- The Brain: Headaches, Alzheimer’s’, Anxiety & Strokes
- Eyes, Ears, Nose, Sinuses & Mental Stress
- Neck, Throat, TMJ, Teeth, & Thyroid (and voice box, too)
- Shoulders-Arms-Hands
- Chest (lung and heart)
- Stomach & Immune System,
- Liver, Gall Bladder, GI tract, Pancreas, Weight gain
- Low Back & Sacrum,
- Kidney-Adrenals,
- Hips, Legs & Feet
Each of our body’s parts plays a role – has a function – in the wholeness of one’s body. The Four Element Method gives us each an easy to use frame of reference to navigate our troubles, and to heal ourselves in more whole-giving, positive, natural ways.
It helps by connecting the body's functional and structural parts to a set of natural principles, which speak to what the Ancients called “the four elements” of nature.
FYI: What follows is not a substitute for medical care, but is offered by Dr. W as a way to help yourself as you tap into a set of life-positive natural forces..
– Holistic Healing Advise from Dr. W
His “Notions, Motions, Potions” series
Each of our body’s parts plays a role – has a function – in the wholeness of one’s body. The Four Element Method gives us each an easy to use frame of reference to navigate our troubles, and to heal ourselves in more whole-giving, positive, natural ways. It helps by tying the bodies functional and structural parts to a set of natural principles, which speak to what the Ancients called “the four elements” of nature.
l. The Brain: Headaches, Alzheimer’s, Anxiety and Strokes
Notions – Motions – Potions
Elemental Notions:
A good deal of today’s concerns – especially for both ends of the age spectrum – relate to the brain. For older people it’s Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, strokes, … For the younger end it’s the anxiety that is becoming ever more rampant. Furthermore, because we’re all depend so much on it, it’s worth it for all of us to learn how to induce greater health in our brains.
Note that your brain is at the body’s very top.
It’s the place where highest level things are given their home. As you work on this area, be aware that you are intersecting with this highest aspect of our human condition. Troubles here are meant to force you to work on this top level part of your being.
In the chakra frame of reference given by yoga, the brain is a part of “the crown center”, a place where spiritual growth occurs. You’re going to discover that there are ways to help this brain-cranial region to stay strong; you’ll learn some tools to help it when things here are breaking down.
FYI: What follows is not a substitute for medical care, but is offered by Dr. W as a way to help yourself as you tap into a set of life-positive natural forces.
Motions:
A good movement to begin the renewal of this region involves a side-to-side horizontal motion – always into something of physicality – a riverbank of sorts. They are classically noted as isometric x-axis motions. These motions are at the core of this system’s Water energy maneuvers. Actively using muscles in an area to create this x-axis motion creates tides of nourishment to move into local tissues. The brain will always benefit from an increased flow within its circulatory components.
Movements as described will help the ventricles where cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) is made and circulated, as well as the dural sinuses that do much to filter the brain’s blood of its oxygen-depleted red blood cells. Even the draining done by small microscopic veins between neurons are helped through this horizontal motion.
In the skull, the soft spot at the top of one’s head is a useful Water place to orient oneself. There you will be on the sagittal suture between the two Water bone components of the cranium – our pair of parietal bones. You want to make contacts with your right and left hands’ fingers on their respective sides of this pair of bones.
A particularly useful motion is one of four counts to an inhale as you physically press your right fingertips outward against the right medial (inner) skull’s parietal bones. The skull presses concurrently inward as that is done. Exhale with four counts as you emphasize your left hand pressing out on its left side. Move repeatedly back and forth (or more accurately, side-to-side) in that manner. You can change which side relates to the four-part inhale and exhale counts.
Click here for my special maneuvers from my exercise system, 4 Element Yoga, which are oriented to this region and its problems.
Potions:
Everyone wants a “potion”, whether it be a pharmaceutical or a nutritional/herbal support. In addition to the following for attaining local tissue nourishment, I find more is accomplished when you add the movements that are embedded in the 4 Element Yoga maneuvers discussed in Motions above.
Here’s a few things to appreciate as far as the brain is concerned.
Fish oils…
Mushrooms
Herbs like gingko
II. Eyes, Ears, Nose, Sinus (& Mental Stress) »
4E Holistic Notion: What unifies these various problems is their locality – our face.
While we identify in a large way with our head in general, it is our face more so than to the cranium above it that we generally see as representative of who we are. Our facial expressions embody important parts of this center’s muscular actions.
In yoga this anatomic level of the body is called the “third eye center”. While the center above is seen as the home of spiritual consciousness, this one just below it is said to be our intellectual center. The mental stress that is so often a negative residue of the modern lifestyle generally comes when this thinking and information-gathering center is overloaded with intellectually stimulating inputs from our eyes and ears.
While we grow spiritually within the crown center, our personal intellectual growth happens in this “third eye” center. Whether it be for eye strain or hearing weakness, you will grow intellectually when you use the exercises in the Motions section to draw life-positive motions into those tissues of this region which you are particularly focused upon.
In Four Element Thinking this center is noticed as the body’s higher Air center. It is not insignificant that one of the distinguishing aspects of this region’s anatomy is its sinuses and airy nasal pharynx, which we use to draw in that special life-positive molecule in air, oxygen.
It’s all quite beautiful and poetic when it comes down to it, that our face is indeed filled with airy spaces – save for the lungs, more open and airy than any other region. So just like the cranium above this region has its nervous system fired-up brain, this center below it embodies the natural principle that holistic elemental thinking tells us follows Fire, Air. We will speak to this in the upcoming Motions section, where we find ways to invigorate what can become stagnant airy sinuses, and poorly used nasal breathing.
Motions:
Potions
Postures:
lll. Neck, Throat, TMJ, Teeth, & Thyroid (and voice box, too)
Each region of the body has a certain energetics to it. One important thing that unifies the throat, tongue, TMJ is their relation to food dynamics. The tongue masticates food with the help of the teeth; sliding that food down the throat.
This center is called “the throat center” in yoga, and is considered in four element holistic thinking as the body’s higher Water center. The Water Principle, or force of nature speaks to life’s need for nourishment. Think of that red river we call blood, which brings nourishment to each cell.
The thyroid is the endocrine gland of this region and does much to throttle up important biochemical tissue metabolisms that are so dependent on that supply of nourishing food. The neck vertebrae themselves are what support all this from the backside.
Another significant Water functionality is the ability we have to communicate with each other. Communication is an interconnective ability (and need) we have. That previously discussed need and ability to take in nourishment is a display of this same Interconnective principle – creating ecosystems which connect all of life together.
For some it is worth knowing that metaphysically: while it is embodied by Water, this third cosmic-wide principle, “Interconnectedness”, presents itself geometrically as the three-born triangle which bridges the two opposing ends of a line.
Problems of this area often result from poor support by the neck, which must constantly do its part behind the scenes of all this “throat center” activity. Poor posture is often the culprit, showing up as poor biomechanics, as poorly grounded kinetic chains of muscle-generated forces.
Motions:
Using the 4 Element Method, we’re going to energize the tissues of this region in the four different planes that it is meant to be able to move through. Let’s start with the energy that is most resonant with this center, Water.
Potions:
Besides the herbal tincture I use to help the energetics of this region, depending on the issues, it can be especially useful to improve one’s nutritive status when suffering with troubles here. Discs in the neck, even pinched nerves here, are often helped as greater nourishment is drawn into the body.
Motions:
It’s useful for this upper Water center is to generate motions that balance out faulty biomechanics and one’s postural habits.
Postures
For most human troubles, one common helpful piece of the healing equation is to improve one’s posture. Particularly insofar as how posture is intersecting with the region where your problem is localized. Many problems in this neck-throat region come from an overly forward neck and head.
Here’s the antidote to that portion of your neck-throat region’s problems. It’s simply the act of bringing your throat backwardly. Here’s how to do it most effectively: Put your left thumb and index fingers on your throat. Your left thumb is on the left side of your middle throat – where the cartilage of your throat is most forward; your left index finger is on the right side of that cartilage. It can be useful to envision both fingers at the bottom vertex of a V.
When properly placed, you should feel a ring of cartilage below it – the cricoid cartilage. The goal is to change the neck-throat postural alignment so that this vertex contact moves toward the backside more. Forcing your left forearm to become more parallel to the floor at the end of the motion helps bring the head and neck back more.
It can prove useful to do this in front of a mirror so as to give you visual feedback. Many will come to realize just how forward their neck (and head) are positioned regularly. There will be some of you who will tend to bring the jaw upward as well. Avoid doing so; try to keep the jaw parallel to the floor.
5. Heart and Lungs of Chest
The heart and lungs come together in an anatomical way in the chest. An essential job of the heart is to ensure that cells are getting their supply of oxygen, which binds to the hemoglobin of our blood as it reaches into the alveolar spaces of our lungs during an inhale.
The holistic notion to keep in mind that this region is called the “heart center” in yoga. It’s seen as the place where balance and tranquility are meant to be established within ourselves – yet always ready for extra bursts of needed action.
This center is always active in us as we breathe, and through that heart of ours constantly ticking. It even has its own pacemaker that affords it the ability to maintain its rhythmic contractions separate to a good degree as other bodily systems might go awry – like mental stresses coming down from above.
In four element holistic thinking (and in Eastern Medicine) the heart is seen to have a lot of Fire at work in it. Four element thinking tells us that the Fire force is embodied by our nerves. Not only does the heart’s pacemaker express that nerve energy, or Fire-force, but the sympathetic nervous system chain running up the thoracic spine behind the heart and lungs strongly embodies it.
In the Motions portion of this, we will discuss how breathing affects the heart’s health; more so, we’ll learn how we can use our breathing to help our heart to stay strong.
6. Stomach and Immune Issues
One of the main jobs of your stomach is to breakdown the proteins of your food – along with the bacteria and other living organisms. That said, one of the first lines of defense against foreign invaders is that they get digested by the stomach’s hydrochloric acid.
So your immune system is giving you troubles. It might be over-active, or under-active. Let’s approach these problems using an elemental frame of reference. This elemental frame of reference was at the core of an ancient wisdom that has been lost to most of us today. Link to LearnMore1.0 – could be used in each category to bring user to a more generalized deeper dive into the 4Es if this is all new to them.
Ancient Elemental Notion: You might wonder about the connection between your stomach and your immune system – both are, according to Chinese medicine, Earth element organs. There is a deeper connection as well. Both your stomach and immune system build upon the power of protein. Four element thinking tells us protein embodies Earth in a big way.
Earth creates physical structure, and in that way, it is seen biologically present as the proteins that give shape to cellular structures.
You might remember this from a science class you took: each creature/individual has its own assortment of proteins, which build the various types of cells composing its organs. The immune system is immensely good at finding (and destroying) those cells that are composed of non-self proteins – until it’s not.
One important subset of immune system cells are called “the B cells’. They are generated and begin their maturing process in our bone marrow. When we discuss motions we’ll discuss that further in regard to heel strike value.
Another important subset of immune system cells are made in the thymus, “T-cells”. That said, the thymus is considered the mother of one’s immune system. It is especially involved in the self: non-self aspect of our immune system.
Like other parts of the immune system, the spleen uses both the T lymphocytes and B lymphocytes to find and destroy those invaders – again all based on that Earth element protein to assess whether a cell living in the body is the body’s own or a foreign invader. Interestingly, hemoglobin, the major protein of blood cells, fatigues and loses its shape like all protein molecules often do. This shape change is detected by the spleen; that old red blood cell is then removed from circulation by the spleen.
There are also the intercellular channels between tissues, which coalesce as lymph fluid in our body’s many lymphatic vessels. They, in a sense, are at the very bottom of the immune system. The structural integrity of these lymph channels express their own level of Earth element physicality. Much harm can occur when Earth has become so weakened in a person that these lymph channels cannot clear its dead bacteria, cellular debris and other assorted materials.
Here’s the ultimate holistic notion: Our immune system depends upon a lot of “Earth” to help it function. This play out in both “motions” and in the food-built potions you can draw upon.
Body Motions:
Thoracic 4E Yoga maneuvers
7. Liver, Gall Bladder, GI tract, Pancreas, Weight gain
What unifies these organs and body issues is their intersection with our intakes of food. Food is what all creatures must have to survive. In both yoga and acupuncture, these abdominal organs are seen to be part of “the solar plexus center”.
In a resonant way, in four element thinking the abdominal organs embody and empower our lower body’s Air center. As such, in Eastern Medicine it noted to be greatly responsible for generating of what is called “chi” in. The generation of chi is built upon channeling the cyclic energies of life into oneself in an upwardly moving way. Upwards is the direction that Nature tells us Air as a principle is eager to move.
This Air Principle with its chi’s vigor pushes life to evolve. Even oxygen – a key molecule that the air of Nature provides was at first something that challenged life. As O2, it rampantly “oxidized”, or combined with much of what it might come in contact with. Eventually life found ways to harness its power.
We see this as life evolved beyond the glycolysis that makes energy for primitive bacteria and yeast – which creates alcohol and the yeast ferments that allow bread to rise.
The Air Principle uses oxygen in the electron transfer chain that follows the Kreb, or citric acid, cycle. With oxygen at the end of a biochemical chain occurring in the mitochondria of our cells, there would be a boosting of life energy. More than 15 times as much “ATP energy currency” is produced per gram of sugar, than when life is more primitively stuck in the glycolysis of the anaerobic state.
There are other cycle and linear chain combos found in the liver as it metabolizes fats and sugars as well as toxins. The pancreas has its own cyclic and linear chains as it releases insulin and glucagon in sequential ways to maintain your blood sugar. The GI tract is a chain that has many cycles that create that movement down through that chain, or tract.
Here’s the elemental, holistic point: empowerment requires both cyclic and linear actions. Stay directed toward your aspirations; still at the same time take notice and appreciate the elemental components that frame the cycles you’re caught within. All of those components can be revved up when they are identified as parts of food’s nutritional spectrum.
And too, in the manner by which muscle-generated motions channel these forces into different regions of our body. This building of chi in local areas – sick areas if you will – is at the core of 4 Element Yoga; and so we move to “Motions”.
8. The lower back & Sacrum is the yang portion of what yoga calls the “solar plexus” center. This center is our power center. With its strong muscles and thicker, bigger vertebral bones, this region does a lot of the heavy lifting involved with our day to day physical activities. That said, if our physical activity level is low, this region begins to degrade. While over-working can cause it troubles, it likes to work, and generally suffers more when it is not being challenged to be empowered in one’s life.