian in question was referred to as the "triple burner meridian," about which unfortunately most books have little to say. But I did learn that the meridian is classified with the Fire element, which was consistent with my heart and fever observations.
Then I made a critical discovery. In one little book, How to Develop Chi Power by William Cheung, I found a list of suggested acu-points to massage to vitalize certain meridians, including the triple burner meridian. When I tried massaging the recommended point (the sixth point on the meridian), I found that it was very sensitive, and indeed it rapidly began to redden and swell as I massaged it. Although I was by no means rubbing it with any force, it soon became so sensitive to the touch that I would describe the lightest contact as like dragging sandpaper across a raw nerve. I had by now come across the concept of qi blocks and I was certain that that was what I was dealing with. I felt certain that if I could just clear this block by massaging it (acu-massage) I would again be well.
As sick as I still was, I felt the joy of believing I had found the key to my recovery. This belief was further strengthened when I studied the entire course of the triple burner meridian and found that it terminated close to the temples. In fact, it terminated at the precise point where the red "lightning bolts" had been forming during those strange night attacks. Suddenly it all made sense: the qi block prevented the Fire qi from flowing, which was why my heart had originally seemed to be moving too slowly, as if in a thick liquid. The lack of Fire also explained why I now felt lethargic and depressed, because Fire is also associated with the emotion joy. The qi block was like a clogged pipe; when the pressure built up enough, just after I relaxed into sleep at night, the qi would break through the block, sending my heart racing. The force of the qi caused the red lines to appear on my forehead where the meridian ended. (The color red is also associated with the Fire element.)
By this time I had read that traditional Chinese medicine considers the Water energy (associated with the kidneys) to be the root of life and its depletion to be the cause of death. I realized from my earlier, long-term state of anxiety (which is related to Water, as I mentioned) that the fever had severely taxed my store of Water energy (called jing in Chinese). So I reasoned that the qi block's severity was my body's attempt to halt the loss of Water jing—even at the cost of the functioning of my Fire element.
So, with this new and hopeful understanding, I began to massage the qi-blocked acu-point regularly. I believed at first that I would rapidly heal but this was not to be the case. The Chinese have a rule of thumb that for every year you spend building an imbalance into the body and mind, it takes at least one month of treatment to bring it back into harmony. In my case, I was actually able to trace back some of the indicators of my illness over twenty years. By indicators I mean the small discomforts and anomalies of the mind and body that most of us live with and dismiss in one way or another. But they are important communications to us about the state of our five elements, and interpreting them is the key to avoiding their eventual emergence as serious illness. This book will show you how to read these messages in your own body and mind and to balance them regardless of how serious or minor they are.
Although things did not progress as rapidly as I had hoped they would, my newfound theories concerning the qi block were borne out. As I massaged the blocked acu-point it became red and angry and seemed to be even more intensely blocked. My right hand became as cold as ice and my mental depression became acute; there was no qi flow at all. Periodically, though, after perhaps two hours of massage, suddenly the blockage would open. Almost instantly my hand would become hot and I could feel something running up my arm; it was the qi. My heart would begin to pound and the lines would form on my forehead. Even my appetite would return for a short while (you will learn later that the action of digestive acid in the stomach is also under the control of the Fire element). For two months I did almost nothing but massage that acu-point, day in and day out. It gradually became less sensitive, less swelled, less blocked. When the massage would cause the qi to flow, the resulting pounding of my heart was not as intense and the lines on my forehead were not as extreme.
Then, unexpectedly, another acu-point on my lower rib cage became very sensitive, as if it, too, were blocked. It was a Wood acu-point, the fourteenth point on the Wood (liver) meridian and, incidentally, the terminal point of the entire course of qi through the body. In Chinese medicine, my health problems could probably have been most accurately classified as a form of "qi collapse." The effect of such a condition might be compared to what has happened to many major rivers that have been dammed, such as the Colorado and the Rio Grande. Nowadays, if these rivers meet the sea at all they are only a trickle when they get there. Wood (liver) 14 represented the end of the qi river in my own body. At the time I found my second qi block, I became crestfallen with the realization that I had just spent two months massaging a single acu-point and that I might now have to spend two more months on this new point. However, within a few days of acu-massage the new point became significantly less sensitive; this point was not the central problem with my qi system, but was merely a secondary effect, an acu-point that had become overworked as it tried to properly complete the course of my qi flows in the midst of insufficiency and stagnation throughout my qi system.
The relevance of this secondary block was ultimately linked as well to the triple burner meridian qi block. The three "burners" refer to metaphorical cooking vessels, which I eventually realized oversee the extraction of a refined essence from the air, water, and food we intake, to use them as the basis for the generation of fresh qi (for this reason, I refer to this meridian as the Fire (essence generation) meridian). This information can be coupled with another discovery I discuss later in this book, that qi blocks form as a result of overactivity by the qi of a given meridian. In the case of my qi collapse, the Fire (essence generation) meridian ended up with the mother of all blocks as a result of its desperate attempts to rebuild my qi.
Over the course of the next three years, as my search for harmony continued, the process of sorting out a host of mental and physical indicators as well as subsidiary qi flow problems taught me a great deal more about the mind and the body. With each new discovery I have felt changes in myself and I am encouraged to study more, to learn more, and to make more connections concerning the seemingly endless wonders of the five elements. Because of the global nature of qi collapse, my one illness became something of a microcosm for the study of all five elements, since a lack of qi has effects on all of them. The qi interconnects the systems and functions of the body like a network of energy pipes. This is why a qi flow problem in one area can cause problems somewhere else, in a seemingly unrelated system. The theory of the five elements as presented in this book will help you to unravel these connections based on your own unique ebbs and flows. The beauty of this approach is that often it is possible to address a whole raft of imbalances within both the mind and the body simultaneously.
So the path to harmony clearly has much to offer those suffering from physical and emotional problems, which are themselves indicators of imbalance in the underlying elements. For those willing to put in the time and effort, the five element approach will provide a unique set of tools for assessing oneself and then charting a course back to balance. At the same time, it is of great value even for those less obviously troubled to come to know themselves now, to understand their tendencies, their strengths, their weaknesses, and where their current life direction is leading. The five elements can reveal nascent problems long before they emerge in the form of real health problems. Furthermore, if you are one of those people who wonders about the "why" of the ups and downs of your own mind and body, you may, for the first time, make some significant connections as you explore the concepts of the five elements. And when harmony is achieved, hopefully this will not be an end in itself, but rather a new beginning: of a life devoted to helping foster harmony in every community of which you are a part, a spiritual quest that is most easily fulfilled when you are yourself filled with the physical vigor and mental clarity that flows from harmony.
By the way, in case you are wondering whether I am "better" now, the answer is that I'm on the road to harmony and expect to be on it for the rest of my life. For, as immersed in the five elements as I became while grappling with my own health problems, I began to see that they are, indeed, much more than a health tool. I began to see that they are the link that connects an individual to the larger universe. The more I understood the five elements, the more I found that spiritual questions I had wrestled with for over two decades became uniquely clarified. And I saw for the first time how these spiritual issues then relate back to the mind and body. For the mind and body are like a glass through which the spirit peers at the wonders of nature. By keeping this lens clear, the experience is rich and without distortion. Perhaps this state of inner clarity best captures the experience of harmony.
RADICAL TAOISM?
Given my newfound, broad sense of the significance of the five elements, I was disappointed to find that modern practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine seemed to be losing touch with these roots. As it is practiced today, most traditional Chinese medicine assesses illness primarily by means of the less comprehensive "eight principles" system, which utilizes four pairs of opposites, each expressing a different facet of the basic yin/yang distinction. While practitioners can obtain reasonable, practical results using the eight principles, the system lacks the refinement and depth that would be possible with an approach that was centered around the five elements. So why would modern practitioners be willing to give up their own inheritance in this manner?
Radical Taoism may sound, at first, like a contradiction in terms. Yet, at its heart, Taoism is utterly radical. It is a religion without dogma and with no scripture beyond a few scant writings. It deifies no one and itself has nothing to say on the subject of God or gods. It is too vague to give rise to fanaticism, yet it is clear and practical enough to underlie one of the world's foremost medical traditions. At its core is the antithesis of the modern ego and the ego's quest to leave its mark on the world.

Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing,
     teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease,
Creating, yet not possessing,
Working, yet not taking credit.
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.
                                                      —Tao Te Ching, 2
Nonetheless, for all its inherent radicalism, Taoism emerged in China, a stringently conservative culture. To the Chinese, what is ancient is sacred. Therefore, books on Taoism and Chinese medicine, even those written in the West, have tended to do little more than to regurgitate the classics, such as the Tao Te Ching (Classic of Tao and Virtue) or the Neijing Suwen (Classic of Medicine). Such wisdom is indeed worthy of study and deep appreciation, but the ideas contained therein were themselves new and fresh once. I do not believe the Taoist masters would have wanted their words to become ossified mantras, chanted monotonously by each new generation.
Because others have been unwilling to rethink the roots of Taoism, there have long remained significant gaps between its key ideas, gaps that undermine the theory's capabilities in both the physical and the metaphysical arenas. When I started working on this book, I believed that my work was clarifying the application of the five elements, not its theory, as it seemed that all the key Taoist ideas were already right there, sitting on the table: the Tao, yin and yang, and the five elements. I assumed that these points of reference had to be interrelated in some known way, though other texts never seemed to explain just how. When I found that my own work constantly seemed to demand the answers that no one was providing, I became more and more immersed in trying to solve the problem myself. And ultimately I was able to fill in the missing pieces, such that the resulting whole turned out to be far greater than the sum of its parts. In this manner, in my second year of research and writing, it dawned on me that what I had actually done was not to clarify an existing theory, but to complete an unfinished one.
Therefore, what is radical in this book is the rethinking of Taoism. This rethinking has been done not in order to criticize or disprove Taoism, but to flesh it out, to fill in the blanks, as it were. By fusing all of the basic Taoist concepts, I was able to understand that the five elements had been marginalized over time not because they are themselves too nebulous to apply, but because their precise relationship to yin and yang has been lost. As I discovered, the nature of the five elements follows from the nature of yin and yang; where the links between these ideas are lacking, any attempt to use the ideas contained in the five elements is itself undermined. Thus, for practical reasons, there has been a drift away from them by traditional Chinese medicine. At the same time, the theory of Tao actually gives birth to the theory of yin and yang; without clarity as to the nature of this connection, yin and yang begin to float apart from their metaphysical roots. The deeper context within which Chinese medicine exists is forgotten, as is the relationship between our own health and the flow of the universe at large. This is why traditional Chinese medicine now seems to be a separate, practical idea standing somewhat apart from the more ephemeral body of Taoist thought.
When I began to organize my own notes on Taoist theory, I envisioned a system that would apply the logic of all its principles toward a more comprehensive understanding of the messages that the body and mind give to us. By uniting the key concepts of Taoism, I saw a way to make it possible for others to avoid the circuitous "bits and pieces" method I had been forced to use when trying to solve the riddle of my own health problems. Even when dealing with unusual or seemingly inexplicable phenomena (such as some of the anomalous symptoms I had experienced), this method would allow one to translate all observations into a single language that encompassed the Tao, yin and yang, and the five elements. At one point I used my ideas to examine every symptom that is named in Nigel Wiseman and Feng Ye's voluminous and wonderfully written Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine, a compendium of patterns of illness as defined in traditional Chinese medicine. I found an overwhelming correspondence between assessments that are based on thousands of years of accrued medical experience and what I was able to arrive at directly using my new method.
In the pages ahead, I will reveal to you the poetry and beauty of Taoist thought. But I will do so in an original manner—I will not leave you with vague aphorisms or mystifying descriptions that imply that if you don't get it, it's because you just aren't enlightened enough. Rather, I will bring the universe of Taoism down to earth, to allow you to learn quite explicitly the nature of your own nature, the mechanics of how the Tao flows through your mind and body. I will explore the means by which this flow can become disturbed and I will show you how to recognize the signs of such disturbances even before they appear to be affecting you. I will show you that the same language that describes your own five elements is also written on the signposts marking your unique path toward harmony, a path that is specific to your personal five element state. Harmony is your true nature and if you are willing to seek it, the very path you find yourself on will carry you back out into the universe by awakening in you a profound awareness of the greater flow of which you are a part.

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