These different emotional imbalances lead to the development of different personalities, built around our different values and expectations of the world. We can put this into a diagram:
Saying that an Organ system is ‘connected to’ or ‘makes an emotion possible’ may sound odd. It is not a belief we have in the West. In the West, for example, the lungs are not thought to connect with our emotions. The Five Element associations, however, say that the Lungs and grief are connected. Well-balanced Lungs can lead to the healthy expression of grief.
From our clinical experience we have seen that patients with weak Lungs often have difficulty with the expression of healthy and normal grief. When a patient’s Lungs are strengthened by treatment or exercises, their ability ‘to experience grief’ improves. The effect of the Lungs on the expression of grief is particularly important when the weakness of the Organ is constitutional. Hence the significance of the types.
What we mean exactly by ‘grief and the ability ‘to experience grief’ will be clearer in the chapter on the Metal type. For the moment, the notion of an emotion overlaps with many other parts of our personality. In the chapters on each Element we describe how at the core of a person there are five key ‘major concerns’. Although all of us have a wide range of other motivating factors in our lives, we all have some which are more important than others.
Why is this so important? It is important because it specifies which are our core weaknesses, our core strengths and, most definitely, our core sensitivities. Knowing these suggests the most fruitful place to work on ourselves.
CORE MOTIVATORS – EACH PERSON HAS A BIG ONE
So how do we describe these ‘big’ motivating factors in our lives. We need to go back now and take a couple of simple steps. The first is from the Elements to their associations.
For example, the associations of the Fire Element are:
Of these associations, the most important for us are the Organs, the emotions and the capacity for emotional expression which a healthy Organ gives us. These positive functions or capacities arise when the Organs are working well.
WHAT ARE THE POSITIVE EMOTIONAL CAPACITIES OF EACH ELEMENT?
Below is a simple table which describes these capacities. Because we are keeping them simple they are described very generally. Of course they vary enormously in the way they manifest.
| Element | Main Organ | The Emotional Capacity this Element Gives us |
| Fire | Heart | The capacity to feel joy; the ability to give and receive warmth and love with varying degrees of emotional closeness. |
| Earth | Stomach and Spleen | The capacity to take in support and nourishment as well as to support and nourish others appropriately. |
| Metal | Lung | The capacity to feel loss and to move on; the ability to take in quality and richness in order to feel complete. |
| Water | Kidney | The capacity to feel fear and to sense and assess risk and respond appropriately. |
| Wood | Liver | The capacity to be appropriately assertive; to have structures and boundaries which enable us to grow and develop. |
These are the capacities of the Element when it is working well. Another important way of looking at these capacities is to see them from their negative side. We might wonder, for example, what kind of experiences we might have if one Element is not working well?
WHAT EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES DOES A CONSTITUTIONALLY WEAK ELEMENT LEAD TO?
When an Element is imbalanced, the capacities associated with it are diminished. A diminished capacity leads to certain sorts of experience. The descriptions below describe the kinds of things we might say if the Organ is imbalanced.
The descriptions are very general and could apply to us at any stage in our life. This could be anything from a pre-verbal infant to an adult who may well be reacting with mixed emotions rather than a simple state of mind. In the individual chapters, we will be giving more details and examples of these.
| Element | Main Organ | Typical Negative Experiences When This Element is Weak |
| Fire | Heart | Hurt, abandonment, feeling unloved, people are not loving and warm, ‘Am I not lovable?’ |
| Earth | Stomach and Spleen | Not going to be fed, others getting fed before me, not protected or held or supported, ‘No-one to look after me’. |
| Metal | Lung | Not recognized, acknowledged, ‘No-one knows I am here’, ‘Why do I feel that something is missing?’ |
| Water | Kidney | Frightened and not reassured, ‘No-one tells me realistically that I’ll be safe’, ‘Can I trust?’ |
| Wood |
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