The Five Elements 101 & Yin Yoga

WEBVTT

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Hi, Janice.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: welcome. If you’re new around here to a yin Yoga, podcast

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Nyk Danu Yoga: if you are familiar welcome back

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Nyk Danu Yoga: today’s topic

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Nyk Danu Yoga: was a request. Actually.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: today, we’re going to talk about the 5 elements, according to Taoism and Tcm, which is also connected to Feng Shui. So it’s all sort of one big interconnected package. We’re going to talk about the 5 elements as an overview. So the request was sort of like a 5 elements for

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Nyk Danu Yoga: for dummies. I don’t really like the For dummies part. So we’re going to say 5 elements for 1 0, 1, 5 elements, 1 0 1. So this will be a pretty basic kind of overview, because I do go into this more in depth, in my teacher training. And even then there’s way more that you could look into, as far as the elements and things like that. So really, this is like an incredibly rich, many, many layered

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Nyk Danu Yoga: subject matter. So this will be again a 101, an overview and especially in different styles of qi gong. They go into this in even much more depth. There’s like animals connected to it, and all kinds of things that I’m not qualified to talk about, because I’m not a Qigong expert.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: but just to let you know that this is an incredibly rich and deep

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Nyk Danu Yoga: subject matter, and this will be a bit of an overview. And because most of you are Yoga teachers. I just want to mention dear Yoga, teacher, please do not take this overview.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Make a couple of notes and then decide that you’re going to teach a workshop on this

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that is not skillful. You are not an expert in this area. You haven’t taken a more in depth training in this area. Consider this good information for you, for your life, for your practice, and if you are super intrigued by it, then, of course, deeper study is a great idea. And again I do the second half of my training so, or maybe even more than half

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the 1st little bit of my training is, you know, sort of more Western stuff. That’s where we talk about.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: You know all of the poses and trauma, and like the intended areas of the poses and how to teach in, and how to sequence, and all of that. And then the second half is all 5 element theory.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and meridians and sinew channels, and the seasons, etc, etc, etc.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So if you are looking for more on this, that is something that is included in my training.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and if you want more information about my training. If you want to get on the wait list, just look in the show notes. There’s a link that says, get on the wait list.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and once you click that link, if you look way up to my picture

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Nyk Danu Yoga: on that page or way down to the bottom.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you will see an area where you could click a button and enter your name and email. Or if you just hang out and read for a couple of minutes there will be a polite pop up that will slide in from the side, and you can enter your name and email there, and then you’ll be on the wait list for the next round of my training or the next one. After that, if the next one doesn’t work for you.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: basically, you’re on the wait list until you tell me to take you off, or you take yourself off.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and while you’re on the wait list, you’re going to get some other goodies from me, like videos, you’re gonna get these podcasts. Sometimes I’ll just send out little extras like

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Nyk Danu Yoga: music that I’ve stumbled across that I really like, or maybe a sequence. So you’re going to get a lot of little bonuses along the way to registration opening up when you’re on the wait list

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then the final thing that you get on the wait list which nobody else gets is advanced registration notice and a coupon code. The 1st 5 people. Get access to sign up for 25% off, and those are only available on the wait list. So if you’ve been listening to the pod. And you’ve been thinking about doing more yin training or your 1st yin training.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Definitely get on the wait list. I’ve had a lot of questions from people who have taken other trainings as to whether or not they should take my training.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and what I’ll say by this is, get on the web page and read what we cover in the training, and if you look at it and you’re like, Oh.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: oh, oh, we didn’t cover those in my last training.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then there’s the answer to your question.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Every teacher trainer has a different

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Nyk Danu Yoga: sort of zone of expertise and thing that they really focus on in their course. So it is not at all unusual to take multiple Yin trainings, especially if your training was quite short.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: like, I see a lot of these 2030 h trainings that’s nowhere near enough. So that’s like a little

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that’s like a little toe dip in the water, you know. 20 or 30 h. Just to pique your interest. But if you really want to get

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Nyk Danu Yoga: well immersed.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: then it’s not at all unusual to take more than one training.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So on that note. So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: just to say that the 5 elements is something we go into way more in depth, in my training. But today we will do an overview or a 101

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Nyk Danu Yoga: before we get into that, I just want to read a little bit of feedback that I got on my training. This is from Amanda Kingsmith, who, if you do not know, has a podcast. So if you’re a Yoga teacher, it’s called the mbone podcast. Mastering

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Nyk Danu Yoga: mustering. The art of business, I think, is the longer form. It’s a yoga podcast, all about how to help you in your business. I’ve been on there several times.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Amanda’s a great soul. You can check that out.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So this was from Amanda.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: My biggest hesitation about signing up was just the time, and being able to make the time around my daughter’s schedule

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the 1st day we were doing our practice, I realized that it had been over a year since I had done an actual full length Yoga class, and it felt so good to give myself that time.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So no regrets in joining.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I learned so much.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I didn’t have other Yin training, only restorative.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I hadn’t practiced Ian in a long time, either. The last teacher I had

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that I practiced with was was, no Nick Danu. That’s so sweet. I’m totally sold on the practice since practicing with you.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I learned so much in this training. Major takeaways were around, how the skeletal system is different, so the poses will look different in different bodies.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the way that you’d

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Nyk Danu Yoga: teach that you’re very open to people choosing their own experience while being guided

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and only going 50 to 60% in the poses.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: No one has ever guided me just to go to 50 to 60%

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Nyk Danu Yoga: of the way in the poses. And I wonder if that’s why I hadn’t loved yin in the past.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I definitely feel ready to teach you in Yoga.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It was super helpful to do the practices on top of the teachings, and to come away with a ton of sequences to use.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: What I liked best about the program was the online format, and that it was recorded.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and it was great for me. With my schedule.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I also liked the format of doing a lot of different types of practices and then discussing them and applying them to what we were learning.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I would 100% recommend this program to other teachers. You were great.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So there you go, my friends, it’s from Amanda Kingsmith.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: again, if you are interested in getting on the wait list. All you need to do is click the link in the episode notes that says, Get on the wait list, look way up or way down. There’s buttons there that you can click. That will give you a little thing to enter your name and email

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Nyk Danu Yoga: or you can wait for the polite pop up to slide in and enter your name and email. So you don’t need to contact me

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Nyk Danu Yoga: on my form

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Nyk Danu Yoga: on my website and say, add me to the wait list. You can just do it yourself. Now that being said, of course, if you have questions, by all means feel free to use the contact form on my website. But for a while there was getting a lot of like people

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Nyk Danu Yoga: jumping into the contact form to say, Add me to your wait list. You could just do that yourself right there on that page link provided below.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, let us dive into today’s topic.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So as I mentioned. This is, gonna be sort of like a 5 elements, 1 0, 1 sort of entry level. There’s so much more richness in Taoism and for those of you who don’t know if I keep saying Taoism, Chinese medicine is based on Taoism. So if you’re like, what does this have to do with yin

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the concept of yin and Yang Taoist concepts.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: there’s so much more that we could do and study and learn here. But again, I do not want this to be overwhelming, and a good chunk of it is in my teacher training program.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So there are things like

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in in Tcm, you’ll often hear that this opens to, and it might be the mouth, the nose, the whatever. There’s sense organs. There’s tissues of the body. There’s if you go deeper into Qigong. There’s like animals. So there’s a lot.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Feng Shui is also connected. But I’m gonna just again stick to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’m going to stick to an overview.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Those of you that are watching this on Youtube. And if you did not know, dear Teacher, Listening, if you’re on a podcast app, and you would rather watch it on Youtube.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I post the almost completely unedited. I’ll take out the odd thing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: if it’s really bad on Youtube, like, if I, you know, started coughing partway through or something. But otherwise the unedited versions are always uploaded on my Youtube channel. That’s always available. If you want to watch rather than listen for those of you that are visual folks.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Of course you’re welcome to stay here and listen. But if you are watching on Youtube. You might notice that my eyes will be moving around because I have notes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: because otherwise I would forget something, and we can’t have that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I’ll have notes here. So if you see my eyes moving around.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that would be why.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: all right, my dear friends, shall we get into this?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: 5 elements, 101. So the Taoist 5 elements are different than the Indian or Ayurvedic elements.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I know that sometimes, as Yoga teachers, we like to take something new. We’re learning and connect it to something we’ve already studied.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I would caution you to resist doing that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: From my experience in my study

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the philosophies of Indian Yoga and Taoist systems are very different. Actually.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so a lot of times people want things to be same same. But in this case it’s a lot more like same same, but different.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: right? So there are differences in the philosophies and in the elements themselves. So rather than sitting here and try to make these associations in your mind between what I’m saying and the Indian system, or, Ayurveda, just slide that to the side for now, and try to just stay here, just like when you took your very 1st teacher training. You didn’t know anything about the Ayurveda system, either, so you weren’t trying to compare it to something else. Right? So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: try to approach this with beginner’s mind and with fresh eyes, and that will actually make understanding this easier than if you try to connect it to something that really it’s got more differences than

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Nyk Danu Yoga: similarities in my humble opinion.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So a couple of the differences are just in the philosophy.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the Indian systems of Yoga, if you look at the Patanjalis Yoga Sutras, for example, are designed to move the energy up and out

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Nyk Danu Yoga: through your chakras, perhaps, especially if you’re a Tantric yogi to eventually transcend the body, merge with the divine right, and to transcend and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: move on.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to become enlightened

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in Taoism. However, they’re actually much more interested in cultivating and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: preserving and cherishing the Chi and the jing which is your essence?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and so it’s got a different philosophy. They’re not trying to move the energy up and out. They’re not trying to transcend the body. If anything, they’re trying to be in tune with nature and maintain the health of your body.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s a little bit different.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the Taoist tradition is a nature-based tradition.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So this shows up in the philosophy as a difference, but it also shows up in the elements.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, for example, in the Indian system you have an element of air and ether. We do not have those in Chinese medicine.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: We have instead things like wood and metal.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I’ll get into these in much more depth

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in just a little moment.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: let’s start with that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the 5 elements.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the 5 element

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Nyk Danu Yoga: elements.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, so let’s get into that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: 1st of all, I want to say that my mandarin pronunciation is probably not excellent, but I will do my best and ask for forgiveness where I completely screw it up.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the 5 elements or whooshing

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Nyk Danu Yoga: has a different cycle

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Nyk Danu Yoga: sometimes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, so let’s dive into that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: First.st I just want to mention that my mandarin pronunciation is not great, did not actually study medical mandarin when I took my

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Nyk Danu Yoga: my Chinese medicine studies. It was one of the courses I wish I would have done before I dropped out of the program, but I did not, so

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Nyk Danu Yoga: my mandarin will be

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Nyk Danu Yoga: imperfect.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so we’ll talk about the 5 elements or whooshing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: First, st I want to mention there’s a couple of ways that we often see the elements discussed in yin trainings.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: One of them is the generating and nourishing and the controlling and regulating sequence.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So in this system you would see the elements all in a circle, one feeding directly into the other.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I’m going to do a different approach. But I’ll tell you a little bit about that first.st The reason why I don’t use that system

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Nyk Danu Yoga: for the 5 elements and for our understanding of it is because I think that’s really really helpful in traditional Chinese medicine. When you’re thinking about diagnosis, because you need to know is, you know, fire overacting. And what do we do to control fire, etc, etc.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That’s not very helpful as yoga teachers. So, although I’m going to briefly explain a little bit about that. We’re mostly going to focus on an actually older view of the 5 elements in just a moment.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in the view where the 5 elements are all placed evenly in a circle.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: There are Sheng cycles.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then there’s Co. Cycles.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The shen cycle is the generating and nourishing Sequence. Co cycle is the controlling and regulating sequence.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then there’s also a destructive cycle which is overacting, which is the Chen cycle. And then there’s an Anti Co cycle or an insulting sequence.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: which is the Wu cycle. So again, I’m only going over this very briefly, simply because if you were to look at the images that are in the

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the podcast image. Or if you’re watching this on Youtube, it was at the beginning. The thumbnail. You’re going to notice that I put earth in the center.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then, if you see other articles or books, or if you’ve been in other trainings, you might have noticed that they put earth in the circle itself, not in the center of the circle.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And again, that is a really helpful view for those that are studying Chinese medicine.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That’s 1 way to look at the 5 elements. Only one

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the reason that I’m gonna go for the older way

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Nyk Danu Yoga: is because I’m talking to a bunch of Yoga teachers. Right? You’re not an acupuncturist who’s now just about to start to look at these elements and how they show up in your diagnosis and decide what is over. Controlling what isn’t, you know, active enough, etc, etc. Right? So that system is super good for diagnosis in Chinese medicine.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But for Taoists

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Nyk Danu Yoga: or for

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yoga teachers.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: not very helpful.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: What’s more helpful is when we think about the

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Nyk Danu Yoga: older method of the 5 elements. So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: before Chinese culture became agrarian, meaning, they were in towns and villages and on farms growing their food. They were nomadic, so they would have been traveling around.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And in that view.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s the much older system. The earth is actually the center.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the earth isn’t part of the circle. The earth is the center of the circle.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s how we’re going to look at

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Nyk Danu Yoga: our philosophy here today. And again, if you look at the picture in the

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Nyk Danu Yoga: podcast notes or the podcast picture. Or if you look at the thumbnail on Youtube, you’ll see an image of that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’ll also include that image over on my blog where the full show notes are. So if you want to see that so the earth is the center.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And this system just seems to make way more sense to me for what we would do as Yoga’s Yoga practitioners, or even for Qigong.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So let’s talk about the 5 elements, shall we? We’ll do a bit of an overview here.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So we’re going to talk 1st about fire.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now, one thing to note is that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: each of the elements has meridians and organs attached and connected to it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Fire actually has more than the rest.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Some people

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Nyk Danu Yoga: split this into fire, and sometimes called ministerial fire, whatever the heck that means. That is not the way that I learned it. But there are 4 meridians connected to fire, whereas there are only 2 for the rest, and

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Nyk Danu Yoga: same with the organs. So talk about fire first, st but just know there’s more going on with fire than there is with the other elements.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So in fire the element itself.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The color is red.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the season is summer.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: it is considered full. Yang, so it’s the youngest of the Yang or the youngest of the young.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about fire.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Fire is interesting, because, although most of the elements only have 2 organs.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: thereby meridians and sinew channels connected to them. Fire actually has 4.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Some schools split fire into fire, and I think what they call ministerial fire. That is not the way that I learned it when I was in Chinese medicine school, and I think it just overcomplicates things, especially if you’re not an acupuncturist, so we’ll talk about all 4 of the organs and meridians connected to fire

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and just know, though, that fire has 4. The rest only have 2.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, let’s talk about fire.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So fire. The phase is full young, or you could think of this as the youngest of the young. So of all of the 5 elements fire is the most young.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: which kind of makes sense. If you think about it energetically.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the color is red.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the season is summer, which also makes sense. If you think about it logically.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the climate would be heat, or the climactic factor they call it sometimes in Chinese medicine.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then the internal organs.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Aka meridians and sinew channels

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Nyk Danu Yoga: R.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The heart and the small intestine. Those 2 are paired organs.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yin and yang.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then the pericardium and the San Jo. Again. Those 2 are paired Yin and Yang.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’ll talk just very briefly about what the difference is briefly, between meridians and sinew channels, because you may have just heard me say sinew channel and gone. What the hell is that?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So? A sinew channel is actually the corresponding fascia channel to each meridian.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you won’t see this information a lot out there in Yin trainings. Because most of the people that are teaching about meridian theory in their trainings, actually haven’t studied Chinese medicine. So there’s a lot of people out there talking all about the meridians who, if you were to say something about the sinew channels don’t even seem to know that they exist.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I would argue that the sinew channels are far more important to us as Yin Yoga people than the meridian itself, because that’s actually what we’re accessing

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Our practice is the fascia channel

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Nyk Danu Yoga: or the sinew channel.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Some of the sinew channels follow the exact map of the meridian.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and some of them actually stop a little short of the full meridian.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, so I’m just gonna briefly talk about that. Maybe at some point in the future I will do a what the heck are sinew channels versus meridians.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: but for now, just know if I keep saying senior channel, that is the corresponding fascia channel to each of the meridians. Sometimes it follows the whole pathway of the meridian. Sometimes it only does part of it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay? So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the internal organs.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: which would mean also the meridians and the sinew channels are the heart and the small intestine. Those are paired. Heart is yin small, intestine young.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then the pericardium and San Jo again. Yin and yang pairs.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now sometimes people are a little bit confused about pericardium

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Nyk Danu Yoga: there is, both

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Nyk Danu Yoga: philosophically

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and also

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Nyk Danu Yoga: physically, a pericardium, right? It’s the protective

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Nyk Danu Yoga: sort of

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Nyk Danu Yoga: almost fascia or sac. You could call it around the heart itself. That is your pericardium. This is in Western anatomy, and also that’s what it’s called in Chinese medicine

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Nyk Danu Yoga: sand. Jiao, sometimes called triple burner or triple heater is a little bit trickier to explain.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Simply because it’s a very

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Nyk Danu Yoga: sort of Eastern concept. Very Chinese medicine concept. So we don’t really have like something that we can tangibly put our finger on. That is called the San Jo. In the West. Some people

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Nyk Danu Yoga: say that it is the lymphatic system again. This is just a Western idea that they’ve just added that on that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the San Jo is connected to the lymph system.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s not really traditional information.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But in

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Chinese medicine there are 3 jowls

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the sand. Jiao is the 3 jowls together.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’ll talk a little bit about

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Nyk Danu Yoga: those jowls just very, very briefly, because, again, a lot of this information is beyond the scope of a quick

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Nyk Danu Yoga: podcast. Episode. But

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Nyk Danu Yoga: there are 3 Dantian and 3 San Jo. There’s the upper jowl which contains the heart and the lungs, the middle jaw, which contains your stomach, liver, spleen, and gall bladder, and then there’s the lower jaw, which is your kidneys, intestines, reproductive organs and bladder.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So some people say that the San Jow is those 3 jowls together, but some people also say that it is the connection of those jowls, or even and including the space

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Nyk Danu Yoga: or the cavities between those jowls. So you can see it’s a little bit esoteric.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So those are the organs that are connected

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to the element of fire.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and each of these organ systems has certain times of day on the clock as well where they’re the most active.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So 11 Am. To one Pm. Is the time of the heart.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: One Pm. To 3 Pm. Is the time of the small intestine.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: 7 Pm. To 9 Pm. Is the time for the pericardium.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and 9 Pm. To 11 Pm. Is the San Jo, sometimes called triple burner or triple heater.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That’s a lot I know fires the most complex of them all. So bear with me

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the direction.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: for the fire element is south, which again makes sense. If you think about heat.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the emotion is joy.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The stage of development, for this particular element is growth.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The energy quality is expansive.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the virtue is righteousness.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the sound is laughing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: we’ll just do a brief overview of each of the elements with this kind of a list. But please know there’s a lot more. There are tissues of the body. There are openings on the body. Again. I mentioned, there are

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Nyk Danu Yoga: animals in Qigong that go along with this.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: There’s even a whole style of acupuncture which is kind of controversial to some called 5 element acupuncture.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Some people say that it is sort of a Western creation, and it’s not overly traditional at all. And others would say, actually, that it predates

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Nyk Danu Yoga: what we now know of as traditional Chinese medicine, because a lot of that was a lot of the Chinese medicine traditions were left out when Mao decided to sort of

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Nyk Danu Yoga: take some of these teachings and bundle them together, and then export them as traditional Chinese medicine.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and that previous to that

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Nyk Danu Yoga: there would have been a lot more focus on the 5 elements

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in traditional Chinese ways of healing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So again, it’s debatable. I don’t have opinion either way. I will say that I find 5 element theory very fascinating, and 5 element acupuncture

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Nyk Danu Yoga: very fascinating.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It deals a little bit more with the personality.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Excuse me, sorry.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: It deals a bit more with the personality, and if you’re familiar with Ayurveda and again, I’m not going to compare them to this. But you may have heard of Dosha’s

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in 5 element acupuncture. Each of us would have a little bit of all of the elements in us, but that we would have a

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Nyk Danu Yoga: what they call a constitutional factor, or an element. That sort of is the makes up the foundation of of who we are. And again, that’s going to be stuff, something for other podcast episodes.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: But just know that there’s actually like

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Nyk Danu Yoga: archetypes that go with this. And personality traits that could go with each of these. But again.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: we’re going to stick to 101, and we do a bit more of that. A little bit more of that in my my training.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s fire. So I’ll just go over that briefly again, because I know that’s a lot of information to summarize. So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: fire. The phase is full young, so fire is the youngest of the young. The color is red, the season is summer.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the climate is heat.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the internal organs. Aka meridians aka sinew channels

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Nyk Danu Yoga: are the heart and the small intestine which are yin and yang pairs.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then the pericardium and the San Jo, which are also yin and yang pairs, and again the fire element has 4 underneath it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: all of the other elements of 2.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so the times of day for the heart are 11 Am. To one Pm.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: One PM. To 3 is for the small intestine.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: 7 to 9 is for the pericardium.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: 9 to 11 is for the San Jo, which is also sometimes called triple heater or triple burner.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: This all gets very confusing, I know.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: but if you ever hear triple heater triple burner, that’s the same thing as Sancho.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the emotion is joy, and the stage of development is growth. The energy quality is expansive.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the virtue is righteousness, and the sound is laughing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: All right. Let’s talk about Earth.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I mentioned at the start of this episode that I’m taking a more traditional nomadic

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Taoist view of the Earth element

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Nyk Danu Yoga: in in this, and I do in all my trainings and in my life.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: rather than sort of the more diagnostic model of earth, where it becomes one in the circle of 5

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and that is the

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, the 5 element cycle that a lot of the use in Chinese medicine. Okay, so that’s not how I’m going to discuss earth. That’s great for Chinese medicine not so useful for us. I’m looking at Earth in the more

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you could say vintage way.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so earth is, the phase is actually yin and yang in harmony.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The color is yellow.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the season. Now this is a little bit tricky, because in traditional Chinese medicine. They would say, it’s late summer. Keep in mind that the Chinese medicine or the Chinese calendar is not the same as our Gregorian calendar. So the seasons start and end at different times. So this makes more sense.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you’re thinking about that calendar.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So in Chinese medicine in that calendar. They would say that the earth and the season for earth is late summer.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: From my experience with my studies in Chinese medicine school, the teachers told me that late summer, although we in especially in North America, might think, oh, oh, I know what you mean. You mean what is sometimes been called Indian summer here.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Not the best name, but that’s what it’s called. That’s actually not what late summer is

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Nyk Danu Yoga: late summer is a season that really is only experienced in in China. Climactically, China is a massive continent, and so there’s many different regions, and they all kind of have their own different weather and patterns, and late summer is said to be incredibly humid, incredibly hot and incredibly damp. Right? So we don’t really experience air quotes late summer the way that they do in traditional China, the way that they were looking at it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So in some traditional Chinese medicine, they say that the season for earth is late summer. But actually, again, if we go back to the more nomadic view of Earth as the center

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Nyk Danu Yoga: earth is actually the transitions between each of the seasons.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So it’s the 18 days between summer and fall.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: between fall and winter, between winter and spring.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and between spring and summer.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and depending on where you live and what the weather patterns are like. So I know some of us live places where we don’t really have 4 seasons. That’s where I used to be. I used to live in Alberta, where we basically had a summer.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, a few days of fall, maybe a month, if you were really lucky, and then winter, and then the same thing with your spring. Your spring would be like really small and basically go winter winter snowing, sometimes even up until May.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Tiny little bit of spring and then summer.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So no 4 seasons there. However, now, where I live, I have 4 clear seasons, even though they’re not as extreme. There’s clear lines between the seasons.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so

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Nyk Danu Yoga: earth would be the center.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and each season would go into Earth for 18 days before it comes back out and into the next season.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, for example, as summer was winding up.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: it would go and transition into earth for 18 days, and then go into fall

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Nyk Danu Yoga: as fall is starting to wind up. It goes into earth for 18 days and then into winter. I think you get the idea.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And this actually can be demonstrated often, and this is sort of what the Indian summer, which again, I don’t know a better word for it. That’s just all I’ve ever heard it called, is one example for those of us that live sort of in North America. You may have experienced an Indian summer at some point. We’re in it right now, at the time of this recording. I’m recording this in August.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and already, as I’ve been outside, I’ve noticed that there is still the heat and the daylight and the sun, but that things are already starting to shift, that there’s a lot more sort of leaves falling. We’re not quite into the fall yet. But there’s that transition period where it’s like not quite summer. It’s not like it was in July, not even like it was 2 weeks ago in August, but it’s also not fall yet. And so those transitions, those 18 day transitions.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: are

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Nyk Danu Yoga: connected to the element of earth.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Earth is the the stabilizer.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the color for earth

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Nyk Danu Yoga: is yellow

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the transitions again, some people say late summer is the season, but actually transitions between the seasons.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and again remembering that the Chinese calendar is not the same

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Nyk Danu Yoga: as the Gregorian calendar as our western calendar, so the seasons start at slightly different times.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The climate is damp.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The organs connected to the earth element are the stomach and the spleen stomach being the

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the

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Nyk Danu Yoga: internal organs aka sinew channels, aka, meridians

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Nyk Danu Yoga: that are connected

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Nyk Danu Yoga: to earth are the stomach and the spleen.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: That’s the paired organs.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: 7 am. To 9 Am. Is the time of the stomach.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and 9 A. M. To 11 Am. Is the time of the spleen.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The direction for earth is center. So this again denotes that that much more old

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Nyk Danu Yoga: representation of the elements where the earth is literally in the center of the elements.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The emotion.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: when it’s balanced, is empathy compassion.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: but also connected to the spleen, is a sense of pensiveness or worry, and that can really injure or impact the spleen.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Or if our Earth element is sort of out of balance, we may notice there’s a lot of worry going on.

333
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Nyk Danu Yoga: The stage of development is transformation.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the energetic quality is stabilizing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The virtue is faith.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the sound is singing.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Again. There’s so much more I could offer you here. But again, we’ll keep this to a 1. 0 1.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, my friends, let’s move into the metal element.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The metal element

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Nyk Danu Yoga: is new Yin. So

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Nyk Danu Yoga: when we have this

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, summer is wrapping up, we’re beginning to move into the season of fall which is connected to the metal element. That is the beginning of starting to also transition from young into yin. So it’s sort of like yin is just beginning. It’s new Yin.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The color is white, the season is fall.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the climate is dry

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the organs are the lungs and the large intestine. Those are the 2 paired organs, aka meridians, aka sinew channels connected to the metal element.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The direction is west.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the emotion is sadness, or sometimes called grief.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The stage of development is the harvest which makes sense. If you think about what would be happening in the fall, right?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: If people were already a Gregarian and they were farming. Then we’ve been harvesting. If they were nomadic, they still would have been preserving and grabbing things for the for the winter to come, and saving, you know, roots and things like that.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So harvest gathering

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the energetic quality is contracting, drawing inward.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The virtues are prosperity.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the sound is crying

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Nyk Danu Yoga: water.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the water element is the full yin. This is the yinist of the yin.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: so it’s exactly the polar opposite of fire, right? If fire is the youngest of the young water is the yinest of the yin.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The phase is full in

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Nyk Danu Yoga: the color is sometimes said to be very, very, very, very, very, very, very dark blue

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Nyk Danu Yoga: or black.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: And when you think of this dark blue, think about if you’ve ever watched any of these sort of deep sea missions where people are going down so deep into the water that you’re not quite sure is that like a dark navy blue now, or is that black?

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So either of those are the colors for water.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The climate is cold.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: which makes sense because this is connected to

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Nyk Danu Yoga: winter.

365
00:38:36.370 –> 00:38:42.789
Nyk Danu Yoga: and the internal organs. Aka meridians aka sinew channels are the kidneys and the bladder.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: 3 Pm. To 5 pm. Is the time of the bladder, and then 5 Pm. To 7 Pm. Is the time for the kidneys. This is when the kidneys are the most active, and 3 Pm. To the 5 Pm. Is the time for the bladder.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: The direction is North

368
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the emotion is fear.

369
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Nyk Danu Yoga: The stage of development is storing or preserving. The energy quality is conserving.

370
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the virtue is courage.

371
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the sound is groaning.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: When you start to learn at some point, if you ever do, about the constitutional factors of people, and which element they’re associated with. This could be heard in their voice. But I always think of this groaning as sort of like, if you imagine, like a really old wooden ship on the ocean, that sort of groan, as it.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, moves

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Nyk Danu Yoga: through the water.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: let’s get to wood.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So would the phase is new young.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: So this is where we’re leaving the sort of yinist of the yinist of the yin of the water element. In winter we’re starting to move into spring

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Nyk Danu Yoga: where this is now new young. Remember, the summer is the youngest of the young.

380
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and so the spring is new, young.

381
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the color is green. The season is spring.

382
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the climate is windy.

383
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Nyk Danu Yoga: The internal organs.

384
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Aka meridians and sinew channels are the liver and the gall bladder.

385
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Nyk Danu Yoga: The times are

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Nyk Danu Yoga: 11 Pm. To one Am. For the gall bladder, and one Am. To 3 am. For the liver.

387
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Nyk Danu Yoga: The direction is east.

388
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the emotion is anger, or maybe more accurately, frustration.

389
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Nyk Danu Yoga: The stage of development is birth. This makes sense. If you think about the fact that this is new, young, this is a time of rebirth, right?

390
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Nyk Danu Yoga: The energy quality is generative, the virtues are benevolence, and the sound is said to be shouting.

391
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Nyk Danu Yoga: okay, my friends, so that’s just a little bit of

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Nyk Danu Yoga: an overview of the 5 elements. 5 elements, 1. 0, 1

393
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Nyk Danu Yoga: again, this could be an area of much study for you.

394
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Whether it’s through my own, or if you have a another teacher that does yin trainings that focuses on the 5 elements?

395
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I find a lot of the trainings out there give a tiny bit of Tcm. But they don’t really focus much on the elements. And there’s so much more

396
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Nyk Danu Yoga: to learn about this right? There’s

397
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Nyk Danu Yoga: again, the sort of mental, emotional archetypes the ener, the constitutional elements, the

398
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the tissues that they align with so much more that we could go into. But hopefully, that is a good start for you, and I know that sometimes when we hear this kind of information.

399
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Nyk Danu Yoga: we want to immediately put it to use and like, we started writing notes. And now we’re before you know what we’re going to do, a workshop on

400
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the element of fire. I would encourage you not to do that.

401
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Nyk Danu Yoga: One of the things that I notice a lot in the Yoga verse is teachers teaching with more hubris

402
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or a sense of sort of an overestimation

403
00:42:21.660 –> 00:42:23.500
Nyk Danu Yoga: of what they know

404
00:42:23.870 –> 00:42:29.100
Nyk Danu Yoga: or the opposite. So we team tend to have in Yoga communities either imposter syndrome.

405
00:42:29.230 –> 00:42:44.279
Nyk Danu Yoga: So people that maybe do have the expertise, but don’t believe they do, or the opposite, which is, I have a little bit of information that I’m excited about. And I just heard it on a podcast and I took some notes. So now I’m going to go teach a workshop on the fire element.

406
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I would caution you not to do that.

407
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Nyk Danu Yoga: because everything I’ve given you here is interesting, and it’s hopefully designed to just sort of whet your appetite to learn more.

408
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But there’s so much that I’ve left out here, and most of this information will just completely overwhelm your students, or they may start pseudo diagnosing themselves based on something you’ve said that actually isn’t accurate. According to Tcm.

409
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know. So they might be thinking, let’s just say, for example.

410
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Nyk Danu Yoga: they have a lot of trouble

411
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Nyk Danu Yoga: in their body at a certain time of day, like maybe they wake up every night at the same time. Now they might start thinking, Oh, my God, something’s wrong with that organ right which is not accurate per se. So this is why we don’t want to

412
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Nyk Danu Yoga: take information that we read in a book, or that we hear on a podcast and then start going out and spreading it around like we know what we’re talking about.

413
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I hope that this just gives you a bit of an overview and a little bit more of an understanding of kind, of a a Chinese and a Taoist view of the elements, as most of you are probably more familiar with the Indian view.

414
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and that if this information sort of resonates with you that it sort of whets your appetite

415
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Nyk Danu Yoga: for a deeper study.

416
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I will say, when I was studying traditional Chinese medicine in school. I was enjoying it, and I really liked it, and I found it, you know, pretty interesting and actually kind of made sense to me. I found it logical.

417
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Some of my classmates did not. When we were doing Yin Yang theory they were completely baffled, and I was like, yes, this makes perfect sense, I understand.

418
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and so

419
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I was enjoying it. I was loving it, but

420
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I didn’t really fall in love

421
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Nyk Danu Yoga: with traditional Chinese medicine and then have that, then peak my interest into eventually starting to study Taoism deeper until I took the class on the 5 elements.

422
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And that was when I was like oh, my heart! My heart just absolutely fell in love with this

423
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Nyk Danu Yoga: form of medicine, and the way that the Chinese view the body as completely interconnected with the world around us.

424
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Nyk Danu Yoga: with nature, the elements with the seasons, etc.

425
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So

426
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Nyk Danu Yoga: if this is something that has sort of wet your whistle. You’re excited about it. You want to learn more again. The second

427
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Nyk Danu Yoga: half to maybe even more of my 60 plus hour. Therapeutic in training is all on this information, and we learn a lot more

428
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Nyk Danu Yoga: about this

429
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Nyk Danu Yoga: other than just the bullets that I touched on here for you.

430
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, my friends, hopefully, this gives you a little bit of

431
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Nyk Danu Yoga: an overview into the elements. Sort of 1 0, 1

432
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and if this is an area you want to study more, and you wanna

433
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Nyk Danu Yoga: check out my training again. Just go ahead and click the link that says, get on the wait list and you can

434
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Nyk Danu Yoga: add yourself to the wait list, and you’ll find out more about it that way. I also have done in the past some seasonal workshops.

435
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Nyk Danu Yoga: very brief again, sort of overview like this, and then a practice. And I have some of those available on my blog. I’ll put a link to the ones that I have. I’ll put links to those in the show notes. So if you want to check those out.

436
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Nyk Danu Yoga: if you want to check out a former zoom workshop with a little bit of the seasonal overview, and then some practice. You’re welcome to do that.

437
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, my friends, until we meet again.

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Nyk Danu Yoga: Goodbye, for now.