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Face Reading with Before & After Photos
Resources– Five Element Face Reading and Today’s Changing Faces
A Diagnostic Art
In Asia both doctors and common folk used Five Element Face Reading to see what’s going on under the skin. Without a stethoscope, they understood the significance of indicators, like facial discoloration, and could discern remedies and solutions. This Five Element template is fascinating, functional and universal in application.
Preventative Medicine with 2500 Years of Success
The Five Elements sprang from the common sense experience of our interrelatedness with our total environment. The Elements are Earth, Metal, Water, Wood and Fire. Each is identified by a color and represents the function of specific inner organs and it has numerous correlations including the season, flavor, activities and foods that either support or challenge its harmony.
This paradigm enables us to see patterns, make informed choices, and resolve health concerns. You can use the Five Elements to decode your health, emotional patterns and facial indicators.
Five Element Face Reading Correlated with Diet and Lifestyle
For five decades of health writing and face reading, I’ve relied on this paradigm (see my blog, How I Learned Face Reading). I track my clients’ transformations and the results can be astounding as you can see in Before and After client photos. I know of no one else using this approach.
Today some of our facial features differ from what was the historical norm. We increasingly see irregularities such as loss of eyelid tone, lack of lip border definition and color irregularities. Examine historical art and photography and you’ll note that such features were once rare.
Now here’s what’s exciting. With lifestyle upgrades targeted to your specific needs, discerned by using Five Elements, you can regain tone and an even complexion. So let’s lean on traditional Asian wisdom to understand what causes facial irregularities. But first, to put it into context, we’ll step back and look at the big picture.
The Hall of Mirrors
Despite our fervent wishes, there’s no super food, magic pill or tweaking one element to resolve health concerns. In other words, to regain a uniform complexion requires a balanced life-style and diet that’s healthy for you. With Face Reading and the Five Elements you’re not shooting in the dark. You’re not, for example, trying on a diet because it worked for your neighbor. With this template you clearly see underlying causes and apply targeted solutions. It’s both effective and measurable!
For example, while the Earth Element is about nurture, each of the other four elements provide specific digestive-related functions. Think in terms of a hologram. Or perhaps imagine looking into a hall of mirrors, and seeing endless layers of connectedness and nesting. Just as your stomach doesn’t work independently of your mouth and intestines, neither does any one element exist in a vacuum, each is in relationship with the others.
As a parallel, there are five major ways that our contemporary lifestyles are typically off kilter: diet, overwork, sleep issues, lack (or excessive) exercise and movement, or the inability to enjoy life’s simple pleasures. So If, for example, you have a perfect diet, but overwork (or have insomnia, or don’t exercise or rarely enjoy a good laugh) then both your appearance and your health will flounder. Each Element addresses one of these five critical necessities for our well being.
Which is another way of saying that health requires harmony between all Five Elements. Whatever your complaint, be it complexion or depression, to resolve it requires working with all of you and that’s where the Five Elements is a trustworthy guide.
Resources Establishing Changes In Contemporary Faces
Two studies reveal face shifts from the historical norm. In the 1930s a dentist, Westin A. Price, made a photographic record showing how a diet with refined foods alters the jaw structure. Price traveled the globe to compare elders who were raised on a traditional diet with their children who were eating white sugar, flour and refined oils. His dramatic photos illustrate the negative impact that foods can have on health and appearance. Check them out at www.WestinAPrice.org.
Are You Crooked? includes a photographic comparison of faces from the last century with contemporary faces. While today’s faces commonly display crooked smiles and strabismus (lazy eye), these features are rarely found a few generations ago. Forrest Macready, the author, theorizes that immunization side effects are literally changing our faces. His book and YouTube presentation, Are Your Crooked? offer a compelling case.
Academic Literature
Numerous studies have explored the relationship between skin texture and color as cues for perceiving a person’s health and attractiveness. One such example comes from the Journal of Experimental Psychology. 1
But do facial characteristics accurately reflect health? In personal correspondence with one researcher, Dr. Alex Jones wrote: “The current thinking in the academic world is that faces do not reflect much in the way of actual health, but there is a lot about faces that make them look healthy or unhealthy. The question is whether those things accurately reflect health or not – the answer at the moment seems to be no, but there is great variation in the way ‘health’ is measured and defined.”2
In significant contrast, face reading is included in the corpus of academic literature on Asian diagnostic techniques. For example when a yellow color appears on the face its significance depends upon various factors including: location, clarity and color intensity (from pale yellow to orange-yellow). Also the tone of the yellow skin is assessed: is it moist, sallow, swollen or withered looking. “A clear and moist yellow colour in between the eyebrows indicates that the Stomach-Qi is recovering after an illness affecting the Stomach and Spleen.”3
It’s true, “moist, pale-yellow colored skin above the lip” doesn’t read like a lab analysis. But it terms of track record, Five Elements’ success is irrefutably valid. Perhaps one day there will be scientific studies of facial characteristics that employ the Five Elements. Until that time, you can observe for yourself and chart a course that’s relevant to you.
Popular Face Reading Resources
Multiple popular Face Reading books and materials are available that focus on personality, relationships, spirituality and wealth potential. Two tradition-based examples are Lillian Bridges’, Face Reading in Chinese Medicine and Jean Hanner’s, The Wisdom of Your Face. Bridges’ book includes one chapter of face reading for health but her focus is personality-based.
I invite you to explore my blogs to note the correlation between facial indicators and health. I also invite you to explore the Five Element paradigm as an effective holistic tool.
1 2016 American Psychological Association Human Perception and Performance 0096-1523/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000219 2016, Vol. 42, No. 9, 1354–1362.
2 Email correspondence with Dr. Alex Jones, Department of Psychology, College of Human Health Sciences, Swansea University
3 Giovanni Maciocia. The Foundations of Chinese Medicine. Churchill Livingston, NY: 1989.