Announcing the publication of my new blog: A Five Element Companion

This can be viewed at https://afiveelementcompanion.blogspot.com

 Below I give my first entry for those who may be interested in starting to read my weekly entries:

 "1. I find that I have written down many more of my thoughts on my five element practice that have not yet seen the light of day than I thought I had.  My old Viennese astrologer friend, Dr Oskar Adler, whom I have mentioned before in my writings, always said that each of us has a duty to pass on whatever we have learnt to the outside world.  "We never know who will read what we have written and who will learn from it," he would say.  So in the belief that the more that is written about five element acupuncture the better, I will be using this new blog to pass on my thoughts to whoever wishes to read them.  I intend to add a new post about once a week, and these individual entries taken together will form my eighth book. 

I am drawing together some of the writings about my practice as five element acupuncturist which I feel will be helpful for any of my colleagues, particularly now those in China, who want to benefit from what I have gradually learnt over the years.  I am especially keen to pass on the lessons from my own acupuncture master, JR Worsley, with whom I studied closely for several years as part of my postgraduate training.  One of the many things I remember him telling us was that we would always learn more from what we didn’t get right to start with, especially our diagnosis of guardian element, than when we got things right.  I know that the mistakes I made in my early practice have always proved to be valuable lessons for me, and I therefore hope that what I write here will give five element practitioners a little more confidence and enjoyment in their five element practice." 

I will continue to add to my current blog when interesting thoughts strike me which may not fit the structure of this new book.

 

 

Planning my 8th book

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

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

 

Surprise discovery of a treasure trove

When I was studying with JR Worsley all those years ago, I would make notes of what he was teaching us during the years of my LicAc, BAc and MAc studies with him at Leamington.  For some time afterwards I kept these handwritten notes in a rather unordered collection in an A4 file, and rather forgot about them.  To my surprise and delight I discovered a few days ago that at some point I must have decided it was time to sort them out and store them in a forgotten computer folder, which I just happened to come across.  Reading through these notes again after all this time I realised that I had discovered a veritable treasure trove.  They contain much that inspired me then, and still inspires me, but also things that puzzle me and which even now I don’t really understand. 

This reminds me of something JR replied when asked a question in class, “If you have to ask that question, you won’t understand the answer”, a profound comment which I took to heart.   I understood this as being his way of telling us that we had to do the hard work of finding our own answers, and not rely on him to spell those answers out.  So there are still things here and there in the notes which I must ponder.  These notes represent my own personal legacy, a handing down of a tradition from a master to one of his most devoted pupils.

I am now reading through them carefully to see how much it will be useful to pass on to others, particularly also to my students in China. 

This has been a most unexpected and welcome discovery which coincides very neatly with the imminent publication of my seventh book, called appropriately My Five Element Legacy.  This will be available in mid-April from Singing Dragon Press: https://singingdragon.com/uk/products.  You can get a 10% discount on this book and all my other books when you quote discount code Y18.

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.  

 

 

New Year message to Five Element Groups in China

Here is the text of the New Year's message I have just sent to the five element acupuncture world in China:

"I always like to draw my thoughts together as we approach the end of each year, looking at the good things that have happened and thinking ahead to what I think is important to take forward with me into the next year.  I’ll do this now in relation to the development of five element acupuncture in China.  So here is how I see what we have achieved in 2017, and the hopes I have for its future development in 2018.

The first thing that pleased me so much about my two visits in 2017 was the very great improvement in their five element skills of all those who had come regularly to our previous seminars.  I have been very impressed with the keenness and hard work everybody is putting into developing their practice, particularly the group of experienced practitioners who have been coming to our seminars over the past six years, and have now taken over all the teaching of the beginners’ groups.  This has made it possible for us to concentrate our seminars more on the intermediate group of practitioners, those with less experience.

At our first 2017 seminar in April I had the opportunity to attend the graduation of the first year of those attending the three-year Project Heritage Programme, and could see the enthusiasm of the 500 or so students of this course, and the dedication of the teachers of the different disciplines. In April 2018, Guy, Mei and I will be teaching an introductory five element seminar for those who have graduated to the second year of this Programme, creating another important development in the spread of five element acupuncture in China.

At our second seminar in October, I was very moved to see the dedication with which the group teachers, after long days spent at the seminar, then went on every evening to give additional help to small groups of the students.  Each group leader spent the evening discussing one aspect of five element practice.  I was so happy to see the enthusiasm with which the groups were learning.  It was after the success of this latest seminar that I began really to feel that the future of five element acupuncture was now resting safely in the hands of an excellent and growing group of Chinese five element teachers.  This is a great relief for me, because it means that I have already passed on so much that I can be sure that a real core of five element practice now forms part of the Chinese acupuncture scene.

On the book front, Lynn Yang has been supervising the publication of more translations of my books, three of which have now been published: The Handbook of Five Element Practice, The Simple Guide and Patterns of Practice.  By the time we arrive for our next seminar in April, the translation of my first book of blogs On Being a Five Element Acupuncturist should be ready, and Lynn is already planning for the translation of the next book, Blogging a Five Element Life.

I am also making very active plans for more books in 2018.  Another one, which is called A Five Element Heritage, will be published in England in time for me to bring copies with me to our April seminar.  I am thinking about writing another book, which will draw together my thoughts about the elements and tips for recognizing them in people.  This is making me look at the elements with fresh eyes, and I will bring my new thoughts with me to the April seminar.

I look forward very much to seeing many old friends and making many more new friends at our seminars in April.  Guy and I have already booked our flights to Beijing, and I’m sure Mei has, too, or will do so soon.

I wish everybody a very happy start to 2018."                     

A chapter closes

As the tumultuous year of 2017 draws to a close, so too does a further chapter in my acupuncture life, for on 31 December I surrender the lease on the SOFEA clinic at 57 Harley Street and move my practice elsewhere.  For the first time in my acupuncture life I will be renting a clinic room in somebody else’s practice and handing over to others all the administrative work.  This will be a new experience for me, and in some ways brings my acupuncture practice full circle.  When I first qualified, I worked by myself from my own home, and only moved my practice when I started my acupuncture school SOFEA in Camden Town, and realised that it made more sense to practise from there rather than split my practice between home and school.

From that point onwards, for the past 20 more years or so I have had the responsibility of running a group clinic.  For the first 10 years this formed part of the school, and provided a student clinic as well as giving students the opportunity to observe a thriving professional practice at first hand.  The last 10 years started when I closed SOFEA and moved to a clinic in Harley Street with about half a dozen other five element practitioners, doing what I had got used to doing and without really querying whether I still needed to run a group practice.

Having now been forced by circumstances (a steep rise in rent, difficulties with our landlord) to decide whether to move this practice elsewhere or simply just move myself, the decision almost made itself.  It was, I realised, time for me to step back and look after my own needs rather than continually taking on the administrative responsibility for others.  So as of January I will find myself walking to a small clinic not far from my home for the few hours a week I still want to practise, where I will continue to treat my long-standing patients.  It is good that the other Harley Street practitioners have all found clinics close to each other, so that we will continue to nurture a small five element base in central London.

What then will I do with the time I will now have available to do other things?

The New Year, as every New Year should, will bring new challenges with it, and some remnants of things which need to be completed from the old year.  For instance, the draft of my 7^th book, A Five Element Legacy, is already with my publishers, Singing Dragon Press, who have promised to get the book published in time for me to take copies with me to Beijing at the end of April.  The translation rights are already being discussed with my Chinese publisher.

Then, as promised by my hosts in Beijing, the translation of what I call my first blog book, On Being a Five Element Acupuncturist, will be ready for distribution to all those attending the seminars we will be holding there at the end of April.  These will now consist of a development on what we have done before.  The Foundation which Professor Liu Lihong has set up has now formed what they call A Project Heritage Programme, which is a three-year course focussing on the legacies of different forms of traditional Chinese medicine and thought, one of which is five element acupuncture.  We will be giving a four-day course as part of this programme, followed by a seminar for our more advanced five element practitioners which continues on from where we left in October.

I have been told by Lynn Yang, who is the brilliant organizer of every minute of our stay and negotiates so smoothly with Singing Dragon Press about the numerous translations now being completed for each of my books, that she intends to get one translation published in time for each of our twice-yearly seminars.  Three have now appeared (The Handbook, the Simple Guide and Patterns of Practice).  Over 25,000 copies of The Handbook have already been sold, and I have just been told that the Chinese publisher is ordering a re-print of The Simple Guide, as they have sold out of the 5,000 copies of the first edition.  The translation of the most precious (to me) of all my books, Keepers of the Soul, is being reserved for Lynn Yang herself, because, as everybody tells me, it is a complex book and requires a serious understanding of my very literary-based English.  It is my favourite book because it expresses, in language I am proud of, the depth of my feeling for the elements and what they represent in terms of human destiny.  Difficult to read it may be, though obviously not to me, but the profound things in life cannot always be shrugged away in simple language.  So I expect it will be long after all my other books have been translated that Lynn will find the time in an extremely busy life (she is the second in command at the Beijing Foundation) to do justice to my works in the way she has told me she thinks fit.  I am very lucky to have found someone so prepared to take the time needed to do this.

Finally, there is one thing hanging over from 2017 which is still very much under discussion, and that is a book I want to write dedicated simply to the elements and to the many tips for learning to recognize them I have devised over the years.  I realise that I have included in each of my books something about the elements, but often it has been interwoven with other topics.  For example, in the Handbook it takes second place to the practicalities of being a five element acupuncturist, and in my other books I often concentrate upon aspects such as practitioner qualities.  Recently I looked through my blogs and realised that that they contained many useful tips dotted here and there which could well be drawn together to form a more complete picture.

My lovely publisher, Jessica Kingsley of Singing Dragon Press, has sadly just announced her retirement.  In my email to her thanking her for what she had personally done to get my books published (and as she told me, saved me all the trouble of packing books up and traipsing to the Post Office to send them off, as I used to do when I first self-published my books), I tentatively asked her whether, as a farewell to her as she leaves, she would consider commissioning this, my eighth book.  She will let me know in the New Year, but the possibility that she might agree has spurred me on to look at the elements with a fresh eye.  This is therefore one piece of unfinished business with which the newly liberated Nora will occupy herself in the New Year.

These are the good things which lighten my mood when I am forced to contemplate the political shambles of 2017, with, I fear, much, much worse to come.  I feel like John Cleese in Fawlty Towers, who had to keep reminding himself not to mention the war.  For me, the red light is “don’t mention Brexit”, or “Trump” – so I won’t, for the moment at least.  I don’t want these two events to spoil my last entry for 2017.

I thank all who have helped me in my acupuncture work over the past year:  Lynn Yang and my lovely group of five element acupuncturists in China, Mei Long who comes with us to China, and above all Guy Caplan, who so stoically stands at my side through thick and thin, both in this country and China, coping with all the necessary chopping and changing my Small Intestine demands of me, as it tries to sort out what is best to do, whilst his Metal would no doubt prefer simply to work things out quietly, make its decision and stick to it.  I am always surprised how well two such different elements combine in our joint work in offering five element acupuncture to the wider world.

A Happy New Year to everybody.  I hope to see some of the readers of this blog at our next seminar on 2 March (http://www.sofea.co.uk/content.asp?page=seminars).

andbook, .  I thank all those.

Blogging a Five Element Life: Publication of my sixth book

I am happy to announce the publication of the second book containing a selection of my blogs, Blogging a Five  Element Life.  This follows on from my first book, On Being a Five Element Acupuncturist, which covered an earlier period of my blogs.

The book can be ordered from Singing Dragon Press: http://singingdragon.com/uk/blogging-a-five-element-life-2.html

Although I know many people enjoy reading my blogs as I publish them, many have told me that they like being able to dip into them by reading one or two in book-form whenever they want to.  Not being a lover of electronic reading at the best of times, unless forced to by the convenience of using a Kindle when travelling, I, too, although the author of these blogs, prefer to re-read what I have written by holding the written words in my hand.  So I hope some of the readers of this blog today will feel the same.

Publication of the second book of my blogs

I have just signed an agreement with Singing Dragon Press to publish a second book of my blogs, following on from my first book On Being a Five Element Acupuncturist.  The new book covers my blogs from January 2014 to the present.  We are calling it Blogging a Five Element Life.

 

I hope it will be published by the time of the BAcC Annual Conference in September, where I will be giving a talk on Saturday 23 September on the challenges and rewards of introducing Chinese acupuncturists to the practice of five element acupuncture.

 

I am also adding a note here to help those who come to our seminars and want to learn more about a five element approach to treatment.   At our seminars many questions are always asked about point selection.  I realise that some of you may not know that I revised and updated the second edition of my Handbook of Five Element Practice to include what I consider to be a more comprehensive discussion of the way in which we use point selection in five element acupuncture.  In particular, I added a surprisingly short list of the points I like to use.  It would be helpful for anybody trying to understand the principles behind five element point selection to familiarize themselves with the relevant chapters in this new edition of the Handbook (to be obtained from Singing Dragon Press).

 

At each seminar I also always emphasize my beloved mantra: “Think elements not points”, to help those who find difficulty in understanding the five element approach to point selection.

 

I hope everybody will have a good Easter break, and that spring will bring with it a bit more of Wood’s optimism.  

 

Words, words, words!

So many words to read in so many different books and in so many different languages, and so little time to do this in!  I have a large pile of books sitting waiting for me to read – books I have borrowed from the local library (most of them), books I have bought secondhand from Oxfam or on-line, and then (just a few) books I have bought for myself using a generous book token given to me for my birthday a few weeks ago.

Looking at this pile, I realise again, as I have increasingly begun to realise, that I have no chance of re-reading any but a few of the many of my own books filling my book- cases.  Sometimes I look longingly at volumes of Marcel Proust (in French, of course – being a linguist), which are waiting hopefully for me to open their pages again, many, many years after I used them to work on as part of an (unsuccessful) postgraduate degree.  I say to myself that if I decide to submerge myself once again in Proust’s glorious French I will not be able to read anything new for at least a few months – and I don’t want to sacrifice for this the time I would like to dedicate to discovering some exciting new writer who will open my eyes to a new world of words.

The only writers I have regularly re-read in the past are some of the classical authors, such as Dickens, Trollope or George Eliot, and, perhaps considered slightly odd, some old-fashioned detective stories which belonged to my mother and to which I return again and again as they envelop me in a familiar and comfortable world of the past, such as Ellis Peters or Patricia Wentworth.

I now have an absolute font of knowledge about good detective stories.  As for many people, they are my escape into a fantasy world where the good always triumphs and the bad is eventually defeated.  In the real world the opposite often seems to be true, and particularly so now.  In these very uncertain times, I need an escape route like this which goes some way to relieving some of the distress I feel at what is happening in the world outside.

 

Off to my 10th visit to China

I will be getting on the plane to Beijing tomorrow where Mei, Guy and I will be giving two seminars.  The first will be over 5 days, for about 120 students, nearly all of whom we have not seen before.  To attend this seminar they must first have taken part in one of the introductory five element courses given by former students of ours, a healthy sign of how many acupuncturists over there already feel competent enough to teach others.  The second two-day seminar is for a more advanced group of about 50 practitioners, all of whom have come to some of our previous seminars.

Finally, to round off our visit, on our last day something quite different is planned.  The day will be spent at the Institute of Acupuncture of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Science, a Chinese medicine research institute under the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.  I an told that it is responsible for 17 research institutes, 6 medical organizations, 2 pharmaceutical companies and a publishing house.  It has been working with the World Health Organization and has edstablished three centres of clinical research into acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine.

In the morning the Institute will be host to the inaugural meeting of the new Five Element Acupuncture Association. This is an umbrella association covering those teaching five element acupuncture according to the principles handed on to them during the seminars we have held over the past five years.  As we know, there is always a risk that some may set themselves up as experts in their field based upon little practical experience, and this is particularly true of acupuncture in China where many thousands of practitioners now qualify from universities of traditional Chinese medicine each year.  The association will be aimed at ensuring that those intending to teach this particular branch of five element acupuncture are qualified to do so. In the afternoon we will be holding a seminar for the Institute of Acupuncture, making this a very full last day indeed.

As usual I am taking quite a few books with me as presents, including children’s books for some of the babies born to graduates of our previous seminars, some more of my books as presentation copies to the various institutes, and, this time, a selection of Monkey Press books which Sandra Hill has kindly donated, and which they are not familiar with over there.  I am also taking a selection of my own books which my publisher, Singing Dragon Press, has asked me to pass on to the Chinese publisher.  This publishing house has now signed an agreement for the publication of translations of my other four books, in addition to the translation of my Handbook of Five Element Practice (the book, which I proudly tell everybody, has already sold more than 20,000 copies over there).  Mei has already translated my Simple Guide, which is now in the process of being published. Translations of the other three books, the Keepers of the Soul (my very favourite book), Patterns of Practice and On Being a Five Element Acupuncturist (my blog book, I call it), are also already in the pipeline. 

So a lot of things are happening in China on the five element acupuncture front, something I feel I am blessed to witness and to participate in.

I will report back further on my return to London at the end of October.

Book Launch for On Being a Five Element Acupuncturist

 

 

We had a lovely evening last week at the book launch we organized at our clinic in Harley Street.  Many people from all the different aspects of my life came:  family, friends, acupuncturists and patients. 

 

And here you can see me reading a few extracts from book, and its lovely cover.

 

The book, like all my other books, is now available from Singing Dragon at //www.singingdragon.com/



Publication of my blog book: On being a five element acupuncturist

I have just completed revising the final proofs of my latest book On being a five element acupuncturist, which will soon be hot off the Singing Dragon Press.  I call it my blog book because it includes the majority of the blogs I have been writing since 2010, and represents 4 years’ hard, but enjoyable work.  I find that seeing the blogs in book form is very different from reading them on-line.  Somehow by putting them together into a book brings something out from them as a complete text which differs from what I call the snippets which individual blogs represent.

Anyway, I, as a lover of books, and not a person who enjoys reading by Kindle, however necessary this can sometimes be, as for example when travelling to China, am enjoying seeing the blogs now in the permanent form of a book rather than the ephemeral form of a computer-driven blog.

The book can be ordered from Singing Dragon Press www.singingdragon.com for delivery in early January.

The delight of reading a good book

I have just come back from spending a happy half-hour in one of my favourite coffee shops reading a book, and, luckily, a good book, too.  As I walked back home I pondered on what it is about the writing of a book which turns its words into something so meaningful that they can make me forget where I am, and can feel myself transported to some hidden place within me which nourishes my deepest feelings.


In my university days, I did a lot of thinking and writing about just this – what makes one book an accumulation of clichés which teach me nothing new about life, and another, as this book today did, helps me to a greater understanding of the mysteries of life?  Perhaps the nearest we can get to an answer is by saying that in some way what is written expresses something which we regard as universally true about the human condition.  Each new thought then adds something to our understanding of human beings.


So my brief half-hour in the company of a German writer, Martin Suter, who I have just been introduced to, has made me see the world with slightly different eyes, subtly shifting my perspective.  And the same is also, of course, true of creative painters, sculptors, playwrights or poets.  Or even, as happened yesterday, of film directors, as I watched a film I had seen before, Strictly Ballroom, but for the first time on a large cinema screen with a roomful of people all as entranced as I was, entranced enough to burst into applause as the lights went up at the end.


How many new insights into life those with creative eyes continue to reveal to us!  And the more I understand about human life, the more this feeds into my work as acupuncturist with my patients.  So although some people may think that my half-hour this morning reading over my cup of coffee might seem to be just wasting time, I see it as something quite different – as helping to satisfy my curiosity about the nature of things.

Publication of the revised edition of my Handbook of Five Element Practice

As I have mentioned before (in my blog of 18 November 2013), the last of my four books to be published in their new editions by Singing Dragon Press, the revised edition of my Handbook of Five Element Practice, has now reached the bookshops.


I am very happy indeed with the new format, which includes a much fuller discussion of acupuncture points to be considered at different stages of treatment, together with my list of about 60 favourite points.  In addition, it has what I regard as a very important appendix, a Teach Yourself Manual for acupuncturists of other disciplines who want to learn the practice of five element acupuncture.  I have included 16 carefully graded lessons in this Manual.


I originally wrote the Manual for my Chinese students and the many hundreds more acupuncturists in China who have no possibility whatsoever of receiving five element tuition.  There then seemed no good reason why all those other people who read my blog around the globe and wish to learn about five element acupuncture should not also have the Teach Yourself Manual available to them in an English version, hence this revised version.  The updated Mandarin version of my Handbook including the Teach Yourself Manual is also very close to publication in China as I write this, the 10,000 copies of the original version having now sold out.


The revised edition of my Handbook of Five Element Practice is now available through the Singing Dragon website www.singingdragon.com, which can be accessed through the tab My Books at the top of this blog.

 

 

 

English translation of the wording on the back cover of "Les gardiens de l’âme", the French edition of my Keepers of the Soul

Sylviane Burner, the excellent translator of Les gardiens de l’âme, (my Keepers of the Soul), now published by Satas of Belgium (www.satas.com), has written a very moving tribute to my book which appears on its back cover.  I have in turn translated this into English, and have her permission to reproduce it below.  She has a true feeling for what my book is about, and I am privileged to have her as translator of what is definitely my most complex book.

“The Keepers of the soul – the five guardian elements of acupuncture” by Nora Franglen is not simply another book about acupuncture.  The author does, of course, talk about acupuncture, discussing the mysterious qualities of the five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal and water), which she has studied in depth as a five element acupuncturist.  Starting with the correspondences between the elements and nature and the seasons, she writes about each of them in detail and with a rare poetical approach.  Taking the reader on a journey of initiation into great universal truths and into the most intimate depths of ourselves, we are told about the characteristics, strengths and weaknesses which our guardian element, our constitutional element, has bestowed upon us since our birth.  Acupuncturists will learn to use the five elements, and most particularly our guardian element, to correct the imbalances we suffer from, and psychologists will discover the subtle workings of this guardian element which places its seal upon the personality of each one of us;  with surprise, we will learn to understand  why we react as we do, why we behave as we do, why we are attracted to some people as we are, why we are frightened by what we are, in other words, what makes us who we are as individuals.  Step by step, subtly and gently, and with enthusiasm and humility, Nora Franglen guides us through the complexities and byways of the human soul, truly a voyage into the infinite which opens up for us many perspectives to help us relate more easily to ourselves and to others, and to understand why, faced with the same situation, each of us will react either in the same or quite different ways.  In this journey into ourselves, as we pass through the cycle of the seasons at the whim of the vagaries of life, accompanied by an element which emphasizes our relationship to these seasons, it is our guardian element, truly a keeper of the soul, which will guide us throughout our life.

                                                                                                            Sylviane Burner

Publication of the new French edition of Keepers of the Soul

An excellent translation of my Keepers of the Soul, Les Gardiens de l’Âme:  les cinq éléments protecteurs de l’acupuncture by Sylviane Burner, has now been published by Satas in Belgium.  If you are a French speaker or know anybody in France or French Canada who would like to buy a French copy it can be ordered from them at order@satas.com. 

 

The updated version of the Handbook of Five Element Practice, including the Teach Yourself Manual, and the Simple Guide to Acupuncture: the Five Elements will also soon be published in a French edition by Satas.

 

Publication of the new editions of my books

I am now very happy to announce the publication by Singing Dragon Press of three of my books, Keepers of the Soul, Patterns of Practice  (formerly The Pattern of Things), and The Simple Guide to Five Element Acupuncture.  The new covers can be seen at the top of this blog.

 

My fourth book, the much revised Handbook of Five Element Practice, is also at the proof-reading stage, and should be available in December 2013.

 

Details of how to order the new editions of these books are given by pressing the tab above called My Books.

Exciting news!

I am making the big time soon in terms of my publications!  Singing Dragon Press is about to publish three of my four books in mid-November.  From that date onwards I will not be selling any more of my books through the SOFEA website.  As Jessica Kingsley, the Managing Director of Singing Dragon Press, so succinctly put it, I will thankfully no longer need to pack up my own books but can now pass this job on to somebody else to do.

Below are details for how to order the first three books:

Keepers of the Soul:  http://www.singingdragon.com/catalogue/9781848191853

Patterns of Practice:   http://www.singingdragon.com/catalogue/9781848191877

(this was formerly called The Pattern of Things)

Simple Guide to Five Element Acupuncture\;

                                   http://www.singingdragon.com/catalogue/9781848191860

These three books are the same publications as before, but in an exciting new format. 

 

My fourth book, The Handbook of Five Element Practice, has, however, been greatly revised, and now includes an appendix which is a Teach Yourself Manual for all those who have no opportunity to obtain some formal five element training or find a five element tutor.  I have also updated much of the information about point selection, adding a list of my 60 favourite points.  It is in its final proof-reading stage, and should be published by the end of the year.