Energy transfers: a lesson in how to avoid complicating things unnecessarily

My introduction to energy transfers came during my first year at JR Worsley’s Leamington college, and set the tone to an approach which carried through the three years of my undergraduate training. This first introduction was made very confusing because unfortunately the tutor who was teaching us got the procedure wrong, selecting the wrong points, and only corrected  himself when one of the class pointed this out to him.  This was hardly an ideal way for us to learn how to include energy transfers into our practice.

The very complex energy transfers we were asked to do as part of our exams also did nothing to make things clearer to us.  By the end of my undergraduate training I had, through hard work, learnt by heart the procedure for carrying out such energy transfers, but, to my surprise, had never been prompted by any tutor to include transfers in treating the patients our tutors were supervising. 
 
Then came the welcome day during my postgraduate training, when JR Worsley explained the importance of energy transfers in such a simple way as to strip away all the confusion which up till then had surrounded what we considered to be this tricky area of five element practice.  From then on I started to incorporate energy transfers into my practice.

I have just looked up what I have written about them in my Handbook of Five Element Practice.  The second edition of the Handbook (published by Singing Dragon Press) has a much simpler, and, I hope, more accessible version of my original text.  I therefore refer any reader interested in delving more deeply into this subject to pages 115 – 120 of the Singing Dragon edition, where I describe in detail the procedure to be used.  In particular I repeat what JR told us:

“The aim of any transfer of energy is to balance the relative energy shared between the elements and officials so that none retains more energy than another.  This way of redistributing energy helps to resolve tension between all the officials, and is an amazingly simple and effective way of restoring harmony.  Transferring energy in this way is therefore one of the most powerful and effective forms of treatment since it benefits all the elements by reducing disparities between them.”

Emboldened by JR’s encouragement I started to make more frequent use of energy transfers, and quickly found how effective they were.  After a transfer of energy of this kind, all the elements would breathe a sigh of relief, as imbalances between them cleared, and the smooth flow of energy round the cycle was restored.

I then started to look at which were likely to be the most common transfers. Again quoting from my Handbook: 

.. “some transfers are more frequently done than others, since certain elements tend to have more energy than others.  For example, the Wood and Earth officials are usually relatively stronger than the Water and Fire officials, which are called upon to provide our reserves of energy.”

This procedure is indicated when the pulses of the grandmother element are stronger than those of the mother element, and the simple transfer of energy using the tonification points between mother and child cannot be carried out, or would be less successful.

In practice, therefore, I found that I only used the following transfers:

From Earth to Outer Fire:          V (Pc) 3, IV (Ki) 3),

From Metal to Wood:                VIII (Li) 4,
From Earth to Wood:                 VIII (Li) 4, IX (Lu) 9
From Wood to Earth:                 XII (Sp)1

I then just learnt the points and the procedure to be used for these few transfers, and have never looked back.
 
As you can see, the transfers I list are carried out only between yin officials across the Ke cycle.  The procedure we were taught as undergraduates included finishing the transfer with the junction point between its yin and yang officials, but I no longer do that.  This is because I can clearly hear JR’s voice telling us that there is rarely a split pulse representing an imbalance between the paired officials within an element.  So when you bring energy to a yin official it will immediately share it with its partner yang official.  This also makes the procedure less complicated.

I hope what I have written here simplifies the approach to carrying out energy transfers a little, and encourages five element acupuncturists to use them as frequently as their reading of the pulses requires.