The power of releasing blocked energy

I love clearing what we call energy blocks, a technique which really forms the bedrock of five element practice.  All illness can be described as being caused by different forms of blocked energy, being the result of some impairment of the balanced flow of energy from element to element round the five element circle.  The most common form of block, and one we address at a patient’s first treatment, is that which leads to the presence of Aggressive Energy, an AE block, where one element in distress passes its disturbed energy on along the cycle, not to its child element but to its grandchild, throwing it across the circle “like some hot potato”, we were told.

It always amazes me how many physical complaints can disappear simply by expelling this negative energy from body and soul, and how often it will occur as a result of some mental or physical trauma.   Any form of surgery, for example, life-saving though it may sometimes be, must always be viewed as traumatic for the body (and soul), and therefore benefits from checking for the presence of AE afterwards.  It may well be there, and will hinder recovery if left to fester for too long.  In a fairly healthy person I assume that AE will gradually seep from the body without treatment, otherwise nobody would recover from surgery or other traumas, which of course they do, but recovery will be speeded up if this simple treatment is done as a matter of course.

Then of course there are all the frequent day-to-day blocks we encounter, which we call Entry/Exit blocks, blocks which occur at the exit point of one meridian and the entry point of another.  These lead to localized areas of pain and discomfort, which can speedily be dispelled by the needling of just a few points.    Finally, there is the most powerful Entry/Exit block of all, that between Conception Vessel and Governor Vessel, a CV/GV (Ren Mai/Du Mai) block. 

I remember JR Worsley telling us that we would do the points for a CV/GV block on every patient if only they were on the hand.  I recall laughing at the time, but I have since realised how true this would be because of the wondrous power this releases at the deepest level.  I suspect many of us choose not to detect this block from a natural reluctance to needle what is the most intimate part of a person’s body.  To help our students at SOFEA overcome their inhibitions, we always made sure that they had marked up these points on both men and women as part of their training.  (And here I will pass on a tip I have learnt from Chinese acupuncturists, who are much less reluctant to needle these points than the more inhibited English.  Turn a patient on their side with their knees bent, rather than, as we were taught, needling the points with the patient lying on their back, a more vulnerable position, certainly for women.)

A patient on whom I have just needled a CV/GV block told me that she felt very different immediately after the treatment.  “I feel more centred, more grounded, more upright.”

See also my Handbook of Five Element Practice for more on all kinds of blocks.