What if the behaviour you’re trying to change is simply the distorted expression of a force you haven’t yet learned to use?

We tend to think of archetypes as personality types. You’re the Warrior, the Sage, the Rebel or the Caregiver. You identify with certain characteristics, recognise a few weaknesses and perhaps discover something interesting about yourself.

But identifying with an archetype is only the beginning. The real potential lies in understanding the force behind it.

In my work, I use archetypes to explore the patterns operating beneath our emotions, reactions and behaviour. Drawing on the eight forces of the ancient Bagua, I’ve developed an approach that focuses on recognising these forces before they become automatic responses.

Because the very force that’s creating problems in your life may also contain the potential to transform it.

Didn’t Carl Jung invent archetypes?

Most Western readers associate archetypes with Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, whose work on the collective unconscious brought them into modern psychology. But the idea of underlying patterns that shape human experience has a much longer history.

Jung drew on earlier Western philosophy and later developed a deep interest in Chinese thought. Through his friendship with sinologist Richard Wilhelm, he encountered the I Ching and the Taoist alchemical text The Secret of the Golden Flower.

Jung was already developing his archetypal theory before this but Chinese philosophy became an important influence on his later understanding of psychological transformation and individuation.

He didn’t simply reproduce ancient teachings. He explored their relevance to his own observations and developed a psychological framework through which Western readers could understand them.

My approach follows a similar principle. Drawing on decades of Taoist research, cultivation and working directly with people, I use the eight forces of the Bagua as a framework for recognising and working with the patterns beneath our emotions and behaviour.

The aim isn’t to identify yourself with an archetype. It’s to recognise the force you’re working with and learn how to transform its expression.

What are Taoist archetypes?

In Jost Sauer’s approach, Taoist archetypes are patterns of human experience associated with the eight forces of the Bagua. Each force has constructive and shadow expressions that can be explored through awareness, meditation and cultivation.

The Bagua: Eight forces, eight archetypal patterns

The Bagua is an ancient Chinese system of eight trigrams, each composed of three yin or yang lines. The trigrams represent fundamental patterns of change and are associated with eight natural phenomena: Heaven, Lake, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Water, Mountain and Earth.

These are more than symbolic pictures in my approach. I work with them as eight distinct qualities of force, each with its own potential and characteristic patterns of expression.

• Heaven: Creative, initiating and ordering. Associated with the Creator, Philosopher and Sage.
• Lake: Joyful, receptive and exchanging. Associated with the Diviner.
• Fire: Illuminating, clarifying and expanding. Associated with the Pathfinder.
• Thunder: Shocking, catalytic and initiating. Associated with the Agitator.
• Wind: Penetrating, adaptable and cultivating. Associated with the Developer.
• Water: Deep, flowing, hidden and potentially dangerous.
• Mountain: Still, stabilising and containing. Associated with the Alchemist.
• Earth: Receptive, nurturing and materialising. Associated with the Enchanter.

The traditional trigrams provide the foundation; the archetypal names and their application to personal transformation are part of my own framework.

To understand why this matters, we need to distinguish the underlying force from the behaviour it produces.

Are you directing the force, or reacting to it?

Consider someone who becomes agitated whenever life slows down. They may start arguments, manufacture crises, abandon projects or constantly seek stimulation. They might describe themselves as passionate, rebellious or someone who simply needs excitement.

But what if these behaviours are different expressions of the same underlying force? In the Bagua, Thunder is the force of shock, disruption and initiation. Its constructive expression is the ability to interrupt stagnation and create necessary movement.

It’s shadow expression is disruption for its own sake.

I call this operating as a force reactor: responding automatically to a force rather than consciously working with it. The force itself isn’t the problem. The problem is that its expression has become habitual, excessive or disconnected from its constructive purpose. You don’t necessarily need less Thunder. You may need to learn how to use Thunder differently.

And the same principle applies to all eight forces.

Four archetypes and their shadow expressions

In my work with family patterns and relationships, four forces are particularly useful for understanding how our reactions become established — and how we can begin changing them.

Mountain: When stillness becomes isolation

Mountain represents stillness, stability and containment. Its developed expression is the Alchemist: someone capable of holding difficult experiences without immediately reacting to them.

This is particularly valuable when working with inherited family patterns. Instead of automatically repeating an old response, you develop the capacity to remain present with the feeling and allow something different to emerge.

But Mountain also has a shadow. Stillness can become rigidity. Independence can become isolation. Spiritual practice can become a way of avoiding relationships, difficult conversations or necessary change. Someone may believe they’ve achieved emotional independence when they’ve actually built a wall around themselves.

The question is whether your stillness allows you to engage more fully with life — or protects you from having to engage at all.

Ask yourself: Where has my stillness become a wall rather than a source of strength?

Earth: When receptivity becomes self-sacrifice

Earth represents receptivity, nourishment and the capacity to give things form. Its developed expression is the Enchanter.

This is the ability to receive new possibilities, nurture them and bring them into material existence.

But receptivity without discernment can become a problem. You may absorb other people’s emotions, continually prioritise their needs or become so available to everyone else that you lose your own direction. What initially looks like generosity can become chronic over-giving.

The shadow of Earth isn’t that you care too much. It’s that your capacity to receive and nourish has become disconnected from your own agency. The aim isn’t to close yourself off. It’s to develop the ability to choose what you receive, what you nurture and what you allow to take form.

Ask yourself: What am I choosing to receive, and where do I need greater discernment?

Thunder: When necessary change becomes constant conflict

Thunder is the force of awakening through shock.

Its developed expression can interrupt stagnation, expose what isn’t working and initiate a completely new direction. We need Thunder. Without it, we can remain trapped in situations that have long since stopped supporting our development. But unharnessed Thunder can create disruption simply because stillness has become unbearable.

This may appear as chronic agitation, unnecessary conflict, repeatedly abandoning relationships or projects, or feeling most alive when something dramatic is happening. Sometimes we mistake the intensity of a reaction for evidence that we’re making progress. But disruption and transformation aren’t the same thing.

The constructive use of Thunder is to recognise what genuinely needs to change and direct the force towards that purpose.

Ask yourself: What actually needs to be shaken so genuine movement can begin?

Wind: When influence becomes manipulation

Wind represents subtle influence, penetration, adaptability and cultivation. Unlike Thunder, which can create sudden change, Wind works through sustained influence. It enters, moves through and gradually transforms what it encounters.

Its developed expression is the Developer: someone who understands how to cultivate change rather than force it.

But Wind has a shadow too. Subtle influence can become manipulation. Sensitivity to others can become an attempt to direct their choices. The desire to help someone develop can become an inability to let them follow their own path.

This can be particularly difficult to recognise because the intention may appear positive. You genuinely want the relationship to improve. You genuinely believe your advice will help. You may even believe you’re acting entirely in the other person’s interests.

But are you cultivating something — or trying to control how it develops?

Ask yourself: What could I cultivate rather than force?

Your shadow is not a separate part of you

Here’s the important distinction. The shadow isn’t another archetype lurking somewhere inside you. It’s the same force operating in an unrefined, inflated, restricted or distorted way.

Mountain doesn’t suddenly become a different force when stillness turns into isolation. Thunder doesn’t lose its essential nature when the impulse to create change becomes chronic agitation. The potential for transformation remains within the original force.

This is why I don’t approach shadow work as an exercise in eliminating undesirable parts of ourselves. If you simply reject the shadow, you risk rejecting the energy and potential it contains. The approach is to recognise the force, understand how it has become distorted and develop the capacity to express it differently.

Transformation involves working with the material we actually have, rather than imagining we can become someone entirely different by rejecting the parts of ourselves we dislike.

How to work with an archetypal force

Recognising your shadow expression is useful, but intellectual understanding alone doesn’t necessarily change an established reaction. You can know exactly why you become angry, withdraw or over-give and still find yourself doing it again. That’s why, in my approach, you work with the force before it becomes habitual behaviour.

I use a three-part practice: Read, Hold, Convert.

1. Read the force

Begin by noticing what’s happening in your body before immediately explaining it.

Does the sensation feel as though it’s rising, sinking, expanding or contracting?

Is there an impulse to push, withdraw, freeze, escape or surrender?

Try to recognise the quality of the experience before becoming absorbed in the story surrounding it.

For example, instead of immediately focusing on why someone has made you angry, notice the force that has been activated.

Is it Thunder demanding immediate action? Mountain becoming rigid? Wind attempting to influence the situation?

These associations are prompts for self-observation, not fixed diagnoses.

2. Hold the force

The next step is developing enough stillness to experience the sensation without immediately acting on it.

This is where Mountain becomes particularly useful.

In meditation and cultivation practice, we develop the capacity to remain present with difficult sensations without automatically converting them into familiar reactions.

The aim isn’t suppression. You’re not trying to convince yourself that the feeling shouldn’t exist.

You’re learning that experiencing an impulse and acting on it are not the same thing.

3. Convert the force

Once you can recognise and hold the force, you can begin working with its expression.

Thunder might become the courage to initiate a necessary conversation rather than creating an argument.

Mountain might become the ability to remain centred during that conversation rather than withdrawing.

Earth might become genuine generosity supported by clear boundaries.

Wind might become patient encouragement rather than subtle control.

In my own practice, this work happens through bodily awareness, meditation and cultivation. It involves learning to experience and work with the quality of the force itself, rather than relying exclusively on analysis.

It’s a capacity that develops with practice, not a technique that guarantees an immediate result.

From force reactor to conscious creator

The next time you encounter a familiar reaction, consider looking beneath the behaviour. Instead of asking only why you’re angry, withdrawing, over-giving or trying to control a situation, ask what force might be operating underneath it.

What is its constructive potential? How has it become distorted? And what would a different expression of that same force look like? You don’t have to reject your shadow to develop beyond it. In fact, the patterns you’ve spent years trying to eliminate may contain some of the most useful material for your transformation.

Your shadow isn’t your enemy. It may be the starting point for learning how to consciously direct the forces that shape your life.

Explore the Cosmic Self

In my Claim Your Cosmic Self webinar series, I explore how our acquired identity is formed, how archetypal forces influence our reactions and relationships, and how conscious cultivation can help us move towards a more expansive expression of who we are.

The third webinar, Alchemise Your Cosmic Self, explores the Bagua, shadow archetypes and the Read–Hold–Convert practice in greater depth.

Explore the webinar series and recordings.

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