A reminder to myself about treating Metal and Earth patients

This week a practitioner asked my help with a patient of his, whom I diagnosed as Metal.  I thought she was more likely to be the Lung official (not able to take in) rather than the Large Intestine (not able to let go).   As usual, seeing this patient added something to my thoughts about the elements.

After I left the practice room I realised that I was in danger of forgetting something JR Worsley told us about treating Metal patients, and which I had not pointed out at the time to the practitioner.  This is something which also applies to treating Earth patients.  He told us that we need to be aware that, for different reasons, both elements might find the start of treatment difficult.  Both might find that the first few treatments could have the somewhat disturbing effect of making them feel rather empty.  I see this as confirming that these first treatments have such a profound effect by addressing the element so directly that they often strip away some of the defences we put up to cope with life.  Metal may therefore experience, perhaps for the first time, a profound emptiness of the spirit, that spiritual disconnection which is the burden Metal has to bear when it is out of balance.  Earth, by contrast, may experience a more physically-based emptiness, that of not being nourished, literally the gnawing feeling we have when we are hungry.

We should therefore always warn our Metal and Earth patients that this might happen, reassuring them it this is a good sign that treatment is clearing things away, so that their energy can be replenished with the good things of life.  After all, that is why we often add that prime clearer-away-of-rubbish, the point IX (Lu) 8, Meridian Gutter, to the normal command point treatment at the very early stages of Metal treatment.  And similarly with Earth, we may add XII (Sp) 8, Earth Motivator, or XI (St) 24, Lubrication Food Gate, early on.  In their different ways, these points all have the effect of helping the element we are directing our attention at to reveal its true needs.

I felt that this Metal patient had so profound an emptiness of spirit that after the initial Metal treatments with which we should always start treatment (see my Handbook of Five Element Practice here for advice on what these points are), I felt she might need more to replenish her.  The obvious point which comes to mind here is IV (Ki) 24, Spirit Burial Ground, but I also felt that she might benefit from another point one or two treatments later, a point which JR Worsley told us is “like IV 24, only deeper”, and that is III (Bl) 42, Spiritual Soul Gate.  And somewhere I feel the lovely point, I (Ht) 1, Utmost Source, beckoning at some time in the future.  JR told us that this was the supreme connecting point, re-establishing a direct connection between Heaven and Man (and Woman of course).  It can be used for patients of any element, and what better point for a Metal patient who, in my eyes, so obviously has lost a sense of this connection.