Passing people by on the street in lockdown London

I don’t know why I am still so surprised at the different reactions I am getting to my approaches to those I encounter on my daily walk around the streets.  Surely, I ask myself, I should know by now that my smiles, accompanied often by a few words, will not always be welcomed.  Indeed they can often be rebuffed, which happens surprisingly often, even in these difficult days when I suppose I assume that we would all welcome friendly approaches from our fellow quarantined human beings.  I am also taken aback at how hurt I feel when I encounter blank stares as I try to engage people I pass in some kind of interaction.  They must all be aware of me, as they correctly swerve 2 metres away from me, and yet they often make not a flicker of eye contact, let alone respond to my words of thanks as I see them moving aside to let me pass.

Of course there are many exceptions, people who are happy to smile in response, even sometimes to stop and talk, and these brief encounters lighten my day and warm my heart.  As a Fire person, I suppose by now I should be aware of how much this heart of mine needs the warmth of its interactions with other people to keep it going.  But I often seem to forget this simple fact, which should act as a reminder to me that, however, much we think we know each element’s needs, particularly our own, we can never fully satisfy them.  At some level we never easily leave that one small circle which our element forms in the larger five-element circle of life.  We remain as though conditioned by who we are despite all our attempts, particularly as five element acupuncturists, to think ourselves into the circles of the other elements.  It becomes a weakness in us if we ignore this, and forget how much our element colours all we do. 

Perhaps, then, it would be a good lesson for me on my walk outside today to try simply to “walk on by”, rather than feel that I should interact in some way with each person I pass.  And I could also learn to use my experiences out in the streets as a useful way of trying to diagnose the different elements of those I meet through their reactions to my approaches.

 

Fighting Fire with Fire

During my acupuncture training I remember hearing the words “fighting Fire with Fire”, and the phrase has always stuck with me.  I am now not sure what the context was, except that it had something to do with not being frightened of using moxa on patients who complain of sweating, where we might hesitate to place further stress on the Fire element by adding moxa cones to our needling.  Later on in my practice, I used what I remembered from this to see if I could  help patients who were suffering hot flushes as part of their menopausal symptoms, and found that this contributed significantly to reducing them if I added one of the most wondrous points of all, III (Bl) 38 (43).

I was reminded of this when a fellow acupuncturist got in touch with me recently, asking for my advice about how he could help his wife who was suffering from very debilitating hot flushes, which persisted almost continuously throughout the day and left her feeling exhausted.   Using the experience from my own practice, I suggested he should add III 38 to the treatment he was giving her (her element is Metal), and asked him to let me know afterwards whether this had helped. 

He phoned me the next day to say that the effect had been miraculous.  His wife's hot flushes had stopped completely immediately after needling III 38 (with 7 moxa cones) ,and he noticed that her skin looked and felt quite different.  Where previously it had been hot and clammy, and had a rather sickly colour, it felt much cooler to the touch and had regained a healthier colour, and she no longer felt cold and shivery as she had done.  I interpreted this as evidence that this point, well warmed by moxibustion, had enabled her body to take control of the fire raging inside her as the hot flushes took hold.  He completed the treatment by needling the source points of Metal.  Two days later his wife had had no further hot flushes.

Thinking through why this point should have such an effect on reducing hot flushes, I have come to the conclusion that this must be because it has a close relationship to the Fire element.  We know that each point is related to the other points lying on the same meridian, as well as to points on other meridians which have a close anatomical relationship to it.  For example, III (Bl) 37 (42), on the Outer Bladder line, lies at the same horizontal plane as the AEP (back shu point) of the Lung, Bl 13, on the Inner Bladder line, and can therefore be seen as having a particular relationship to the Metal element.   Similarly, III 38 on the Outer Bladder line, lies at the same level as the AEP of the Heart Protector (Pericardium), III (Bl) 14, on the Inner Bladder line, and therefore can be seen to relate closely to the Fire element.  At a physical level, the two Outer Fire officials, the Heart Protector and the Three Heater, are in control of the blood and the body’s temperature mechanism, both of which the appearance of hot flushes show to be under extreme stress.  Needling III 38, beautifully warmed up by adding 7 moxa cones beforehand, is therefore a way of helping bring balance back to Outer Fire.  If further treatment is needed, more moxa cones can be added.

Bl 38 is one of the few points, apart from command points, which we can use several times in succession, and to my mind is probably one of the points which form the bedrock of five element practice.  One of its qualities is that it can increase its effect simply by increasing the number of moxa cones by a factor of 7 at subsequent treatments, up to a total of 50 cones (or more symbolically, I like to think, 49 (7 x 7) cones). It has an amazing effect on patients undergoing chemo- or radiotherapy, or for those with anaemia, where it can be used at successive treatments, often only a few days apart, to help the Fire element regain control of the blood. 

Which element would tidy up his/her practitioner’s magazines?

Here’s another little lesson in following up even the tiniest clues to the elements, sent to me by Pierre from France.  I give his words in full, with a few small amendments to make for easier reading:

Just a few words concerning an interesting clue in order to help diagnose the elements.

I treat a male patient since 2 months. At the beginning I felt Water and
Metal a little bit. The others haven't aroused my attention.

After the two first treatments he felt better, but I can attribute this to 7
dragons and AE drain, not to Water treatment.

When I saw him last week, I found that he walked slightly too fast and with
a kind of forcefulness. Compared to my way of walking, I had doubts about
Water... And then when after the third treatment, he got up fast and strong
from the treatment couch, I realized that my intuition was good to change my idea
of his guardian element : indeed I moved from Water to Wood ( thank you for
your blog about bodily movement!) . After he left, I went into the waiting
room and all the magazines which were in a mess on the table before he came
in were now well arranged in ordered piles.

" What an interesting clue to help diagnose a Wood person! Structure of the piles of magazines!"

 

Here is my reply:

A very interesting observation, Pierre.

I think probably only Wood would tidy up the magazines. I (Inner Fire)
would definitely notice that they were all in a muddle, but would not like
to make the practitioner feel that I was judging him by tidying up! I don't
think that Earth would even have noticed (much too busy thinking about
his/her problems). I think Metal would have noticed, but would think it was
the practitioner's task to tidy up, not theirs.

What would you have done, as a Water person? Would you have noticed the
mess?

 

Pierre’s reply to me:

I have never arranged any piles of magazines in a practitioner's clinic. I notice that it is a mess, and I don't like mess. But I know that each thing is moving and unstable : so making an effort to tidy up the piles of magazines is wasting energy for nothing.  I prefer to leave the magazines in a mess.

In my own clinic, I tidy up sometimes the magazines in the waiting room, but always by sorting and throwing out a lot!   Like that, what is left does not seem too messy when it is!

It is by following up such very tiny clues that we begin to differentiate between the different elements.

As a postscript to this blog, I asked Guy Caplan (Metal) whether I was right about Metal not tidying up the magazines, and here’s his reply:

When I arrived at the Acupuncture Academy there were some Acu magazines and EJOM's on the table in the entrance hall.  I instinctively tidied them up into two piles and put them in order.  I don't know if this is a Metal trait or a bit of OCD!

So my observation of Metal is not quite right, is it?  And that’s how we learn that we can’t shut up any element into too tight a box, much as we would like to.   

 And then Guy followed this up by adding another insight into Water:

 When we had the Water group in front of the class, one interesting thing came up for many of them, about not wasting resources! Perhaps the fact of taking time with no goal for itself would be a waste of resources of time for energy for a Water CF?

Interesting how one small but perceptive observation by Pierre has led me, and now Guy, and I hope all those reading this blog, to do a lot of thinking.

Political mayhem and the Small Intestine

To divert myself a little from the appalling political scene in this country, which mirrors what is happening in the US, I try to hone my five element skills by observing the leaders of the two countries in action on the world stage. I always add a proviso to my thoughts about the elements of famous people that since I don’t know them personally I have to base any tentative diagnosis on observing them at one remove on the TV screen.

The effect they have upon me is surprisingly similar.  They both make me very, very angry.  I am appalled at their behaviour and at their total lack of concern for anybody but themselves – an almost pathological level of selfishness which dumbfounds me.  But despite the obvious similarities between them I do not think they are the same element, and will try and explain why not.  I have blogged before that I think Donald Trump is of the Wood element, but, after observing the effect Boris Johnson has on those around him and on me watching on TV, I think his element is Fire.  Despite myself he makes me laugh, as he deliberately acts the clown.  If you watch the people around Donald Trump, on the other hand, all you can see is apprehension, the fear that an unbalanced Wood can arouse in those around it, with only a strained smile on the faces of his audience.  So I will concentrate in this blog on looking at how I think the Fire element shows itself in Boris Johnson, and dedicate another blog to updating my comments on Donald Trump.

When diagnosing the Fire Element we always have to remember the very real differences there are within this element between its two sides, the one I call Outer Fire, with its Heart Protector and Three Heater officials, and the other, Inner Fire, with its Small Intestine and Heart officials.  Having just held another happy day’s clinical seminar at which we discussed in detail just this question of how to distinguish between the two aspects of Fire, this has made me look more closely again at the kind of Fire which Boris Johnson appears to be showing.

I often gather significant pointers to how the different elements reveal themselves by reading newspaper comments.  Today, for example, I read that Boris Johnson has created an “atmosphere of feuding” within 10 Downing Street.  He is, the article says, “only listening to two voices now”, those of Dominic Cummings and of his partner, Carrie Symonds.  Would Outer Fire be so unconcerned about the atmosphere within its team that it would allow feuding between its members?  I can’t see that it would, for it is the task of its two officials to maintain a safe and comfortable atmosphere, physically through the balanced flow of warm blood round the body, and emotionally through their efforts to protect the actions of the Heart in their midst.  I see no sign that Boris Johnson is concerned with doing this.  Far from it.  He does not seem interested in ensuring the overall well-being of anybody apart from himself, and appears ever more preoccupied with pursuing his own ends without regard for others.  His team are said to be at loggerheads with one another, all but his inner circle of two having been banished to the periphery of decision-making.  And it is one of the characteristics of the Small Intestine that it has to make its mind up quickly in order to ensure that it does not endanger the Heart, its yin official, and quick decisions are more easily made by a few people rather than thrown open to a large group.  This again points to Inner Fire.  

Boris Johnson’s voice, too, reflects what I regard as the hesitancy all Inner Fire people show in speaking, as their minds work hard at sorting out the words to express the complex thoughts they are engaged in.  His speech is certainly not the articulate speech that distinguishes Outer Fire people, who think before they speak, and when they speak do so without hesitancy.  I have always believed that Inner Fire uses the very action of speaking as a way of sorting out its thoughts, as it searches for exactly the right expression to articulate these thoughts.  There is therefore always a kind of “stop and start” feeling about listening to Inner Fire people, as they try to gather their thoughts into exactly the right form to express what they want to say.  Boris Johnson often mumbles or sounds hesitant, interspersing this hesitancy with sudden bursts of bullying, when he talks over the interviewer apparently without listening to what he is being asked and failing to answer directly many of the questions directed at him. Is his “element within” Wood within Fire perhaps?

I have written before that I thought that Tony Blair was also Inner Fire, but a much more balanced expression of the Small Intestine as it takes on the task of sorting the pure from the impure.  During his time as Prime Minister, though, he had in common one characteristic which he shares with Boris Johnson, and that was his reliance upon one or a few people who he allowed to have too much influence upon him.  In Tony Blair’s case it was George Bush.  I still find it disturbing watching the old clips of Tony Blair walking in the woods in America with George Bush, with an almost sycophantic, adoring look on his face.  It was the influence his obvious admiration for George Bush had upon him which I believe led to his decision to follow him into the disastrous war in Iraq.  Similarly, we are at the time of writing this (3 October 2019) watching a somewhat hapless Boris Johnson appearing to be trapped in the coils of a disastrous attachment to his adviser, Dominic Cummings.  The Small Intestine, when out of balance, as Boris Johnson’s so obviously is, can indeed lose its ability to sort the pure from the impure, in the case of both these leaders of this country leading to disastrous consequences.

I am always happy to acknowledge that everybody is free to develop their own personal take on the elements, and should indeed do so.  I am therefore sure that some people reading this may well disagree with my diagnosis.  But since I feel a strong affinity with all other Inner Fire people, having the Small Intestine as my particular guardian official, I am quite happy to express my own very personal understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of living my life under the influence of this particular official, and how my personal understanding may be helping me see signs of this in Boris Johnson.

I also like to think that my writing this will help me let off a bit of the indignant steam I feel rising within me as I watch the political shambles unfolding around me.

 

 

 

 

An amazing response to simple Inner Fire treatment

Occasionally the treatment we give can have what are to me even now quite startling results.  One such outcome occurred during my last seminar in Beijing.  A young man of 18, who by chance happened to have been educated up to the age of 11 in England, and therefore spoke excellent English, came for treatment.  He was finding life very difficult, probably because of his difficulty in integrating himself into the Chinese educational system after all those years in England in a very different kind of a school.  Because his knowledge of written Chinese was very limited, he had been placed in a class which was 2 years behind his age group, a difficult thing for any child to cope with, and this, I think, had caused him most of his problems.

I diagnosed him as Fire, and he responded to me in a way which I felt was very characteristic of Inner Fire.  He had had some previous treatment on Fire early on his treatment some months back so I felt that we did not need to give him the four treatments on Outer Fire first, as we should always do before turning to Inner Fire.  (The reasoning for this is that we need to strengthen Fire’s outer defences before addressing its very heart).  I therefore thought it was reasonable simply to do the source points of Outer Fire, and then move on in the same treatment to Inner Fire, again with its source points.  We therefore needled a total of only 4 points.

I thought he looked and felt very different as soon as we treated the Inner Fire points, but I was not expecting what he said, as he walked towards me after the treatment.  This was:  “I feel as though I’ve just come out of a coma.”

No wonder I love what I do!

 

Two prime examples of the Wood element out of balance (2)

Instead of the constant mantra-like repetitions of key phrases, which are one of the hallmarks of Theresa May’s speeches, we have instead in Donald Trump a different kind of example of the Wood element out of balance.  His Wood element appears as though trapped eternally in a kind of infantile world, with bursts of often incoherent words babbling forth in uninhibited tweets, much like a child enjoying itself with a new toy.  He combines this with a need to make a stream of off-the-cuff decisions without apparently giving any thought to their consequences.  I see this as the Wood element, the element of spring, growing innumerable little buds and shoots without worrying about which of these will develop into full-grown plants, instead just taking pleasure in all this activity for activity’s sake.  

I like to think of each element as having its particular place along the cycle which represents our lifetime.  According to this, Wood represents our childhood, Fire our youth and early maturity, Earth our full maturity, Metal the time of late adulthood and early old age, and Water, that mysterious time  which represents both the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next, offering us the seeds of the future.  Being the child element, Wood people therefore express much of the joyousness of the young.  But as with all children, this sense of uninhibited enjoyment can reveal its imbalance in different ways;  it can become suppressed, or it can become exaggerated.  Theresa May and Donald Trump are two very clear, and contrasting, examples of this.

It was significant that when asked to describe an incident when she had been a naughty child, the only one Theresa May could recall (or the only one she wanted to share) was a rather harmless time when she ran into a field of growing corn.  By any standards this could hardly be considered a very wicked thing for a young child to do, but it was significant that she regarded it as such.  Her feelings of guilt about this seemed to me to show evidence of some suppression of Wood’s natural exuberance rather than enjoyment of it.  From then on I began to regard her as a very good example of inhibited Wood, the suppressed emotion associated with this being what we call a lack of anger. 

Trump, on the other hand, shows signs of quite the reverse.  His Wood element is not only not suppressed as May’s appears to be, but is allowed much too much freedom to express itself in a totally uninhibited and inappropriate way.  The emotion he shows is therefore what we could call an excess of anger.  The pointed finger, one of the characteristic Wood gestures, as he furiously jabs the air as though attacking those he is arguing against, is also evidence of this.  Suppressed anger and excess anger are the two sides of the Wood element out of balance.  Neither can be said to be an appropriate emotion to be displayed by the leader of a country.  This can be contrasted to their detriment, and often is, with Barack Obama’s more mature and more balanced emotional expression, which I interpret as being that of a thoughtful Metal element, a much more appropriate emotion for one who is asked to lead his country.

The only signs of the Wood element that I could observe from looking at clips on TV or social media were those associated with sound and emotion, since I could obviously not observe colour clearly or sense smell.  Their voices both bear the hallmark of Wood’s distinctive forcefulness. Trump’s is a more overtly shouting voice, whilst May’s has a much more controlled tone.  Their way of walking, too, expresses the two very different sides of Wood very clearly.  Trump stomps along with heavy feet, and sits forward almost aggressively in a clear attempt to control whoever he is sitting next to, whilst May’s body and facial movements are more tightly controlled.  In fact, a New York Times article on May has just described her, appropriately, as “famously wooden”.  Her jaw is clenched, with tight neck muscles, always a sign of the Wood element under stress, and she now walks in an increasingly hunched position, with bent shoulders.  All these are signs of Wood’s control over our tendons and ligaments showing its stress.

Interestingly, both Theresa May and Donald Trump like to surround themselves with a very close band of advisers, chosen not for their expertise but because they apparently don’t feel threatened by them.  They are both reluctant to appoint experienced people with a proven record of expertise in a given field, relying instead on hand-picked advisers, often friends, whom they catapult into jobs for which they are completely unqualified.  Or, in the case of Theresa May, not only friends.  Think of her surprising appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary, a man totally unsuited to the delicate negotiations required, but nonetheless appointed in the hope that such a dangerous opponent of hers would have to show apparent loyalty to her in his new position.  This was another example of an extremely unwise, ill thought-out decision.

Neither May nor Trump appears to have the emotional depth necessary to show empathy of any kind with their fellow human beings in distress.  We should think here of Theresa May’s unwillingness to visit the Grenfell tower block until a few days after the fire, and Trump’s equally unfeeling approach to locking young children up in cages on the Mexican border. 

To end this blog on a happier note, it is useful to contrast what I have written with a shining example of an appropriate human reaction to tragic events which was that of Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand Prime Minister, whose response to the shootings in the Christchurch Mosques could not be faulted.  It helps, of course, that she is Fire, I believe, which is the element most capable of showing its emotions, “wearing its heart on its sleeve”, as we say.  It may always be more difficult for Wood to show a similar level of empathy however balanced it is, but certainly not the complete lack shown by these two leaders.

 

 

 

How watching a tennis match helped me observe something new about the Fire element

I am always fascinated to see how one small movement or gesture can make me see the elements from a slightly different angle.  The present example occurred during the award ceremony at the recent Australian Open Tennis Tournament. Anybody who has read what I have written over the years knows that I much enjoy watching sport.  This love of mine started when I developed scarlet fever as a young child, and, this being well before the age of antibiotics, I had to be quarantined for six weeks in a room away from my siblings.  I whiled away the long hours on my own listening to the daily cricket commentaries on the radio (no TV then!). This love of cricket moved on to my enjoying watching many other sports.

So it is no surprise to hear that I watched this tennis final on TV, and, apart from enjoying the tennis itself, was pleased that it confirmed something more for me about the Fire element.  I had already thought that the element of the winner, Naomi Osaka, was Fire, but then I noticed another quirk of the Fire element which I don’t think I had observed so clearly before.  Winners always take time to congratulate their opponents, and as she started to do this, she looked around uncertainly until she located her standing a little behind her.  She then turned right away from the camera in front of her to look straight at her opponent as she talked, and became so absorbed in talking to her that she seemed to have forgotten all about the camera that was on her.  It was almost as if the two of them were alone together, rather than in front of a huge stadium and TV audience.  The camera-man had to shuffle round rather awkwardly so that Naomi was still on camera.  To me this was an unexpected confirmation of Fire’s need to talk face-to-face to the person they are engaging with. 

Afterwards I went through how I thought the other elements would react in a similar situation.  I had seen Rafa Nadal, who I think is Wood, and Roger Federer, who I think is Water, accepting their winners’ trophies at different times, and both had continued talking to the interviewer, only glancing briefly over to include their opponents.  Neither, I felt, looked as if they wanted to turn their back on the cameras as Naomi had done.  I can’t recall any examples of Earth and Metal tennis champions, but I feel that it is probable that these two elements would be unlikely to have the same need to maintain the close eye-contact Naomi wanted.  I think Earth would accept its role at the centre of the vast watching audience, whilst Metal, which always likes to remain slightly apart from the people it talks to, would be likely simply to stand there quietly.  By contrast, Naomi’s movements were rather jerky and uneasy, and she never seemed to be still.

It was also interesting to read later that she had said that she was cross with herself for forgetting the speech she had prepared beforehand.  I think only Fire would be so unselfconscious as to laugh at itself so openly in this way, by “opening its heart” and therefore making itself slightly vulnerable.

It is by being surprised at some quirk of behaviour such as the example I am describing here that I continue to add to my understanding of the elements.  Observing the small differences between the way one person behaves compared with another is an excellent way of helping us refine our five element skills.

 

What do the different elements get angry about?

I always like looking at the ways the different elements express their emotions, and  my last blog (14 August) has made me think about how each element expresses its anger. 

When we express emotions other than the one our particular element imprints us with, these other emotions will always be coloured a little by the specific emotion which has our guardian element’s stamp upon it.  If I take the example of Metal, then Metal’s expression of anger will always be tinged with Metal’s own emotional needs, one of which is its demand for others to respect it.  What makes Metal most angry, therefore, are likely to be those things which impact negatively upon its sense of self-respect, or, by extension, upon the self-respect of others around it.  I have seen Metal people becoming extremely angry, and to me quite frighteningly so, when somebody has ridiculed them openly in front of other people.

Earth can show its anger when it feels that somebody is not paying enough attention to what it wants to say, or interrupts it in mid-sentence.  Its need is not so much a craving for sympathy, but a craving for understanding in its widest sense.  It wants to be given the space and time to express exactly how it feels, and becomes irritated if it is not allowed to do this.  This is something that I, as a rather over-hasty Fire person, have sometimes been guilty of doing, at my Earth patients’ cost. 

I have found Water’s expression of anger to be more hidden, but like Metal’s it can be quite frightening to witness.  It can appear out of the blue (what a Water-like phrase!), like a tornado erupting suddenly out of a clear sky.  Water needs to be constantly on the move, and its sudden expression of anger can be its response to feeling that something is blocking its path.  Behind this outburst of anger lies all the power which Water exerts on all it does.

There is then the Wood element’s own expression of anger.  This is an element most at ease within a given structure and with order in its life.  It is when structure and order are under threat that its dominant emotion of anger will show its stress.   It is easy for us to see an exaggerated example of this in the shouting and fighting to be observed in drunken people on the streets at night.  There is, however, the flipside to this, which is often forgotten, and which often leads us to misdiagnose the Wood element.  This is the suppressed expression of this emotion which we call lack of anger.  Here the voice can speak in an exaggerated whisper instead of a shout, and there may be a marked inability to express anger where anger would be a balanced reaction to some external event. 

Lastly, how do I think Fire tends to express its anger?  I should know, because I am, after all, Fire, but there is always the complication with Fire that, unlike any other element, it has two sides to it, which I have called Inner and Outer Fire.  I have always felt that in some ways this double-sided element could really be described as harbouring two elements, making a total of six in all.  I remember saying this to JR Worsley one day, and was rather delighted when he nodded.  Of course the two sides share Fire’s sensory signatures of colour, sound and smell, but their emotional approach to life is very different.  I can really only speak at first-hand for Inner Fire, although having observed Outer Fire for many years I have learnt to understand some of its qualities as I have those of the other elements.

I know what makes me angry, and that is any injustice meted out to other people, not so much injustice of which I am the object.  I like to fight my battles more on behalf of others than on behalf of myself, and feel deeply, and thus become very angry, when others are wronged.  In my experience Outer Fire’s anger is more directed at feeling that they have been the victim of some injustice.  Both sides of Fire, though, will not harbour grudges for long for they tend to feel that difficulties in any of their relationships with others may somehow be their fault.  Their anger is therefore likely to simmer down quite quickly, once they acknowledge their own role in whatever initially angered them. 

These are my thoughts on the different expressions of anger which each of the five elements may show.    

Lessons from the master JR Worsley

When I am teaching, as I have been recently over a busy two weeks in Beijing, a question I am asked often serves as a reminder of some important incident which took place during my training or my early years as a practitioner, which I now see set me thinking quite differently about my practice.  Each of these incidents proved a catalyst, opening up new directions to my thoughts.  I am surprised to find how many such important events have occurred in my acupuncture life, and appreciate now that without them I would not have made the often unconventional detours I did.  Much of my development as a five element acupuncturist, and reflected now in my writings, has been based on what could be considered the rather unconventional approach I have adopted when measured against that of many of my peers.

I have often thought that the tone was firmly set early on when I was asked to teach an evening class about acupuncture at a London evening institute at a time well before complementary practices were in such common use as they are today.  This was also when I had only just qualified.  It meant that I was free to develop my own thoughts about my practice unhampered by others, since there weren’t any others around doing what I was doing.  I found myself talking about five element acupuncture to a very wide range of lay people, and therefore had to couch my thoughts in very general terms, rather than assume that my audience and I spoke the common language familiar to all acupuncturists.  I taught at several of these institutes during the first few years of my practice, allowing the differing groups of people who came to my classes to influence how I expressed myself and how far what I was learning from my practice could be translated into a language they could all understand, from the builder, the retired postman, the young student, the bank clerk and the unemployed people who crowded into my classes evening after evening.

This allowed me a freedom to be cherished, something I did not realise until later, for I was able to develop my own ideas quite independently of other professional acupuncturists, and quite unhampered or inhibited by opinions about the practice of acupuncture which might well have differed from mine.  When I rejoined my fellow acupuncturists two years later as part of my first advanced training course under JR Worsley, I brought the often rather odd ideas I had developed into my time with him, a time which proved to be the most exhilarating of all my years of acupuncture training.  It also proved to be a time of heightened tension in the five element world as it coincided with JR Worsley’s own fight to keep the college he had nurtured so carefully for the past 20 years untainted by the introduction of other less traditional forms of acupuncture as he felt strongly it would be.  Eventually he lost this fight and had to resign, and this led almost directly to my starting the School of Five Element Acupuncture (SOFEA) with the express intention of continuing his work of spreading the practice of this branch of acupuncture, and often, to my delight, with his active support.

I took every opportunity I could to observe JR in his interactions with patients, and was fortunate that the time of my postgraduate training with him coincided with his last years at Leamington. There was therefore a rather febrile atmosphere at the Leamington college during my last years there, with acupuncturists lining up on one side or the other of unfortunately an increasingly hostile divide.  Sensing this, I made every effort to stay as close to JR as I could, attending all his seminars and taking many patients to private consultations with him.  I view these few final years at Leamington as forming my own personal apprenticeship to the master of five element acupuncture.

It was during this period of intense activity that I experienced many of the seminal moments which have set my acupuncture practice on such a fulfilling course.  In particular I am now enjoying reliving some of the profound lessons I learnt when studying with JR. The first of these occurred when I was sitting in the classroom at the Leamington college during a lunch break watching a video of JR with a patient, in which he was asking the young patient a question.  I remember her looking puzzled, thinking for a minute, and then saying, “I’m not sure how to answer that”.  Unnoticed by me, JR had come into the classroom, and was standing behind me.  I heard him murmur, “Only a II CF would say that”.  Translated into the acupuncture language in common use now this meant that only a Fire person who was Inner Fire (the Small Intestine is given the Roman numeral II in five element acupuncture) would express herself in those terms.  Not only did this teach me a lot about the distinctions to be made between Outer Fire’s much more articulate responses to a question and Inner Fire’s verbal hesitancy as it tries to sort out its thoughts, it also taught me a lot about myself, and has continued to do so over the years, for it has made me, an Inner Fire person, so much clearer to myself.  So, I asked myself, was this the way I respond to questions, with the initial brief air of puzzlement this patient showed, before finally sorting out an answer to give which satisfies the Small Intestine’s need to pass only what is pure on to the Heart?  Now, whenever I try to work out whether a person’s Fire element is that of Inner or Outer Fire, I always draw on the image of this girl’s puzzled face to help me decide.

 

Help needed!

To my surprise, because I have in the past always used my blog entries as a form of one-way traffic, I have learnt a lot by asking for feedback from my blog readers to my blog of 22 January “Metal removes itself”.  In this I asked for comments from people as to how they would react to being in tricky situations.  The comments that I received taught me a lot about how different elements approach life.

I am always aware that I may be becoming a little too fixed in my ideas about the elements, and offering insights which are too stereotyped.  This is a danger for anybody who has immersed themselves in one area as I have done with studies of the elements over so many years.  I sometimes wonder whether I am growing a little blind to different aspects of the elements.  So to counter this, I would like some further help with another piece which I am writing to form part of what I hope will be my next book.  This book will draw together my many tips for diagnosing the elements which I have devised for myself, and which are scattered here and there throughout my writings.   

The piece I am writing at the moment I am calling “The impact an element makes upon us”, and describes the way in which I feel the different elements engage with me.  I have written about four elements, but I have come to a slight full-stop with Fire, because that is my own element, and I feel my observations may well be too specific to me and not general enough to help others.  This is how I have started the piece:

“Fire, maybe because it is my element, tends to make me relax since I am on familiar terrain and therefore no longer feel under any pressure to react.  It is as though I do not have to put on a mask of any kind, and can be who I really am.  As a practitioner this runs the risk of making things a little too cosy, with a tendency to overlook inevitable areas of tension, in case these disturb the comfortable atmosphere I and my patient are hoping to create for ourselves.     

Because I feel at ease with Fire, I am not as aware as people of other elements might be of the pressure it puts upon me, because it makes me feel warm and comfortable.  I realise that this may well not be the case for everybody.  Because this is a very personal reaction I will have to watch carefully how Fire’s interactions with other people unfold.”

I will be very interested to hear descriptions of how readers of this blog, whatever their element, experience their interactions with Fire.  

 

 

Metal removes itself

A Metal friend of mine, asked to explain how she deals with difficult situations, said simply, “I remove myself”.

I am always delighted when somebody offers such a neat and almost laughably concise illustration of an element’s particular qualities.  On reflection, I decided that I could not think of any other element apart from Metal that would say this.  I think it is the only element which I can see detaching itself so firmly and standing back.  Certainly, I who am as Fire as they come, could never say something like that.  In some way I realise that I always have to stay attached to whatever situation I am involved in.

This has made me think about how the other elements, Wood, Earth or Water, react when confronted with similar tricky situations.  I have my own thoughts on this, but would welcome feedback from people of these elements just to confirm my thinking.

Is there anybody out there who is Wood, Earth or Water, or indeed Metal or Fire, who would like to add something to this discussion?

Wood can't afford to have doubts

I was with a Wood friend today and after a few hours in her company I realised that I wanted to ask her an odd question, which was, “Do you ever have doubts?”  I wondered why this question had popped into my mind and realised it was because the hours with her had in a subtle way undermined me.  She seemed so sure of everything she said, stating everything as an established fact.  It was as if I was listening to many statements all having the effect of a pronouncement, a kind of “this is so”, and “that is so” and “that is all there is about it.”

I asked myself why this had thrown me as much as it obviously did, because here I am now half a day later still slightly disturbed.  Mulling this over, as I always do when something happens which throws me off-balance, I realised that the strong certainty with which she talked about things had caught me on the hop by highlighting what I felt were my own uncertainties and making them look liked weaknesses.

If I look carefully at the times when I think of myself as uncertain, it is not in fact the result of weakness, rather the reverse.  It represents merely the necessary time my Inner Fire (Small Intestine) needs to weigh up possible alternatives, because I always have to allow myself to see two sides of every situation.  In contrast to Wood  I am asking myself: “It may be like this, but I must also consider whether it may on the other hand be like this.”  And then my Inner Fire carries on with its ceaseless work of sorting what it is right for the Heart to do.

The Wood element, on the other hand, has other priorities.  Not for Wood is the luxury of weighing up pros and cons.  It is there to get on with things, and its decisions have to be rapid and taken in a “no turning back” kind of spirit.  Once made, these decisions have to be put into effect as soon as possible, and once it has decided what its opinion about anything is, that fixes it, if not for all time, then certainly for the immediate future.  During the time I spent with my Wood friend, I heard many statements of fact which sounded as though they were my friend’s firm opinions.  With each of her emphatic statements I could feel any confidence in my own certainties fading a little, as my Small Intestine tried to take on board what was being so firmly offered as fact.  It often felt itself swayed by these dogmatic statements because it couldn’t give itself enough time to assess whether at heart it agreed with them or not. 

This was another important lesson for me on the differences between Wood’s ability to make decision and my own, and also gave me further insights into Inner Fire’s potential weaknesses, as well as its potential strengths.  These are related to its need always to see the other side of the question and therefore to evaluate the relative merits of the arguments being presented to it.   I feel that Wood has no such hesitations.  Once having made up its mind, that is it.  And as I put it myself, it can’t afford to have doubts, because doubts will hold it back from acting, and action is above all what Wood wants.

Thus do I learn a little more each day about myself, about my Inner Fire and about my relationship to the Wood element.

Difficulties of dealing with our own element

How does the Fire element make me feel?  This is a more difficult question than when I ask myself how the other elements make me feel, because here I am confronting my own element, and dealing with one’s own element presents challenges and risks all of their own.  One would think that its very familiarity to me would make me feel far more at ease, but oddly this is at the same time both a true and a false assumption. 

In a way I am very easy in the presence of Fire because I can relax and express my enjoyment of life with those who enjoy similar things.  But I find that I am also irritated by just those familiar qualities in other Fire people that irritate me in myself.  So my contacts with Fire are not always the unalloyed delight one might expect them to be.

In looking at the elements over the years I have often learnt a great deal from studying them in those closest to me, my family and friends, as many of us do.  We cannot choose our families, but we do of course definitely choose our partners, and thereby hangs many a tale about our relationship to the other elements.  We also choose our friends.  Unless we have moved from partner to many other partners over the years, our choice of friends will provide us with the largest selection of those we like to be with.  We are likely to have accumulated more friends than partners, and thus have a larger choice from which to learn more about the elements at close hand, and more specifically, to explore what it is about particular elements that has attracted us sufficiently to select them as people whose companionship we enjoy.  For me it has been a fascinating exploration which has yielded surprising results, all of which has taught me a lot about particular elements in general and about my own element in particular. 

I have therefore used myself as a productive tool of learning, which we should all do if we are to deepen our understanding of what distinguishes one element from another.

Usain Bolt - again

I have written about Usain Bolt and the Fire element before (see my blog of 24 August 2016), and I am delighted to be writing about him again today, the morning after he ran his last race here in London.  He didn’t win last night, but interestingly he didn’t seem to mind.  I could see him obviously enjoying to the full the love pouring towards him from the huge crowd.  This reflected what I had read in the newspaper on the morning of the race, words which so accurately describe the effect that the Fire element can have when it tries to share its joy with those around it.  Here are some of the article’s descriptions of how he affects other people:

“He is not only the face of athletics but its light-house, luring even the most casual fan to its shores.”

“..Usain really is a people person, too.  When he first went on the circuit, a decade ago, he would be in the hotel lobbies talking to people at 1am or 2am. He loves people and interacting with them.  I had to tell him to go to bed.”

And one description which makes me think Usain Bolt is Inner Fire:

“What struck me was just how willing he was in the middle of a conversation to break off and oblige a fan for a photo or an autograph, never complaining, always smiling…”

“He’s a selfless human being, one who genuinely loves to make others happy.”

All these descriptions could only be applied to Fire, I think, and in my view particularly to Inner Fire, which has a greater ability than Outer Fire to multi-task, even at the most emotionally extreme moments (such as running in the Olympics).

 

I know this from myself, who am Inner Fire.  Many years ago, long before I had even caught sight of an acupuncture needle or understood anything about the elements, I realised that I had this ability to do more than one thing at a time when somebody expressed amazement that I was able to switch from a very serious moment to pointing out something rather trivial happening nearby, almost as if the two events, the very serious one and the trivial one, were happening at one and the same time.  Watching Usain Bolt again, I could see that, whilst preparing for his race, he was nonetheless all the time aware of those around him and interacting with them, exchanging smiles and the odd word with whoever was next to him.  We can contrast this with the absolute and necessary self-absorption that Metal would display in a similar situation, as I have observed before.

 

So all hail to this most charismatic and joyous representative of the Fire element.  Feast your eyes on him wherever you can catch him on TV or social media, and you will get a lesson about one of the elements that you will never forget.  I wish it was as easy to find such outstanding examples of the other elements.