The Five Elements: TCVM's Map for Pet Health

Dr. Josie Beug and I sat in the same room for this one, which changes the energy of a conversation more than people realize. We've talked before (that episode is linked to her guest profile on the podcast website), but this time I wanted her to just teach me. She's been practicing Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine for over 20 years, and one thing she said early on has stuck with me since: Chinese medicine isn't something you read a book about and check off. It's a lifelong practice. So consider this your entry point, not the finish line.

Listen to the full episode here

Why holistic medicine needs an actual framework, not just a supplement rotation

Here's the problem Dr. Josie named that I think explains so much of the overwhelm in this space: most of what gets called "holistic" right now isn't actually built on any coherent framework. It's a good diet plus whatever the next trending modality is. Acupuncture, then ozone therapy, then fecal transplants, then homeopathy, each one gets adopted as a bolt-on tool, still being evaluated through a Western, reductionist lens (what's this doing biochemically?) rather than through any underlying theory of the body itself.

She traced that reductionist lens back to Descartes, the French philosopher who split physical, material reality from anything spiritual or energetic. Western science ran with the material side of that split about as far as it can go: tissues, cells, DNA, monoclonal antibodies, down to the atom and now into quantum physics, where, interestingly, the material and energetic pictures start to blur back together again. Traditional Chinese medicine never made that split in the first place. It grew out of Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist tradition, treating the physical and energetic body as one continuous system from the start. That's the actual value of TCVM as a framework: not one more modality in the rotation, but a genuinely different lens for looking at the whole picture, which is coincidentally what "holistic" is supposed to mean in the first place.

This connects directly to something Greg Tilford said on the podcast the day before this recording (small world, they know each other): a lot of people in the holistic space are quietly anti-allopathic, and that's not actually holistic either. Dr. Josie put it in her own clinical terms: she's not anti-drug. She reaches for antibiotics when a dog has hemorrhagic gastroenteritis and needs the bleeding stopped before it turns septic. Prednisone has its place for a flare that needs controlling now, even while Chinese herbs work in parallel underneath it. Holistic means using every real tool with intention, not refusing half your toolbox on principle.

Where she does draw a hard line is anything genetically modified, and she was direct about why, straight from a TCVM lens. In her words:

That's Dr. Josie's clinical philosophy, built on 25-plus years of TCVM practice: Jing is treated as the deepest, most foundational layer of the body in this framework, and her position is that it warrants that level of caution before anything gets to touch it.

A quick, honest note on bioresonance testing

We got into bioenergetic and bioresonance testing here too, since I've worked on developing one of these tests myself. Dr. Josie's caution is worth repeating plainly: this is a real field, frequency and wavelength measurement has legitimate history behind it, but it only works when a trained practitioner is interpreting the results in context, alongside everything else going on with that animal. It is not something you can mail a hair sample to a stranger for and get back a supplement prescription with any real meaning. If a company's entire business model is send-us-your-pet's-hair-we'll-mail-you-pills, that's not the modality working, that's the modality being used as a sales funnel. A genuinely good bioresonance reading should mostly be pointing a skilled practitioner toward better questions, like which foods to eliminate in a trial, not replacing that clinical relationship entirely.

Get the Wild Wellness Pet Bioenergetics test kit for your dog (or cat) and get a special discount when you bundle a report review from me, using TCVM of course! 

Your dog is reading you constantly, and it's not mystical, it's observable

This is the most immediately useful part of the conversation for daily life. Dr. Josie spent eight years working in animal shelters, watching how dogs communicate with each other through extremely subtle body language: shoulder bumps, tail flicks, eye glances. Norwegian trainer Turid Rugaas built an entire, now widely used framework out of documenting this, cataloging around two dozen distinct "calming signals" dogs use to defuse tension and communicate reassurance, not just with each other, but with us too (On Talking Terms with Dogs, Turid Rugaas).

Her point: dogs are reading these same signals off of us constantly, whether we're transmitting them on purpose or not. If your muscles are tight while you're restraining or handling your dog, they feel the exact moment you relax. If you're anxious about leaving the house and trying not to "make it a big deal" out loud, your dog already knows, because your body told them two days ago. Wild canines live in pack structures where certain members handle surveillance so the rest of the group can actually relax, and our dogs are still wired to look to us for that same signal: is it safe to play, or is it time to be on alert? An anxious household reads as an unsafe one, regardless of what you say out loud.

The fix she described isn't a supplement. It's consistency and groundedness. Her Siberian husky came in terrified of thunderstorms and worked through it in about four months with nothing more than calm routine and predictable structure. A recently adopted goldendoodle went from bouncing off the walls, unable to hold still long enough to hear a "sit," to lying calmly on his bed waiting for her to come home, through routine, raw food, and consistent rules. Same lesson Dr. Katie gave in our last episode about advocacy: regulate yourself first, because your pet doesn't get the luxury of not absorbing what you're carrying.

The five elements, actually explained

Here's the framework itself, the Wu Xing, more accurately translated as the five processes or five transformations rather than static "elements." It's not a table of correspondences to memorize. It's a cycle, a flow, each stage generating the next.

Water is where it starts: pure potential, the essence of life itself, matching the biological story of life emerging from water. In TCVM, water governs the kidneys, and it represents both death and rebirth, the deep rest of winter, the season for going inward.

Wood comes from water, the moment a seed absorbs it and germinates, pushing both up and down at once (a plant's roots mirror its branches). Wood governs the liver, correlates to springtime, and represents rapid early growth, the energy of a puppy doubling in size within months.

Fire grows out of wood (literally, wood is fuel for fire). It governs the heart, connection, joy, and the body's metabolic and hormonal systems, what TCVM calls the Ming Men fire, essentially the body's pilot light. Developmentally, it's early adulthood: seeking connection, a mate, a place in the world.

Earth comes from fire's ash, building soil. It governs the spleen and stomach, digestion, nourishment, literally pulling qi out of food. Earth is also the caretaking, grounding phase: building a stable home, a family, a foundation. In the older classical model, earth actually sits at the center of the whole diagram rather than as a fourth compass point, because everything else depends on it, a structure that maps almost exactly onto the Native American medicine wheel.

Metal forms under earth's pressure and heat, the way ore and crystal form underground. It governs the lungs and large intestine: breathing in, and letting go of waste, which makes it as much an energetic principle as a physical one. Developmentally, it's autumn, the slowing-down, everything-means-more phase of later life.

And metal, cooling, creates condensation: water again. The cycle closes and restarts.

This framework holds up outside of Dr. Josie's telling of it, too. Standard TCVM veterinary literature maps the same five organ systems (liver/gallbladder to wood, heart/small intestine to fire, spleen/stomach to earth, lung/large intestine to metal, kidney/bladder to water) with matching seasonal and life-stage correspondences, and it's taught at accredited institutions offering TCVM certification to practicing veterinarians (Clinical Application of Yin-Yang and Five Elements Theory, VIN/WSAVA). This isn't fringe theory Dr. Josie invented. It's a documented, centuries-old diagnostic system still actively taught and used in integrative veterinary practice today.

What made this click for me: it's not just a chart, it's a living resonance you can build with anything. Dr. Josie has taught entire sessions mapping medicinal mushrooms to specific elements based on which ones support liver-and-growth energy versus heart-and-connection energy versus grounding, digestive energy. You can do the same exercise with herbs, foods, even colors and stones. It's less a rulebook and more a lens you learn to see through.

Where this lands: ReWilding, stated plainly

This is where the conversation folded directly into everything I've been building with ReWilding, and Dr. Josie said something that gave me actual chills recording it: we didn't just remove ourselves from nature, we brought our pets out of it right along with us. TCVM's entire five-element framework is, at its root, an instruction manual for living in sync with natural cycles rather than against them: eating with the seasons, resting when it's time to rest, growing when it's time to grow. That's ecological medicine as much as it is individual medicine.

Her read on why our pets matter so much in this moment, beyond companionship: she sees them as being on the front line of this reconnection, patient teachers absorbing what we're carrying and reflecting it back at us, whether that's an anxious nervous system or a genuinely calm and grounded home. Whatever language resonates with you for that (a soul contract, an energetic exchange, or just the very real, well-documented reality that our stress measurably transfers to our animals through tone and body language) the practical takeaway is the same: the work you do to regulate yourself and reconnect with a slower, more seasonal rhythm doesn't stop with you. It reaches the whole household, four-legged included.

This is exactly the thinking behind why we built our own bioenergetic sensitivity testing kit at Wild Wellness Pet. Dr. Josie's caution above about hair-test-to-supplement-funnel companies is exactly why we built ours the way we did: as a tool that reads your dog's energetic terrain, not a mail-order prescription pad. It's meant to point you and your practitioner toward better questions, in the same spirit as reading the five elements, gathering real information about where your dog's body is out of sync so you can actually address the root instead of guessing. If you want the fuller picture of how bioenergetic and at-home testing fits into a ReWilded approach to your pet's health, I broke it down in our guide to at-home tests for dogs.

Where to find Dr. Josie

Dr. Josie publishes her long-form writing on Substack at Dr. Josie's Substack, including a full series on the fundamentals: diet as foundation, vaccines, flea and tick prevention, heartworm, and how to walk into a conventional clinic prepared with the right questions. She's available for telehealth consults and second opinions on bloodwork and imaging, and she's currently developing a book out of a three-hour lecture series for the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association, reframing "preventative medicine" around living in sync with the five-element seasonal cycle rather than the conventional vaccine-and-supplement model.

Please give your pets some extra love from both of us this week.

Listen to the full episode here