"1 of the 48%"

I am still reeling from the result of the referendum.  And I don’t agree with many people’s passive acceptance that “Brexit means Brexit”.  It certainly doesn’t, or at least only if we, who so violently oppose cutting ourselves off from Europe, tamely accept that it does.

So I am on a personal mission to fight what I consider to be the good fight.  I have bought some badges supporting the EU, one of which I now wear proudly everywhere.  It says “1 of the 48%”, and has already provoked an argument from a “leaver”, but also much support from others.

And then I make sure that I buy a copy of the New European, which calls itself a “pop-up newspaper”.  It appeared within a week of the referendum, and gives a very healthy European slant to the news.  Originally, they said that there were only going to be 4 weekly copies, as a brief protest against the referendum result, but we’re on to copy 3 now and people are buying it, so I hope it changes its mind and carries on.

I also heard Paddy Ashdown talking on the Andrew Marr programme yesterday morning about a new group he and many others are bringing together called MoreUnited (www.moreunited.uk ) which, as he put it so persuasively, is there to give voice to the voiceless, those who don’t want to belong to any political party, but feel fervently that Britain should not cut itself off from its international roots.  It wants to campaign strongly against the idea that we have to go along with the idea of Brexit, rather than ensuring that we continue to fight against it.  So that’s another cause I decided to support.

And finally, to my own surprise, as somebody who has always been a floating voter, not attached to any particular party, I have thrown caution to the winds and have joined the Liberal Democrat party, because they are the only party who has said that they will base their plans for the next election solely on fighting to remain in the EU.

So it’s been a politically rather hectic few days for me, my pro-European feelings strengthened even more by the terrible events in France and Germany.  This is surely not the time to withdraw into an isolationist shell, as though we are trying to tuck ourselves out of sight in this corner of Europe.

 

Treatment of alopecia - another satisfactory use of a CV/GV block

A fellow practitioner, Jo Banthorpe, invited me to her practice for a day in mid-May to help with the treatment of some of her patients.  Before I arrived she warned me that she looked somewhat different from when we had last seen each other because she had developed alopecia, and now had large bare patches on her head.  She had therefore shaved her hair close to the skull to make these patches less noticeable.  I have Jo's permission to write about this.

During the day with her I asked her whether she had had treatment for a CV/GV (Ren Mai/DuMai) block, or had even considered this as being the cause of the alopecia.  I told her that over the years I had successfully treated several patients with alopecia, each having been told that there was little Western medicine could do to restore hair growth.  In each case clearing a CV/GV block led within a few weeks to the gradual re-growth of the hair.  I had been encouraged to select this treatment because I felt that such a drastic depletion of energy causing severe hair loss of this kind could only be the result of some serious energy block.  This obviously pointed to a CV/GV block.

I cleared this blockage on Jo during my day with her and awaited the result.  You can imagine how happy I was a few days ago to receive an email from her telling me that she was “delighted to report that my hair seems to be growing back! ” And “I don't think it was growing back before we did CV/GV, in fact I think I was still losing it but more from the hair line at the sides.”   She enclosed some photos of the back and side of her head, clearly showing the re-growth of hair.

This is yet another example of the drastic improvement in all kinds of conditions that clearing a CV/GV block can lead to.  It isn’t always at all clear from our often inadequate pulse readings that there is sufficiently severe depletion of energy to point immediately to a CV/GV block.  But if in doubt, and there is a persistent deep-seated condition which your treatment cannot seem to shift, then always think of this block. 

I remember quite clearly JR Worsley telling us that if the points for clearing a CV/GV block were on the wrist we would do it on every patient!  Those words have stayed with me for 30 years, and encouraged me to think often of this block and clear it, perhaps receiving confirmation only afterwards, when the patient’s symptoms change dramatically, that there was indeed such a block there.  So all of you out there who hesitate to diagnose this block because you are uncertain of your pulse-taking or feel reluctant to needle some of these points, just do this treatment. The block is surprisingly often there, and if it isn’t, it never hurts to do it.  It’s only like opening a door which is already open.

 

A good example of the Fire element

Here are some comments from the BBC Sports Website today about Andrew Johnston, the English golfer, a competitor at the golf tournament at Troon. 

"(Andrew) has delighted fans at The Open with his cheerful demeanour and says he will continue to do so when chasing the Claret Jug on Sunday.

The Englishman high-fived spectators as he walked down the 18th and his one-under 70 left him on five under, seven adrift of leader Henrik Stenson.

Playing in only his second Open, the hugely entertaining Johnston's rapidly growing popularity is down to his unique interaction with the crowds, as well as the media."

"It's been amazing," said the 27-year-old. "It's been such great fun.”

“I guess I'm just a down-to-earth bloke who likes to talk to people. You want people to go home with good memories. I'll chat to anyone from anywhere, as long as they're nice people who are nice to me."

Watch him on YouTube or Facebook.  You’ll learn a lot more about the Fire element after a few minutes of looking at him and listening to him talk.

I think he is Outer Fire (Heart Protector/Three Heater), not Inner Fire (Small Intestine/Heart).  The difference can often be seen by the way each aspect of Fire talks.  Inner Fire, sorting out what it wants to say as it talks, often stumbles or pauses in its attempt to find the right words.  Outer Fire is much more smoothly articulate.

 

 

New direction for my teaching

The same Viennese friend of my family, Dr Oskar Adler, of whom I wrote in my last blog, The disappearance of things (27 June 2016), was the author of several extremely interesting books on astrology.  In them he often talked about life and the destinies life chooses for us and those we choose for ourselves.  One of his sayings has inspired me over the years.  He said that we have a duty to humanity to pass on to others anything we have ourselves learnt, however small and insignificant it may appear to be in our own eyes.  We will never know who may be out there waiting to hear our thoughts, and how these may add something to their life, changing it in some way that we may be completely unaware of.

Many years ago, an acupuncture student who came to observe me in my practice happened to say to me, somewhat frivolously I thought, “I think I learnt more from you in this one day, Nora, than I learnt in a year at acupuncture college”.  However exaggerated this comment was, it proved a turning point in my life, giving me, who was then a rather uncertain only recently qualified acupuncturist, the necessary courage and impetus to think of teaching others.  And that one remark has stamped itself on the last 25 or more years of my life, as I have endeavoured, through one form of teaching and another, to hand on as much as I have learnt from my own practice to as many people as possible.

During these years I have moved on from the first informal teaching of a few students in my practice, to founding my own acupuncture college, where I taught 10 groups of students over a period of 12 years or more, to more postgraduate work, running seminars and visiting practitioners’ clinics in various European countries, before what I regard now as probably my final reincarnation as a teacher of many hundreds if not thousands of Chinese practitioners.

With Dr Adler’s dictum in mind, I have now decided that I need to grasp another nettle, on-line teaching.  I am thinking of running a webcast where I can reply to questions about five element acupuncture that are sent to me.  I should probably have been thinking of doing this long before now, as I know that all the people I teach are completely at ease with their mobiles and their tablets, and are used to the constant interchange of ideas which this allows them.  

I would be very pleased to hear whether this of interest, either through comments posted in the comments section below or on my Facebook page.