You are the best acupuncture textbook you will ever read

Following on from my blog of 17 October about practitioners being sure of their element, there is another important reason for this.  In our lifetime each of us will only get to understand one element out of the five deeply from inside as it were, that of our own guardian element – that is, unless we believe, as I do not, that we change elements during our lifetime.  That being so, we need to use this insider knowledge to our advantage, by studying ourselves closely.

 

I think we think we know ourselves, but I have found that, even after 30 years of close study of myself and my element Fire, I can still surprise myself with my reactions to a situation.  It is only when I look closely at a particular response of mine that I realise, often to my own amusement, how typical of the Small Intestine it is, and therefore how much new light I myself continue to shed on this aspect of Fire.

 

Of course, being the Small Intestine part of Fire, and therefore only too happy to sort everything which comes my way, it is inevitable that I will be particularly concerned with constantly analysing my reactions in that endlessly busy way the Small Intestine, the “sorter”, always does, but there is a lesson here for practitioners of other elements.  We are all walking textbooks teaching us in detail about one of the five elements.  By knowing ourselves well, we will therefore gain a deep understanding of at least one-fifth of the five element circle.

 

So to help those of you who are not of the Fire element, but who would like to understand how Fire, and Inner Fire in particular, reacts to different situations, I will keep on doing what I have done in previous blogs, and give you insights into the busy workings of my Small Intestine.  At the same time I will try not to neglect the other elements, but what I write about these will always be slightly coloured by my own element, and therefore be slightly from an outsider’s point of view rather from the inside.  Those of other elements will have to be their own textbooks for these.

 

Rather frivolously, I have been thinking how very convenient it would be if all five element acupuncturists could find four other practitioners, one from each of the remaining elements, so that together they can form the complete circle of the elements and give themselves the opportunity continuously to share their personal insights with each other.