A Terrific Book on Personality Types

     I know that I covered the five Chinese personality types a few weeks ago, but if you want to know more, I found a terrific book.  It is The Five Elements of Self-Healing: Using Chinese Medicine for Maximum Immunity, Wellness, and Health by Jason Elias and Katherine Ketcham.  If you want to understand more about your personality type, along with your physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges, this book is for you.

     What I found most helpful in this book is its conversational style.  Rather than very detailed charts and graphs, along with more technical medical jargon, this book presents its material with easy-to-read description and plenty of examples, gleaned from patients' and the authors' lives.

     After a long questionnaire, the authors describe the five personality types according to Chinese medical tradition.  Here, they call the Wood type "The Commander," the Fire type "The Lover," the Earth type "The Peacemaker," the Metal type "The Artist," and the Water type "The Philosopher."  They also presented a chapter on personality types with two almost equal domains, such as Metal-Water or Fire-Metal. 

     One of the "aha" moments I had was when the book, in passing, finally answered a nagging question I've had all along:  What about the air element?  Most other traditions call the (usually four) elements fire, water, earth, and air.  The Chinese tradition doesn't name air as a specific element.  However, I found that the Metal element is described as a mountain filled with gems which reaches for the sky (air!) and is the domain for the lungs (more air!).  No doubt you already figured that out.