Five element acupuncture comes full circle

A few days ago I gave a seminar for five element acupuncturists in the Netherlands. It was a fruitful experience for me because I was talking to a group of acupuncturists who have learnt their five element skills from a practitioner, Koos van Kooten, who in turn came to our courses at SOFEA. He has moved on, developing his own insights and his own approach, and has drawn in his wake an increasing number of Dutch practitioners devoted to deepening their five element knowledge. All this is very satisfying to me, and provides just the kind of justification for my work at SOFEA which warms my heart.

Amongst his group was an acupuncturist, Mei Long, who trained originally in China and who told me that, after much exploration of different branches of acupuncture, she had come across five element acupuncture, and recognised it immediately as representing a calling for her. As part of this calling, she had felt driven to get in touch with a well-established contact of hers in the world of acupuncture in China, who still has links to acupuncture's traditional roots and wishes to strengthen them, a rare thing in modern China. As a result of her approach he has asked her to run a week’s course on five element acupuncture for acupuncturists in Guangxi College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China.

This person turned out to be Liu Lihong, whose name I had come across whilst looking at the work of Arnaud Versluys. Liu Lihong is said to be “at the forefront of a Chinese renaissance movement that aims at reviving the depth and the core values of Classical Chinese Medicine”. This is where things come full circle, for JR Worsley said to an acupuncturist friend of mine, Sarah Matheson, some years ago that “the Chinese will be asking us to bring five element acupuncture back to China”, and it appears that they have indeed at last come calling.