Alternative Medicine Works

The Five Elements are a comprehensive template that organizes all natural phenomena into five master groups or patterns in nature. Each of the five groups—Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water—include categories such as a season, a direction, climate, stage of growth and development, internal organ, body tissue, emotion, aspect of the soul, taste, color, sound . . . the categories are seemingly limitless. The Five Elements reflect a deep understanding of natural law, the Universal order underlying all things in our world.

It provides a master blueprint that diagrams how nature interacts with the body and how the different dimensions of our being impact each other. When studying the Five Element Framework it is important to emphasize that this multi-dimensional view of life offers a diagnostic framework to recognize where imbalances—body, mind, emotions, and spirit lie. The Five Elements include the internal organs, and the interconnected relationships between them.

Western Herbal Medicine (WHM) is a clinical practice of healing using naturally occurring plant material or plants with little or no industrial processing. Medicines or extracts from crude plant material, such as root, bark, and flower, are used in multiple plant formulations to treat persons with disease and dysfunction and to promote health and well-being.

WHM is a title recently used to differentiate herbalism based on Anglo-American traditional herbal medicine from other systems of herbal medicine such as Ayurveda or Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Representing varied and diverse groups of practitioners, WHM is also referred to as traditional Western herbalism, herbal or botanical medicine, medical herbalism and phytotherapy. WHM is practised in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and Western Europe.