Think of the wind bending a bamboo. Start with being fully rigid, then relax just enough to allow for bending, but always with enough tension to snap back like a bow, or a wooden ruler or a cane. (ahh, school days!) Wood has its own way of moving, of holding tension and that is what the Tao Te Kung Fu Wood form is specifically looking to encourage.
The Wood Element also represents different times in one’s life as we move through different cycles. It is associated with Spring, the time when new shoots begin to push their heads up through the soil. All vegetation is represented by the Wood Element. Wood suggests the creative principal, the feminine principal, and new beginnings of all kinds.
Yin Wood represents growth and development; the strength that it takes for a new shoot to push up through the ground, a chick needs to break through the hard shell of an egg, or a baby needs to come out into the world. Notice that these are all apparently weak things, but their strength is subtle and sufficient for their needs. No one needs to work hard at making a plant grow; it is enough to put it in the right environment and its own energy will do the rest. The greatest and most profound endeavours require only the seed with its own energy and the right environment.
Yang Wood represents the planting of the seed, the moment of conception, the essence of creation. These require your intention, a drive to create, to produce, to grow. Everything that happens needs a beginning, a moment of decisive action.
Wood periods are a time for healing, for helping others, for beginning projects and a time for initial growth both personally and professionally.
Wood nourishes fire, and is nourished by water. This is quite obvious.
Wood is controlled by metal and controls earth. Picture an axe cutting into a tree and a root of a tree working into a crack in a rock and breaking it slowly.
Let me contextualise these ideas a bit. A strong emotional augment will tend to override the slow steady growth of an idea. Fire, or an impassioned action or drive, wants instant results and doesn’t care what it burns up, even though, once the immediate fuel has gone, its drive will soon dissipate. Water is patient, looses none of its drive when it has to pause, like when a river is damned, because it has actual mass. Water, by always adapting and being flexible will find a way, so, expressed as an attitude, it feeds your new endeavours and helps them grow.
Imagine if the seeds planted are weeds and the seeds of negative ideas have grown in your mind to choke and tangle up your thinking. The sharp, precise, wise words of advice from an expert therapist, can cut to the heart of a problem, (metal represents skills that have taken time and hard work to create, so that their finely honed edge requires little effort to cut with). Wood can control stone in that a seed of an idea planted in the cracks of an attitude that is belligerent and rock like, will slowly grow, breaking it open. Or soil (another aspect of stone) when freshly turned will be covered in new green shoots surprisingly quickly. Nature abhors a vacuum whether it is tilled earth of or a gap in a market or the loss of a cultural entertainment. New ideas and endeavours will invariably arise opportunistically.
