Human beings should live in tune with the 5 elements – or as a proverb beautifully says: "Observe the flow of your life and realize how many streams flow into it, that nourish and support you."
SHEN – MORE THAN A NAME
Shen is referred to as the constitutional regularity that forms the basis of the natural movements and changes of matter. Shen also refers to all living creatures in a broader sense and to our mental activities, our consciousness and thinking in the narrower sense.
The 5 elements stand for converting phases and describe the changes of the 5 material conditions of wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Together these states form the knowledge of the world, which was created out of the characters of those same 5 material states of wood, fire, earth, metal and water and their "mutual generating" and "mutual controlling" constitutions.
The Taoists were striving to understand and explain the world through observation of nature and meditation. They attempted to live in harmony with nature and establish a connection between the microcosmos of their body and the macrocosmos of nature and the universe.