Exploring ways of teaching five element acupuncture

I seem to be spending a lot of time at the moment trying to work out ways of teaching five element acupuncture now that the colleges who were teaching it as their main form of acupuncture in this country have unfortunately closed or are in the process of closing. The three years since the closure of my own school to undergraduates have been a time of recovery from all the very hard work involved in running a college, and also a time of taking stock as to what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Somebody asked me yesterday, surprised at hearing how much I still worked, whether I would consider retiring at some point, and the answer to that is an emphatic “no”. I can’t visualize a life in which I am not continuing to practise and in some way involved in acupuncture teaching, and specifically talking about my particular love, the elements, and what they continue to teach me about life.

The field of acupuncture has suddenly started to look like a battlefield, with corpses of colleges strewn around. I predict more may well be under threat as the tumultuous events which are about to descend upon universities hits them too. Seven universities, I read in the newspapers today, are about to fold for lack of funds. This must surely have a knock-on effect on university-based acupuncture courses. I have always felt that we followed universities too closely, and now it seems they are leading the profession up a blind alley. That being so, I feel I must involve myself, perhaps more than I originally intended to, in supporting five element acupuncture wherever I can.

This has now become the focus of my attention, and with the help of others equally concerned about the future of five element acupuncture, we are together already planning an exciting way forward. More anon, when we have consolidated our plans.

In the meantime, I am preparing what I call my Tips on how to start learning about the elements, which you will soon be able to download from our website http://www.sofea.co.uk./ I have so far prepared tips for the Wood and Fire elements, and am now working on those for the Earth element.

With all these things in the pipeline, I would like to hear from anybody out there, in whatever country you live in, who is interested in studying the elements in greater depth, whether or not you then want to pursue that interest further into the field of acupuncture or not. If you are not already on our mailing lists, email us on info@sofea.co.uk and we will keep you informed of our plans.