The Five Elements of Relationships with Dr. Vicki Matthews

In this episode, we're talking about the Five Elements of Relationships with Dr. Vicki Matthews, who wrote a book on that subject. She is a naturopathic physician and outspoken voice for alternative healing and change, who has used the Five Elements model from Traditional Chinese medicine to help people improve their lives, health, and relationships. During the episode, Dr. Matthews explains what the five elements are, and how we can use them to understand ourselves and others, so we can better relate to each other. On this episode of the Live. Love. Engage. podcast: What prompted Dr. Matthews to become a naturopathic physician The difference between naturopathic and traditional medicine How Dr. Matthews began to apply the 5 elements of Chinese medicine to relationships What the 5 elements are and how they relate to personalities How we can use our primary element to best advantage Dr. Matthews explains why there's so much conflict in the world today Why it's important to play to your strengths Dr. Matthews shares a commonly held belief she disagrees with The benefits of seeking relationship counseling Connect with Dr. Vicki Matthews Dr. Matthews’ website: vickimatthews.com Quick Links: Join the Live. Love. Engage. Community Intuitive Business Coaching The Live. Love. Engage. Book Support the Podcast with BuyMeACoffee.com Enjoying what you're hearing on Live. Love. Engage.? Subscribe on Goodpods or your favorite podcast platform, and click here to leave a 5 STAR Review. You can also watch the conversation on YouTube. TRANSCRIPT Gloria Grace Rand Namaste, I am Gloria Grace Rand and I'm delighted to be with you again for another edition of Live Love, engage, and I've got a wonderful guest with us today. We've been just having a little chat before we get started, and I am delighted to welcome Dr. Vicki Matthews to the show. Dr. Vicki Matthews It's great to be here. I'm so excited. Gloria Grace Rand Yeah, I am too. Cuz when I saw, um, what you are all about, I was like, Ooh, okay, this sounds good. I wanna, I wanna have her on the show to talk about what she's gonna talk about, which I'm gonna tell you about in a minute. So , so let me tell you who she is. She is a naturopathic physician and outspoken voice for alternative healing and change. And she's even appeared on Oprah show, not once, but twice. I might have to ask you about that later. Um, and is the author of book a new book called The Five Elements of Relationships, how to Get Along With Anyone, Any Time, any place. And boy is it a timely time for you to have that book out because, oh, it just seems like the last few years just, it's just gotten harder and harder for people to get along anymore. Um, so we're gonna dive into that in a minute because I really do wanna understand what those elements are and everything. But I always like to ask our guests to start off with, um, sharing a little bit about their journey and, and, you know, what led you to become a naturopathic physician for, for one thing and, and, and how you've then wound up becoming an author as well. Dr. Vicki Matthews Okay. Well, I was, I, I'm a bit of a science nerd. I've always been a bit of a science nerd. And as an undergrad I was a premed major and I lived, I lived, I grew up in California, so I was doing this at ucla and, um, it became clear to me that I probably wasn't going to be popular in medicine . So, because I was kind of, I mean, I grew up in California, I had alternative views on things. So I then through family circumstances, um, my father had a stroke and my mother moved the whole family back to the Midwest, which was where both my parents were from. And I walked into this small little college like, hi, I'm from ucla, California. Cool. I'm a psychobiology major. And the guy looked at me and said, right, we have biology and psychology, you pick. So my, my undergraduate degree is psychology, which has was fascinating. Dr. Vicki Matthews I loved it. And then I went on, uh, to, I decided I'd like to eat and make money. So I, when I went to graduate school, instead of going to years and years and years of med school, I could go to University of Chicago and get a degree in a master's in business in mba in marketing and consumer behavior and make money. So that was really cool. And that was where I met my husband. And so it was, it was kind of a turn right, turn left, turn right, turn left type of journey. And, um, but it all worked out. I, I, I don't begrudge any of it at all. It was a wonderful experience, all my education and, and actually then I've gone back and gotten, I did finally go back and get a naturopathic degree because I really did have a passion for medicine. And in fact, on, on surveys when it says education for me, my husband puts in too much . It's like . So I love learning. I give, that's really what it comes down to is I love learning. Gloria Grace Rand Absolutely. Okay. Explain a little bit about what is the, what makes a naturopathic physician different from like a regular, you know, medical doctor, Dr. Vicki Matthews (03:28): Medical doctor, other than the training, it's two totally different sets of training. Um, all the anatomy, the biology, the pH, all the basics are the same. But a naturopath will use natural ways to heal the body. It's, it's one of the biggest way to describe it is we don't violate the barrier and the boundary and the protective layer of the skin. We don't do surgery, we don't do shots. We work with the internal organs through herbs or homeopathy or water therapies or things like that. Uh, letting the body, helping and supporting the body in healing itself rather than, um, interventions that are more radical than we would be comfortable doing. That said, if I'm hit by a bus, take me to the hospital. You know, it's, it's . Um, but I will tell you I have worked with a lot of cancer patients and have a pretty high success rate with cancer patients. Dr. Vicki Matthews Uh, but, but I'm coming at it from an emotional, mental, spiritual and physical perspective, like the whole person. And that's actually how I got into relationships because when I was working with my cancer patients, when you talked about emotions, almost all the upheavals were in the relationships. So I had to kind of figure out how, what can I bring to the party for them that will help with the stabilize the relationship so their emotions are stabilized so that they can heal. And, uh, that actually came from, uh, discovering the whole five element model as part of my naturopathic studies and realizing that their personalities embedded in that model. And because the model predicts interaction between each element, those interactions hold between each personality. So I had, um, practiced it on my husband quite a bit. Gloria Grace Rand Nice to have a Guinea pig in the house for this. Absolutely. Dr. Vicki Matthews And it was, it, it was a, the book, the, my book starts with a story of being my husband and I got married, graduated, and moved all on the same weekend. Oh. And you know, nothing like getting it all condensed. Mm-hmm. . And then we were driving to one of my, from Chicago back out to LA to my best friend's wedding. And we were driving through the Mojave Desert, and I don't know if you've ever been in the Mojave Desert, but it is nothing but sand and rocks, rocks, sand, nothing, no highway patrolman, nobody. And my husband was going the speed limit. And I'm like, you're going the speed, can we speed this up? And he looked at me like I had four heads and it's like, we're going the speed limit. So my, my little bride's heart went, oh my God, what have I done? Dr. Vicki Matthews Who have I married? I mean, I love this guy, but he sounds like a colossal jerk. I would be speeding through the dust, you know? So when I discovered the five element model and the personalities in it, it's like, oh my god. Of course, that makes such sense. One of the personalities is metal and they follow the rules. They're process oriented, detail oriented. Laws are laws for a reason. I, on the other hand, am a wood, which is a cowboy. It's like, let's just do it bigger, better, more. Let's get it going here. People . So it was, it's, it's been a journey to work out the dynamics between us and make it work. But we've been married a very long time, so it's working, Gloria Grace Rand I guess so. Well, so you mentioned two of the, two of the five elements already. So metal wood, what, what are the other three? Dr. Vicki Matthews Okay, the five elements from, and this goes back millennia. This is a model theChinese developed as part of Chinese medicine, actually. It's a way that they move through the body, but we're just gonna talk about the personalities. So it's water, which kind of relates to winter. So inner directed, quiet, um, and we could talk about each of the personalities more in depth if you'd like. Then wood, which is spring. So we're doing a seasonal movement through a year. So wood is spring, that's buds bursting through barks, spring animals coming out from hibernation. So emerging making, you know, an appearance sort of thing. The next is fire, which is summer. So it's out there, fire people are fun, gregarious, let's outgo, let's be, you know, do fun things. And that's summer. And then we're gonna skip earth for a second and we're gonna go to metal, which is fall, autumn, beginning to close down, beginning to look inside, looking back on the cycle and saying, what did we learn? Dr. Vicki Matthews What do we want to keep, what do we want to let go of letting go sits in the metal element and we can, um, we can learn a lot from metals because they have, they are the historians of the group. So they can say, this worked, this didn't, why would you do this again? And then we're coming back to earth. Earth is balance....