Earth

Although everyone has the Earth element within them, some people become deeply invested in Earth’s way of being. We call this the Earth constitutional type and it is a collection of habits. We can put that collection of habits into 3 categories: habitual thoughts, habitual emotions, and habitual behaviors. Earth constitutional types will invest their body’s vital Qi and resources into thoughts like “no once cares”, “no one cares for me the way I care for them”, “life is hard”, and “life is harder for me than it is for others”. These thoughts create emotions like burden, worry, and a need to feel sympathy from others. These thoughts and emotions then create behaviors like looking for connection through sympathy, giving too much, taking too much, and co-dependent behaviors. Over time, these thoughts, emotions, and behaviors can create diseases like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and digestive issues.

These thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are a collection of habits. For Earth types, this collection of habits feels safe and comforting in the face of the uncertainties and unknowns of life. Like most habits, they aren’t necessarily healthy…like biting your fingernails or smoking a cigarette, they are ways of self-soothing. Rather than facing the vast enormous uncertainties and unknowns of life, we retreat into our habits which give us a sense of security.

Ultimately, we need to ask ourselves if investing in these thoughts, emotions, and behaviors is a worthy investment of our Qi. We can choose where we want to invest our Qi. When we begin investing our Qi in the present moment, trusting life, and trusting the unknown, we create the pathway to remembering the peace, joy, and love inherent within or original nature. We do that in the section Earth Returning to Original Nature.

• Satiation, satisfaction: there is nothing in life quite like eating a truly satisfying meal where you feel full and totally satiated. You don’t need or want another single thing. You just feel satisfied. Symbolically, when we tend our needs in life, we create the feeling of satisfaction and satiation in our day to day life. In health, Earth types know what makes them feel satiated and satisfied. They practice radical self-care by fulfilling their needs and making satisfaction a priority in life. 
• Pleasure: all pleasure falls under the jurisdiction of Earth: sensual pleasure, pleasure from good food and happy positive experiences. Knowing what gives you pleasure and creating pleasurable experiences makes for healthy Earth. 
• Nourishment: when you are in touch with your needs, you feel nourished and you know what nourishes you and what doesn’t. Choosing to fill your life with nourishing food, people, and experiences creates stability, stamina, and strength.
• Community: Late Summer is harvest time when people come together to help gather the bounty that has been grown. Earth types feel fulfilled and nourished when there is a strong sense of community. Togetherness creates strength and support from members of the community. Earth types may feel bereft by our modern individualistic society where community and connection are sparse.
• Stamina: Earth types tend to be strong and have stamina. In health, the Earth element gives us stability and stamina to make it through life’s hard work and challenges. Like the beast of burden in the field, Earth plods along at a steady pace, slowly carrying on day after day.
• Resilience: strong and healthy Earth is capable of enduring a great deal. Strong and healthy Earth can also help others to do the same.
• Intellect: Yi, or intellect, is Earth’s aspect of consciousness or spirit. This is our ability to study, comprehend, and memorize. Symbolically, this is our ability to digest, assimilate, and retain life’s information and experiences.

• tends to feel burdened by life and life’s daily tasks
• tends to feel like a burden to others
• this feeling of burden feels heavy. It makes life feel joy-less, stifling, weighted.
• may feel endlessly exhausted due to burden
• may look for connection with others through sympathy and pity
• may want others to feel sorry for you
• may become very productive in an effort to avoid boredom
• may have periods of lethargy and passivity
• may have an ungrounded, overactive, ruminating mind
• may busy themselves in an effort to quiet the ungrounded, overactive, ruminating mind
• may have a foggy, cloudy, heavy sensation in the mind and head
• may dig their heels in and become stubborn
• may have co-dependent behaviors due to an unhealthy relationship with giving and receiving
• may display selfish and greedy behavior due to an unhealthy relationship with giving and receiving
• overeating and losing the ability to determine if you are full and satisfied. Continuing to eat, especially sweets, even if you are full

• Sympathy: Earth types may experience a need for sympathy more strongly than other constitutional types. Sympathy is generally an emotion of caring, nurturing, or mothering. When we are feeling sick, injured or just down in the dumps, it’s nice to have someone say, “oh you poor thing…let me take care of you”. Earth types often confuse sympathy with love. Earth types may want to give sympathy when it is not wanted and they may try to elicit sympathy from others when it is not appropriate. This can turn others off and become a form of manipulation.
• Worry: Earth types may worry more than other constitutional types. They may find their mind is overactive and ruminates. This can feel ungrounding and frenetic.
• Burden: Earth type’s response to the stresses of life is burden. This can manifest as feeling burdened by life/work/others or feeling like you are a burden to others. This makes daily life feel heavy, weighted, and stifling. It takes all the joy out of life.
• Neediness: Earth types fall into the habit of looking to others to fulfill their needs. Earth types, in an effort to try to elicit sympathy from others, can become emotionally needy. When we believe the thoughts, “I can’t fulfill my own needs” or “s/he should be fulfilling my needs”, we don’t take good care of ourselves and allow our needs to go unmet.
• Insatiable: Earth types tend to never feel really satisfied. This is directly related to identifying, acknowledging, and fulfilling needs. When we aren’t aware of our needs, we feel unsatisfied and like it’s never enough. We are always feeling like we want more.
• Greed: When we go for long periods of time feeling insatiable and unsatisfied, greed can become a habit. We can begin to take and take in an effort to find that feeling of satiation and satisfaction. But no matter how much we accumulate, we never feel satiated.

(Note: these thoughts are the root of the above emotions and behaviors. When we isolate and question the thoughts which create these emotional states and behaviors, we create the ability to free ourselves from these mental and emotional habitual tendencies.)

• No one cares. No one cares for me the way I care for them.
• Life is so hard. Life is harder for me than it is for others.
• It’s not enough. I’m not satisfied or satiated.
• I don’t have everything I need. I don’t have anything I need.
• I can’t fulfill my own needs. S/he should fulfill my needs.
• I don’t even know what I need.
• I can give and give and give of myself.
• I have to take care of everyone else before I can take care of myself.
• I have to take everything for myself so that I feel satisfied. I can’t rely on anyone else to satisfy my needs.
• My needs will only be met if I dig my heels in and get my way.

Listed below are diseases associated with the Earth element and the mental, emotional, and behavioral tendencies that may cause them. This information is based in my experience as a medical intuitive and practitioner of Chinese medicine, so what is presented below is just my opinion. My hope is to give you self-awareness, clarity, and insight into yourself through what your body tells you. This information can be a springboard for you to journey within and get to know your habitual tendencies which can manifest as disease.

If you are an Earth constitutional type, this does not mean you are predisposed to the diseases below. Anyone can have these diseases. Diseases are usually caused by multiple factors including infection, poor diet and lifestyle choices, environmental toxins, genetics, aging, and habitual mental and emotional patterns. I hope this information starts a conversation within yourself. Ask yourself: “does this resonate with me?” “can I see this in myself?” “if I don’t resonate with this, does this bring up other feelings, memories or information that gives me insight into myself?”. These are mere suggestions rather than absolute truth.

• Earth addiction: An inability to feel satisfied or satiated leads to craving sweets. Eating vast amounts of sweets still doesn’t leave you feeling satisfied and you keep reaching for something that does. Symbolically, this relates to an inability to choose nourishing people and experiences for yourself. A total lack of awareness of what your needs are leads to choosing unhealthy, “empty-calorie”-type people and experiences for yourself. A merry-go-round of reaching for sweets/non-nourishing food/people/experiences, not feeling satisfied, but continuing to reach for the sweets/non-nourishment. A call from deep within to identify, acknowledge, and fulfill your own needs.
• Earth depression: Stagnation. An inability to move. An inability to know how to move and in which direction you should move. Stuck deeply in the mud and mire.
• Bruising easily: Weak Earth Qi can no longer hold the blood in its vessels. Symbolically: fragility, vulnerability. A need to care for yourself. A need to treat yourself with softness and kindness.
• Breast swelling and tenderness: For whom do you emotional caregive? Does emotionally caregiving for them work for you? Resentment about caring for others. Feeling obligated and burdened by caring for others. This includes emotionally caring for others.
• Fibrocystic breast disease: Resentment about caring for others turns into deep simmering resentment and anger. (With Wood)
• Prolapse of organs (uterus,bladder): Earth Qi cannot upbear the Qi due to weakness and exhaustion. Depleted resources and reserves. Depleting yourself caring for others. Again, this can be emotionally caring for someone, not just physically caring for someone.
• Digestive issues: All digestive issues are rooted in some way by an imbalance in the Earth element. In Chinese medicine, digestive issues usually involve other organs and elements as well which is shown in the specific digestive diseases listed below. Digestive upset is one of the first signs of imbalance and it is always a sign that more self-care is needed. Here are four common habits that disrupt our body’s ability to digest well: 1. Erratic eating schedule: the Earth element loves rhythm and routine. Our organs of digestion love to know that meals are at regular times every day such as breakfast is at 8AM, lunch is at noon, and dinner is at 5PM. This is rarely the case in our hectic, fast paced world. 2. Eating while doing other activities. Your body needs to be relaxed and at ease while it eats and digests food. Again, rare in our hectic, fast-paced world. 3. Over-eating. Stress, eating while distracted, and eating overly processed and overly flavored foods all contribute to overeating. This is common in our culture and puts strain on our organs of digestion. 4. Poor food choices. We have so many food choices in this day and age. We often get in the habit of choosing poor food choices. This can include seemingly healthy choices that may not work for your body or constitution. For example, being vegetarian when you need meat protein.
• Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS): This is an imbalance of both Earth and Wood. Symbolically, this is being very hard on yourself. Putting undue pressure on yourself. Not listening to your body’s need for rest, ease, and recuperation.
• Inflammatory bowel disease/ulcerative colitis/Crohn’s disease: (With Fire, Metal, and Wood) The mothering, nurturing influences in your life are rejecting, cold, and, can be, abusive. Confusion is created about what mothering and nurturing actually is. Mothering and nurturing is associated with rejection and poor treatment. This leaves you with an inability to mother and nurture yourself.
• Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: Burden: Life feels heavy and burdensome. You feel like a burden to others. You feel burdened by others. Believing the story that you must burden yourself with care for others. Sympathy: desperate for sympathy. Feeling a neediness and looking for sympathy to placate the feeling of neediness.
• Fibromyalgia: Resentment and anger at the burdens of life. Resentful that life feels heavy and burdensome. Resentful at the burden of caring for others. In addition, feeling ashamed of the anger and resentment. Hiding the anger and resentment and pretending everything is okay.
• Rheumatoid arthritis: Resentment and anger at the burdens of life turn into deep burning rage which settles in the joints of the body. Hidden simmering rage at the burdens of life particularly the burden of caring for others. As with Fibromyalgia, the rage stays hidden and underneath the surface. Autoimmune: attacking yourself for feeling the rage. Telling yourself it isn’t okay to feel anger.
• Varicose veins: Deficiency: weak Earth Qi can no longer raise Qi and blood back up to the Heart. Excess: stubborn, digging heels in. Refusing to move from one way of doing things. (Generally, people have a combination of both deficiency and excess)
• Latent virus syndromes (Lyme disease, Epstein-Barr virus, West Nile virus, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV): 1. Co-dependency. A tendency to orbit a central person in your life. Putting the needs of this central person above your own. 2. A war between two parts of ourselves. One part of ourself which believes we deserve punishment and are full of shame versus the part of ourselves which believes we deserve happiness, joy and a fulfilled life.
• Lupus (systemic lupus erythematosus SLE): Deep anger and rage at the care received from the mother or mother figure in your childhood. Mistrust of the mother figure. Feeling the mother put you in harm’s way or didn’t protect you in childhood.
• Weight Gain: 1. For no obvious reason: most likely organs of digestion are weak and having a hard time breaking down food. Self-care is needed. 2. Due to craving of sweets, unable to feel satisfied: Unclear on what needs you have and what nourishes you. Choosing empty-calorie people and experiences in your life…people and experiences which don’t nourish you and don’t meet your needs.
• Candida: 1. Burden: taking on others burdens. Feeling a burden to others. Feeling burdened by life and by others. 2. Not feeling at home in your body. Not feeling at home anywhere, even in your own home.

• Eat meals around the same time everyday: The Earth element loves routine and rhythm. This is shown in Earth’s rhythms; spring always follows winter, the sun always rises, the moon always waxes and wanes. Our digestion loves to have rhythm and routine as well. Eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner at around the same time everyday gives the organs of digestion optimal opportunity to digest and assimilate our food. Waiting until you are hungry to eat can create chaos for the digestive system. This feels erratic to the organs of digestion and consequently the digestive process is not as thorough.
• Eat mostly cooked foods: When we eliminate waste, what comes out of our body is about 98.6 degrees. It is our vital Qi that heats food up and keeps it warm as it makes its way through the alimentary canal. If we eat raw foods, it takes a lot of Qi to cook that food for it to be broken down and assimilated. Eating cooked food takes less Qi as the food does not need to be heated. This makes it easier for the body to break down and assimilate the nutrients in our food.
• Your diet should consist mainly of fruits, vegetables (steamed, sautéed, or baked), lean meat protein, whole grains like rice or oats, and legumes like beans or peas: In Chinese medicine, this is called a clear bland diet and is recommended to keep our organs of digestion functioning optimally. Eating these basic food groups is a great way to support digestive function, eliminate dampness (a byproduct of poor digestion), and feel healthy and vital.
• Eliminate gluten, cow’s milk and cheese, and sugar: Gluten, cow’s milk and cheese, and refined sugar lead to dampness and the production of phlegm. Dampness and phlegm are associated with most diseases on some level. It is the main contributor to fatigue and most digestive issues.
• Eat yellow and orange vegetables: Yellow and orange are the colors associated with the Earth element. Most yellow and orange foods support and strengthen digestive Qi. Acorn squash, butternut squash, delicata squash, pumpkin, carrots, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and yellow squash all strengthen and support digestive Qi. Sadly yellow and orange fruits do NOT have the same function. Oranges, tangerines, cantaloupe, and other citrus fruits are cooling in nature and are better at draining summer heat. Anything cooling in nature can be hard for the organs of digestion to assimilate.
• Sip hot water: Sipping hot water first thing in the morning before you ingest anything else as well as throughout the day is a great way to keep the lymphatic system healthy and clear.
• Find a Health Balance Between Being Overly Productive and Overly Lethargic: If you find yourself being overly productive, practice awareness of that. See if you can slow down and do less, even if it’s just a little bit. If you find yourself overly lethargic, practice awareness of that. See if you can do a little something, even if it’s small, like a 10 minute walk.
• Structure and Routine Benefits Earth Types: Just like have a routine with meal times, creating structure and routine in your day is helpful. This can help balance feeling overly productive or overly lethargic. Wake up and go to bed at around the same time every day. Create a routine with exercise. Creating routines for each season can be fun such as waking up earlier in the springtime or going to bed earlier in the fall and winter.
• Radical Self-Care: The Earth element asks all of us to take such good care of our precious body and its vital Qi. Eating the right foods, getting plenty of rest, sleeping well, and having a healthy exercise routine should be a part of every day. Taking time out of our day to stretch, breathe, and take a little break is important. Giving ourselves time and attention is important. Seeking out healers and therapists when we need them is important too.
• Yoga, Qi Gong, Tai Ji: Everyone would benefit greatly from a regular practice of either yoga, Qi Gong, or Tai Ji. These forms of exercise create strength and flexibility. They balance, harmonize, and strengthen Qi. Yoga, Qi Gong, and Tai Ji strengthen our connection to the peace, joy, and love inherent within. They weaken the habitual mental and emotional patterns which block us from experiencing our connection to peace, joy, and love.