How important is it that a five element practitioner is sure of their own element?

One of the problems I face now when teaching students about five element acupuncture is that they are all too often unsure of their own element, and this casts a shadow of insecurity over their belief in five element practice as a whole.  I think that this has a lot to do with there being so few five element teachers around now confident enough to make a diagnosis (see my blog of 11 September), plus the understandable reluctance of even experienced practitioners to venture a diagnosis in case they step on the toes of a colleague who may be treating the student.  So there is now greater timidity about moving into the area of diagnosing than there was in the good old days when we all clamoured to have JR Worsley diagnose us with the heartfelt approval of whatever practitioner we happened to have at the time.

Gone are those days and with them is gone the certainty which this led to.  As I have often said, our particular guardian element shapes the whole of our life, including how we interact with our patients.  Not to understand the nature of that interaction is to lose much essential information about our patients and may also cloud our judgement.  It can certainly undermine our faith in what we are doing.

So I plead with all those who practise or are studying five element acupuncture to persist in their efforts to work out what their own element is, and, if they feel their treatment is not supporting them in the way they hoped, to dare discuss this with their practitioner  A practitioner must always listen if a patient, particularly another practitioner, is unhappy with the treatment offered.  As everybody knows, it will always take some time to find the right element, and all of us five element practitioners should welcome any input from our colleagues to help us in any way reach a correct diagnosis, rather than, as is all too likely, feeling threatened.

If a practitioner is unsure of their own element, how effective do we think the treatments they offer others will be, based as they will be on an underlying feeling of insecurity?