Foundations: Five phases

Two cycles, two different questions

The generating cycle explains where support comes from; the controlling cycle, who restrains whom. Facing an imbalance you ask both: what stopped feeding it, and what stopped containing it.

Wood → Fire

generating: mother feeds

Wood → Earth

controlling: wood restrains

Common mistake: Memorising the cycles as a list instead of using them as questions.

Order the generating cycle starting from Wood.

1. Wood↑↓
2. Fire↑↓
3. Earth↑↓
4. Metal↑↓
5. Water↑↓

Each phase drags a whole family with it

A phase is not only an organ: it brings an emotion, a flavour, a season and a tissue. That family is what lets you connect a complaint with a part of the body that seems unrelated.

Wood

Liver, anger, sour, spring, sinews

Fire

Heart, joy, bitter, summer, vessels

Earth

Spleen, worry, sweet, late season, muscles

Metal

Lung, grief, pungent, autumn, skin

Water

Kidney, fear, salty, winter, bones

Common mistake: Learning the tables by heart and never using them to explain a symptom.

Match each phase with the emotion that unbalances it.

Order the controlling cycle starting from Wood.

1. Wood↑↓
2. Earth↑↓
3. Water↑↓
4. Fire↑↓
5. Metal↑↓

Every upset brings stomach pain, bloating and loose bowels. Which relationship is that?

1. Wood over-controlling Earth
2. Earth over-controlling Wood
3. Wood over-generating Earth

Long-standing digestive dampness ends in oedema and scanty urination. What happened between Earth and Water?

1. Water stopped generating Earth
2. Earth is controlling Water as it should
3. Overflowing Earth has invaded Water

Sort each sign into its phase.

• Tension along the sidesWoodEarth
• Bloating after mealsWoodEarth
• Dry eyes and blurred visionWoodEarth
• Loose, unformed stoolsWoodEarth
• Cramps and tight sinewsWoodEarth
• Turning things over before sleepWoodEarth

A Lung deficiency that does not respond to treating it directly. Which phase do you strengthen under the mother-child rule?

1. Water
2. Earth
3. Wood

A sustained excess in the child ends up emptying the mother. What do you do?

1. Tonify the mother harder and leave the excess alone
2. Nothing: it resolves once the season turns
3. Drain the child's excess so it stops pulling on the mother

Rib-side pain with diarrhoea whenever anger flares. Build the name of the pattern.

Match each phase with its flavour.

Every spring the allergies, irritability and headaches flare. Which phase do you look at first?

1. Wood: the season that tests it
2. Water: it is what winter left behind
3. Fire: headaches are always heat

Sort each complaint by the phase that governs it.

• Brittle, ridged nailsWoodEarthWater
• Drooping, slack eyelidsWoodEarthWater
• Hearing loss over the yearsWoodEarthWater
• Stiff sinews on getting upWoodEarthWater
• Muscle weakness in the thighsWoodEarthWater
• Teeth working looseWoodEarthWater

What are the five phases actually for in clinic?

1. To classify the patient as one of five types
2. To ask who stopped feeding and who stopped restraining
3. To pick points without needing a diagnosis