The Problem with Lunchables

On Earth, and how TCM school gets it wrong

I hate the way TCM school teaches us the Five Elements.

Our very first class separates each Element apart from each other–as if they are somehow operating independently–and then further slices them into a seemingly random Microsoft Excel-style spreadsheet of Cartesian categories that no one really understands but orients our baby-acu brains toward reducing deep wisdom into flat, disjointed multiple choices.

This is generally fucking weird, because our medicine touts itself for being the big game in holism and naturalism, while teaching it to us exactly the opposite. And the worst part is that after a few years of practice, when we all find ourselves mechanically using the same 20 points–cleaved entirely from the curiosity and wonder that led us to the profession–we secretly presume it must be something wrong with us. When actually, TCM school laid the pavement for our monotony and burnout in that very first semester.

This is also specifically fucking weird because any true comprehension of the Five Elements is altogether dependent on seeing them in dynamic and evocative relationship to each other.

To divvy the Five Elements up like prepackaged frozen dinners for “picky eaters” who can’t tolerate a pea touching their mashed potato misses their point: they are transitions–gestures, still in movement–in dialogue with the state that precedes and follows. They are meant to be regarded as bridges through the cycle of growing and becoming, and only make sense in their totality as a complete circuit, with stops along the way.

For no Element is this more important than the Earth Element–our Late Summer–because Earth is explicitly describing how we transition from the brightness and joy of Fire to the early decay and grief of Metal. The context here is crucial to understanding Earth because it is singling out the auspicious moment in the lifecycle when the bloom of Summer has passed but the rot of Autumn hasn’t yet begun: nothing is growing, but nothing is dying either. 

It is from this delicate, ecological exhale–this cosmic pause–that we have the capacity to stand in our center, free of momentum, take stock of what has happened, digest it, make sense of it, and use it to give care. Earth is the aggregation of experience only possible from the neutral space of pause, and the integration of that understanding to give and receive care and nourishment.  

(Incidentally, the Stomach acupuncture meridian–which circles all the senses before diving into the brain, down the throat, and into the gut–is a metaphor for this aggregation and assimilation. ST-8 specifically represents the pause before the “Fall” to ST-9.)

The virtues and fundamental goals of the Earth element–giving of care, turning self-centeredness into selflessness, community and mutual aid–only start to make sense when you consider that they are the direct result of Fire’s curriculum of compassion, connection, and intimacy.

Fire teaches us how to lower the gates, and see others as ourselves: the Pericardium is a metaphor for softening the walls between our Hearts. Fire is about really listening–which is why the Small Intestine meridian ends at and wraps the ear. It is only from this arrival that Earth doles out its nourishment and recognizes its own imperative to engender care, service, community and collaboration.

It’s Fire’s connection and compersion that give rise to Earth’s altruism and welfare. And it's from here, once we come through this stewardship, that we are able to release our personal grip on the experience of living, and begin the shedding of Metal.

Plotted within their interdependent context, all of the components we learn take on new clarity. We are taught the “sound” of Earth is singing-”Mommy’s nursery rhyme”–but in this context we see it more clearly: it’s actually the sound of laughter turning to crying.  It’s vacation ending; it’s the children going back to school. The sound of Earth is whining. The “singing” is Joy, rising and falling away.

We are taught the “emotion” of Earth is rumination or worry but that’s not really it (and don’t get me started: ruminating is not even an emotion): the emotion is sympathy, which is the feeling of seeing ourselves in other people, and coming to understand and care for them as if we are caring for ourselves. Sympathy is love, with the anticipation of loss or pain: Fire meeting Metal.  

All the truth of the Earth Element is in its duality: the joy of Summer sensing the first whiff of Metal’s grief. It’s not quite sad; it’s the pause before sad. We loved in Summer! And now that love has its first tinge of loss; the initial ping of its evaporation. This is the sticky, damp ambivalence of Earth. The “taste” of Earth is sweet, but it is also bittersweet.

This discernment is a subtle yet powerful statement on how and why we give care. Earth’s position at the intersection of Fire and Metal makes its curriculum explicit: the instinct to give care is born from a place of revelry and connection, but always with the low undertone of coming grief.

All of Earth’s impulses–tenderness, communion, balance, gratitude–are conceived from love, with a premonition of loss. This is where care comes from.

For people like us, who have committed so much of our lives and scholarship in the service of collective care, this could not be more important. For me, as someone who has always felt like his work has reflected both love and grief, this awareness was affirming and liberating.

When I started treating patients in 2005, I had just suffered a life-altering loss. I worried that my pain would be felt in my treatments; that my grief would be in every needle. My mentor, the great Dr. Yvonne Farrell, told me not to worry about it, because she knew the truth I didn’t yet: grief is always a part of care. Care is love that is tending to its own fragility and transience. Care is connection, foretelling its dissolution. Care is where Fire meets Metal.

Again, it’s not that it’s sad; it’s the pause before it’s sad. This is the work that we do.

This is how we should learn the Five Elements. They can’t be sliced up for parts and understood in any meaningful way. They’re not Lunchables. They aren’t bologna and crackers.

This is how we should learn them because I want us to never lose the wonder and curiosity that was the original impulse that brought us to acupuncture. I don’t want us to burn out-I want us to be in perpetual, enthusiastic dialogue with our medicine. 

I want us to be old practitioners, still marveling and excited about it all! Is there anything more inspiring than a tiny elderly acupuncturist, with bony but powerful hands, no eyebrows but a giddy smile, whose been at it a million years, and still in awe of what we can do?