Planning my 8th book

For my next book, I have decided to write about the most important milestones in my acupuncture life over the past 40 years, many of them associated with what I learnt at the feet of JR Worsley.  I have been surprised to find that these include so many of what I call seminal moments, particularly spread around the early years of my practice, which have acted as catalysts, directing my understanding of what I was doing along new paths.  Drawing these together now, I realise how fortunate I was to form part of the last cohort of JR’s postgraduate students at Leamington, at a time when I was very aware, particularly throughout the last two years of my Masters’ course there, that storm clouds were gathering over five element acupuncture’s head, for a while threatening its very existence.  For a time after I left, these almost obliterated five element acupuncture’s right to exist as a legitimate stand-alone acupuncture discipline.

Thank goodness that I now feel that that threat, though very real at the time I founded the School of Five Element Acupuncture in 1995, is now rapidly receding in the light of China’s enthusiastic welcome of five element acupuncture back into its homeland over the past seven years.  So where some years ago what I write might have been tinged with sadness at the hard battles I have had to fight to keep five element acupuncture alive in this country, now it is with joy that I am bearing witness to a complete reversal of its fortunes.  And I hope that I am not being too arrogant to revel in the thought of what SOFEA, its graduates and I have done to achieve this.  As JR said, “They will want five element acupuncture back in China soon”, and that is what, thankfully, has happened.