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. 

My New Year's blog for the Chinese Year of the Rat

My vision for the future of five element acupuncture

We have invited a group of five element acupuncturists from the Chinese Five Element Society to come to London in July. They include many of the people who have been following us with such dedication in seminar after seminar since our first days in Nanning in 2011 to the much grander venues in Beijing which now host more than 300 keen five element acupuncturists every time we come.  This group will include those who can now be regarded as the core of a five element teaching team spread around China.  This visit will be a lovely way for Guy and me to repay some of the overwhelming hospitality we receive each time we go to China.

Planning the group’s time here has made me think more about how I see the future of five element acupuncture, both in China and in this country.  My founding of the School of Five Element acupuncture in 1995 was a direct answer to the appallingly cynical downgrading of five element acupuncture in the eyes of many people in this country and around the world.  I still remember well being asked rather scornfully by somebody seduced by the temporary glitter of the introduction of TCM into this country, “Do you still only practise five element acupuncture?”, as though I was practising some primitive form of out-dated acupuncture. 

Nobody now dares say this, either to me or to anybody else, in the light of China’s wholehearted welcome for the return of five element acupuncture to the land of its birth some few thousand years ago.  This turnaround delights me, and justifies my fight for the survival of five element acupuncture in its purest form – and what a fight that was.   I feel the battle is now won, thanks in great part to the support Professor Liu Lihong in China has given me with such great heart from the first day we met and the years since then.  I am so proud that, in his dedication to the translation of Liu Lihong’s great book Classical Chinese Medicine, Heiner Fruehauf mentions five element acupuncture as being one of the disciplines now well-established under the umbrella of traditional Chinese medicine in China.

The original vision Professor Liu Lihong and I had of bringing five element acupuncture back to its homeland has, I feel, been achieved.  But that is only the first step, although a momentous one, in five element’s journey back from West to East.  The most important thing now is the journey it will continue to take as it consolidates its position in the Chinese traditional medicine world.  And here the visit of the first group of Chinese five element acupuncturists to spread their international wings abroad will become an important turning-point, providing an opportunity for future international co-operation between practitioners from our two countries. The group will spend time at The Acupuncture Academy in Leamington Spa, where they will meet tutors and students there. 

My hope is that this visit will eventually lead to cooperation between members of the Chinese Five Element Society and five element acupuncturists in this country on two fronts, one relating to research and the other to clinical practice.  The Director of the Acupuncture and Moxibustion Institute of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in Being, Wang Jingjing, is a very keen practitioner of five element acupuncture, and has already published a paper on five element acupuncture in the Science and Technology Review in China.  It will be exciting to see how this work can be expanded, and I hope, too, that there will be greater opportunities for future student exchanges between our two countries.

All in all, a very exciting start to the Chinese Year of the Rat.  From being just a personal quest on Professor Liu Lihong’s and my part to spread an understanding of five element acupuncture in China, our work there will now move to a wider, more international arena.  How exciting the future of five element acupuncture now appears to me to be!

A Happy New Year of the Rat to you all!

A five element review of my year: December 2019

As I approach the end of another year, I like to add up its pluses and its minuses, always hoping that its pluses are the greater.  On the professional front I am pleased to think that they definitely are.  On the political front, definitely not, as we just emerge from another unsatisfactory election and face an even more unsettling future expelled from the comforting family of our European friends.  But since the world as a whole is going through a period of great turmoil, with no end in sight, I will concentrate here on the joys my professional life has brought me this year, none more so than observing the blossoming of five element acupuncture in China.  

And appropriately for a five element acupuncturist, I am breaking down my time in China into its different elemental phases.  There was its initial Water phase, when the seeds of five element acupuncture’s re-emergence in China were slowly being sown, after Mei Long had met me at a seminar in the Netherlands, and then written about this to Liu Lihong.  Then Wood’s buds, planted so inspiringly by Liu Lihong, slowly germinated, first a few of them in our seminars in Nanning, then more and more, as the buds of China’s five element spring gradually spread, until they have burst into full summer blossom in the last few years under the warmth of the Fire element which Mei and I bring to what we do.

How happy I was when I came to China this October to see the fruit of all our work in the large team of Chinese five element teachers who now teach the basic five element principles to the many hundreds of those wanting to learn.  These teachers represent the true fruit of what we have sown in the past eight years, doing the Earth element’s work for us.  And then appropriately as we approach the end of the year, we come to Metal, as Liu Lihong adds his inspiration to all our work, and Guy Caplan bestows Metal’s quality upon all the teaching we do.   

Finally, the growing success of what we are achieving in establishing five element acupuncture’s position in the traditional medicine landscape in China lies in the capable hands of the strongest of all the elements, Water, for without Lynn Yang where would we all be?  She holds everything together, drawing things into a circle so that one seminar ends and without a hitch the next is already at its planning stage.   Without her Water energy the circle which symbolizes the re-introduction of five element acupuncture into China would not be complete. 

Liu Lihong once told me, “Now we need a Chinese JR Worsley to appear”.  I am sure the seed for this has already been sown, and will emerge when the time is right.  As he said, “There’s no hurry, Nora.  If it takes 100 years or more for five element acupuncture to establish itself in China, it doesn’t matter.”  I am a much more hasty person than he is, and I am delighted to see that it has not taken the 100 years he predicted, but less than the eight years I have been going to China, for I see it happening already.   

So each element has added its magical touch to my years in China.

 

Some very Water-like words from Roger Federer at this week's Wimbledon tennis tournament

I have always thought that Roger Federer is Water.  I can’t see his colour or smell his smell when I watch him on TV, but his body movements are so fluid, as if he flows through the air, and I think his voice is the kind of groaning I associate with water flowing around rocks.  So I was amused to read the following in the Guardian newspaper a day or so ago:

“Their (the crowd’s) love for Federer is boundless.  And he appreciates it more than people realise. In an interesting aside later, the Swiss was asked how much time he spends alone.

“Not much,” Federer said, pausing. “I don’t like being alone. I mean, I’m not afraid of being alone. I like being surrounded by my friends, family. It’s obviously the best. I like talking to people. Now with four kids anyway, there is a lot of that, which is perfect for me in my life because I’m very happy.”

I always think of Water people as being like individual drops of water that stream together with their fellows to form the flow of Water which creates a pond, a river, an ocean or a shower of rain.  It’s therefore nice to receive some confirmation of this in Roger Federer’s words.  I find it interesting, too, that he uses the words “I’m not afraid” when describing how he feels when he is alone.  There is a tinge of fear revealed in his use of the word “afraid”, even though he is denying that he is.  (Water never acknowledges its fear, for that makes it vulnerable.)  I asked myself if I, a Fire person, would ever say “I am not afraid of being alone”, and realised that I would not.  This is because I am not afraid of being alone, but if I feel lonely it will be sadness, not fear, that I feel.

Earth, too, will not enjoy being alone, for it enjoys being surrounded by the company of others.  Metal is perfectly happy being alone, since it is definitely the element which most enjoys its own company, often preferring it to that of others.  I don’t think it matters very much to Wood whether it is alone or with people, since it is so occupied with planning and doing things, and people will either help him do that or get in its way.

I enjoy piecing together fresh little thoughts like this about the different ways the elements express themselves, prompted by something that I read or see.

Another happy SOFEA seminar day on 9 June

People tell me that I never like to trumpet the successes of what our little band of dedicated five element acupuncturists do to promote the calling that we love.  So this blog is my attempt to make good this fault a little.  It has been promoted by the following two lovely compliments we received from attendees at our London seminar last weekend:

“I was truly starving for 5 Element teaching after 10 years not being in the UK for extra courses. So that was why my smile was from ear to ear for most of the day. Tears because of coming home again in this BEAUTIFUL 5 Element world.

I want to wish you (Guy) and Nora all the best and hope to meet you one day again.”

 

and:

 

“It was wonderful to be amongst like-minded folk and I really appreciate the feedback on my patients from a ‘fresh pair of eyes’.  I’m sure both patients will continue to do well with their treatments”.

 

As usual, Guy and I emerged from the day re-inspired from our day-long immersion in the world of the elements with a group of like-minded acupuncturists, acupuncture students and those just keen to learn more about the elements.  This time we saw four patients brought by some of those attending;  we helped with their diagnosis and supervised treatments for each of them.  We were delighted that the group understood that they need not be concerned about “getting the element right”, but instead have learnt to accept that this always takes time, remembering my mantra “Don’t hurry!  Don’t worry!”

 

We have devised a very useful way of helping with the diagnosis by asking the group whether they feel the patient makes the energy in the room go up, go down or “neither up nor down”, as the good old Duke of York says in the nursery rhyme.  Up is obviously more yang (therefore Wood or Fire), down more yin (therefore Metal or Water) and in-between is more likely to be Earth.  We have found this a surprisingly accurate way of discarding some elements and emphasizing the one or two the patient may be.  Usually the majority in the room, even among the 300 or more in China and the lesser number in this country, experience the same effect of a patient’s energy upon them.  This simple method by itself usually reduces the potential number of elements to choose from five down to two, or at most three, always a helpful way to start our diagnosis.

 

Our next London seminar on 29 September is now fully booked, with a waiting list, but there are still a few places left for our spring 2020 seminar on Sunday 9 February.  Booking forms can be downloaded from our website: www.sofea.co.uk.

 

 

 

 

My review of Professor Liu Lihong's book: Classical Chinese Medicine

Published by The Chinese University Press
The Chinese University of Hong Kong 2019

 

I would like to start my review of Liu Lihong’s book with the words with which he ends it:

"Why is this book titled “Contemplating Chinese Medicine” in Chinese? What is it that we are contemplating? It is nothing other than these underlying principles, nothing other than the mysteries of nature and life as deciphered through the orientations of time.”  

Liu Lihong was the person who invited me eight years ago to come to China to give an introductory seminar on five element acupuncture, and has since then steadfastly promoted five element acupuncture as a valid discipline of traditional Chinese medicine.  It was therefore a lovely moment of recognition for these years of my work in China since then to read the following in Heiner Fruehauf’s introduction:

 

…”Liu Lihong has developed the Institute (for the Clinical Research of Classical Chinese Medicine) into an influential platform that has reintroduced multiple classical lineages to contemporary scholarly discourse, most notably the Fire Spirit School of Sichuan herbalism (huoshen pai), the traditional system of emotional healing synthesized by the Confucian educator Wang Fengyi (1864-1937), and classical five-element-style acupuncture. Each one of these efforts has had a considerable impact on the grassroots momentum of Chinese Medicine education in China.”

 

Joyful at thus seeing evidence of the importance of my work in China, I was delighted at last to be able to read the book which was the catalyst those eight years ago for Mei Long to write to Liu Lihong, urging him to acquaint himself with this discipline of traditional Chinese medicine, one which she recognized was very close to his own approach.  It has been with much surprise and delight now to receive confirmation that all that I was taught by the great master of five element acupuncture, JR Worsley himself, all that I have since learnt for myself and from my readings of the classics through translations by Father Larre and Elisabeth Rochat, all of this finds strong, almost eerie echoes in what Liu Lihong writes.

Though the book includes much detailed discussion of herbal remedies, since Liu Lihong is a herbalist, I have come to regard it much more as a profound philosophical exposition of Chinese thought, and it could well have been entitled Classical Chinese Philosophy.  Certainly the profound insights about Dao, yin yang and the five elements, which are the main emphasis of the book, also form the bedrock of my five element practice.  In particular, he emphasizes, as JR Worsley always did, the importance of regarding ourselves as embedded in nature.  As he says:

“When discussing Chinese Medicine, the backdrop of the natural world cannot be forgotten. If you have a thorough understanding of the natural world, your foundation in Chinese Medicine will be sound and your understanding can progress.”(p. 375)

Of the many insights I gained from my reading of this book, none impressed me more than the clarity with which he compares traditional Chinese medicine and modern Western medicine, clearly seeing that they spring from different approaches which cannot be melded together into one system as so many people now attempt to do.  Instead he regards them as complementing each other, provided that their fundamental differences are acknowledged.  For instance he writes:

“Western Medicine is clearly biased towards objectivity rather than subjectivity…..Chinese Medicine is vastly different in this respect and places great emphasis on the subjective experience.” (p.262)

I also find the humility he shows in relation to his own understanding of his discipline quite startling and very impressive, such is his respect for his masters whose influence on his development he acknowledges.  I always feel that teachers who are not afraid to know that they have more to learn are the ones I can truly learn from.

And here I encounter a slight problem, for though, quite rightly, he claims that the best, if not the only true way of learning is to sit at the feet of an acknowledged master of whatever discipline we wish to practice (and did I not do exactly that when I was fortunate enough to find my way to JR Worsley?), how are we to find such masters in a world, as he says, where institutionalized classroom learning is valued more highly than the kind of personal transmission from master to pupil?  And even more pertinently, where are the great clinical teachers without which there can be no transmission of such profound age-old disciplines?  Liu Lihong, too, is also deeply concerned about the increasing depletion in the number of those who have sufficient clinical experience to warrant being given the name of masters of their discipline, whilst there are ever-increasing numbers of those eager to learn from such masters.

This is something I have had to struggle with during my time in China, for I often ask myself how can I and my small cohort of two other five element teachers, Guy Caplan and Mei Long, alone pass on as much as we can in the form of personal transmission through our seminars to as many people as we can.  It is with great relief, therefore, that, thanks to Liu Lihong’s efforts and that of those working at his Tong You San He foundation, I can at last be reassured that there is an ever-larger group of Chinese five element teachers who can now pass on their understanding of five element practice to others.

The world needs people of vision, such as Liu Lihong, and I am honoured to have been able to work with and for him.  I am profoundly grateful that my efforts to re-introduce five element acupuncture to the country of its birth have been recognized by him as making a significant contribution to his work in so firmly and courageously ensuring that classical Chinese medicine, including five element acupuncture, now takes its rightful place at the forefront of modern medicine as a profound medical discipline in its own right.

Finally, I want to express my admiration for the team of translators, led by the book’s editor, Heiner Fruehauf, who have made such a tremendous job of creating an English version which reads so beautifully and eloquently.  As a former translator in another life, and still a translator from French into English of Elisabeth Rochat’s work, I appreciate from a very personal point of view the many hours, days and weeks of hard work such an excellent translation would have demanded.

 

 

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!

 

Procedure for diagnosing 130 budding five element acupuncturists in one day

I am often asked how on earth we have attempted to offer a five element diagnosis to the many hundreds of acupuncturists in China who have come to our seminars over the past eight years.  I am just returning from another week’s seminar in Beijing where we have tried yet again to do just that, so I would like to describe the procedure we have worked on over the years to do this.

Of the 300 or so practitioners who attended, some 130 were new to us.  All these had previously attended one of the many preliminary five element courses in many towns all over China organized by the more experienced of our five element group of practitioners, now promoted to the role of five element teachers.  By the time Mei, Guy and I arrive at a seminar all those attending will have been given a provisional diagnosis of their element as a starting point from which we work.

In China, nobody seems to worry at all when I explain that all diagnoses we make are only a first attempt at finding their element.  They are very unconcerned when we change these preliminary diagnoses, and may change them again during the week of our seminar.  This is probably because I always emphasize that none of us can ever truly “know” the guardian element until treatment has confirmed that we are on the right track.   

As encouragement for myself, and for others, I always like to remember JR Worsley telling us when we were students that we would all be able to diagnose as quickly as he did when we had as much experience as he had after his 45 years of practice.  I have now had 30 or more years of five element practice to help me, and if I add these years to those of Guy and Mei, I like to think that together we reach JR’s total of years.  Certainly to my surprise, every time to we return to China  the three of us are getting better and better at our diagnoses, and quicker and quicker at making them, too.  And we work together very well as a team.

So here I will describe the procedure for carrying out these multiple diagnoses which we have developed to cope with the ever-increasing number of those attending our seminars who wish to have some idea of their own element.  As we know, all five element acupuncturists should as far as possible be sure of their own element as an essential pre-requisite for their practice, for without this we do not know what shadow our own element unconsciously casts over our patients.  And all those attending quite rightly crave a diagnosis from the most experienced five element practitioners they can find.  I therefore think we have a duty to offer them our expertise in diagnosing the elements, with the proviso that we make these diagnoses in a rather idiosyncratic way to take account of the sheer numbers involved.  The Chinese, bless their hearts, willingly accept this without complaint.

This is what we do:  To help us, we are given photographs of the new practitioners grouped together according to the element to which they have been assigned in the introductory seminars.  We then count the total number for each element.  This seminar (April 2019) the numbers were:

Wood: 17,  Fire: 10,  Earth: 32,  Metal: 21, Water: 42, plus 11 still left undiagnosed.   

From experience we know that if we work quickly, we can get through this large number in a day, divided into a morning section from 8.30 – 12, a long lunch-break of 2 ½ hours from 12 to 2.30 (the Chinese always take a nap after lunch), and an afternoon session from 1.30 – 5.30.  Five chairs are placed on the raised platform at the front of the large seminar room, and Mei, Guy and I sit in the front row of the audience group, with many people sitting on the floor all around us, and everybody else seated behind us.  There is always a scramble for people to get as close to us as possible, because they want to hear the discussions we carry on between us. 

This time we started with one of the larger groups (when our minds were fresh!), choosing Earth first, because starting with the largest group, Water, was likely to give the room a more uneasy feel (Water’s fear showing itself as it is asked to talk in front of such a large group of people).  An Earth group is much more at ease, and this helps to settle the room down nicely at the start.

Five of the each group sit down in turn on the platform in front of us, and we look at this small group as a whole to see how far they seem at ease with each other (or not), and whether any particular person stands out from the group in some way.  Then each of the five is asked to talk a little about anything they want, as we listen to their voices (the audience group is told to do this with closed eyes for part of the time), and observe them closely.  Over the years everybody coming to our seminars has got much better at spotting the odd person who doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the group.  This may be the one who sits forward whilst the others sit back, the one who turns to look at the person talking, whilst the others look straight ahead, or is constantly moving whilst the others remain still.  We have found that the audience as a whole has become surprisingly good at pointing out any significant differences.

Mei, Guy and I then put our heads together and decide whether or not we agree with the provisional diagnoses.  We discuss quite openly where we have doubts and why this is so and which element group we think a person should be re-allocated to. 

When we have gone through an element group as a whole, we ask all those we still think are that element to stand together on the platform for us to take a look at the group as a whole.  And here we may change our diagnosis again, because in the large element group, one or two will now stand out as feeling different.  These we then re-allocate to join another element grouping during the day.

At previous seminars Guy had the bright idea of providing coloured stickers in the five element colours, which we would put on those we had diagnosed so that everybody could see from a distance which element we had provisionally allocated to those attending.  This time, instead of a coloured sticker, each person was given a much more visible ribbon to wear around their neck, the colour of which could be spotted a long way away to help us if we decided to change a diagnosis.

After this seminar I totted up how many changes we made for each element. For Wood it was 5 out of 17, for Fire it was only 1 out of 10, for Earth it was 17 out of 32, for Metal 8 out of 21 and for Water 8 out of 42.  From this random survey we could conclude that the Chinese five element acupuncturists running the preliminary seminars are better at diagnosing Fire (nearly 100% right), than Earth (only about 50% right)!  For some reason there are always a large number of Water people at our seminars, and practitioners over there therefore have a lot of practice in diagnosing this element.

This may seem a rather complicated procedure, but it works surprisingly well, and is an excellent way of helping a large group of practitioners learn more about diagnosing the elements in one day than they will learn from seeing only a few patients at a time.  We do the diagnoses at the start of a five-day seminar, which leaves us nearly four days in which to change our minds.  When you are sitting in front of a roomful of people, all wearing very visible coloured ribbons around their necks, it becomes surprisingly easy to see those who respond to what is going on in an expected way and those who don’t.  I was delighted that the last thing I did as I left the platform on our last afternoon was ceremonially to remove the red ribbon around a young man’s neck and replace it with a yellow ribbon to great applause in the room.  I had been talking about the Fire element, and in my usual Fire way had stoked up a lot of laughter in the room, except in this young man who only looked puzzled.  “He looks worried as though trying to process something, and isn’t his colour yellow?” I asked myself.  “He must surely be Earth, not Fire”.  He himself was delighted at the change, as he had felt that he didn’t really fit in amongst his fellow Fire practitioners.

We have also added another simple diagnostic technique to our teaching, which is to ask the group whether they feel a patient coming before the class makes the room feel “up” or “down” (i.e., yang or yin).  If “up”, then it is likely to be either Wood or Fire, if “down” then Metal or Water, with Earth “neither up nor down”, or “both up and down”.  This is again a surprisingly simple way of helping those new to five element acupuncture start examining the feelings different elements evoke in them.

Reading about a heart-warming new community enterprise

It always lightens my heart to hear about a successful community project which is breathing new life into rundown city centres.  Nothing has equalled the glow that spread through me when I read an article by George Monbiot in the Guardian on 24 January, with the title “Could this local experiment spark a national transformation?”

He wrote about a visit he made to a 5-year community project called Every One, Every Day, set up by the local council in Barking and Dagenham, and inspired by a group called The Participatory City Foundation http://www.participatorycity.org.

I quote from his article:  “They launched Every One, Every Day in November 2017, opening two shops (the first of five) on high streets in Barking and Dagenham. The shops don’t sell anything but are places where people meet, discuss ideas and launch projects. The scheme has also started opening “maker spaces”, equipped with laser cutters and other tools, sewing machines and working kitchens. These kinds of spaces are usually occupied by middle-class men, but, so far, 90% of participants here are women. The reason for the difference is simple: almost immediately, some of the residents drew a line on the floor, turning part of the space into an informal crèche, where women take turns looking after the children. In doing so, they overcame one of the biggest barriers to new businesses and projects: affordable childcare.”

He goes on to say: “There are welcoming committees for new arrivals to the street, community potluck meals, cooking sessions and street lunches. There’s a programme to turn boring patches of grass into community gardens, play corners and outdoor learning centres. There’s a bee school and a chicken school (teaching urban animal husbandry), sewing and knitting sessions, places for freelance workers to meet and collaborate, computing and coding workshops, storytelling for children, singing sessions and a games café. A local football coach has started training people in the streets. There’s a film studio and a DIY film festival too, tuition for spoken-word poets and a scheme for shutting streets to traffic so children can play after school. Local people have leapt on the opportunities the new system has created.”

George Monbiot finishes by writing: “Perhaps it’s not the whole answer to our many troubles. But it looks to me like a bright light in a darkening world.” 

And it does to me, too.  So I hope sharing this will lighten some of my readers’ day, too.

 

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