Thoughts on my return from China

So here I am sitting comfortably once again in my favourite London coffee shop, and feeling as though the past 10 days in China have been like a dream and never happened. This is always how I feel on my return from such a different environment and culture.  I am suffering a bit from jet-lag after our 11-hour flight, but not as much as I normally do, because Guy has given me a tip on how to combat jet-lag.  This is for acupuncturists only, I’m afraid, but consists in needling the horary points of the elements whose times we are entering as we move from one time-zone to another.  It does seem to work, although not every time, I found.  Certainly, after self-needling a series of points during sleepless intervals during the night, I woke this morning experiencing none of the heavy jet-lag I normally feel.

On our flight back, Guy and I enjoyed ourselves mulling over the very happy days we had spent with our students on the two seminars we held, and making plans for what we will be doing at our next scheduled visit in April 2017.  We always say that the seminar we have just completed is our best, but these two truly were the best, because we saw such an improvement in five element practice even in the short time since we were last in China.  I often feel that the enthusiasm and dedication our Chinese students show put our Western-based students to shame.  It is such a joy for me to see how what started in 2011 with a mere 15 students in Nanning has now grown five years later to many hundreds of practitioners throughout China.  This is an awesome achievement, and makes me very proud of all the work everybody has put into developing five element acupuncture there - from Professor Liu Lihong who first invited me, through Mei and Guy, and on to every one of those who have moved the study of five element acupuncture forward to where it is at present in China.

I would like to dedicate this blog to all who made our latest visit such a rewarding one, and in particular Lynn Yang who organized everything so beautifully, as she always does, and held everything together, from the moment of our arrival at Beijing Airport to that of our departure.  I would also like to thank her and Caroline who as usual acted as such splendid translators for us.  And then we owe a great deal of the success of our visit to a small army of helpers who took much of the strain of organizing the very large group of well over 100 acupuncturists into orderly ranks so that they could observe treatments in the practice rooms in small batches.  All of these helpers together made my 10^th visit to China such a successful and joyous event.