The truth at the heart of five element acupuncture

One thing I am absolutely convinced of, and was from the very first day I was introduced to the elements through my own treatment, and that is that there are different aspects of our life force which make unique individuals of each one of us, and that these have been given by the ancient Chinese the symbolic names of what are called the five elements, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water.   These different aspects create our life, and by some esoteric miracle of comprehension by these same ancient Chinese they were understood to have perceptible presences in each of us, so that we can hear them with our ears, see them with our eyes, smell them with our noses and feel them through our emotional sensors, provided these ears, eyes, noses and emotional sensors have trained themselves to do this.

There is thus a truth underlying my practice of five element acupuncture which is confirmed each day I spend simply observing my fellow human beings and myself, as well as each day I practise.  After all these thirty or more years of my acquaintance with the elements, I remain as fascinated by them as I was on that very first day at acupuncture college, and am in ever-growing awe of those early practitioners who perceived this truth and passed it on down the centuries and across the oceans to me, happening to sit at a party here in London next to a five element acupuncturist.  As I now book the flight for my next visit to China in the autumn, I feel how extraordinary it is that the journey of my own life is playing itself out in terms of these same elements, and how fortunate I am to be part of the great route of transmission from those olden days hidden deep in the past to the present day.  I am privileged to allow this small needle of mine held in my hand as I practise to draw to itself some of these centuries of understanding, and pass them on through the tiniest of manipulations to those who come to me for help.

 

The Chinese learn to hug each other

Today’s newspaper yielded yet another interesting snippet.  An article from the New York Times International Weekly had the intriguing title “Chinese unwind with a hug and a song”.  Apparently the Chinese are “finally learning to hug each other” - although, from my own experience in China, they already know how to hug with great enjoyment.


Or perhaps it is just that I have met those who have spent time looking at the elements, and have had their interest in emotional responses stimulated by being told to observe what each element offers.  Most Chinese, this article appears to indicate, “have been slow to embrace the embrace”.  Liu Lihong told the class I was teaching that “we need more Fire here”.  In the case of hugs, it is probably more Earth that is needed, since I think hugging is much more a response to one of the Earth element’s needs, which is to draw people close to them.


The article said that “recently it seems like everyone is hugging.  Friends are hugging. Family members are hugging…. The tables are turning….. Schools are now conducting classes in emotional intelligence.  For homework, children have been assigned to hug their parents.”


This trend towards learning to be unafraid to show emotions may be part of the reason why my Chinese five-element students are so keen to learn all about the emotional manifestations of the elements, and enjoy doing exercises which help train them in learning to detect emotions both in themselves and in their patients.

Five element thought for the day – some pointers I use to help trace an element’s signature

Last week I had a very heartening day up at the Acupuncture Academy, the new college in Leamington, getting my first glimpse of a new group of students there, all eager to learn. 

One of the things I told them was not to worry about feeling that there is any quick way to develop the complex skills required to distinguish those much-emphasized sensory signs the elements imprint on all of us.  When I first started my studies, I think I was very optimistic about how easily I would perceive these, imagining that by the end of our three-year course I would be well on the way to assessing accurately all the four aspects of colour, sound, smell and emotion.  

I was to find that this was far from the case, so far, indeed, that it was only after quite a few years of practice that I at long last began to understand what a rancid smell was, or honed my  assessment of Earth’s colour, yellow.  And just when I thought I had “got” one manifestation, I would find all my previous learning confounded by discovering that my patient’s rather bright red face was nothing at all to do with Fire, but was either Wood or Earth out of balance.  In the case of Wood, I eventually worked out that it was its imbalance which was throwing its child, Fire, out of balance and creating the red colour, and in the case of Earth, the red was coming from problems handed down to it by its mother.  Fire, I have found, never imprints a constant high red colour on those of its element.  Its reddish tinges come and go, as it flickers, but they never remain a constant imprint.

Now that I have recognised for myself how difficult it is accurately to perceive the elements’ sensory signals, I realise how important it is for those new to five element acupuncture not to rely too heavily on sensory impressions which may well be leading them astray.  Instead, I try to emphasize all the many other ways the elements reveal themselves, and share with them the observations I have accumulated over the years to help fill out what I lack in sensory awareness.  For example, I have now developed for myself a list of the small variations in facial expression which help me pinpoint an element more clearly.  I give these below as an aide for others.

Wood:  Look at the eyes (perhaps obviously enough since Wood is to do with vision in every sense).  Its eyes have a direct, often challenging look as though demanding a response from me.  A secondary point may also be very tight neck muscles around the mouth or neck.

Fire:  Look for the smile lines around the eyes. All elements smile when they are happy, or want to pretend they are happy, but only in Fire do the smile lines around the eyes stay in place long after the smile has faded.  I can feel this in myself.  I love warming my own Heart up by smiling, often doing this when I am on my own as my own personal comfort blanket.  I now recognise Fire by those smile lines indicating that a smile is trying to force its way through.

Earth:  The mouth:  often slightly open, or if not open, then looking as if it would like to open, as though appealing for food.

Metal: The eyes, like Wood, but with a completely different look.  They are not trying to set up any relationship with me, as Wood’s eyes try to do, but even when looking at me seem to be looking past me as though into the far distance.

Water:  Again the eyes, but here it is the movement of the eyes which is revealing.  They have nothing like the stillness of Metal’s eyes or the forcefulness behind Wood’s gaze.   Instead they seem to flicker, dart around, as though constantly on the move, ready to perceive danger and avoid it.

If all else fails, and you are not at all sure which element your patient is, then see whether the rather basic signposts I have listed above help you.  I have found them to be a remarkably accurate way of supplementing what my senses are unable to tell me.  And as you move on in your practice, you will also find your own pointers to add to this list – maybe a characteristic way of walking, or talking, holding a hand out for pulses to be taken or settling on the treatment couch.  Since everything we do is the work of the elements within us, every part of body and soul will be showing characteristic pointers to our guardian element.  We just need to be patient enough and give ourselves the time needed to develop our own individual stock of diagnostic pointers.

I still find it fascinating that each patient I see teaches me just a little more about the elements, and this learning will never stop since we are all unique manifestations of the interplay of the elements within us.

 

CSO and E

I have always had a problem with teaching students how to learn to recognise the presence of an element through the four famous sensory indicators of colour, sound, smell and emotion (CSOE). I know from my own experience that it has taken me many years to perceive some smells, colours or sounds, and then pin on them the label of one of the elements. Even now, after more than 25 years sniffing at my patients, looking closely at them, listening closely to them, I may still not be able to pinpoint exactly what that particular smell, tone of voice or colour is. I have always felt that I am on much surer ground when I look at emotions, and not just those five emotional categories we have divided the elements into, but the whole emotional weight we carry with us which impacts with a jolt upon those we meet.

Of course we can sift this down into the small words of joy or grief with which we label an element, but our emotional make-up is much more all-encompassing than just whether a person looks happy or sad, since it is the overall impression of the whole of our inner emotional life which pours out from us in all that we do. And since we have all reacted to the emotional impact of other people from the day our mother first smiled at us with love (at least we hope it was a smile and not a frown!), this is the elusive quality with which we are, I believe, more familiar than the way we may or may not have reacted to the colour upon our mother’s face, the smell of her body or the sound of her voice. Of course these, too, will have affected our responses in some way, particularly perhaps the sound of her voice, but, unless we are blind or deaf, we are unlikely to continue to be as aware in such depth of all the other sensory signals as we are by the signals we detect with our emotional antennae.

I don’t think I am the only one to have learnt to rely more on emotional feedback than on that from my other senses, because I see the difficulty those new to five element acupuncture have in seeing, smelling or hearing anything which can help them differentiate between the elements. They appear to be able to attune their emotional responses much more quickly as a way into the landscape of an element. This being so, I think it is a bit unfair for students to be expected to give all four sensory indicators equal weight to start with. One consequence of implying that they should be able to do this is that this is likely to make them feel disempowered from the start, and the whole aim of any training must be to empower.

I certainly felt disempowered in those early days as I attempted to see anything which could be called a colour on the areas of the face I was told it apparently showed itself, the side of the temples and round the mouth. This is not the where I see colour particularly even now, but instead I have gradually recognised it as imparting an elemental sheen over the whole body. I use my rather red Fire hand as comparison, and by placing it anywhere on the patient’s body I can see another elemental colour appear on the patient's skin in quite startling fashion, and there before me now lies a bright yellow body or an ashen white body. If, on the other hand, I lay my hand on a Fire patient, the red of my hand softens into a more gentle pink, as the patient’s skin and my skin seem to meld together in harmony. (For any practitioners reading this, try this out yourselves.  The leg is an unobtrusive place to do this. You will learn a surprising amount about colour from this.)

Obviously there are people who have better vision, smell or hearing than I have. These are fortunate people. I remember that we had somebody in our undergraduate class who picked up smells with remarkable accuracy, but that was an unusual trait. How we envied him as we struggled to smell anything!

So all people out there trying to trace CSOE on their patients, take heart. It will take some years, but gradually the ability to see quite marked differences seeps into us, so that now I can walk in the street and be shocked at how clearly I may see a very green face, or hear a weeping voice talking in the bus. If we try too hard, though, our ability to distinguish these subtle differences appears to fade. It is far better to let the sensory impressions float towards us. And if, like me, you feel you can more easily diagnose which element a person belongs to through the emotions they evoke in you, then this is a perfectly valid way of starting to pin down the difference between elements, as the emotional signals everybody sends out raise an echo deep within us.

A lovely Leonardo da Vinci quote

I have just read this beautiful description of the power of the human eye by Leonardo da Vinci, who was himself a most amazing man of vision, in every sense of the word:


“Who would believe that so small a space could contain the images of all the universe?”


In our own, much smaller, but perhaps not much different way, we could say that within the small space of our own eyes as we look at another human being is contained the image of all that being, if we can but be sensitive enough to interpret what we are seeing.