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WOOD THE TRAILBLAZER

If you scored highest in Wood traits on your assessment and have confirmed that your results are accurate, then Wood is your primary archetype.

When Wood is your primary archetype, your bold determination directs the way you interact with your environment. You share the gifts of perseverance, grit, independence, and freedom with the world.

Primary Woods are the first people in line to explore unchartered territory. They’ll show up at the airport on a Friday afternoon with no luggage, eager to choose a flight for an unplanned weekend adventure. They’re the quarterback who relentlessly drives the ball down the field, nimbly cascading past every obstacle in his way until he reaches the goal. Wood types can also be the coach of the high school basketball team who stands by his team through thick and thin, refusing to give up on his players. He pushes them forward when the score tips in the competition’s favor and reminds them with gusto that they can do this!

Wood is the desire to dive headfirst into a heated debate on a controversial topic and the moxie to defend a position when challenged. Wood is about not giving up, especially in the face of difficulty.

Primary Wood types motivate you and fuel your ideas until they come to fruition. They focus more on getting things done quickly rather than perfectly, but Woods know how to get you moving when you feel immobilized by worry or fear.

Also considered to be the “advocates” in friendships, Wood types make sure you’re protected and mentor you to become strong and self-reliant. Seeing you succeed is deeply satisfying to them and emboldens their own sense of self-worth.

The Wood archetype, also known as “The Trailblazer,” is associated with leadership, self-determination, and perseverance, meaning that people who are primary Woods will often seek out challenges and enjoy them, as well as perform well under pressure. On the flip side, their typical lifestyle challenges revolve around learning to appreciate the value in pausing and taking the time to nurture a plan or an idea and overcoming the frustration of feeling restricted in their pursuits, perspectives, and convictions.

Even if Wood is not your primary archetype, you will still have some amount of Wood in your nature, so in order to achieve and maintain harmony throughout your lifetime, take note of where your Wood ranks among the other four archetypes and practice the skills that help keep the Wood in your nature strong. The long-term maintenance practices beginning on page 85 will help you both optimize your primary archetype and harmonize, as well as provide a firm foundation of resilience in the face of stress. If Wood is your primary, practicing your long-term maintenance activities will naturally allow you to more easily pause in the face of quickly escalating feelings of anger when you’re stressed and will increase your ability to move forward with goals and projects. If Wood is your lowest, practicing these activities will naturally help you curb self-defeating thoughts and empower you with more drive to push through difficulties.

When Wood Is Your Primary Archetype

If Wood is your primary or is tied as one of your primaries, then this chapter applies most directly to you.

As a primary Wood, your enthusiasm to achieve higher heights and explore uncharted territory is unmatched. You have unencumbered access to bravery and gumption. When you’re on top of your game, your friends, family, and community regard you as the courageous one to turn to when something needs to get done. You’re a survivor, pushing forward to reach goals regardless of obstacles and consistently encouraging those around you to do the same.

Primary Wood types live their highest spiritual purpose through teaching and coaching others to realize their own ambitions. With fastidious care and sustained attention, they engage with others to encourage them on their chosen path to success. They demonstrate how to move through real and perceived obstacles along life’s journey. Wood types at their absolute best also want to express to others that spending time focusing on what’s wrong instead of what’s possible can hold you back from living a great life. Woods hope that, as a result of these efforts, others will begin to model the ability to push through negative thinking and attain their dreams by emulating what the Wood archetype illustrates for them.

Primary Wood types who feel grounded, self-aware, and secure in who they are will embody distinct traits in their physical, mental, and spiritual being. Physically, Wood types appreciate and enjoy regular exercise. Mentally, Wood types are excellent at planning and achieving goals. Spiritually, Wood types embody and share the gift of freedom to choose compassion even when tensions are high and emotions are difficult to control.

When your primary archetype is Wood, you’ll exhibit specific inherent capabilities and attitudes. These patterns persist and are expressed in your personal behaviors, the self-care activities you favor, and the way others perceive you.

Here are some basic Wood archetype indicators to be aware of: When feeling resilient, a primary Wood is a survivor, pushing forward to reach goals, regardless of obstacles, and consistently encouraging those around her to do the same. On the other hand, when feeling insecure, the Wood type experiences strong feelings of frustration and anger and becomes acutely sensitive to criticism.

This is why it’s important for Woods to recognize when it’s time to self-regulate, rather than react in a maladaptive manner when faced with challenge. Sometimes we become so caught up in our dysfunctional thoughts and belief patterns that we can’t easily distinguish between rightful action and reactive behavior. To help them make that distinction and more quickly notice reactive thoughts and behaviors, primary Wood archetypes should be on the lookout for times when they:

The ultimate outcomes I hope you achieve as a result of practicing the Five Archetypes method as a primary Wood are twofold: self-empowerment and empathy for others. I want you to strengthen your personal resolve and know your unique brand of Wood-centered resilience so you can exercise it in the face of friction and conflict. When life’s influences and forces lead you toward choices and behaviors that feel most Wood-type comfortable, like pushing your agenda without listening to others’ feelings, I want to you have the awareness to pause and recognize that your comfort zone is not always your sacred path. With time and patience, you will establish a foundation of insight and understanding about how to maintain your Wood individuality while simultaneously empathizing with and meeting the needs of those around you.

When Wood Is Your Secondary Archetype

If Wood is your secondary archetype, it modifies your primary way of engaging in the world, meaning Wood behaviors and proclivities more often reveal themselves within your character than your lower three archetypal traits, but not as much as your primary traits.

For instance, as a secondary Wood, you may notice that Wood-specific challenges, such as impediments to moving quickly and unpleasant critiques of your work, can irk you intensely. These Wood-typical challenges won’t chronically provoke you in the way that the ones associated with your primary will, but you will likely notice times when you have Wood needs you want met and Wood frustrations you seek to avoid. Arm yourself with the Wood knowledge in this chapter so you have access to Wood-balancing activities when the need arises.

Here are some archetype-based traits you may notice in yourself or others who are secondary Woods:

When Wood Is Your Lowest Archetype

Knowing that Wood is your lowest archetype sheds light on the archetype-based skills that may be harder for you to access overall. The scarcity of Wood will be more obvious to you in times of stress or when you feel stuck and unable to easily move past disappointment.

If Wood is your lowest archetype, you may not like to exercise regularly. You may also have difficulty envisioning a positive future resolution to your challenges, ranging from the most manageable to the more convoluted and gnarled of predicaments. With lowest Wood, speaking up for yourself can also be incredibly anxiety-inducing, so you may find yourself remaining in unpleasant situations longer than you’d like. Additionally, people who score lowest in Wood may spend more time panicking or overthinking their issues rather than moving quickly into outlining a strategy for solving them. Those with lowest Wood may also believe focusing on their own needs is improper, and they could have a difficult time sharing honest pride in their own achievements.

Having an awareness of your lowest archetype, however, can show you where you need to focus your energy so you can start building overall resilience to daily stress. Recognizing that Wood is your lowest archetype and doing the work to increase your Wood traits will propel you to build more rewarding interpersonal relationships, speak up for yourself when the need arises, and improve your ability to get out of situations that don’t serve you.

THE FIVE ARCHETYPES METHOD

Optimization

The Five Archetypes method begins with optimization, a process that comprises three steps, which remain the same no matter which archetype is your primary. They are:

  1. Recognize your primary archetype’s strength and stress states.
  2. Understand your primary archetype’s individual needs for safety.
  3. Achieve balance within your primary archetype.

As a result of optimizing your primary archetype, you will cultivate more empathy and compassion—for yourself and others—and replace old, ineffectual patterns with empowerment. You will embody stability and security in the face of upset. Optimization will also give you elegance and agility at times when you’re feeling powerless or tossed about like a rudderless sailboat in response to unpredictable and unstable circumstances—and help you navigate those unchartered waters with more grace and stability.

Step One: Recognizing Wood’s Strength and Stress States

When your Wood archetype is balanced, you will notice that it contributes the strengths of perseverance, grit, independence, and freedom to your life, to your relationships, and to the broader community.

A balanced Wood also helps us:

We create courage and clarity in our lives and in the lives of others when we have unfettered access to the positive aspects of our Wood archetype. But sometimes Wood can become unstable, stressed, and unavailable to us. Luckily, Wood gives us warning signs to help us know when this is happening.

Stressed Wood manifests as:

At its core, recognizing your strong and stressed Wood dispositions in Step One is about shifting how you use your time. Unbalanced Wood types have a tendency to rush through life hoping everything goes well and nothing gets in the way of ticking off all the items on their to-do list. In such a state, Wood types are more likely to ignore the early signs of internal stress and relationship problems. However, early detection allows us to stave off issues well before they grow into turbulent, painful situations.

Step One in the optimization process invites you to make time to notice subtle clues that may direct you to course-correct or perhaps stay right where you are and move a little faster toward your goal.

Start practicing this step by recognizing and tracking your Wood stress and strength states. Recognizing asks you to look and observe, not judge and criticize. There is no right or wrong, good or bad in these states. They’re your teachers. They help you know what type of action to take so you continue to develop internal strength and expand healthy relationship skills. So just notice things like whether you openly listened to your colleague’s opinion of your work or quickly reacted to argue in support of your perspective. Become aware of when you’re trying to plow through challenges without evaluating them. Familiarize yourself with these lists, and remember to simply pay attention to your Wood tendencies.

Once you get used to noticing when and how your Wood states make themselves apparent in your daily life, you may also choose to track these symptoms or challenge states. Many people are pleasantly surprised at how easy it becomes to take more control over their less pleasant states and to self-regulate just by taking a moment to notice themselves throughout the day.

Over time, you may surprise yourself by spotting patterns of thoughts and behaviors you usually miss when rushing through your day. When you slow down and take the time to notice your Wood states, you may become aware that your stress thoughts and behaviors always reach a peak around certain people in your life. You may notice that when you hear critiques of your work, you jump into feelings of anger quite quickly when you never really realized you did that before. You may also start to become cognizant of the fact that when you speak up in a group, you spend more time talking about your own achievements than about those of others around you. In those moments, you may appreciate how your heightened awareness of yourself also contributes to your ability to notice the impact your thoughts, behaviors, and predilections have on other people.

Step Two: Understanding Wood’s Needs for Safety

You now know how Wood looks and feels when it’s strong and when it’s stressed, but let’s take a look at why primary Woods get stressed out in the first place.

As Dr. Cowan teaches in the Tournesol Kids #PowerUp program—a nonprofit we created together to teach parents, teachers, and kids the skills for self-awareness, self-regulation, and empathy—we only experience our stress states when our particular needs for safety are not met. Our individual needs for feeling secure correspond directly to our primary archetype. Just as Wood’s strength and stress conditions are unique, so are the particular needs a primary Wood requires to feel balanced and avoid feeling too much stress.

For example, you’ll see in the list below that primary Wood people require forward movement, potential, and adventure in their lives. When Wood types go too long without these needs being met, their stressed behaviors and feelings begin manifesting. However, it’s up to them to recognize which of their needs are not being met and to make a plan to bring action, challenge, and freedom back into their lives. If primary Woods were to expect others to meet their needs for challenge and speed, they would be setting themselves up for disappointment, which leads to anger and frustration toward themselves and toward the people they think “waste my time and hold me back.” Ultimately, expecting others to fulfill your needs for you only drives a wedge in your relationships and stokes emotions that make it difficult for you to access your inherently trailblazing Wood strengths.

This is why I’ve created a “needs list” for primary Woods, inspired by what I’ve learned from Dr. Cowan, so you as a Trailblazer can better understand your specific needs and avoid getting stuck in destructive situations. Recognizing and meeting your individual needs for safety will help you feel strong, confident, and motivated to take good care of yourself and your relationships.

NOTE: If Wood is not your primary archetype, you can still refer to this Wood’s Needs List to better understand and empathize with the primary Wood people in your life. The more skilled you become at empathizing with the needs of others, the more success you’ll have in your interpersonal relationships. For more information on how to more harmoniously interact with the other Wood types in your life, turn to page 81.

WOOD’S NEEDS LIST

If your primary archetype is Wood, use the needs list to help you:

To help you get started, think of a current struggle you’re having. Then take a look over the needs list to see if there is a need related to your struggle that you wish you could fulfill right now.

Be mindful that this needs exercise is not about what others aren’t giving you or doing for you, as Dr. Cowan teaches. Instead, it’s about gaining an awareness of which of your core needs for safety are not being met at that moment and figuring out what you can do to have them met.

Keep in mind, your individual “needs” work is about empowering yourself to observe how you’re feeling and to take control over creating internal harmony. It’s about figuring out how you can get your own needs met, not about expecting other people or outside circumstances to change so that you get what you want. I’d be willing to bet you’ve tried that before and have come up empty-handed. Expecting others to complete us simply doesn’t work—sorry, Jerry McGuire!

This is not to say we shouldn’t empathize with and care for each other or meet each other’s needs within relationships. The sign of a strong relationship is when we can have compassion for and meet each other’s shared needs for safety. Take a look back over Neha Chawla’s advice for building and nurturing strong relationships on pages 36–38 for a refresher.

Remember that the only thing in this world you can control is you. Take some time to review the needs list that corresponds to your primary archetype. When your stress states creep up, pause instead of reacting. Then practice taking action to acquire the items on the list that you need in your life. Doing so will reduce the frequency and severity of your stress states and allow you to recover from them more quickly and easily. As a result, you’ll feel better more of the time and enjoy more fulfilling relationships.

The highest level of having your needs met is being able to meet them for yourself. Being aware of and figuring out how to meet your needs for safety is the way to continuously grow stronger throughout your lifetime. When you are self-aware, self-reliant, empathetic, and empowered to meet your own needs, your life experience is exponentially elevated.

Step Two in the optimization process asks that you recognize which of your specific unmet Wood needs for safety are kicking up your uncomfortable emotions. The more you practice merely paying attention to your stress and strength states, the easier it will be for you to identify and even predict why you’re feeling low. Making this connection subsequently brings you closer to taking control over the seemingly inexplicable ebb and flow of your emotions.

For example, a frequent stress trigger for primary Woods is feeling that someone or something is wasting their time. When primary Wood people feel they’re being compelled to sublimate their agenda according to someone else’s slower timetable, their fear of idleness and slowing down is provoked. In the face of this fear, a primary Wood person may feel extra body tension or become overly busy and engrossed in their work because they’re trying to make up for time they think has been lost or wasted.

When left unaddressed, these irritating emotions intensify. In Wood types, this could result in:

To start practicing Step Two as a primary Wood, examine a current stressor that’s bothering you. Next, identify the feelings that come up for you as a result of this particular challenge. Your emotions are your need identifiers. Wood types sometimes exhibit anger in response to escalating mixed emotions. However, here I’m asking you to pause. Instead of engaging with your mixed emotions, observe them. Consider that your anger is there to help you identify your unmet needs for safety. Once you’ve identified all your mixed emotions, wait for a beat or two and ask yourself what unmet need(s) they’re telling you that you should focus on from your needs list.

If you’re feeling anxious, sad, afraid, or angry, Step Two asks you to notice it. Observe, and don’t react. Try to identify what your frustrated Wood feelings are telling you that you need in that moment. Are you feeling inhibited? Are your colleagues criticizing your work too much, asking you to go back to the drawing board and reframe your plans? Are people around you engaging in too much idle chatter?

Any of these examples can dredge up uncomfortable emotions for primary Wood people, but the more you practice pausing and observing what comes up for you when you feel uncomfortable emotions, the more you’ll remain calm and notice which of your needs aren’t being met, instead of experiencing frustration toward others or self-critical thinking.

When you know what is causing your Wood energy to get caught up in exasperation, you grow closer to becoming resilient to your triggers on a regular basis.

Step Three: Achieving Balance Within the Wood Archetype

Step Three in the optimization process is about taking action. This is the step for building your foundation of resilience and making new stress-response choices. This is where you begin to build new habits and behaviors, which translate into the creation of new and healthier neural pathways over time and, ultimately, balance within your primary archetype.

Armed with new information about the source of your stressors from Step Two, you’re more aware of where your unpleasant feelings are coming from. You understand that they’re directly related to whether or not you’re having your needs for safety met. Other people and outside circumstances may initiate uncomfortable events, but how you choose to respond is ultimately your decision. If you elect to react while your Wood is unbalanced, you and those around you will spend more time in discomfort.

On the other hand, if your Wood is balanced, you will be more in control of your reactive states under stress and actually reduce the amount of time you and the others spend upset. Reducing your reactivity enables clarity of thought, creativity, smooth conflict resolution, and unconditional love. When you have more control over your stress reactions, you will live a more fulfilling and well-adjusted life.

Let’s get to the core of how to achieve a balanced Wood archetype. While Wood is the power of adventure and spontaneity in relationships, if Wood is not nurtured and gently curbed to be balanced, then it can become difficult to maintain healthy and lasting connections with those you love and care for. The Wood archetype needs to support you by contributing its venturesome spirit instead of its stressed qualities. You also need your Wood to be balanced so it can help temper and balance out the stress states of the other four types within you. Ultimately, as a primary Wood, your Wood archetype needs to work for you so it can improve your life, instead of making it stressful.

Your Wood-Balancing Skills

Balanced Wood presents itself as the ability to work effectively with others to accomplish shared goals and to create opportunities and guidance that help other people realize their own desires.

As you know, Wood is forward-thinking and seeks to initiate change and advancement. But just as wood that becomes too wet or too dry or is not pruned properly cannot deliver fruit nor shade, the Wood archetype within us can become overbearing or unstable if it doesn’t have a balance of what it needs. Wood’s instability can manifest as becoming too preoccupied with dominating the competition or as being so attached to needing freedom that relationships feel more suffocating than rewarding.

We become balanced by taking specific and consistent action that builds and protects the body, mind, and spirit components of our archetypal nature. Eastern well-being philosophies like TCM state that whole health is not achieved by simply addressing one of these three aspects of our overall being. They teach that these aspects are inextricably connected within us. For example, a physical imbalance causes emotional unrest, which manifests as larger existential conundrums. Consummate balance is the result of a combined effort to empower all three intertwined parts. Thus, you’ll notice that the tasks for balancing the Five Archetypes draw upon all three realms: mind, body, and spirit.

Now that you’re familiar with Steps One and Two of the optimization process, in which you learned about Wood’s archetypal traits and needs for safety, it’s time to learn how to balance your Wood archetype—and even how to help other Wood types do the same.

There are two important ways of doing so:

Wood Self-Care in the Moment

Wood self-care in a moment of heightened stress and imbalance calls for different skills from those you’ll use for building resilience and ultimately balance over time.

Faced with an intense, difficult, heated situation, a primary Wood type is not going to have an easy time identifying the mixed emotions that are feeding the reactive state or coming up with creative ways to solve what likely feels like a downright attack. At the peak of a Wood type’s overwhelm, they don’t feel like calmly sitting down and talking through their challenges.

But in Wood’s troublesome moments, such as when anger and frustration peak, Fire serves as Wood’s immediate release valve. Fire activities, behaviors, thoughts, and people are the most likely to help Wood rebalance and recover from a stress trigger.

Some Fire tools for releasing the initial pressure include:

If Woods are too frustrated to access Fire, they should move their bodies to blow off some steam first. Go for a run, take a brisk walk, toss a ball against a wall, or simply leave the room for a moment.

Once over the initial hurdle of emotional intensity, when a sense of calm begins to reappear, primary Woods then have easier access to skills from the other archetypes that will help expand their ability to solve the challenge that kicked up stress in the first place.

When you, as a primary Wood, feel adequately calm and prepared to begin problem solving, choose the archetype-based activities from the lists on pages 86–93 that correspond to the strengths you most need in the moment. Examples of the strengths that correspond to each type are:

Wood Long-Term Maintenance

Another way to achieve balance within your Wood archetype is to practice maintenance activities over the long term to help ensure you remain resilient in the face of stress as you progress. With a stable, reliable cache of resilience accumulated, you will more adeptly wield the skill of observing your challenges rather than reacting to them. The better you become at avoiding reactive states, the more quickly you recover from stress and return to enjoying life.

Begin your maintenance regimen by practicing activities that support your primary Wood archetype. Start by choosing one or two activities from the Wood list to practice every day.

Next, identify one or two activities from the archetype list that correspond to the archetype in which you scored the lowest. Add these items to your daily Wood archetype routine. Don’t forget, it’s important to practice your lowest archetype, even if it’s your least favorite type of activity (which I’m willing to bet it is). Exercising your most vulnerable archetype minimizes the gap between your highest and lowest archetypes, expanding your ability to be more emotionally dexterous when challenges arise.

Finally, practice activities that correlate to the challenges you’re currently facing. Here are some examples to help you identify which archetypal skills in the lists on pages 50–59 you will need and will find most helpful as a primary Wood:

Choose from among these Wood activities to get you started on building your Wood maintenance regimen:

Water-Building Activities

Fire-Building Activities

Earth-Building Activities

Metal-Building Activities

Ultimately, your Wood archetype is balanced when you:

Harmonization

I don’t want to leave you hanging, wondering when and how you’ll know that you’re in harmony as a primary Wood.

Again, harmonization is not an absence of stress and challenge. For primary Woods, it’s about being able to navigate the challenging moments in your own life while empathizing with and supporting those around you whose Wood archetype may be low and in need of a boost. At its core, harmonization allows you to have unconditional love for yourself and those around you.

When you, as a primary Wood, are harmonized, you’re likely to experience many, if not all, of the attitudes and behaviors noted below.

WOOD IN RELATIONSHIPS

As our personal awareness and resilience in the face of stress expands, we are less triggered by other people’s opinions, moods, and tendencies. We also become less likely to attach to relationships that don’t serve us well or in which our needs for safety aren’t being met. As we strengthen our individual Five Archetypes skills, we are better equipped to form equally strong bonds with individuals from any one of the Five Archetypes because we see the benefit and the beauty of the gifts they each bring to the companionship.

In this section, primary Woods will gain guidance for building and maintaining propitious relationships, and non-primary Woods will learn how to engage in healthy relationships with primary Wood types.

If You Are a Wood/Trailblazer

To be a good Wood partner in any relationship, practice staying in balance by knowing your strengths, challenges, and needs, and by practicing the Wood long-term maintenance activities starting on page 86 to remain a consistently stable partner. This will ensure you approach relationship challenges from a place of calm compassion for yourself and your companions.

When you commit to doing the work that keeps your Wood in balance, you contribute the following strengths to your interpersonal relationships:

When your Wood is balanced, you also possess the following characteristics that benefit the global community:

On the other hand, when your primary Wood is not in balance, it shows up in your interpersonal relationships as:

When your primary Wood is unbalanced, watch out for these potential behaviors that could manifest and affect your global community:

If You Have a Relationship with a Wood/Trailblazer

In the following pages, you will learn how primary Woods exhibit themselves at work, in intimate relationships, and as parents. Remember, The Five Archetypes is a primer for beginners, so I’m just touching on the basic concepts to help you understand, evaluate, and adjust the flow of the primary Wood archetype within you for the best personal and interpersonal outcomes.

The Wood Employee or Coworker

When applied to the workplace, the Five Archetypes method expands your ability and the ability of your coworkers to get things done efficiently. Moreover, when employees and colleagues feel safe, seen, understood, and appreciated in the workplace, they navigate challenges more easily and therefore are less reactive when in stress states, which ultimately translates to a healthier bottom line.

To enhance your awareness of times when your Wood staff or coworkers feel safe and when they feel insecure, there are some common tendencies to watch out for. When you see your colleagues exhibiting their insecure states, it’s time to pause and fortify yourself so you don’t jump into your reactive states as a result. Get to know these common strengths, needs, and stress states:

The Wood Friend

Enjoying mutually gratifying friendships starts with you knowing how to be a good friend to others. To consistently show up as a steady, sincere, reliable friend, check out these Five Archetypes guidelines:

How Do We Nurture Lasting Friendships?

As a friendship grows, how do we continue to nurture the bond using the Five Archetypes method? When you know your friend’s primary archetype, you will better understand what makes them feel safe and what makes them feel insecure. Here are some additional suggestions for what primary Wood people will likely appreciate in a close friendship.

Wood likes spending time with people who:

Helping a Wood Friend in Stress

When you care about someone, you sympathize with their pain and want them to feel better. The Five Archetypes method helps us understand that people have unique stress triggers and also have different paths to de-stressing. Here’s how to help your primary Wood friends recover more quickly from stress states.

Uplift a Wood friend by praising his ideas. Share how excited you are about what he’s devised and envisioned as the way forward. Your Wood friend will also benefit from physically getting away from the stressful situation, taking a walk outside, or getting a drink of water.

The Wood Romantic Partner

Primary Wood people keep things moving in a relationship. They get you outside hiking, biking, running, exploring. On Sunday morning, they’ll have you up early for an activity. No lying around in bed for your Wood partner, although at bedtime, he may fall asleep quickly, having been so active all day.

Your Wood partner will also stand up for your rights, protecting you with vigilance from anyone who attempts to knock you down. He has big plans for your future and makes sure you reach those goals together in strength.

When Woods feel insecure, they exhibit specific patterns of disharmony in a relationship. Stressed Woods fear feeling trapped in a relationship with no way out and may desire freedom over the confinement of the union. When they’re not feeling strong, they have the potential to become pushy and argumentative without the ability to pause and notice what their partner feels or needs.

Here are some tips for how you can be a strong partner to a primary Wood type:

The Parent–Wood Child Relationship

Your parent-child relationship is impacted not only by the intersection between your and your child’s primary archetypes but also by how you perceive your purpose as a parent. When you see your parental role as compassionate guide and teacher and empower your kids to master life skills so they become strong, resilient adults, you’re more likely to build a strong relationship with your child and feel fulfilled by the parenting journey.

To create a gratifying and lasting relationship with your primary Wood child using the Five Archetypes method, start by identifying and balancing your own primary archetype. Get to know yourself in strength and in stress. Understand your button pushers so that you’re best able to remain in a state of resilience and compassionate power when faced with your triggers. You’ll be the most outstanding advocate for and will nurture a respectful, strong relationship with your child when you serve as a heroic example of how to manage stress, triggers, and disappointment.

Then find out your child’s primary archetype. Help him become more self-aware and self-reliant by teaching him how to recognize and celebrate his gifts. Empower him to overcome his stress states with ease by understanding what pushes his buttons and giving him the Five Archetypes tools to become more resilient to his triggers.

Dr. Cowan is a pioneer of using the five types as a methodology for healthy child development. Here are some points, inspired by his work, to keep in mind when parenting a child whose primary archetype is Wood:

WOOD AYURVEDIC PRACTICES

Wood people participate in wellness activities that reinforce a sense of accomplishment and competitiveness. They’re more likely to maintain an exercise routine and thrive when they can see and measure their progress in comparison to others, or can appreciate how they’ve improved their speed, muscle mass, or stamina. The kinds of fitness activities Wood people enjoy include bodybuilding, competitive sports, training for marathons, and participating in challenging obstacle races.

Primary Wood types will also benefit from regular meditation, but they may find it difficult to dedicate regular time to this practice. A common Wood pitfall is rushing ahead without pausing and failing to pay attention to the more subtle aspects of an issue. Devoting time to a meditation practice helps protect them from taking hasty action in other areas of their lives. Woods may also be more inclined to stick to a meditation practice if they can directly link the practice to improving their performance. There’s a lot of research that supports this phenomenon, so Wood people: Check it out! If you focus your wellness pursuits around competition and personal improvement, you will more likely be pleased with the program.

With regard to incorporating Ayurvedic wellness practices into your everyday life, remember that the Wood archetype corresponds to the sixth Chakra. In the chart on the next page, you will find some gentle Ayurvedic practices that will help engage and balance this chakra.

The sixth Chakra is known as the Brow, or Third Eye, Chakra. According to Ayurveda, the Brow Chakra governs clear vision that transcends time and space; when in balance, it correlates to the Wood archetype’s ability to see the path ahead for themselves and others without being impacted by irritating emotions and perceived obstacles.

Using Ayurvedic practices is a safe and empowering option to complement any health-care regimen. Peruse the selection of Ayurvedic lifestyle practices below that correspond to your primary Wood archetype. Try the ones that feel like a good fit as you assemble your menu of healthy lifestyle practices.

Sixth Chakra—Brow or Third Eye

Oversees: Wisdom, clarity, moving from logical mind to intuitive mind, insight, visualization, fantasy

Location: Pituitary gland, pineal gland, skull, senses, left eye, cerebellum, nose, central nervous system, autonomic nervous system

Colors: Dark blue, indigo

Mantra: Om

Yoga: Child’s pose, half-standing forward bend, warrior three, revolved lunge pose, locust pose, camel pose

Gemstones: Amethyst, labradorite, moldavite, lapis lazuli, amazonite

Mudra (a hand gesture that’s said to stimulate a specific sense of focus and balance): Shuni mudra, ahamkara mudra

Foot marma (a pressure point that’s said to enhance mind-body balance when massaged): Halfway down the outside edge of the pinky toe

Aromatherapy: Angelica seed, lavender, hyacinth, camphor, eucalyptus, jasmine, lemon, rosemary, frankincense, blue chamomile, sandalwood, clary sage, cedar wood, cypress

Taste: Pungent

A Final Note to Primary Woods

Dear Wood Friends,

A few words of encouragement as you venture out with a Five Archetypes perspective on life:

Remember, your need for speed can actually hold you back from achieving goals and moving on to the next cool project if that need isn’t balanced with skills and behaviors from the other four archetypes. Experiment with what it’s like to take your time, pause, and notice subtle details you previously overlooked, and pace yourself. You may be pleasantly surprised at how much more you achieve.

You are unparalleled in your ability to stick with ventures and make them happen. I am indebted to you for:

I wrote a haiku for you in honor of the gifts you bestow upon the world.

With appreciation and humility,

Carey