Review the highlights from the Taoist Metal Element Chi Kung Practice Online.

I’m going to guide you through this Taoist-inspired sequence to help you open up the flow of your body, the channels, the qi, and your meridians to harmonize your qi, harmonize your body, purify the poisons of the metal element, and ignite the virtues of the metal element.

What are the energies expressed through this practice? 

In the Taoist vision, nature is created by yin and yang, the two primordial energies. The feminine primordial energy is yin, which is related to the moon, receptivity, the earth, intuition emotions, the temperature of coolness, and receiving.

Yang is the masculine primordial energy related to action, assertiveness, fire, temperature of warmth, and the heavens.

Together, these two energies create reality all the time. They’re not stagnant. They’re always in movement. It’s a dynamic play between these two energies.

And, if you see the yin-yang symbol, there’s a little circle of the other within. So within yin, there’s always you; within yang, there’s yin, and they’re transforming into each other. From there, they create the five elements. 

What is the relationship between the five elements of Qi Gong? 

So we have a fire, which feeds earth, metal, water, and wood, and then wood feeds the fire. This is a generative cycle, and then they control each other. Earth is the mother of metal. You can see that minerals contract into metals when the earth has minerals.

Metals, those minerals, nourish the water, which nourishes plants. Wood nourishes fire. You put wood into the fire, and everything you put into the fire gets scorched. It creates ashes, which nurture the earth. It helps to make the earth’s landscape.

How is the metal element expressed? 

This is a bit of how the elements flow. Now, the metal element in the Taoist vision is related to fall and autumn. So I’m bringing this to you because we are in that season. It’s also associated with the time of the day of sunset and old age in the life cycle.

If you pay attention to nature, what happens in the fall is that the leaves start to fall away. The energy begins to go from outside to inside, right? In winter, all the energy goes into the root. So that process starts to happen. So that’s the flow of metal. It starts to go more internal.

What is the season for metal? 

There’s more opportunity for introspection, to go within, to shed, and to let go to detoxify. Fall is also a perfect time to cleanse. The organ systems connected to metal are the lungs and large intestines. So think about it through breath. We are constantly detoxifying.

What are the organs for metal? 

We release CO2 through our large intestine. We’re releasing everything not serving and serving us from what we consume. So, these two organs are constantly helping us to release those those leaves that need to be shed. This is an excellent time to do introspection, to take stock of what you no longer need, to be able to release that, and to keep what is nourishing you.

What are the poisons and virtues associated with metal? 

Sadness and grief are poisonous emotions that weaken the metal element. They are not poison; this is the language of Chinese medicine and the Taoist vision.

So, it’s not that emotions are destructive. Energy becomes overwhelming and locked in the body if it stagnates or cannot be expressed. So, sadness and grief, if not appropriately expressed, start to dwell. What happens is that the lungs contract extremes.

So, the breath starts to become shallow, and the chest becomes constricted. There’s less breath, less life force, and less chi available. The emotion that harmonizes the metal element is joy because joy uplifts.