Yin Yoga & the Earth Element: The Centre Within

Hello. Today we are gonna talk about the earth element according to Chinese medicine and Taoism. And what the deal is with the earth element. And you’re gonna notice that what. I’m gonna say about this might be different than what you’ve heard before or what you’ve learned in your original teacher training.

’cause I’m gonna go back old school, I’m going OG Earth Element in today’s episode, so stay tuned for that.

Welcome to a Yin Yoga podcast. I’m your host, Nick Denu, certified yoga therapist, mentor of yoga teachers, yin yoga, teacher trainer, and total yin yoga geek. If you have a crush on yin yoga. And are ready to dive deep, then you’re in the right place here. Myself and my guests will discuss all things in yoga, including anatomy, philosophy, traditional Chinese medicine, meditation, Taoism, teaching tips, and so much more.

You can expect these conversations to be long format, informal, lo-fi, and delightfully imperfect. So whether you are a yoga teacher or a yin yoga student, I welcome you to the inside.

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Okay, so today we’re gonna talk about the earth element. As it sits in Chinese medicine. Now, I’ve recently discovered, and I’m still sort of investigating this so I don’t have all the answers yet, that there’s a difference between what’s called traditional Chinese medicine and Chinese medicine, and that a lot of the people that say they teach Chinese medicine or practice Chinese medicine are actually going back.

To before Chairman Mao sort of codified Chinese medicine, which did happen. There’s a point in history where you, you know, I can’t remember who it was, but some American politician or aid of a politician or something was in China, had some serious health issues, got some needles, and then came back to America going, oh my gosh, this is amazing.

So as Chairman Mao sort of is trying to codify this tradition into something that could be exported a lot of the spirit. The original sort of nature-based focus of Chinese medicine got kind of pushed out to the side to make it more palatable and easily digestible. And that’s unfortunately where a lot of the magic is.

So I’m slowly starting to switch the way I say this, although I still fumble all the time because I’m so used to saying TCM to say that actually. I’m much more focused on Chinese medicine than traditional Chinese medicine. ’cause it turns out traditional Chinese medicine may not be super traditional, or at least a lot of the traditions were left out.

So what I’m gonna say about the earth element today, maybe a little different than if you’ve taken a yin training where they included Chinese medicine. It might be different than what you’ve heard. That might be for two reasons. One, because a lot of people teaching about Chinese medicine have actually never studied Chinese medicine.

So that’s problem number one. , Is that if the teacher that you went to was talking about meridians and, you know, organs and all this stuff, but they actually haven’t studied Chinese medicine in depth, problematic. So that might be part of it. Or it might be that even if somebody has studied Chinese medicine, they’re going on the kind of TCM version of Earth.

And I’ll explain a bit more about this in a moment. Whereas I’m going back to the Taoist version of Earth and the more Chinese medicine version of Earth so that you could say the OG version of Earth. So that’s what I wanna focus on. For those of you that are on YouTube, you will see my eyes moving around a little bit ’cause I got some notes.

’cause you know I have a DD and if I don’t have notes then. I forget to say things or I say other things or I get off track. So I do have some notes of my own, from my own, , training that I’m gonna share. And then I’m also gonna share at the end, I’ll share a reading with you that, , that I really like,, to use.

If I’m doing like an earth themed class, I’ll share that with you as well. I know teachers really like to get poetry and reading, so I will share that with you as well. All right, let’s talk about the earth element, shall we?

So the philosophy of Daoism, which is what traditional Chinese medicine is loosely based on, but Chinese medicine is based on, there are five elements, fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. So these are different than the Indian tradition or the are Ayurvedic tradition. The elements are slightly d. And these elements exist not only within ourselves, but also within nature, both because we are part of nature.

Each element has corresponding, um, organ seasons, climates, directions, colors, tastes, sounds, emotions, personality types or constitutions, tissues, sense organs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We’re not gonna get into all of them today, or that would be one hell of a long episode. And I will say that I have done a few other episodes.

Um, I’ve done one on winter, I’ve done one on fire. I think I’ve done one on wood. So, if you wanna access older episodes that I mention in this one, if you go into the show notes, you’re gonna see a link that says, see all episodes at a glance. Click on that. And it’s literally a Google Doc of every episode and the season, so , it’s much easier to scroll through there and just see if a topic interests you and then click on it.

That’ll take you to my website where you can either watch the video or listen to it on Spotify. And I know there’s some confusion from people that like if you listen to it on my, if you get to it on my website, you can’t listen to it on Spotify. Yeah, you can. You click the little plus. On the player and it adds it to your Spotify list.

Now if you’re on Apple, , you gotta either listen to it on my website or, you know, just scroll on Apple, I’m afraid. , So please know that those are there. So I have done, uh, five elements 1 0 1. I’ve done some stuff on water. I’ve done, fire, I think I’ve done wood as well. I think I’ve even done some on the element of metal.

So I have other episodes that you could check out if this is, if this sort of hits your nerdy intrigue button. Alright. So I wanna talk about the earth element and how sometimes you’ll see, , a circle with the elements. Circle, and it’ll usually start with fire, and then it’ll be earth and then it’ll be metal, and then it’ll be water, and then it’ll be wood, and then that leads back to fire in a circle.

So that is a really, that’s , the generation and destruction cycle. It’s often referred to as in Chinese medicine, and that’s really useful for diagnosis. So if you are a Chinese medicine practitioner and you’re trying to find out what’s going on with your patient, it’s really good to know.

Which of those elements might be overacting on the other, which one’s weak, et cetera, et cetera. But that’s not the OG way that Earth was looked at. And it’s also not helpful for us as yoga professionals because we’re not doing Chinese medicine diagnosis unless you already are a Chinese medicine person, in which case this episode’s probably gonna be boring to you.

So for those of us that are. Yoga people who have a little nerdy love of Chinese medicine. The way that I’m gonna present this to you is not only sort of older, but also more useful. Okay, let’s get into that. So there is one that’s older than the other. And for my information and study, before Chinese culture became an agrarian society.

So farming the land, they were nomadic and as a nomadic society, they saw the earth as the center. All of the other elements around the earth and being dependent on and in service to the earth. So instead of the earth being one in the circle, the earth being the center of the circle, a very different approach.

And the earth element at the center means that it’s also sometimes earth. The earth element is referred to as late summer. That’s the season sometimes connected to the earth element, which is why I’m putting this episode in where I am. , Because we’re in, technically when this goes live, it will technically be just finishing sort of late summer, but not quite in fall if you’re in the northern hemisphere.

But actually in the older system, in the sort of nomadic system, the OG system Earth would’ve been the center. So it actually earth would’ve been the 18 days between the seasons. So in between summer and fall, there’s an 18 day window, which is connected to the element of earth in between fall and winter and 18 day window between fall and winter and winter to spring.

Same thing, 18 days, spring to summer. And I think if we, depending on where you live and what your climate is like, you can actually really see this. It’s not like. In our climate, we go from summer to bam, fall overnight, right? There is like a transition that is the element of earth. So later, when Chinese society became less nomadic and more agrarian, oh my gosh, why can’t I not say that word?

Sorry, friends. , How the elements reviewed changed, and the earth lost its all important role as the center. Became an in an equal sort of single part in the five elements known as the five phase theory. And again, five phase theory is super useful if you’re trying to diagnose people, but if you’re just a yoga teacher trying to teach some seasonally influenced classes, it’s not very useful.

So I’m gonna be talking about the earth in this more older, more nomadic view of the two. Elements for a couple of reasons. One, five phase theory, as I mentioned, is great for Chinese medicine diagnosis, but that’s beyond our scope. We will be focusing on the elements and the seasons, not TCM diagnosis, and that the nomadic view of the elements and seasons is not only more traditional, but it’s also more in line actually with the climates.

Most of our climates in western society. Okay, so the earth element.

So I’m just gonna do a bit of an overview, go into this much more in depth in my teacher training. So if you’re intrigued about these five elements, this is the second half of my training is all about five elements in the seasons. The first half is all the physical, practical stuff, and then we get into the philosophy.

Okay, so the earth element, there are two meridians, but more importantly to US Sinu channels, which are the corresponding fascia channel that connected to the Meridian, but not the exactly the same as the Meridian. This is complicated, but we will eventually do probably an episode on the Sinu channel. So the meridians and the Sinu channels.

So I’m just gonna say the channels from here on, because Meridian is actually also not really the best translation of what the word would’ve been in Chinese, but that’s what most people know it as. So when I say channel, I’m referring to the meridian, but also the sinew pathway. So the two pathways or the channels for the earth element are the stomach and the spleen.

The stomach being the more yang and the spleen being the more yin of the tube.

There’s all kinds of things that go along with each element, so tastes, smells, and areas of the body, s sense organs, et cetera, et cetera. So we’re, again, we’re not gonna go into all of it, but we will go into some, . Here’s a quote. In dwelling, live close to the ground in thinking. Keep it simple in conflict.

Be fair and generous in governing. Don’t try to control in work. Do what you enjoy and family life. Be completely present. So the season for. Earth element is sometimes referred to as late summer. And to be clear, this is not late summer, like how we view it sometimes in North America or Europe where we sometimes affectionately call that time of year Indian summer.

That’s actually not what we’re referring to late summer in China, depending on where in China is like its almost like its own mini season and it’s actually not sort of dry in the beginning of fall, like we would think of it as it’s actually incredibly hot and humid. So in Chinese medicine information, when they’re saying late summer, that’s not even something that most of us have ever experienced.

And what I like to talk about more so is I’m an o I’m into the OG element of Earth is the 18 days between seasons. The direction for Earth is center. It is the all important center. The color is yellow, the climate is damp. Yin channel is the spleen and the yang channel is the stomach and the sound is singing.

The emotions are compassion or empathy. And then the spirit. And I am just gonna try my best to say this because I just realized I had to Google it. Sometimes pronouncing mandarin isn’t easy, but it’s spelled YI. But the Y is almost silent, so it’s more like E, like you would say with T. So the E is thought or intention.

The constitutional archetype is the mother or the nurturer, and the Q direction or action is that it actually holds and stabilizes, thus being the center.

So the spleen is the sort of yin aspect, many schools believe that the role of the spleen in the pancreas were either merged or that there was some confusion in translating from China to the west and that the word spleen was used for.

Actually the word pancreas might be a bit more accurate to the function or the view of the function in Chinese medicine. But since most horses use the word spleen, that’s what I’m gonna use, um, the spleen. Is responsible for the transformation and transportation of not only our food stuffs, but also our chi, our blood, our body fluids to the whole body and mind allowing all parts of the system to be nourished.

If the system doesn’t function well, then we can get fluid buildups. So in TCM that they call too much damp and that can clog our system. The main direction of spleen, she is upward and it’s responsible for moving the clear yang chi to the head. The spleen is responsible for clear thinking, studying, memorizing, focus, concentration, and in this way, the spleen supports the heart’s thinking.

When there’s a disharmony in the spleen, it can show up mentally as worry or pensiveness, which can then affect the heart with anxiety or insomnia.

So that E, the thought or the emotion. Is the process that establishes the meaning of the world from the words that come from the heart. That’s from macha. Um, in 2008, the textbook, and it’s page 72 to 73, anyone’s looking for it. In the west, we associate thinking as a separate function from the heart because the heart is home to the emotion.

But this is based on this assumption that the heart is irrational. However, in Chinese medicine, the heart grounds the thinking and allows a person to be true to themselves. The spleen is responsible for thinking, studying, memorizing, focusing concentration, and the generation of new ideas. Our E is also our intention, our ability to focus, and if the E is weak, then we can lose our ability to concentrate, and it can affect our ability to be steadfast in our purpose.

It can lead us to lethargy of spirit and inability to stick to your path, which again, could lead to anxiety, depression, and despair.

Okay, and then the stomach is the yang channel for the earth element, and it’s the controller of rotting and ripening, which is a lovely way to say digestion and fermentation. So in Chinese medicine, the stomach’s job is to rotten ripen. It does this by breaking up the food, drinking in the nutrients, or the essences that need to be retained to create Qi.

So for this to happen, we not only need the correct food, but also a strong and healthy stomach to digest and support the physical as well as the mental and emotional nourishment and the direction of stomach Q is downward, which makes sense because you wouldn’t want your stomach qi moving upward. That would make you fuke or be nauseous.

The earth element archetype. So within some schools of Chinese medicine, there’s a big focus on this sort of constitutional element or constitutional factor, or the element that is dominant within each of us. So we all have all of the elements in us, but there might be one or two that are a bit more dominant, and so that could be considered an archetype.

So people with a dominant, um, earth arc element can be compassionate, that you might even be empaths, often referred to as the mother In Chinese medicine, they’re just naturally nurturing. They give support and comfort. They instill , a feeling of belonging and safety in others and earth element types really need to be of service.

Here’s another quote by Marcia Muell. She was the archetypal, selfless mother, living only for her children, sheltering them from consequences of their action, and in the end, doing them irreparable harm. So this brings us to the flip side. If the earth element is in disharmony, this can result in martyrdom or being overbearing or codependent.

So with all of these, if you’re earth, if you were an earth element person and it’s in balance. You’re gonna have all of these characteristics I mentioned before. You might be empath, empath, empathic. You might be really caring, compassionate, you people are really comfortable around you. They feel belonging and safety with you and earth types.

Again, feel the need to be of service. But if the earth element is sort of out of whack, that’s when we can get into martyrdom. Being codependent or being overbearing.

So that’s just a little bit about some of the aspects of the earth element and the earth element. Again, the reason I’m talking about it now is because when this goes live, we will be in that 18 day window between summer and autumn or fall. And so this is the time of Earth, and then again, there would be another little earth.

Cycle between, um, fall and winter, between winter and spring. Between spring and summer. I think we can also see that really clearly for a lot of us. In spring, there’s a, a blend between spring and summer, right? Most of the time it doesn’t just go from like kind of cool, but a little bit of sun and flower buds to like bam summer, right?

Even if you watch the leaves. If you live somewhere, we have a lot of trees that lose their leaves. You can see how they start off as little buds in the spring, and then they slowly grow and then by the time they’re summer, they’re in full leaf or full bloom flowers. And so that 18 days in between those spr, the, uh, spring and summer is the time of earth.

All right, so that’s a little bit about earth. And the element of earth.

So some of you might be thinking, okay, well that was all a nice little brain tickle. Nick, but how the heck do we use this in our classes? Well, you shouldn’t until you have some training in this. First of all, , don’t go back to your class next week and start pr paddling on about the earth element because you listen to one podcast that is not, .

A good idea. But what I do with my students in my training is we go over each of the elements in a bit more in depth, and we learn. Where the meridian pathways are, where are the corresponding sinew channels? So sinew is just a sort of, , different way of saying like a fascia channel that is the corresponding one to each meridian.

So for example, there is a spleen meridian, but there’s also a spleen sinew channel. There is a stomach meridian, but there’s also a stomach sinu channel. And actually in yen yoga, we’re really accessing the Sinu channel more than we are the meridian. Which again is something that a lot of people don’t talk about, and that’s because there’s a lot of people out there that are teaching Chinese medicine in their yin trainings who’ve actually never studied Chinese medicine in depth.

And although I wouldn’t say that I. I’ve studied it in, in a ton of depth. I did go to Chinese Medicine school for three years and that’s where I learned about the Sinu channels. And if you’re thinking right now, ? Why haven’t I heard of these Sinu channels? They’re not in any of my yin yoga books.

Nope, they’re not. And the reason for that is again, because they are, um, something you’d learn about in Chinese medicine school. They’re in the textbooks. Regardless of the manual of acupuncture by Deadman or Macha or whatever sort of Chinese medicine textbook you would get in school, they’re in there.

They’re not often talked about in yin circles, and in my opinion, they’re more important actually than the meridian. So we would be focusing on shapes. If we were wanted to do an earth element class, we might be focusing on shapes that access the stomach and spleen meridian. I’m always a fan of doing a well-rounded practice,, getting a back bend action, a forward bend action, a twist something lateral whenever possible.

But I do teach seasonally, meaning that in this time of of year that we’re in, this in this earth time of year, I’m gonna be adding in more poses for the spleen and stomach to my sequencing briefly, and then we’ll be into metal. And I will say also that I always add some element of earth to every class because again, remember, earth is the center, earth is the stabilizer, and the El other elements are revolving around and in feeding the Earth.

So there’s always a little bit of earth in every single class that I teach. So. I hope that this was a little brain tickle for you. I’m gonna share, uh, a reading that I love to share in classes about the earth element. , It’s not a Chinese,

so this reading is a First Nations, um, reading, maybe a prayer you could call it. Or contemplation. But it’s often attributed to different chiefs, and there are slightly different versions, so it’s hard for me to know exactly which chief it was and which tribe. Um, so I’m just gonna read the version that I have and.

Again, there’s, if you Googled this, you’ll probably find three or four versions and it’s accredited to different cheese, but it is a First Nations,, prayer or contemplation. Earth. Teach me stillness as the grasses which are still with light Earth. Teach me suffering as old stones suffer with memory.

Earth. Teach me humility as blossoms are humble with beginning. Earth teach me caring as the moth who secures her young earth. Teach me courage as the tree which stands alone earth. Teach me limitation as the ant which crawls on the ground earth teach me freedom as the eagle which soars in the sky earth teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall.

Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring earth. Teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life earth. Teach me to remember kindness as dry fields weep with rain. I hope that you found that helpful. That is again, one of my favorite readings that I share often in an earth themed class, and I hope that you found this little brain tickle about the earth element helpful as well.

And again, remember, some of the information that I’m giving you here is based on the sort of older, more Daoist version of the element of Earth as opposed to the earth in part of the cycle of generation and destruction, or the sort of more TCM version. And we go into this a lot more in depth and into the meridians, the channels, which poses are for those, et cetera, et cetera.

In my teacher training, it’s sort of the second half of my 100 hour training is mostly TCM elements, um, all that stuff. So if that, is interesting to you, you can get on the wait list for my training in the show notes, there’s a link. There’s lots of perks for getting on the wait list. I send out lots of cool content like this podcast and other things along the way.

And then when registration opens, you get first crack at registration, and the first few people that sign up also get access to a 25% discount code. So if you have been listening to the pod and you think, Hmm, I would like to take Nicks training at some point, make sure you get on the wait list. All right, my friends, I hope that you have a wonderful transition.

If you’re listening to this live, if you’re in the norm hemisphere between our end of summer, but not quite fall and until we talk again, or you see me again if you’re on YouTube, bye for now.

For those of you who stick around until the very end, thank you. If you love this podcast, I’d be grateful if you gave it a review. It really helps other yin yoga lovers find it. If you’ve already given a review, would you consider sharing a screenshot in your Instagram stories? And don’t forget to tag me at Nick Danu Yoga or at Y Yoga podcast so I can share the love.

Before I sign off, some gratitude first for you, the listener, for spending time with me today. Big gratitude and deep reverence for my teacher, Paul Grille. Thank you to Fred Westra for the Hang Drunk Samples. You can hear more of his music by clicking the link in the show notes. A big thank you to my beloved for mixing the intro and outro tracks, and until we meet again.

May you be well, may you be content. May you be at peace. May you be free.