When we’re talking about the 5 elements, we must look at the placement of the elements as part of our human manifestation. Each of us begins life with a unique combination of these five manifesting frequencies. Observing the people around us, we can see that no one is perfectly balanced in their elements because if we were, we would be perfectly enlightened!

On a material level, there can be different kinds of physical manifestations of elemental imbalances as well as variations in emotional, and mental, and spiritual qualities. Almost anything can create elemental imbalance. Lifestyle and environmental issues, including things like whether we’re happy at home, what we’re eating, how we’re sleeping, how we’re feeling on a daily basis, how we get along with the people closest to us – all of these things can create imbalance and eventual illness.

So many things can unbalance the elements, but conversely, all these things can also balance the elements because there’s a lot that we can do on a daily basis.

Water Element - The Zhi

Many qualities associated with Chinese medicine are very poetic, but they still manage to describe a lot about what is going on within each individual element on a very deep level. Looking at the water element, we want to first understand the spiritual/consciousness qualities of water referred to as the “Zhi.”

Many Chinese scholars translate the Zhi into the concept of the will or willpower. The Zhi is also translated as wisdom, a sort of piercing wisdom that allows us to know exactly what is going on and to hit the target. In Chinese medicine, this quality of wisdom helps us to access our kidney yang aspect, our basic life force.

Kidney Yang

We’ve all heard the terms Yin and Yang, but it’s important to understand something about how they work together. It’s the kidney yang, the fire aspect of the kidneys, that propels us forward in our lives to fulfill our destiny.

So, we can say it is the initiative of our kidney yang that helps us to accomplish things, but it’s also important to consider the reserves of kidney yin that help us to realize our goals in the long term. Yin and yang are always working together, and we have to make sure that the yin is being preserved in its fluid aspect so that when the fire aspect of the kidney yang is activated, the balancing, stabilizing aspect of the kidney yin is also activated.

Kidney Yin

The concept of yin is an important influence in Chinese medicine. It allows us to be quiet enough, still enough, and patient enough to be able to face all the different challenges and difficulties that can come up. The yin aspect of the kidneys is associated with deep intelligence.

Someone wrote that the kidney yin aspect is a manifestation of a serenity prayer, allowing us to “accept the things that we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” A balanced kidney yin will help us to do this.

Zhi + Ying/Yang interaction

The Zhi-wisdom is helping us in our lives by balancing our inner ambitions with the realities of our challenging circumstances.

The kidney yang is the initiative that is needed to fight against circumstantial or environmental influences so that we can keep going. At the same time, it is our kidney yin that is really giving us the ability to go deep inside to understand what it is that we need to do. It is our patience.

The Zhi-wisdom represents the willpower to achieve our destiny. This is about our work in the world. This quality of our ability to work is represented through our kidney yang. The expression of our real intelligence is the marriage of our thinking capacity and our intuition, the balance of yin and yang. It is this integration that helps us to bring forward the skills that are required to succeed in a particular task.

Our clear Zhi-wisdom also helps us to connect with our hearts so that our true intelligence can shine forth.