None of us can escape our past

During these terrible days as COVID19 locks down the world, I have been thinking a lot about what may cause some of those in power to react in the often disturbing ways they do when faced with dealing with the pandemic decimating their countries.  These thoughts have been triggered by a comment I read today by Philippe Sands in the Guardian newspaper who was discussing his latest book, The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive.  He writes that he was at the International Court of Justice listening to Aung San Suu Kyi trying to justify the Myanmar military’s actions against the Rohingya community, and asks, “How could she not see the facts as others did?” Answering himself, he wonders whether the reason may lie in her relationship to her father, the previous ruler.  He then transfers this thought to the son of the man who was in charge of the extermination of the Jews in Poland during the war, including members of his own family, and wonders whether this son has learnt to accept his father’s appalling actions as “a way of being able to live, a means of survival”.

This made me think of Donald Trump, as I tried to apply this understanding to his inability to empathize in any way with another human being.  I then tried to relate my thoughts to my knowledge of the five elements.  I have always believed that Aung San Suu Kyi is of the Metal element, and can see that her need to maintain her father’s legacy, possibly added to the effects of years of enforced isolation, may indeed be her “way of being able to live, a means of survival” that somebody not subject to Metal’s yearning for an absent father may be unable to understand.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, is, I think, of the Wood element, at the opposite point of the five element circle.  Do his words and actions show a Wood element which is pathologically out of balance?  We know that Wood is the child among the five elements, and it is significant that a speech expert described Trump’s way of talking as “oddly adolescent”.  There is definitely something frighteningly childish about him.  Perhaps this can be traced back to a childhood in which his mother apparently played little part, his brother saying that the children rarely saw their mother.  Since we know the emotion associated with the Wood element is anger, it is not surprising, therefore, that this is the emotional atmosphere in which Trump feels most at home, quite happily stoking up anger in all who surround him, like a child indulging in tantrums.  It is terrifying that somebody with more power than anybody else in the world should be the least able to exercise any self-control. 

But perhaps, like the other two examples I mentioned, Aung San Suu Kyi and the son of the prominent Nazi, this is his “only way of being able to live, a means of survival”.  And perhaps this applies to us, too, for how each of us lives our life can indeed be said to be our only way of being alive, and a means of survival, though we hope with less extreme consequences for the people around us.

Some more little pointers to the Wood element

I was with a Wood friend one day 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 to say about it.”

I asked myself why this had thrown me as much as it obviously did, because there I was 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 like 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.  Wood does not have 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.

I learned a further lesson about the Wood element from one of my Wood patients who told me, rather aggressively, that he found my presence challenging, and, being also an acupuncturist, he attributed this to my being, he thought by mistake, of the Wood element.  Although I have learnt over the years never to show that I am taken aback by personal comments from patients, I found that I reacted inside myself with quite a vehement desire to answer back sharply, and had to hold myself back from doing so.  Afterwards I found that the episode had disturbed my inner equilibrium, and I tried to work out why this was.  By dint of some careful self-examination, I realised that this patient had projected on to me his own dislike of being challenged and had in effect made me angry, often the effect Wood can have when the Wood person or I are out of balance.  I then analysed my feelings to see what they told me about anger in myself and how far my reaction had been unbalanced, before finally using what I learned from this as a way of understanding not only the Wood element better, but other elements within me, such as Water (my fear of the anger) and Fire (my own element’s reaction to stress).  An interaction of just a few minutes therefore became through this a valuable lesson about the part of me which reacted to the Wood element, as well as about Wood and other elements in general.

Sometimes I come across very appropriate quotations about the elements in books that I read which I like to collect.  Here is one about the Wood element in a book by Helen Dunmore called The Spell in Winter

“I was bad at anger;  I’d always been bad at anger.  There was something pitiful in Miss Gallagher which muddled me.”

I, too, have always been "bad at anger".  That doesn't mean that I don't get angry.  I certainly do.  But my anger leaves a strong aftertaste in me which it takes me a long time to get rid of.  It is as though I am ashamed of feeling this emotion.  The "something pitiful" which the protagonist in this book feels is something which resonates with me, because I also tend to find quite legitimate excuses for the behaviour in people that has provoked my anger.

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

Finally, here is a lovely illustration of Wood’s sensitivity to the effects of acupuncture treatment.  It would help us in corroborating some of the principles according to which we work if patients were able to report precise effects when feeding back on the outcome of any particular treatment, but it is rare for patients’ assessment of improvement (or otherwise) to be so precise as to enable us to relate this to any particular treatment rather than to a combination of treatments.  To encourage us, however, it does, occasionally happen that a patient may say something like, “whatever you did last time made me feel marvellous (made my backache better, helped me cope better)”.

On rare occasions, feedback can be even more specific.   I treasure still, like some beacon in this particular wilderness, the memory of a Wood patient who, when I needled Gall Bladder 40, described immediately in perfect detail the pathway of part of the Gall Bladder meridian.  He traced the movement of energy down to the toe and back up along the outer leg, where with great accuracy he showed me the odd lateral dip the Gall Bladder is said to take at mid-calf, and then continued to draw a path up over his knee to his abdomen, finally arriving at his head, where he said, “I seem to feel something up here at the side of my eye.”  I have had other Wood patients describe the line of some movement of energy along a Gall Bladder pathway in this way, but none so precisely as this.  It may well be that Wood, the element which structures us, can feel the structure of its own shape reasserting itself as more energy, like sap in a plant, courses through its pathways as a result of treatment.   I have not had such detailed descriptions of the passage of energy from patients of other elements.                                                                                                                    

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 Wood element

It’s nice if occasionally other writers do my work for me, as a journalist just did in an extract printed in a newspaper about Donald Trump last week.  So here is what this writer, his biographer, said about him: “I don’t think right or wrong are categories he thinks in.  The only category is, can he get away with it?  He loves fights.  That’s his comfort zone.  He likes people being angry and yelling at each other.  He gins that up any chance he gets… He’s comfortable when everyone else is uncomfortable, running and ducking for cover.  That’s how he got elected, pitting people against each other.  He’s into “bring it on” because he’s in his element.”

And I would add to that, “because he’s in his Wood element”!

I don’t think you can have a clearer description of the Wood element completely out of balance, with its enjoyment in stoking up the anger in others so clearly shown.  And I think Trump has a very shouting voice, and always talks with the finger stabbing at his audience, which we recognize as one of Wood’s signatures.

Whilst I’m thinking about the Wood element, it would be good to spend a little time wondering about which official out of the two Wood officials is the one that might most influence Donald Trump, the one I now like to call the guardian official.  Is it the Liver, the yin official, or is it the Gall Bladder, the yang official?  We know that the Liver’s function is to be responsible for making plans, and the Gall Bladder’s is to be responsible for putting these plans into effect.  I always like to think of the Liver as being the general sitting in his tent deciding on the campaign to be run, and the Gall Bladder the official in the field carrying out the general’s orders.  So which do we think most fits our impression of Donald Trump?  I feel that the Liver is more likely to be his weakest point.  It’s almost as though he represents the general sitting in his tent, sulking, as Ulysses did, whilst the army runs riot outside doing whatever it likes.  In other words, it seems as if his Gall Bladder is given no clear instructions on how to act by the Liver, which is why all those inappropriate tweets are sent off, significantly often during Wood’s time, in the middle of the night.

Enough said, I feel, about these somewhat unhappy excursions into the worlds of Inner Fire and Wood.  But how I wish both of the heads of state I have written about in these last two blogs would find their way to a five element practice room so that their poor, unbalanced elements could regain some equilibrium, and save their respective countries from much chaos and hardship.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

Two prime examples of the Wood element out of balance (1): Theresa May and Donald Trump

I think we tend to see the elements in terms of their general characteristics rather than training ourselves to recognize the degree of their balance or imbalance.   I am particularly aware of this now because we have before our eyes the very public, and highly disturbing, spectacle of two totally unbalanced world leaders, our own Prime Minister, Theresa May, and the American President, Donald Trump.  It may be no coincidence from the point of view of the state of world affairs at the moment that I believe that they are both of the Wood element, and both, in their differing ways, examples of Wood frighteningly out of balance.

One of the advantages of studying the elements as five element acupuncturists do is that this can help transform any personal responses to the elements which we may find personally difficult to deal with into lessons teaching us a more objective approach to the elements.   When they are not stoking up my own Wood element to a high pitch of anger as I contemplate what suffering these two leaders are inflicting on their respective nations, I therefore try to lighten my mood by seeing them both as excellent examples which teach me a lot about Wood’s imbalances.  I also fantasize about how some good five element acupuncture treatment for them might help make the world a happier place for us all.

By chance, I happen to know two people who have worked with Theresa May, one before she was a Member of Parliament and the other in one of the civil service departments she was in charge of.  Both say that it was always well-known that she was incapable of making decisions.  This is almost laughably typical of the Wood element under stress.  We all know that its function is to be in charge of our planning and decision-making.  If Theresa May is Wood, then, this helps highlight something which has laid the cold hand of Brexit over the past three years of this country’s political life.  It explains the dogmatic statement Theresa May made at the start of her first speech as Prime Minister, when she told us so emphatically that “Brexit means Brexit”, and explains why she has never deviated from this in all the negotiations she has engaged in since then.

If decision-making is something you are uneasy with, but know that it is an essential part of your job constantly to be asked to make important decisions for the good of the country, then to be plunged so suddenly into the Prime Minister’s role which demands a high level of balanced and quick decision-making would have put an enormous strain on both Theresa May’s Liver, which would have been asked quickly to plan her first speech to the people, and then her Gall Bladder which would have had to decide when and how to say it.  Her quick-fire statement “Brexit means Brexit” failed miserably on both counts.  A more balanced Wood might have recognized that the referendum vote only marginally tilted the country in favour of Brexit, and would therefore have understood that it would be important to reach out to the nearly half the nation who voted to remain in the EU.  I see the dogmatic statements which have been her trademarks in the years since then (“strong and stable” being an obvious one) as being her way of persuading herself that the decisions she makes are always the right ones.  When we are unsure about doing something, but don’t want to reveal our uncertainty to others, we can often over-compensate by hiding these uncertainties under an over-emphatic shield of apparent confidence.  This is often what Wood does, and I think this is Theresa May’s default mode.  The less certain she is about what she should do, the more dogmatic her statements become, and the more stridently she repeats them. 

Those with a more balanced Wood element would plan ahead more carefully, using the vision which this element offers to ensure that any decisions made are flexible enough to be altered if events change, as they inevitably do. The quality of flexibility is one that is singularly lacking in Theresa May.  Her dogmatic approach makes her quite incapable of changing her mind, leading to total inflexibility when confronted with difficult situations which call for adaptability.  Hence the disastrous political mess this country is now in.

My next blog will continue these thoughts on the Wood element out of balance, as I look more closely at Donald Trump’s actions since becoming President.  I see his as being a very different kind of Wood imbalance. 

Wood: the element of future potential

I have a lovely quote by a Wood friend of mine which I would like to share.  She is planning to make many changes in her life at the moment, and as she left the coffee house where we were meeting, she called out from the door: “I’m always looking at possibilities.”

I can’t think of a neater description of one of the Wood element’s most important qualities, that of giving itself, and others, hope for the future.

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.    

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.

The Wood element in crisis

As those who read this blog will know, I think both Theresa May and Donald Trump are Wood, and both, unfortunately for the world, appear to be incredibly rigid, unyielding Wood, more stolid oak trees than graceful willows.

I was therefore amused, as well as horrified, by reading this in the Guardian newspaper yesterday about Theresa May:

“Wooden-headedness is a source of self-deception. It is also the defining feature of Theresa May’s prime ministerial stint, and particularly of her “hard Brexit” strategy.  On Europe Mrs May appears to assess a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring any contrary signs.  She then acts on her delusions and does not allow herself to be deflected by facts.  While this might be a good way of winning power, it is not a good way to exercise it.”

And the piece ends with: 

“Wooden-headedness is characterised by a refusal to benefit from experience.  Why not, Mrs May, learn from one’s mistakes and change tack?"

It made me think a little more about how I perceive Wood.  Changing tack, a very nautical expression for changing the sails of a boat to move it in a different direction, is very appropriate for describing the flexibility and manoeuvrability of the Water element.  It is certainly not how I would see Wood moving.  It likes to keep to a straight line, and once on that line is determined to stay on it as it presses onwards towards the future.

We all know that Wood’s function is to do with planning and decision-making.  When in balance these plans will be appropriate and lead to good decisions.  When under stress, which Theresa May always seems to be, the plans, once made, have been rigidly adhered to, and the decisions made on the basis of these plans can easily become the wrong ones.  She has been seen to change her mind suddenly and quite erratically (from a Remainer to a hard Brexiteer in the matter of a few hours, as well as all the volte-faces she has recently made in government). 

I think her dominant Wood official is likely to be the Liver rather than the Gall Bladder.  It appears to be much easier for her to plan (the Liver’s function) than to carry out the plans (the Gall Bladder’s function) by making the right decisions.  Others may see the differences between Wood’s two officials differently.  I have always been reluctant to specify which is the dominant official within an element, because I have always regarded the elements as an almost indivisible whole, the yin and the yang within them indissolubly tied together.  There are, however, definite differences in some elements which I have found easier to see, such as the difference in the Metal element between the Lung and the Colon official (taking in and letting go).

And finally Trump as well!  I need hardly point to Trump in this context.  Enough said, as they say.

 

Two more quotes about the Wood and Metal elements

Sometimes I come across very appropriate quotations about the elements in books that I read.  I like to collect these.  Here are two more, one about the Wood element and the other about the Metal element, both from a book by Helen Dunmore called The Spell in Winter:

Wood quote:

“I was bad at anger;  I’d always been bad at anger.  There was something pitiful in Miss Gallagher which muddled me.”

I, too, have always been "bad at anger".  That doesn't mean that I don't get angry.  I certainly do.  But my anger leaves a strong aftertaste in me which it takes me a long time to get rid of.  It is as though I am ashamed of feeling this emotion.  The "something pitiful" which the protagonist in this book feels is something which resonates with me, because I also tend to find quite legitimate excuses for the behaviour in people that has provoked my anger.

Metal quote:

“You live backwards as if there’s no tomorrow.”

I think this is a very acute observation of some aspects of the way in which Metal people live their lives, looking backwards and judging a past that is behind them.  I think that Wood, on the other hand, would like always  to "live forwards as if there will be no past".

How the elements cope with responsibility

Having written about the Wood element in positions of power in my last blog (posted 5 December), I feel I should turn my attention to the other elements.    Most obvious of all is a very clear representative of the Metal element, Barack Obama (with, standing at his shoulder, one of the greatest statesmen of them all, Nelson Mandela).  I can think of no greater antithesis to Donald Trump than Obama.  Where Trump is impulsive, given to displays of unco-ordinated thought and action, we have in Obama the very epitome of the opposite, somebody who thinks things through carefully, utters no unconsidered word or action, stands back, observes and only then acts or speaks. Trump’s impulsive tweeting would be anathema to Metal.

So I am left to consider the remaining three elements, Fire, Earth and Water.  As those who have read my Keepers of the Soul  (Chapter 6) already know, over the years I have always used Tony Blair as an excellent example of one aspect of the Fire element, Inner Fire (Small Intestine).   This side of Fire has a toughness coming from its need to sort things appropriately for the Heart, and will feel that it must refuse to do what it does not consider right to do, and force through what it thinks right.  Whatever our opinion of Tony Blair’s decision about the Iraq war, he was convinced, and is still convinced, that this was necessary, and would not allow public opinion, so vehemently against him at the time, to sway him.  There was, too the added pressure exerted upon him from his association with George Bush (another Wood leader to go with Donald Trump and Theresa May), who drew Tony Blair in his wake.

I think that the other side of Fire, Outer Fire, is well represented by two flamboyant politicians, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, both able to attract supporters by acting the clown and making them laugh, a very different Fire quality to that of Tony Blair.

Fire and Wood are the two strong yang, outward facing elements keen to push themselves forward.  We can contrast that here with Obama’s Metal, with its inward-turning yin qualities.

We are now left with the last two elements, Earth and Water.  Interestingly, what I consider to be the most powerful element of all, Water, does not like to push itself too strongly into the limelight, as befits its deeply yin nature, making it the most hidden of all elements, as it works away in the dark.  The most obvious politician I can think of to show Water’s characteristics is Gordon Brown, briefly a Prime Minister, and yet somebody who for many years attempted to undermine Tony Blair and usurp his position.  When faced with the first opportunity to challenge Blair, though, he hesitated and retreated, only becoming Prime Minister once Tony Blair had resigned.  And as Prime Minister, despite so desperately wanting this position for so many years, he was surprisingly hesitant and uneasy in the limelight.

Finally, Earth, for which, David Cameron, our former Prime Minister, is a good example.  Here is a man at ease with himself, and easy in the company of others, with one of those soothing Earth voices.  Once having made the fatal decision to hold the referendum, he was unable to deal with its consequences, resigning immediately rather than facing them.  Powerful when surrounded by others in power (the yang aspect of Earth), Earth’s yielding yin aspect came to the fore when he lost the referendum, and like Gordon Brown, but for other reasons, he retreated rapidly into the background.  In the last glimpse of him on the Downing Street doorstep he was, appropriately for Earth, closely surrounded by his family.

Some people reading these thoughts of mine will disagree with my conclusions, but I hope what I have written has at least made them think a little more about how the elements, in shaping all of us, shape our politicians in very specific ways.  These may often be disturbing ways, but equally often, I hope, positive ones, too.  After all, South Africa would still be under the thrall of apartheid if there had been no Nelson Mandela.  I hold fast to my thoughts of him as a good antidote to fearing what Trump may unleash upon the world.

The pitfalls of making snap diagnoses

Since all five element acupuncturists know that diagnosing a patient’s element takes much time and is certainly not done in an instant, it is obvious that trying to do the same by looking at the necessarily brief glimpses of politicians and other famous people on television or social media can at best be a rather hit and miss affair, and at worst may lead us to making completely erroneous conclusions.  I remember well that I was convinced that Julia Roberts was Fire, because this is how I interpreted her endless smiling.  I told all my students this until one day, a good few years later, when my understanding of the different qualities of the elements had obviously deepened, I noticed a different reaction in me to this smile.  It certainly did not warm me, but, instead, irritated me with what I now thought was its artificiality.  I realised suddenly that, rather than giving me something, as Fire always tries to do, it was demanding something of me.  Once I had noticed this, I changed my diagnosis from Fire to Earth, and have stuck with that ever since.  This was a good warning to me always to hedge my conclusions about elements with a few question-marks.

So, now being an older and wiser observer of my fellow human beings, I hesitate a bit in offering my thoughts on the elements of politicians much in the news at the moment, but if I don’t add my slice of knowledge to what others are trying to learn about the elements, then I think that is a bit cowardly.  Those of us who have been looking at the elements for many years (in my case over 35 years) have a duty to pass on whatever they have learnt to those with less experience.  So here goes with what I have observed in two politicians very much in the news at the moment: Theresa May, in this country, and Donald Trump, in the United States.

At such a difficult time for the world, I find it interesting and disturbing that the fate of so many people is in the hands of two people I consider to be of the Wood element.  Leaving aside their politics, what is it about the Wood element which makes me wary of this element being the guiding force in a leader of a country (and in Trump’s case in a leader of the Western world)?  I’ve thought carefully about this, and will continue to do so as I observe their words and their actions over the next crucial months.  Here I can draw on the knowledge of the Wood element I have gained through my acupuncture practice.  If we think of the cycle of the elements as describing the arc of a human life from birth to death, then after its period of gestation in the seed of all life, the Water element, life emerges into the open in the Wood element, at its point of birth, and then on to early childhood.  I ask myself whether I want my leaders to express the childlike qualities which the Wood element can often show.

What, then, are Wood’s qualities which will manifest themselves in the positions of power held by a country’s leaders?   It definitely has a lot of strength and stamina, good qualities in a leader.  Its principal emotion is a kind of forcefulness of character which demands that others do what it wants them to do, but it can express itself in outbursts of anger if those around it do not fall in with its plans.  We see this kind of anger very clearly in Donald Trump’s emotional outbursts and also the lack of control which accompanies them.  Wood does not yet have the maturity to rein in this anger if this would be a wiser course to take.  Theresa May, too, though much less overtly Wood-like than Donald Trump, shows flashes of anger if a situation does not please her.  A constituent of hers at a meeting with her said that she became very irritated when questioned too closely.  Observing her on a BBC programme, I noticed that as the camera panned back to her after I suspect she thought she was no longer on public view, she looked surprisingly cross – not at all the bland, controlled persona she had shown us during the interview itself.

So it will be very interesting to see how these two leaders deal with the inevitably difficult times which lie ahead for them.  It does not therefore surprise me that, as of this date, 5 December, Theresa May has not yet come up with any clear plans for how to proceed with Brexit.  Though planning and decision making are the prerogative of the Wood element, they can easily lead, on the one hand, to over-dogmatic statements (“Brexit means Brexit” being one of them), and, on the other, to hesitancy, if the Wood element is under stress.  And who, in the positions of power which May and Trump hold, will not be under stress in one form or other?  Rather worryingly for both of them, this sense of balance in their Wood element seems rather to be absent, in Trump’s case most obviously so, his Tweets being clear evidence of this.  Theresa May, too, certainly made some hasty, rather odd decisions soon after coming to power (reinstatement of grammar schools and delaying a decision on the Hinkley Point nuclear power station).  One of these decisions (grammar schools) has since disappeared without trace, and she rescinded the other very quickly and rather ignominiously in the light of China’s anger.  

She has said that thinking about what to do about Brexit keeps her awake at night.  Rather amusingly, I see this as a clear sign of the struggles her Wood element is undergoing to keep everything on track as it passes through its horary time between 11 pm at night and 3 am in the morning.  Angry as I am about all the unnecessary expenditure which will be spent on the Brexit negotiations and would much better be spent on care homes for the elderly or children’s playgrounds for the young, I know I will still find it fascinating to observe how what I consider to be these two clear examples of the Wood element in power will deal with that power.