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In 2002, Harry founded NES Health www.neshealth.com, a company dedicated to fostering a 21st - century system of healthcare based on the integration of physics and biology. Harry invented three health - related clinical technologies: the NES miHealth, Biotouch & Biosync. These endeavors grew out of his own research into... Read More
Gregory Eckel has spent the last 20 years developing and refining his unique approach to chronic neurological conditions. In addition to his experience in clinical practice using a combination of Naturopathic and Chinese Medicine, he has a deep personal connection with chronic neurological disease since his wife Sarieah passed of... Read More
- What are the 5 elements in Chinese Medicine? Why do they matter?
- Does living in accordance with them help with health?
- How are the emotions tied to this?
- Is there a way to measure our emotional state?
- Can we correct imbalances of the body this way?
Related Topics
Agitation, Anger, Balance, Bioenergetics, Breath Work, Chi, Chi Stagnation, Chinese Medicine, Core 5 Elements, Emotion Balancing, Emotional Energy, Emotional Health, Energy, Fear, Fire, Five Element Theory, Food, Grief, Harmony, Healing, Heart, Internal Alchemy, Irritability, Joy, Ki, Kidney, Liver, Lung, Mindset, Moving Energy, Qi, Restlessness, Sadness, Spleen, Stomach, Stress, WorryHarry Massey
Well today it’s role reversal. So me and Greg are here again however I’m interviewing Greg. So I don’t think you of us need in introducing given all the other videos in the summit, but if you didn’t know which I’m sure you probably do by now. So Dr. Greg is as well as being a naturopath. He’s also an expert in Chinese medicine and you know one of the fundamental sort of tenants in Chinese medicine is five element theory. And the reason we’re just doing this special little video and five element theory is because it’s something that’s relatively simple to learn for yourself. And, but it’s very, very applicable in day to day life. So it really actually just helps balance your energetics your life, et cetera, just knowing some of these principles. So I guess without further ado we could just go into the interview. So, well, Greg, like from TCM one on earth well actually is energy and Chi and like obviously people want energy on demand. And what do you actually mean by that?
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
You know, it is it’s Chi, right? Qi or Chi, or in Japanese, it’s K I Ki. It it’s energy. It’s esoteric. We’ve been talking bioenergetics for the whole summit. And you know, you know, when you don’t have energy, right it is the force that moves blood in Chinese medicine. It is life force, life energy. We, you can practice Chi gong. Chi is energy. Gong is work. You can do Thai Chi, which is very energy like increasing energy. So there are practices through time that have been developed to increase your internal alchemy or your energy. And then there is your energy, the Chi, and it’s always the Chi moves the blood in Chinese medicine. So there’s not one concept that stands alone there, which that, that then ties into this whole aspect of
Harry Massey
Maybe that’s no corn thing, because probably some of us in the west think that she is some pure like NG woo woo thing. But, but actually for the Chinese, it is actually all mixed in with like oxygenation nutrients movement.
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
Oh yeah. So there’s prenatal Chi and postnatal Chi prenatal Chi is what you parents gave you, your genetics postnatal Chi is what you’re putting into your mind what you’re putting into your body, what you’re doing with your body. So it is all inter it’s. It’s basically, it’s a really ornate, very well articulated system and it incorporates the biochemistry the physiology and the bioenergetics all into one. What I love about the system as well is it’s really mimicking nature, this component of how you let into the five elements and having some basic understanding of them and applying that to your life is, you know, it it is an, a natural procession of like mimicking nature. Nature is so ornate. It’s so complex. It’s so it’s so natural, right? I mean, things just flow when things are in nature they’re not thinking about how to be a tree, how to be a rock. They just are the same thing with us. People is when we start thinking about it, we get further away from the concept. So it’s just being in, in the state that we are, that that’s really the root for change for us
Harry Massey
And so what, what is actually the purpose of five element theory? Like is it basically to balance balance your energy? So, you know, your, your roughly in harmony with with your environment is that, is that the idea
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
That is, you know, there’s five, they’ve matched organs with emotions, with the directions, with the elements. And so, you know, I, I always start out with the heart the heart being the emperor or the empress. There’s no separation of mind and body in Chinese medicine it’s all heart centered medicine. And why I love that as a framework, the heart represented by the color red and the element of fire. So it’s, you know, burning with joy is is one way to think about that. But then you look at okay, the ashes create earth. And so, you know, we’ve get the spleen in the stomach is in the earth. And then at the core of the earth metal appears that’s the lung. And then from the lung, from the metal the core of the earth, we get the liver which is the season of spring.
And from the spring, it leads naturally into summer, back to the fires that happen in summer from the wood burning. So you have this natural transition between the elements you know, again, then as that tree burns it creates rich soil of the earth and it’s a never ending cycle. And then you have the different elements that overlap and and balance or control the other ones. When you look at the natural characteristics of the natural item, whether it be earth for spleen and stomach or metal for the lung kidney, I actually I passed over kidney, which is water that’s winter time. And out of the winter then comes the, the wood of the spring and the liver back to summertime. So it’s that endless natural cycle that we’ve got.
Harry Massey
Yeah. Maybe we should give an example. I mean, I could maybe give an example yeah. From, from this. Yeah. So this year got the dreaded C word, but we got the the dreaded C in, remember it was spring, I think April or so. And then anyway, we kept having like lung issues all year and, you know, I was very into juicing actually. And I didn’t realize juicing was putting all this cold into
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
Cold in damp, cold
Harry Massey
Into my body and damp to my body which was actually making, sorry, lung with God which is lung, sorry, metal. Yeah. So the metal was making my, you know it was blunting out my me my metal and actually the moment I stopped juicing and started having like, you know nice warm soups and brews, this cough went away actually. Yes. And so that’s just a little little example of how you can balance your elements if you if you have some knowledge about it.
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
Yeah. Another one, you know kind of a classic one is waking up at three in the morning in three, am it that every two hours the energy is in a different Meridian and the Meridian it’s the end of the energetic cycle, which is the liver. And then three to five is the beginning of the lung time. And that’s the beginning of the energetic cycle. So lung is the beginning of the energetic cycle. Liver is the end of the energetic cycle. So a lot of times people wake at 3:00 AM because they have this classic liver-lung block and between the liver and the lung because the liver actually will overact on the lung. When we look at the five element theory. So you can layer these concepts on each other which is really it, which is very indicative of the organization of the universe, basically. So that, you know, there’s these nuances like you mentioned different plants different foods have different energetic qualities that those flavors and qualities are associated with the different organ networks.
Harry Massey
Oh, I’ve, I’ve found it very helpful in, you know, actually like we, like, we, we actually cook our meals in reference to, to five elements and, you know, we have all these rest recipe books. So we like,
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
I love it
Harry Massey
…more recipes, but certain things or I’m a wood personality. So we’ll do a bit more wood. And, and obviously we’ve been doing some metal in the last few months as well, but how, how does it relate to emotions? Cause you know, that’s probably one of the most sort of predominant way it shows
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
For sure. So in the heart, I’m gonna start, I always start with the emperor or the empress and the heart. And that’s joy is the positive emotion there. Moving into the lung, you get into more grief or sadness, the melancholy of fall. Then you get into the kidney and fear, right? When somebody is in acute fear sometimes they’ll all of the energy will go down. They’ll like pee their pants. If it’s an extreme fear, then moving out of the water the kidneys with the fear you get into the liver which is worry or stress, aggravation, anger, you you get red with rage, that’s liver, fire rising. And then coming back outta the liver, coming back into back into the heart. And I, I skipped over the spleen and stomach, which is worry folks that are worried, have a lot of deficiencies. One of my teachers would call it a spleen chi deficiency. He would stand in the front of the room Dr. Tong, five foot, two Chinese professor of acupuncture in herbs and his, he, it it resonates with me, you know, with the the spleen chi deficiency in this high voice. And it’s a very big component in the, in the west, I think because of a lot of the worry that we do and, and components of the elements of food that we’re eating too.
Harry Massey
So how can you actually balance some of those promotions?
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
So depending on like, if you’re stuck in let’s say it’s sadness or grief we don’t do that well as a culture. So you look at well, what balances out from the lung? So the lung again, was the metal element comes out of the earth, the spleen in the stomach. From there, you have the heart, which is the fire that burnt the wood that created the earth. So you could actually the heart overacts on the lung. So you can create with more joy it will overcome the grief and the sadness to balance or control uncontrolled sadness or grief.
Harry Massey
Interesting.
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
If let’s go to the liver, because that’s another big imbalance of a, a wire pulse or a liver energy stagnation. Yeah.
Harry Massey
What, what overpowers frustration
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
Frustration will move
Harry Massey
The, the, the entrepreneurial emotion
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
Indeed. The big entrepreneurial emotions will movement really is one thing that will help move the energy because of a chi stagnation. So you, if you look at the liver again, so we go from liver to heart, which is the fire, which then goes to the earth which then goes to the metal, which then goes to water. So we go back to the metal that would be breath, work will move. The Chi breath is Chi or energy. So doing breath work and and clearing clearing the lung Meridian. So that’s a big one that will move over off of the agitation. A, you know, that irritability restlessness short fuse, along those lines.
Harry Massey
Easy. Are you able to share your screen by any chance?
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
Oh yes.
Harry Massey
Well, sorry. I wanna share my screen, but yes
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
Yes. Let me do that. Do that. Sorry about that.
Harry Massey
Perfect. So, you know what what’s been pretty pretty interesting is over the actually over the past couple of years, we’ve been we’ve been looking at the whole TCM pulse staff. Well, let me ask you this. So how, how do you at the moment detect someone’s pulses, like, you know and do a TCM diagnosis.
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
So through one, through voice scans through the nest platform, and then two I actually take their pulses, the three pulses on the right hand, three pulses on the left, the, the width the depth, the, the rate and rhythm of the pulse.
Harry Massey
Got you, got you. So in anyway, over the past couple of years, we basically well, we got a data scientist and we basically were like looking at the shape out of all of these TCM pulses. And you can see here that this looks like a normal pulse right? And this one here, that’s a, that’s a slippery slippery pulse. And you can see it’s a very distinct shape and very different from the normal pulse. And this like 30, this 13 of these pulses, like hued rapid soggy, flu, blah, blah, that, that basically we’re able to identify. And there’s very, basically, there’s very distinct maths that will describe the shape, the shape of those pulses which means dot, dot, dot we’re basically able to, well, we we’re basically able to detect it with algorithms. So you know what, that’s an old device. I should just put up that up for the camera. Ooh, that’s a that’s a new, that’s actually what, it looks like
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
The new gem.
Harry Massey
So, you know, that’s an old deck actually. And you know, it was pretty interesting. So from this fine element point of view we’ve basically taken, you know a bunch of these different pulses and then made correlations to the five elements. So that like, yeah, so we have like our, so with the emotions, for instance, so like fire is impatience. Well, it was joy. We, we made it, we made it gratitude, honestly because we wanted, we wanted something for people to focus on so they can focus on, on, on gratitude and anxiety to faith as the earth, one grief, connection, fear, courage frustration to, to decisiveness, but long, long, short base like wearable now can show where or different emotional states are. And they say in transformation, you know there’s like people get in a right, a right twist. I would say of, you know, like there’s a lot of spiritual philosophies where, you know people want all the philosophy want, you know there’s like be, be the change and like, and unique and get into this whole thing of like, well, you know I need to do this.
I need to do that. But really ultimately the, the simplest way of changing yourself is, is actually just through awareness because from awareness, you, you can, over time you get an understanding of your situations, you know how you’re interacting with, with other people. And then from that understanding like reality actually will just change you because you’ve gotta you’ve got a better understanding. So basically what, you know, what the wearable is doing it’s help, it’s helping to bring awareness to where your emotional state is. And then you can you know, then you can put more sort of understanding and thinking behind why you’re in that you know, why you might be in that state and interaction as well.
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
You know, that the component for how you have measured. I, I know I shared with you now, I’m gonna publicly share that I was a little upset because you know I’ve been studying pulses for 25 years and I’ve been like sitting at the feet of masters that lifetimes like they’re going ward to ward measuring pulses through their fingertips. And then during on
Harry Massey
The modern sites could do it for you.
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
I know in lickity split in, in with better accuracy, you know, be in, in the time of C0V!D of like trying to find a way into people’s living rooms in a healing way, not a creepy way but in a healing way and came across the nest system using that with the voice scan and then with the measurement of the pulses, with the pulses and some of the prototypes, it’s like, wow, this is eerily accurate. And actually does a better job. I will admit publicly than the the fingertips of a trained professional. It is really awesome. And I love the awareness component of it because where your attention goes when you become aware of your state it’s actually it’s way easier for you to change.
Harry Massey
Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, then we add these like we add these personalized meditations to help you know, to help, to help you shift from what’s this one here, it says courage. So like the opposite of courage is is fear so that this one’s helping to go from fear to courage with a meditation. And then with a little like haptic bias signature that’s basically giving a signal into your body. And then your autonomic nervous system Reno recognizes that signal. So like, if you’re not listening to the meditation your body will actually automatically recognize that. So if you get this tiny little thing, it’s like your autonomic nervous system will know that actually right. In that moment, you’re in fear and it help it. It just helps shift you to, to courage without you having to do some 20 minute meditation.
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
Lovely.
Harry Massey
So yeah, that’s, that’s energy that, yeah, well that’s the wearable and the five elements, which, you know which if, actually, if you’re listening to this summit be the first time that it’s actually available which is on energy4life.com with a number four
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
So energy, with the number four life, the number four. Love it. Perfect. Yeah, it is really I’m super excited that this is coming out and you’re sharing it with the world
Harry Massey
This, we have anything else to share private elements.
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
You know, I, I think just the component of I really love the system. It’s time tested. I like to say it’s more landscape or pastoral oriented in that it is about mimicking nature. And, you know, we like to think in the west, we’re up in the gray matter, not attached to the environment but ultimately it is our home, the biosphere. And so I love that. It really brings us home to ourselves and to the planet in its in a a whole system that has really survived the time test.
Harry Massey
Yeah. Yeah. And I also just want to add even though Craig publicly admits he publicly admits his fingers aren’t as good as the device. He does. He does have this wonderful amazing clinic there in park city. So if any, if any of you are passing through Utah or you know, wanna wanna have a, a healing holiday stay in a hotel and go, you know, well, why don’t you tell why don’t you tell people, Greg like some of the amazing things in your clinic, because honestly like people need to hear like you’ve done all this summit and honestly no one knows what you actually do. So yeah.
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
So I, I mean, you know, one, the root word of doctor is dosari teacher. I love the summits. I learned so much interviewing everyone and we are creating these nodes, these recharging centers it’s a wellness and recharging center be vital, a wellness and recharging center. It’s a love beaming, beacon of light it’s joyfilled providers and staff and patients thriving. And that’s the whole premise of how do we help folks get into brain and heart coherence, creating the more beautiful world they know and desire? Well, what does all of that mean? It’s very flourishy language, but we’re really here in the real world, making a difference for people moving the needle. It’s, you know, 30 plus years old folks that are just not into big pharma, Western medicine, hasn’t served you you’re looking for a different route. You want to do it more naturally. We’re working on all of the levels from physiologic biochemical to the bioenergetic and tying that all together with sound healing and laser activated and guided very small embryonic like stem cells. We do EEGs of the brain. We do longevity testing. We’ve got some really cool
Harry Massey
Hyper and-
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
We’ve got ozone saunas
Harry Massey
Let’s go toys.
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
We want, we do ketamine assisted psychotherapy. So check out the website we’re really into individualizing programs. We love working with groups of folks that want to create transfer.
Harry Massey
We do. We do. I say we, I mean it’s Greg’s clinic but we occasionally turn up for these like little group, like group healings, crystal ball sessions. Oh
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
Yes.
Harry Massey
It’s. And to give Greg some, well, Greg and me met at actually this mastermind where these like noble Laureate, the basically the like the top of the top of researchers, you know, meets and like share all the latest, latest information on, you know on health and keeping people alive. So like anyway, so Greg has a very, like he knows he knows all his medical and back backwards actually he’s at the cutting edge of the medical end but it’s say it’s this beautiful fusion of the energetic and the naturopath and say all his staff have, have a, have a lot of, a lot of love. So, you know, it’s it’s the only place it’s the only clinic I would go to and well, I happen to near live nearby. So that’s great.
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
It’s a very nice bonus. Thank you Harry, for the kind words. And you know, it really is, you know we need these recharging centers and these beacons of light to help recharge us as there’s more and more, you know, chaos and in, in our worlds. And so we’re really looking to help organize people, get us all into coherence, charge us up so we can share that with our communities, our loved ones and ourselves.
Harry Massey
Perfect. Well, I think with that, we will let everyone so it’s be vital and energy for life. They’re the two websites and brands for everyone, but thank you, Greg.
Greg Eckel, ND, LAc
Hey, thank you.
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