An ancient form of healing for a modern world in crisis: how an understanding of the five elements helps us cope better with the stresses of modern life

We are living through difficult times, perhaps more difficult than any that I can recall as an adult, though a childhood spent under the shadow of the second world war must certainly have weighed more heavily upon my parents.  Now with the sudden invasion of the coronavirus almost bringing the world to a halt, we are all confronting what is perhaps the most frightening of all, which is facing the unknown.  None of us can now predict how things will develop, not even the most experienced scientists used to exploring the secret worlds of viruses, with their eery ability to change shape and ferocity at will, in a never-ending attempt to outwit our human capacity to master them.

We are left, then, with our individual responses to this challenging situation.  In five element terms this will depend very much upon the element which guides our life, and the level of its balance or imbalance.  We need each to ask ourselves how, finding ourselves in such an uncertain and therefore threatening world, we will counter these uncertainties and threats.  Some elements will thrive and others will shrink.  So what particular challenge does the appearance of this virus, and its effects upon our everyday life, present for the different elements?  And here we have to look closely at situations which an element finds comfortable to be in, and those which by their very nature threaten and disturb it.  As with all things, we can use our insights here to teach us a little more about the elements.

First we have to look at how a five element acupuncturist deals with named diseases, like cancer, or the coronavirus now.  We have to remind ourselves that our approach to any patient suffering from any condition whatsoever must always be the same.  We must find out as much as possible about our patient, and gradually pinpoint their element.  Then by treating that element we hope that we will strengthen it sufficiently for it to cope with whatever stresses it is being subjected to.  The only difference when dealing with a very serious medical condition is the fact that this will be having a major effect upon the patient, and his/her elements will be under greater stress than if they are only suffering from a minor imbalance, such as a headache or slight emotional trauma.

Because all major illnesses are considered by orthodox medicine to be purely physical in origin, and therefore to be treated by purely physical remedies, such as drugs or surgery, the emotional and spiritual effects of these illnesses are usually overlooked.  This is precisely where five element acupuncture, with its treatment of all three levels of body, mind and spirit, can help.  Our treatment should therefore be able to support patients suffering very severe physical illnesses at a level which purely physical treatments cannot.

The extent of the spread of the coronavirus has raised the level of fear in everybody.   In this atmosphere of fear, it is difficult even for five element acupuncturists to remember that simply supporting the elements at all levels is likely to increase a patient’s resistance to infection. The more balanced all the elements are, the less likely they are to be overwhelmed by any disease. We also know that old people and others already weakened by illness are those most at risk, and we would hope that our treatment will help strengthen their ability to withstand the debilitating effects of any other infections they are exposed to.

When we look at how the different elements will cope with the serious task of dealing with the coronavirus and the understandable fear it engenders in all of us, it will be good to start by looking first at the Water element, since its emotion, fear, is the dominant emotion swirling around now.   Even the most laid-back person will be experiencing some deep-seated fear of what the future may possibly have in store for them, should it spread to whatever country they live in.  Being Water’s emotion, fear will already have given Water people a lifetime’s experience of learning to cope with this emotion.  In some ways, therefore,  they may be better able than people of other elements to deal with the current situation, perhaps by being the first to take practical steps to remove themselves quickly from the risk of possible infection.  If they can’t do this, they may then be able to draw on their natural skill in hiding the fear they are experiencing, thus making themselves look well able to cope, where people of other elements may not be able to do this.  If Water cannot flee from a frightening situation, which is always its first reaction, it has learnt to turn its fear into the kind of response a cornered animal will make, which is to fight rather than to give up.  Water people may then be the ones who appear to be the least disturbed by the real risks involved in any situation, and thus look best able to cope.

When we move on to Wood, we will find a different copying mechanism.  For Wood is likely to want to counter the risk of catching the virus by taking some definite action, and, unlike Water, whose actions may often be more hidden and surreptitious, and therefore appear to be seen as avoiding action, Wood likes to act not only openly, but to feel that it is controlling the situation for other people around it.  It is always happiest to be the one taking obvious control of any situation, whereas Water is likely to be more concerned simply with its own safety, with less interest in seeing how others are coping.  Wood will therefore be happiest if the whole environment in which it lives is operating smoothly and things are under control for everybody around it.  It will counter fear with action.

To get some idea of how the Fire element will deal with the current situation, I can use myself as the best example, because I have personally been faced with the reality of having to take some decisions about whether I should still consider going to China in mid-April as planned.  I expect my trip would have in any case had to be postponed because many airlines have already halted all flights until the end of April, but since my Chinese hosts persisted in telling me that all would soon be well, I felt it was up to me to make the final decision, and not wait for the airlines to make it for me.  In the end, it was I who postponed my trip.  Looking at my reasons for doing this, I realise that fear for my own health and safety was not the predominant one.  My main concern was for the Chinese acupuncturists I felt I might be letting down if I cancelled my visit.  It was only when it was pointed out to me that perhaps my Chinese hosts did not want to be the first to cancel my visit that I felt able to take the decision.

I also amused myself by envisaging myself landing at Beijing airport suffering from a slight sniffle, being whisked off to quarantine to some god-forsaken place I’d never heard of, succumbing there to the virus and being hospitalized, turning my visit into a disaster for my hosts.  I suspect that Fire’s reaction to dealing with a situation like this may always include a strong component of not wanting to be a bother to other people, mixed with any natural fear it feels.  Fear, though, is not an emotion I am very familiar with, and wonder whether that is a general Fire reaction.

Earth, on the other hand, will always tend to look after its own needs first, before checking that those around it are safe.  I think it will experience an appropriate degree of fear, which will encourage it towards acts of self-preservation.  Metal will weigh up the risks more carefully than any other element, work out a way of dealing with them, and then, once having made its decision about what avoidance measures it would be sensible to take, will just get on with its life.  Its assessment of the situation and the dangers involved for it and for others will be the clearest of any element.  It was my Metal son who was the first person to warn me not to go to China, well before the risks became so overwhelming.  All he said to me was “Watch it, Mum”, and then left it to me to decide what to do.  Since he is not somebody who would make more of a situation than it merits, I took his advice to heart, and have “watched it” by deciding to postpone my visit.

My observations here are necessarily very generalized, but I believe there is a strong core of truth in my thoughts on how the different elements deal with fear.

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Thoughts on the 12 guardian officials in preparation for our coming seminar in Beijing

Guy Caplan, Mei Long (from the Netherlands) and I are off in a few days for our next seminar in Beijing (from 17 – 26 October).  I have lost count, but I think this will be the 14^th seminar we have given there.  As usual, each time I go, I like to think of something new I would like to concentrate our teaching upon.  This time, it has been prompted by an email sent to me by Caroline, a dedicated five element acupuncturist and the lovely translator of my books.  She wondered whether I could talk more about the functions of the 12 officials, because the people she teaches at the five element introductory seminars held before we come seem only to think of them in terms of physical organs, and not as having the deeper meanings associated with their individual elements. 

That made me realise that I, too, concentrate much more upon the elements as a whole, rather than trying to distinguish which of the yin or yang officials holds a dominant position.  I have always thought that it was difficult enough homing in on the correct element, and that I would only confuse myself by trying too hard to see which of its two officials is the most important.  JR Worsley would diagnose somebody as being a “Metal CF”, and then write next to this “IX” or “X” in brackets, meaning that either the Lung or the Colon was the dominant aspect of the Metal element for this particular patient.  I have now rather cheekily coined the phrase “guardian official” to describe this official.  In all the time that I observed patients with him, I never heard him explain what it was in the patient which made him select one or other official, except in the case of the Small Intestine (II).  Here he would always specify, not that this patient’s CF was a I/II as we say in five element acupuncture, but simply a II CF.  I remember very clearly him saying one day as he watched a video of himself asking a patient a question, “Only a II CF would answer like that”.  This taught me a lot about the Small Intestine and the way it looks as it tries to find the correct answer to a question.

Thinking about this carefully in preparation for my Beijing seminar has also brought to my mind the question which has remained a slight puzzle for me throughout my acupuncture life.  In all the hundreds of patients JR diagnosed in front of me, I never once heard him say that a person was a “I CF” (in other words had the Heart as his/her guardian official).  Somebody told me that he had indeed diagnosed an acquaintance of mine as a “I CF”, but that was only hearsay, and never corroborated by JR himself.  And my doubts about the Heart official being the primary cause of an imbalance (that’s what “CF” means) always seemed to me something that a tutor of mine at Leamington put well into words for me.  He said that he himself felt that the Heart, the Supreme Controller of body, mind and spirit, would never allow itself to be so much weakened as to be the ultimate “causative factor of disease”.  Unfortunately I never thought to ask JR himself why I had never seen him diagnose a person as being a Heart CF, so this has always remained an unanswered question for me.  Somehow, though, I have always felt that what my tutor told us rings true. 

There has always been a slight niggle in my mind about this diagnosis, because I felt very strongly when I was with this person, that she was very like me, and that our two Small Intestines were engaged in a slight tussle for supremacy, as each tried to sort the other person out.  Surely the Heart, such a yin official, would just be residing quietly rather than battling with me, as my own yang Small Intestine quite likes to do when it is under some sort of stress.  The niggle was also strengthened by the fact that this person liked to feel that she was a rather rare person by reason of her guardian official being the most important official of the twelve.  I did wonder whether she had herself spread this rumour, rather than that JR had actually diagnosed her as such, but I will never know, whatever my slight suspicions.

 

So I am now thinking carefully about the different qualities of the officials so as to help the 300 or so practitioners gathering next week to hear us in Beijing.  They, of course, are brought up on rote learning of the Neijing Suwen, and I have told them to prepare for what we will be talking about by re-reading Suwen Chapter 8, which is all about the officials, and gives each of them their distinctive name.  Now I have to ask myself, “Do I really understand how the Liver differs from the Gall Bladder in a person with Wood as their guardian element, or the Stomach from the Spleen for Earth?”  These are all very important questions to which I am ashamed not to have paid sufficient attention over the years.  So, as usual, my visits to China and all the other seminars I have held over the years offer fresh stimulation to my thoughts.

 

 

Don't shut the elements up into too small boxes

In our attempt to pin down some of the characteristics of the five elements to help us with our diagnostic skills, there is always a danger that we apply the very broad definitions we have learnt for each element in too rigid a way.  General descriptions, such as that Fire’s emotion is joy, or Earth’s colour is yellow, are all well and good as starting points to help us understand the differences between the elements, but we have to be careful not to regard them as fixed categories.  Instead we should see them as providing us with broad outlines into which we will gradually learn to fit our growing understanding of the elements.  In each of us as unique human beings they meld together to form something far less clear-cut.

Of the four sensory signatures of colour, sound, smell and emotion I always think the most accessible initially are the emotional signs.  The others are likely to be more difficult for us to detect, since our senses tend to become blunted as we grow.  Our emotional sensitivity, however, has to continue to be sufficiently acute throughout life to guide us through the intricacies of human relationships, and this is why we may often concentrate our diagnostic antennae more upon how a patient makes us feel emotionally than upon whether we can detect a specific smell or colour.  With time, of course, our other senses grow sharp enough to help us with our diagnosis, but even now, after 40 years of practice, I find that my first impression of a patient is based upon their emotional impact upon me.  Subsequently, I will draw upon information my other senses give me to add to this. 

At least that is true for me, but may not of course be the same for other five element practitioners.  One of my fellow students at our Leamington College, for example, had a very acute sense of smell, and used his ability to pinpoint a five element smell as the basis for his diagnosis.  Presumably painters must have an acute ability to see colour, and musicians an equally highly-developed sensitivity to sound.  I am neither a painter nor a musician, so I tend to fall back on what I feel is my most developed sensory skill, which is that of recognizing the emotional signals directed at me by my patients. 

Here, too, though, we must beware of relying too heavily upon boxing the elements into too rigid categories.  Something like this is always likely to happen as a result of being told that a particular emotion is assigned to each element.  If we take Wood, for example, whose emotion is described as anger, it becomes all too easy to think that any expression of anger must point to this element, whereas experience will gradually help us understand that each element can express anger in its own way, since every person, whatever their element, has a liver and a gall-bladder, which are Wood’s organs within us.  For example, I am of the Fire element, but can all too often explode with anger, but for very different reasons from those which my Wood or Water friends will express.  Earth’s sense of fear differs from that of Water, Wood, Metal or Fire, just as Metal’s expression of joy differs from that of each of the other elements.

These thoughts have been stimulated by another email from my very “curious” French acupuncture friend, Pierre.  Here are his latest questions to me:

“Which element is the most connected with curiosity? And particularly in the sense of discovery and novelty?

 

Which one wants to look for efficiency first? Wood?

 

Do Earth people have trouble moving, i.e. travelling, exploring?”

 

Based on what I have written above, I think that Pierre’s problem is that he still tends to think that any human characteristic, such as curiosity or efficiency, must be a quality of a particular element, rather than being a common human quality which each different element will express in its own particular way.  My answer to Pierre is therefore that all elements can be “connected with curiosity”, or “a sense of discovery and novelty”, just as all can “want to look for efficiency” in addition to the Wood element, (I, as Fire, certainly do!), and not only Earth people have “trouble moving”.  The crucial thing for us five element acupuncturists is to determine the specific way in which they are expressing these general human tendencies.

A lesson from JR Worsley: The importance of keeping control in the practice room

A further lesson which I learnt early on from JR Worsley was a very important one that we often don’t confront in our attempts to make the practice room a welcoming place, and that is ensuring that a practitioner must never allow a patient to take control of what goes on in the practice room.  For once we have lost control, it is very difficult to regain it.  Control can relate to many areas of our practice.  It can cover whether we allow a patient to dictate to us which points they will allow us to needle, at what intervals treatments should be spaced, whether or not we need to answer their questions about the treatment we are giving, and whether they choose not to answer our questions.  If we allow the patient to decide how the treatment will proceed, each of these situations is potentially one where we are assuming that they are the ones who know what needs to be done.  This is of course never the case, and is particularly true in the always tricky case of treating a fellow practitioner or somebody with some knowledge of acupuncture.

The following are some examples of times when I have lost control of the practice room in some way, showing how I at first failed to deal with the situation satisfactorily before finally, after hearing JR’s voice, regaining the control I was in danger of losing.

One of these changed totally the way in which I learnt to deal with patients I found difficult.  Of course we should never call a patient simply “a difficult patient”.  Instead, we should always add the words, “a patient I find difficult”, because our perceptions of people always colour our relationships to them.  A patient whom one practitioner finds difficult may be easy for another practitioner to relate to.  So it is always important to chart for ourselves what kind of situation we find difficult to deal with because often, when looked at closely, this will usually tell us more about ourselves and our own prejudices and inadequacies than about the patients themselves who we feel are making things difficult for us.

Analysed in this way, I realised that what particularly irritated me in a patient’s behaviour was often something as apparently insignificant as arriving a little late for treatment or always phoning to check the time of their next appointment, even though I had seen them enter this into their diary.  In such cases JR taught us a very simple procedure.  “Tell the patient what you find difficult”, but we must always make sure to include the words “I find” in what we say: “I find it difficult when….”   This is acknowledging that our feelings are filtered through our own perceptions.  It is then up to the patient to correct these perceptions or to agree that they are true.  This ensures that you avoid pointing an accusatory finger at them, and are instead asking them whether what you feel tallies with what they feel.

At the same time JR’s advice also taught me how important it was to confront any problem you are having with your patient as soon as possible, rather than trying to ignore it, because it is these sorts of problems, however trivial you may feel they are (does it after all matter if a patient is a few minutes late for a treatment?) which can take on a surprising level of importance out of proportion to their actual significance.  They can then cast disturbing shadows over our time with our patient.  For example, before I adopted JR’s advice, I would often be thinking during the treatment itself about how I should be dealing with the situation of the patient arriving persistently late rather than concentrating on the treatment.  Instead I might be cross at myself for being a bit too cowardly to dare say anything, perhaps fearing that I might offend them or that I was endangering the good patient/practitioner relationship I was trying to set up.  In fact the reverse would be true.  I was risking harming this relationship by the very fact that I was delaying dealing with a troubling issue which was getting between me and my patient.  And this was taking up precious time in the practice room which should instead have been spent concentrating upon the treatment.

Another layer was added to the incident of the patient arriving late.   After I had told her that I found this difficult, I noticed a slight change in our relationship which I had not anticipated.  She apologized and promised to make sure that she arrived on time, but actually started to arrive much too early with a rather defiant look on her face, as though challenging me in some way, which I found both puzzling and disturbing.  Something in the situation had obviously unsettled her.  It took me some time to realise that, instead of just accepting the simple fact that she needed to arrive on time, she had interpreted what I said to her as a sign that somehow she had lost face with me, and saw my comment as a reprimand which she was annoyed by.  She was telling me this not in words but in the rather defiant and slightly triumphant look on her face as she persistently arrived much too early for the next few treatments, as though saying, “See, I’m being a good girl now and doing what you told me to do, but I’m not happy with your ticking me off in this way.”  In effect, I felt she was acting like a sulky little child, and showing me an unexpected side to her character.  She was a high-flying business woman, and I had no doubt she was the sort of person who would always make sure that she arrived well on time for any of her important business meetings.  So why not with me?  Did I represent somebody who evoked a relationship where the roles of who was in charge were blurred or difficult for her to deal with, the obvious person being, of course, her mother, since I am quite a bit older than she is?

I may seem to be making rather heavy weather of this slight, but clear change in our relationship, but it made me uneasy enough to view her name in the diary with some trepidation, as though I knew there was yet another issue here that I was not dealing with properly.  It really felt that there was a hidden struggle for control going on between us in the practice room.  We have talked this through now, and she agrees that the situation of me being her therapist and she the patient somehow made her feel as though I had taken on the superior role, and she has always found that difficult, in whatever therapeutic situation she had been in.  And it turned out that it did indeed remind her of resenting her rather controlling mother.  I think we have now talked this through sufficiently to move on, but it has left a slight feeling of discomfort in the air between us, which I hope will be dispelled in time.
Often it is just this feeling I have that something is not quite right between the patient and me which leads me to understanding my patient better.  Sometimes, of course, the opposite can happen.  If a patient feels that we are moving on to emotional ground which they find too uncomfortable to deal with and wish to avoid, these become the times when a patient may suddenly stop treatment rather than confront what is causing the unease.  And I, as practitioner, may not be adept enough to work out a way of helping me get round this particular obstacle to treatment.

Another issue which can often cause us problems is the extent to which we allow a patient to become involved in treatment situations.  This becomes a particularly difficult area in five element acupuncture if we start discussing with our patients which particular element we have decided to treat them on.  I know that different practitioners have different opinions about the wisdom of doing this.  Some do not mind at all going through with their patient the reasons why they have chosen a particular element.  I am not convinced, though, about some of the practitioners’ motives for doing this.  Hidden deep within this decision may be the practitioner’s often unconscious need to get some reassurance from the patient about the treatment we are offering them.  We may feel we are on the right track if the patient appears to agree with our choice, or our confidence in our diagnosis may be undermined if the patient shows disbelief at our choice.  In both cases, we are in effect allowing the patient to influence the diagnosis, a bad idea when we consider that they are not trained to recognize the elements as we have been, and also because they may have a predilection for one or other element from their rather superficial knowledge of them.  By letting our patients influence our choice of element may well be because we may unconsciously be revealing our lack of confidence in our own diagnosis by drawing the patient in to help us.

I remember clearly the day during my training at Leamington when a group of students went up to be diagnosed by JR, and arrived back depressed in the classroom, because he had diagnosed quite a few of them as Earth, when they were convinced they were Fire, Fire apparently having a better press for them than what they regarded as the neediness of Earth.

This brings me to the always tricky problem which rears its head once we approach treating a fellow five element acupuncturist.  Here there is not just the compulsion we all seem to feel to support our treatment choices by drawing an acupuncturist/patient into discussing what treatment is needed, but there is the additional problem that a practitioner often has their own fixed idea about their element, assuming that somehow their own personal understanding of themselves makes them better qualified to diagnose themselves than their practitioner.  The opposite is true.  We often like to flatter ourselves that we possess emotional qualities which we admire, whilst ignoring those aspects of ourselves which have a less attractive side.  So we are not good judges of which is our dominant element, or even of the elements of our nearest and dearest.  I remember very vividly completely misdiagnosing one of my children, choosing to interpret his behaviour in a selective way which fitted my somewhat erroneous perception of him, much coloured, and I realise therefore distorted, by my love for him. 

We have to accept that all of us have a tendency to regard one or other element in a more favourable light than the others, however hard we try not to, because events in our personal lives have shaped our approach to the elements.  All this has proved an excellent lesson for me not to treat those to whom we are too close, although this can sometimes not be avoided, particularly if there is no other five element practitioner geographically close enough.  The important thing is to be aware of the drawbacks, of which there are many.

 

 

 

Each element needs to love and be loved, each in a different way

I recently received an interesting question from Pierre in France, an acupuncturist who is fascinated by learning as much as he can about the elements:

“I have a new question about Fire CFs.
We know that they want to share, and to give love. And they suffer if their love is not received. But do they need more than the other CFs to be loved or is it just a human need, regardless of the CF?"

After much thought, this was my answer:

“It is a human need for everybody to be loved, but each element expresses its need for love in different ways.  Fire more than the other elements enjoys the act of loving.  It warms its heart, so it will find it more difficult than other elements if there is nobody around for it to love.  It is not only that Fire wants to receive love.  I think its greater need is to offer love.  Other elements don’t have the same level of need to offer love.

Your question has made me think, and I may write another blog about this, because what you asked raises interesting questions about all the elements.”

What he asked set me thinking about the ways in which the different elements do their loving.  Whatever our element, we all have a Fire element, with the Heart deep within it, which wishes to love and be loved, but this need will be tempered by each element’s specific needs.  So what do the non-Fire elements want from their loving? 

I have come up with the following simple definitions of how I see the other elements’ relationship to love:

Wood takes love for granted

Earth needs love
Metal accepts love
Water craves love for reassurance
And Fire, as I told Pierre, wants to give love

 I am sure that other people will have very different ideas from mine, particularly people who are not Fire people themselves, but then everything we feel has to pass through the filter of our own element.  My thoughts are therefore unashamedly coloured by my Fire element, I expect.

 

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.

"I'll have to think about that" - a phrase I would never use

It is odd how a small thought, casually encountered, can lead to much deeper thoughts.  I asked somebody what I thought was simply to give me his answer to, in my view, a very simple question.  I was surprised to hear him say quickly, ”I’ll have to think about that.”  My surprise was because the question deserved no more than a quick answer, and because I would never myself leave a questioner high and dry like this.

Here, then, was yet another lesson in learning to understand better how different elements respond, in this case to being expected to find a quick answer to a question.  Thinking further about this, I could not recall a time when I would have answered any question in this way.  Instead, if I am unsure of how to answer, I express this uncertainty immediately in words.  It is as though I am trying to find an answer as I talk. This is my Fire element’s dominant official, the Small Intestine, doing its job of sorting in plain sight, as it were. The friend of whom I asked this simple question, however, is not Fire but Metal.  Was his answer typical of Metal, then, I asked myself?  So I asked another Metal friend whether he could see himself replying like that, and he confirmed that he definitely could.

So here I had two instances of Metal needing time and space to think things through before coming to a decision, but making this decision by themselves rather than in open conversation with me, as Fire would do. This made me wonder about the other elements.  Earth, which likes to think things through thoroughly and slowly, would understand Metal’s reply, but would take longer reaching a final decision, possibly talking things through slowly with me.  Wood is the element closely associated with decision-making, but might be in danger of making too quick a decision and sticking to it through thick and thin, without considering too much whether it is the right one.*  When I come to Water, I am, as always with this hidden element, somewhat uncertain how it will react.  I must ask my Indian Water friend, Sujata, to help me here.

In a week or so, Guy Caplan and I are holding a seminar for 50 people which we have called “Exploring the Elements”.  I think this will be a good occasion to explore further with the participants the decision-making processes of the different elements.  This should help confirm or amend what I have written above.

*Added after I posted this blog for the first time:  Or Wood, always the inquisitive, enquiring element, might counter my question with a question of its own.

Interpreting the elements is always a subjective experience

I have been very interested by the comments people have posted on my recent blogs about the differences between Water and Metal.  Some have agreed with my observations, others not.  All have given me something fresh to think about.  They have made me realise that people reading what I write may be assuming that the very personal way I have learnt to interpret the elements over the years is prescriptive, and that they should see and feel things in the same way, rather than what I say reflects my own often maybe quite idiosyncratic approach to the elements.  What I mean by the word prescriptive is that it may be felt that others reading what I write should try and see the elements as it were through my eyes.  I don’t think that this is right or what I would like people to do.  Instead, it is important that everybody develops their own personal filters through which they perceive the elements.  Everything we do, think and feel reaches us only through these filters, and will be interpreted according to what they tell us individually.

What is absolutely essential, though, is that each of us, practitioners as well as anybody else interested in developing their understanding of the elements, subject this understanding to a rigorous system of control.  This is what I have been doing ever since my eyes were opened on to the landscape of the elements spread before me.  I have learnt that I must test carefully my assessment that a person I encounter might at first sight be Earth, for example, against those other people who I have previously thought might also be Earth, and then assure myself that these people have enough in common to warrant being gathered together under the heading of Earth.  Collecting together enough examples of all the elements therefore takes time, and requires a great deal of patience and self-scrutiny as we assess how accurate our diagnoses are.  Being accurate requires us to be very aware that we may often get things wrong, and then be prepared to amend our initial diagnosis.

Some people, of course, will find this the most difficult aspect of being a five element acupuncturist, because we can never really know that we have found a patient’s element until we are offered proof from the results of successful treatment.  As I have often said, what we do is not a calling for the faint-hearted, but, as I have also often added, but it is a calling which, if we persist, brings us incredibly rich rewards.

A reason to write my books

I have just received this lovely pat on the back about my latest book, all the way from Australia:

“I just wanted to tell you how much I have loved reading "On being a five element acupuncturist". Somehow I take more in from words on paper than words online.

It's a gem - not only in terms of giving insight about diagnostic and practice skills but also I find it immensely reassuring and affirming. It's so nice to know that doubts and mistakes are normal and even useful. It can be particularly challenging over here in Australia where there are so few of us trained in five element style acupuncture.

Thank you, Nora!”

I am reprinting it here for two reasons.  The first, obviously, is because it is lovely for me to hear that what I write is of help to others.  The second is that I am delighted that I am helping five element practitioners understand that “doubts and mistakes are normal and even useful."

I have always liked to Descartes’ phrase, which is usually quoted as “I think, therefore I am (cogito, ergo sum)”.  But in fact I prefer its fuller, correct version, which is:  "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am (dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum)”.  The ability to doubt and therefore to be humble in our thinking is a rare gift we should all cherish in ourselves.  This is particularly so, as I always say, when we are trying to track down the elements.

I could not have expressed one of the aims of why I write more succinctly and more beautifully.  So thank you, too, Lucy, for this encouragement to continue writing.