Always query your diagnosis

I woke this morning with a warm feeling in my heart.  Yesterday we had another one of our very successful and satisfying seminar days which I share with Guy Caplan.

 

I always like to focus these days on diagnosing the elements in patients our participants want help with, or, as this time, diagnosing the participants themselves who want a clearer picture of their own element.  You will note that I say “a clearer picture” rather than a definite diagnosis.  This is something I insist upon, because I am so aware that a diagnosis can initially only be a tentative hypothesis and awaits confirmation from the way in which a patient responds to treatment.  In other words, we are never sure that we have the right guardian element until that element has shown us, through its positive reaction to treatment, that this treatment is directed in the right place along the circle of the elements.

 

I know that hovering over all five element acupuncturists is the picture of JR Worsley interacting with a patient for a few minutes, and then turning to us with an immediate diagnosis of one element.  This picture can delude us into thinking that every diagnosis we make should be equally as fast.  But, as JR told us as students, it had taken him more than 40 years’ hard work to get to the stage he had reached.  We would all be able to do the same, he said, once we had the same number of years’ practice behind us.  So those of us with far fewer years’ experience will have to accept that tracking an element down to its source in a patient takes more than just a few minutes, and very often many more than just a few treatments.

 

What I tell students is that no patient minds how long this takes provided they feel our compassion for them.  A practitioner, Jo, who has attended many of our seminars, has just sent me the following lovely quote:  “People don't care what you know, they want to know that you care.”  As long as we show we care, a patient will trust us to know what we are doing and allow us the time to work out gradually which element we should address with our treatment.  We must never allow ourselves to be hurried by our patients into feeling that things should be moving more quickly than they are.  One of the things we were told as students was that it takes about a month of treatment for every year of illness.  That does not mean continuous weekly treatments, but it is a helpful rule of thumb, and allows us to tailor our expectations to a more realistic level.

 

Once my patients have started treatment, I have noticed that very few of them, if any, seem to spend much time talking about their symptoms, but instead want to talk about their life in general.  In fact they often forget altogether why they originally came to see me, evidence that patients do indeed want “care”, and not necessarily a “cure”, although with care often comes cure, since usually the two are closely related.

 

Our next seminar will be in the spring. In the meantime, Guy and I are off to China again in mid-November.  Our usual enthusiastic group of practitioners over there are again organizing a preparatory five element course for the people who will be attending for the first time so that we will be preaching already to the converted.  And luckily the new edition of the Mandarin version of my Handbook of Five Element Practice, with its Teach Yourself supplement, is flying off the shelves over there, and will give Chinese practitioners new to five element acupuncture a firm foundation on which to base their practice.

 

 

Element-watching with the Ryder Cup

As everybody knows who has read this blog, I enjoy watching sport as a pleasant diversion from the horrors of much of what is going on out there in the world at the moment, and also because sportspeople reveal their elements much more clearly when under the extreme stresses competitive sport subjects them to.


So I have been watching the Ryder Cup, mostly on playback, since I was up at the British Acupuncture Council’s annual conference for part of the weekend.  And much of my watching has concentrated upon the Fire element, because not only is the leading golfer of the day, Rory McIlroy, most obviously Fire, but so is another well-known golfer, Sergio Garcia.  So that watching them together was a supreme example of the qualities particular to the Fire element.  Not only did they stoke each other’s Fire up so that they seemed to be having a little party between them all the time they played, but their joy also lit up the crowds watching them. 


If you are unsure about what exactly distinguishes the Fire element from other elements, you can do no better than playing back those parts of the Ryder Cup from the TV programmes showing them in action.  Watching these two golfers will teach you more about how to recognise the Fire element than any number of words.  They are examples of how Fire lights up both itself and those around them, and I can guarantee that you will not be able to stop yourself smiling when you watch them.  Only the Fire element will have this effect.


And then compare the effect these two people have on the crowds and on you with other golfers not of the Fire element, for example the American golfer Phil Mickelson.  I think his element is Water, and though he is very warm towards the crowds and encourages their participation, he does not make me feel that I want to smile in the same way as I do whenever Rory McIlroy pops up on the screen.  And there was also a rather angry Wood golfer I had never seen before, called Patrick Reed, who is also worth watching as providing a useful comparison with Rory McIlroy and Sergio Garcia’s Fire and Mickelson’s Water.


Of course, since I don’t treat any of these people, I always have to remind myself and those reading this blog that I cannot be sure that I am diagnosing the right elements.  I therefore offer my diagnoses with the usual humility.  But it’s important that those of us who have been looking at the elements for many years (30 in my case) offer their expertise to those who are just starting on the road of five element acupuncture.  I am more likely to be right now than I was 30 years ago when I started on this journey.