The Metal Element, which includes our Lungs and our Colon, is the Element most profoundly impacted by the Covid 19 virus. The classical literature of Acupuncture and Asian Medicine[1] refers to the Lung’s function as “receiving the inspiration of the heavens”. It helps us find the presence of a spiritual guide in turbulent times. These same texts refer to the Colon as being responsible for “the drainage of the dregs”. It helps us let go of what is no longer useful.
Together, they regulate the coming and going of inhale and exhale, receiving and letting go and all the rhythms that support life. Their most poignant function is to help us transform grief and loss and find inspiration for new beginnings and fresh breaths.
Each of the 5 Elements carry a gift of spirit. The Po, or Animal Soul, is the spirit held by the Metal. It discerns what is valuable in each moment – breath by breath. What inspires us, what needs to be let go? It supports our connection to life as it presents itself, moment by moment. We receive this information as an embodied, instinctive, felt sense.
A flexible, clear, unencumbered Po is critically important when our reality is changing as fast as our next breath. We can trust our Po, residing in our Lungs, to inform and guide us about the value of each moment and each experience.
In the context of threat, the Metal oversees the first moment of the Self-Protective Response. Its function to “Awaken Arousal” helps us notice something new in our environment and uncouple the uniqueness of this moment from previous potentially similar ones. This essential moment becomes easier to manage when unencumbered by all those other moments. We are more able to find the inspiration necessary to carry us into the next step of our lives.
When we are challenged in the function of a particular Element, symptoms associated with that Element are more likely to leave an imprint on our tissues, psychological constructs, functional challenges, and spiritual longings. The Metal carries the burden of unresolved grief.
Here is where Covid-19 comes in. While individual experiences of Covid-19 are profoundly personal – this tiny virus also exists in the social context of world grief.
I would assert that the world’s people are carrying a massive burden of grief. The field in which humanity is breathing is filled with a sense of loss and a longing to find inspiration to help us understand, manage, cope.
In addition to our own personal losses – those relating to Covid-19 as well as dozens of other life-experiences, as a world we are experiencing:
- Global warming, with a loss of security for the ground under our feet;
- A seemingly unending war and thousands of fatalities in the Middle East and elsewhere;
- Community violence, too often state sanctioned or influenced by government policy, action or inaction;
- Hundreds of thousands of people forced from the land of their ancestors due to violence, poverty, and lack of opportunity, and finding cages, barriers and yet more threats on their journey to their next moment;
- Insults and threats from political leaders regarding our race, gender, or ethnicity that threaten our sense of our own value and our sense of safety and possibility for ourselves — and for our children’s future.
We live in a world that has been profoundly influenced and challenged by grief, leaving our communal Lung so very burdened, and so very vulnerable. This state has created a world-wide vulnerability in our Metal Element.
Thankfully, there is wisdom in the traditions of Acupuncture and Asian Medicine to inform the cultivation of our Po, the health of our Lungs and our Colon – and the transformation of the burden of grief that we and our world are carrying.
First, the Metal Element wants to breathe. Clear time and space, quiet your mind, invite conscious attention to your breath – and allow the small and the big griefs you carry to move through you. Invite the inspiration of the heavens to help you. Ask your Colon for help with letting go. If tears come, welcome them. Allowing grief to move through us supports clearing out what is no longer useful and creates space for something fresh and clean to move in.
Second, the Metal Element requires the presence of the Fire Element – which is responsible for our social engagement response – for it to function well. Without the presence of Fire, Metal relates exclusively to the heavens – leaving behind earthly and often imperfect relationships with people and perhaps pets. It can forget how important our “tribe” is to our very survival.
Fire softens Metal – it helps Metal be more flexible and malleable. Without Fire, Metal can become inert, rigid and overly critical. This state can give rise to nooks and crannies in our lungs where grief can harden and contract our tissues – leaving us more vulnerable to this virus that finds its best home in a weakened, brittle lung.
Fire’s gifts of love, joy and laughter can soften what may be braced and bring tone to what may be collapsed in our Lung and Colon. Our Fire can help us find the tears to help us transform and let go of grief that has left both our communal and our personal lungs so very vulnerable.
This is another way of affirming the wisdom of polyvagal theory (https://relationalimplicit.com/porges-social/?fbclid=IwAR0aqQzhoS3R2eEhZFnLDg2rwsNRhiEOSD8XQZ1e3snHARwiwhUWN-MMwzs) on the critical importance of social engagement and warmth of connection while we adhere to the advice of public health experts on physical distancing. Without nurturing the capacity of our primate brain to mitigate our stress response through relationship, we will be left with our more primitive fight, flight or freeze responses in charge of how we navigate life.
Please, reach out to people who live alone, make special efforts to express love and care for those you live with, take time to bring to mind your sense of connection with the various communities or “tribes” you are a part of — and every single person who loves you.
Third – the Metal loves beauty. Another of its many gifts is how it informs us of our gem-like nature. Surround yourself with beauty. Create art – write poetry, paint, draw, sculpt, listen to or play music. Invite beauty to inspire you.
Fourth – Bring this into your body. Take a quiet moment. Come to your breath. Place your hands on your chest, over your Lungs. Invite the presence of your spiritual guides. Listen. Feel. Experience whatever movement or stillness, sensation or image that arises as you are present to your Po. Then move your hands down to your lower belly, over your Colon. Invite this same guide to help you let go of what it is now time to leave behind. Let go of what may be in the way of a fresh, clear and inspired breath. Again, listen, feel and experience whatever movement or stillness, sensation or image that comes in your body as you are present to the message of your Po in your Colon.
I promise you this. The vitality, the energy of your internal experience will begin to vibrate out into the world. Traumatic stress is vibrational. We change its’ vibration and we change not just ourselves, but everyone we are in relationship with.
Everything in Acupuncture and Asian Medicine exists as a duality. Every danger also contains an opportunity. Covid-19 is a very real and present danger to our very existence. It is not a small danger – but it is not everything.
Alongside this danger, there is an opportunity to experience a sense of world-wide connection and care.
Our lives are in each other’s hands – we know this so clearly now. I am holding the possibility that the necessity to tend the grief the world carries — and heal our Lungs –will also support the creation of a vibration rooted in this sense of connection with the world’s people. I am holding an intention that it will give rise to the insight and inspiration necessary for ones amongst us to take necessary, heroic and powerful action for the good of all of humanity.
This is my prayer. Thank you for your service.
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For more information on the Self-Protective Response and the Five Elements of Acupuncture and Asian Medicine, see: The Tao of Trauma: A Practitioner’s Guide for Integrating Five Element Theory and Trauma Treatment by Alaine Duncan, with Kathy Kain
Alaine.Duncan@integrativehealingworks.net
[1]Huang Di Neijing, or the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine.