A student at one of the seminars I gave recently asked me how I wrote my books, an interesting question nobody had ever asked me before, nor one that I found I could easily answer. She wanted to know whether the words just flowed from pen to paper or whether I reworked what I had written a lot. This set me looking at how I actually do write. I proceed in small bounds, working on bite-sized chunks of words, invariably written away from home in some place of refreshment (see my blog of March 14th on Coffee Shops I Have Known), at most in very short bouts of perhaps 10 – 20 minutes. I then go back and transfer this to my computer, print it out, and take this printed version away with me again to my next expedition outside, to correct, delete and usually abbreviate, until the words flow as I want them to do, with the kind of cadence I am looking for. I then use the last paragraphs of this amended version to move me on to the next thought. I often have no idea where this will come from, but it seems to appear once I am happy with the content of what has just gone before, as each small kernel of thought leads me on to the next.
Since each of these excursions into a new thought represents about a page or so of writing, I find this now fits appropriately into the space of a blog, and I have increasingly begun to include in my blog some of these snippets of thought. I will, I imagine, eventually draw them together into another book, although I realise it would be far easier (and far, far cheaper, since I self-publish), simply to go on blogging and forget the publishing. On the other hand, I regard each book I write as in some way reflecting a form of completed thought, or at least a kind of temporary full-stop in what may well be a continuous process. And shaping a book requires much more than the publication of the snippets which a blog can resemble. A compromise would be to publish the blog as it stands, though that would, I think, be a bit lazy.
Nevertheless, the pressure of an audience for my thoughts out there, some of whom declare themselves to me, others forming rows of silent listeners surrounding me, encourages me in my thinking. I am sure, too, that much of what I have written in books remains unread by the people buying them, for I recognise that I do not myself always read books from cover to cover, often dipping into the first chapters and leaving the rest for another time, perhaps never to be re-opened. The same may be true of a blog, but, because they are shorter, it is more likely that people read to the end, rather than stopping half-way through. Perhaps, with people’s attention span much shorter because of the vast number of words out there waiting to be read, a blog is more likely to be read than any book now, and is more conducive to the realities of people’s rushed lives than the kind of protracted reading a book requires.
Certainly the presence of my blog has changed how I approach my writing and given it some urgency, because of the need to add to it at regular intervals. So here’s to further happy blogging, with the added bonus that now, thanks to Zara (see my blog of July 17th asking for help), I now know how to correct what I have already published!
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Further tips on diagnosing the voices of the different elements
Each element has a distinctive way of speaking, and as five element acupuncturists we are taught to listen for tone of voice as one of the sensory signs by which we recognise the elements. As with the other three sensory signs, smell, colour and emotion, we tend to think that we recognise a sensory signal merely by using the appropriate sense organ, in this case by listening. But there is more to speech than the mere sounds we utter as words. In addition to the tone of voice in which we hear the words, we need to look at how the words are spoken, as well as the body language which accompanies them and expresses their meaning. No diagnosis of the element behind the words can be complete unless all these factors are taken into consideration.
There is an additional important factor here. When we feel we have to rely simply on the sharpness of our hearing, we may feel helpless if we cannot yet distinguish the different tones of voice, something which it takes many years to master (so students, take heart – we have all had to learn this the hard way!). If we can add to this some visual input, by looking at how the words are spoken and watching the body language, we have more in our sensory armoury to call upon. This is something that is particularly important for me as I am now very hard of hearing and don’t trust my ears as I once did. I have therefore started to develop additional distinguishing marks which I can add to tone of voice to help me recognize the elements. I noted, for example, that Fire people tended to lean forwards towards the person they are talking to it, making me wonder whether this was indeed a characteristic peculiar to all Fire. I then started to observe myself talking, and noticed that I, too, move forward towards my listener, as though trying to engage more closely with them and add something personal to the communication.
I have now started to look more closely at the movements the other elements make as they speak, and have so far discovered the following, though I have still much work to do to define these characteristics further and with greater reliability. Metal, as is to be expected, tends to remain remarkably still as it talks. Earth enunciates its words very clearly and obviously enjoys the process of speaking as though, I like to think, it enjoys the moment at which a word is uttered, then swallowed, and the thought behind it digested, much in the way we enjoy the taste of food as we digest it. Its way of talking is comfortable and soothing, reflecting the singsong quality characteristic of its speech. This can make it the easiest on the ear.
Water’s speech, on the other hand, tends to be more rapid and jerky. Its body moves as it speaks, with none of the stillness behind Metal’s words or the comfortable feeling underlying Earth’s. Its characteristic tone of voice gives it a droning-like quality of speech which can be difficult to listen to and unsettling to the listener, without their knowing quite why, a characteristic typical of Water. Finally, there is Wood, where the emphasis behind the words, that of telling somebody something with a kind of internal punch, can be spoken through tight lips, as though the words are being restrained from bursting forth.
These represent some early observations of mine, and reflect only half-formed ideas. As I go on, of course, I may find some Fire people who never move as they talk, and Metal people who do, just to throw the cat among the pigeons! But that is the nature of things, and I offer the observations above as food for thought and as another illustration of how we try to learn to hone our diagnostic techniques as patient succeeds patient, and as I hope I will continue to do as long as I practise.
There is an additional important factor here. When we feel we have to rely simply on the sharpness of our hearing, we may feel helpless if we cannot yet distinguish the different tones of voice, something which it takes many years to master (so students, take heart – we have all had to learn this the hard way!). If we can add to this some visual input, by looking at how the words are spoken and watching the body language, we have more in our sensory armoury to call upon. This is something that is particularly important for me as I am now very hard of hearing and don’t trust my ears as I once did. I have therefore started to develop additional distinguishing marks which I can add to tone of voice to help me recognize the elements. I noted, for example, that Fire people tended to lean forwards towards the person they are talking to it, making me wonder whether this was indeed a characteristic peculiar to all Fire. I then started to observe myself talking, and noticed that I, too, move forward towards my listener, as though trying to engage more closely with them and add something personal to the communication.
I have now started to look more closely at the movements the other elements make as they speak, and have so far discovered the following, though I have still much work to do to define these characteristics further and with greater reliability. Metal, as is to be expected, tends to remain remarkably still as it talks. Earth enunciates its words very clearly and obviously enjoys the process of speaking as though, I like to think, it enjoys the moment at which a word is uttered, then swallowed, and the thought behind it digested, much in the way we enjoy the taste of food as we digest it. Its way of talking is comfortable and soothing, reflecting the singsong quality characteristic of its speech. This can make it the easiest on the ear.
Water’s speech, on the other hand, tends to be more rapid and jerky. Its body moves as it speaks, with none of the stillness behind Metal’s words or the comfortable feeling underlying Earth’s. Its characteristic tone of voice gives it a droning-like quality of speech which can be difficult to listen to and unsettling to the listener, without their knowing quite why, a characteristic typical of Water. Finally, there is Wood, where the emphasis behind the words, that of telling somebody something with a kind of internal punch, can be spoken through tight lips, as though the words are being restrained from bursting forth.
These represent some early observations of mine, and reflect only half-formed ideas. As I go on, of course, I may find some Fire people who never move as they talk, and Metal people who do, just to throw the cat among the pigeons! But that is the nature of things, and I offer the observations above as food for thought and as another illustration of how we try to learn to hone our diagnostic techniques as patient succeeds patient, and as I hope I will continue to do as long as I practise.
Monday, July 19, 2010
The declining (in every sense of the word) and pronunciation of English verbs
As light relief to all the serious things I usually write about, I am including below two amusing poems from an interesting book called The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher (Willliam Heinemann, 2005), which, as you would think, is all about the development of languages. These poems neatly encapsulate the difficulties we all have, English and foreigners alike, in spelling and pronouncing English. Having tried many times over the years, usually in vain, to help students with their spelling (a fast-disappearing skill with the appearance of Twitter and blogging), the poems made me laugh out loud.
The teacher claimed it was so plain,
I only had to use my brain.
She said the past of throw was threw,
The past of grow – of course – was grew,
So flew must be the past of fly,
And now, my boy, your turn to try.
But when I trew,
I had no clue,
If mow was mew
Like know and knew
(Or is it knowed
Like snow and snowed?)
The teacher frowned at me and said
The past of feed was – plainly – fed.
Fed up, I knew then what I ned:
I took a break, and out I snoke,
She shook and quook (or quaked? or quoke?)
With raging anger out she broke:
Your ignorance you want to hide?
Tell me the past form of collide!
But how on earth should I decide
If it’s collid
(Like hide and hid),
Or else – from all that I surmose,
The past of rise was simply rose,
And that of ride was surely rode,
So of collide must be collode?
Oh damn these English verbs, I thought
The whole thing absolutely stought!
Of English I have had enough,
These verbs of yours are far too tough.
Bolt upright in my chair I sat,
And said to her ‘that’s that’ – I quat.
(Guy Deutscher)
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough, and through?
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead – it’s said like bed, not bead –
For goodness sake, don’t call it ‘deed’.
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt):
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose-
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front, and word and sword
And do and go, and thwart and cart-
Come! Come! I’ve hardly made a start!
(From the Manchester Guardian, 1954)
The teacher claimed it was so plain,
I only had to use my brain.
She said the past of throw was threw,
The past of grow – of course – was grew,
So flew must be the past of fly,
And now, my boy, your turn to try.
But when I trew,
I had no clue,
If mow was mew
Like know and knew
(Or is it knowed
Like snow and snowed?)
The teacher frowned at me and said
The past of feed was – plainly – fed.
Fed up, I knew then what I ned:
I took a break, and out I snoke,
She shook and quook (or quaked? or quoke?)
With raging anger out she broke:
Your ignorance you want to hide?
Tell me the past form of collide!
But how on earth should I decide
If it’s collid
(Like hide and hid),
Or else – from all that I surmose,
The past of rise was simply rose,
And that of ride was surely rode,
So of collide must be collode?
Oh damn these English verbs, I thought
The whole thing absolutely stought!
Of English I have had enough,
These verbs of yours are far too tough.
Bolt upright in my chair I sat,
And said to her ‘that’s that’ – I quat.
(Guy Deutscher)
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough, and through?
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead – it’s said like bed, not bead –
For goodness sake, don’t call it ‘deed’.
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt):
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose-
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front, and word and sword
And do and go, and thwart and cart-
Come! Come! I’ve hardly made a start!
(From the Manchester Guardian, 1954)
Saturday, July 17, 2010
“Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today”: Tony Judt
I have just read Tony Judt’s latest book, Ill Fares the Land (Penguin Books, 2010), a fascinating and challenging book. Judt is a philosopher and social historian about whom I wrote in this blog on 2nd July. His book is about what the title of another book, this time by Andrew Rawnsley, the political journalist, on very much the same subject, called The State We (this country) Are In. Basically Judt’s thesis is that Margaret Thatcher acted like a scythe cutting across all the gains this country had made in promoting social fairness since the second world war, and ushered in an era in which self-interest and the pursuit of wealth were lauded above all other aims, with no regard to their effect on the society in which we live. Hence the financial, and of course the resultant social, disasters we now face. He maintains that this trend was further encouraged, devastatingly, by Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown. I myself can still remember how appalled I was when Thatcher abolished essential social services like the well-functioning youth worker network, and encouraged the sale of school playgrounds to developers, thereby consigning generations of schoolchildren to the streets, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, except, inevitably, to add to our current crime figures.
Judt yearns for the return of a time when the good of society as a whole becomes once again the motivating force of society, rather than profit and the achievement of illusory financial targets in all things. He bewails the fact that there are no outstanding characters in government, let alone in parliament, with the vision and drive to halt the creeping advance of self-interest at the cost of the benefits to society as a whole. Just this week, with the announcement of what looks like plans for the wholesale dismantling of the NHS as we know it, we can see confirmation of that, as the parliamentary opposition, which should be fighting on the NHS’s behalf, is intent instead on pussyfooting about who should be its leader, leaving it effectively leaderless and without a clear voice at a time when a strong opposition is needed to take the fight to the government and hold it to account
What frightens me is the terrifying note of glee, rather than appalled regret, in the voices of those announcing drastic cuts to public services. I have heard no expressions of any true concern for those who these cuts are going to damage most, inevitably the poorest and least able to withstand their effects, nor, as Tony Judt points out, any understanding that the unequal society Britain has become, a society with, appallingly, the worst gap between rich and poor of any advanced nation, inevitably endangers the whole of that society, and not just the weakest of its members. If we value what we should now be fighting for, then a reading of Tony Judt’s book offers a lucidly argued condemnation of the direction in which Britain (and the USA) are moving, and constitutes a call for action to halt this downward slide.
This is truly a great and important book. And, thankfully, not a very long book. I read it almost at one sitting. Do read it! And if you want to support your local library in its fight to avoid the closures which now menace all public libraries, then order it through your local library, something I always try to do. I regard this as my small, but I hope important, contribution to helping maintain what I regard as essential social services, and my way of trying, through this blog, too, to change things. In Tony Judt’s concluding words to his book, “As citizens of a free society,we have a duty to look critically at our world. But if we think we know what is wrong, we must act upon that knowledge. Philosophers, it was famously observed, have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
Judt yearns for the return of a time when the good of society as a whole becomes once again the motivating force of society, rather than profit and the achievement of illusory financial targets in all things. He bewails the fact that there are no outstanding characters in government, let alone in parliament, with the vision and drive to halt the creeping advance of self-interest at the cost of the benefits to society as a whole. Just this week, with the announcement of what looks like plans for the wholesale dismantling of the NHS as we know it, we can see confirmation of that, as the parliamentary opposition, which should be fighting on the NHS’s behalf, is intent instead on pussyfooting about who should be its leader, leaving it effectively leaderless and without a clear voice at a time when a strong opposition is needed to take the fight to the government and hold it to account
What frightens me is the terrifying note of glee, rather than appalled regret, in the voices of those announcing drastic cuts to public services. I have heard no expressions of any true concern for those who these cuts are going to damage most, inevitably the poorest and least able to withstand their effects, nor, as Tony Judt points out, any understanding that the unequal society Britain has become, a society with, appallingly, the worst gap between rich and poor of any advanced nation, inevitably endangers the whole of that society, and not just the weakest of its members. If we value what we should now be fighting for, then a reading of Tony Judt’s book offers a lucidly argued condemnation of the direction in which Britain (and the USA) are moving, and constitutes a call for action to halt this downward slide.
This is truly a great and important book. And, thankfully, not a very long book. I read it almost at one sitting. Do read it! And if you want to support your local library in its fight to avoid the closures which now menace all public libraries, then order it through your local library, something I always try to do. I regard this as my small, but I hope important, contribution to helping maintain what I regard as essential social services, and my way of trying, through this blog, too, to change things. In Tony Judt’s concluding words to his book, “As citizens of a free society,we have a duty to look critically at our world. But if we think we know what is wrong, we must act upon that knowledge. Philosophers, it was famously observed, have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
Saturday, July 3, 2010
In the Footsteps of the Elements
I am giving a seminar at the College of Traditional Acupuncture on 14th July, and have prepared the following outline for the day. I think it neatly encapsulates some of the difficulties we all have, both as human beings in general and as five element acupuncturists in particular, in seeing others as they really are, not as we think they are. I am calling the seminar In the Footsteps of the Elements:
“We can all throw great shadows, those of our own needs, over those we come into contact with, and it requires a high degree of self-awareness and humility to acknowledge how much we may be distorting the messages we think other people are sending out, so that we may, without realising it, be misinterpreting what they are telling us. It is particularly important for five element acupuncturists to be aware of this, since our diagnosis consists of tracking to their true source the footsteps the elements leave behind on each person. An image which can be used to describe a state of balance is that of someone standing at noon with the sun directly overhead in a cloudless sky so that they cast no shadow over anybody who approaches them. An image of imbalance is then that of a person standing deeply in their own shadow, so that whoever approaches is swallowed up in this shadow.
This further day with Nora Franglen will concentrate upon helping us learn ways of pushing our own shadows aside as far as possible so that we do not allow our perceptions of our patients to be distorted by our own imbalances.”
“We can all throw great shadows, those of our own needs, over those we come into contact with, and it requires a high degree of self-awareness and humility to acknowledge how much we may be distorting the messages we think other people are sending out, so that we may, without realising it, be misinterpreting what they are telling us. It is particularly important for five element acupuncturists to be aware of this, since our diagnosis consists of tracking to their true source the footsteps the elements leave behind on each person. An image which can be used to describe a state of balance is that of someone standing at noon with the sun directly overhead in a cloudless sky so that they cast no shadow over anybody who approaches them. An image of imbalance is then that of a person standing deeply in their own shadow, so that whoever approaches is swallowed up in this shadow.
This further day with Nora Franglen will concentrate upon helping us learn ways of pushing our own shadows aside as far as possible so that we do not allow our perceptions of our patients to be distorted by our own imbalances.”
Friday, July 2, 2010
On listening to Tony Judt speaking on the radio
I have just listened to a very moving radio interview with the writer and historian Tony Judt who suffers from such advanced motor neurone disease that he is now completely paralysed except for the ability to move his head and to speak. What was so uplifting to hear was the way he approaches his disability and his determination to continue his work with the pressure of his impending death to speed him on.
At a much less extreme level I can resonate with what he said, as should everybody, whatever their age, but it is only as I approach the final quarter of my life, and having a few years ago had a very mild stroke to remind me of my mortality, that I have been made so aware that time does indeed press and there is a need for speed in all that I still have to do. It is as though all the thoughts dammed up inside me and jostling for expression are finding a new focus because there is some compulsion to utter them stirring within me with increasing urgency.
This may have something to do with the closure of the school, and the slight hiatus when I took breath to recover and realign my life, and now the feeling of taking off in another direction as though I have much work to do before this hand, still slightly handicapped by the stroke and a daily reminder of time passing, finally refuses to do my bidding and my thoughts falter and fall silent.
When asked about how he viewed his death, Tony Judt said that he did not believe in an after-life, but felt that the point of his life lay in what he would leave behind him. On the small piece of wood which is the only thing my woodland burial plot (already chosen and paid for!) allows as a gravestone, it would be nice to feel that I, too, could write that, in some small measure, I had achieved what I wanted to do and been able to leave something of all that is within me behind.
At a much less extreme level I can resonate with what he said, as should everybody, whatever their age, but it is only as I approach the final quarter of my life, and having a few years ago had a very mild stroke to remind me of my mortality, that I have been made so aware that time does indeed press and there is a need for speed in all that I still have to do. It is as though all the thoughts dammed up inside me and jostling for expression are finding a new focus because there is some compulsion to utter them stirring within me with increasing urgency.
This may have something to do with the closure of the school, and the slight hiatus when I took breath to recover and realign my life, and now the feeling of taking off in another direction as though I have much work to do before this hand, still slightly handicapped by the stroke and a daily reminder of time passing, finally refuses to do my bidding and my thoughts falter and fall silent.
When asked about how he viewed his death, Tony Judt said that he did not believe in an after-life, but felt that the point of his life lay in what he would leave behind him. On the small piece of wood which is the only thing my woodland burial plot (already chosen and paid for!) allows as a gravestone, it would be nice to feel that I, too, could write that, in some small measure, I had achieved what I wanted to do and been able to leave something of all that is within me behind.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
A little lesson in the difference between the Earth and Fire elements from today’s practice
It is in small differences, and in our ability to pick them up, that much of the secret of our capacity to understand the distinctions between the characteristics of the different elements lies. When we realise this, we can use this knowledge to test ourselves and widen our understanding.
I will give an example of this from my practice today. An Earth patient told me of the feeling of mental confusion she often experiences. As she did so, she lifted her hand and pressed it close to her head as if trying to still the thoughts she said churned around inside her. I asked myself whether this gesture could be considered significant as pointing to something particular to Earth. Would I, of the Fire element, ever make a similar movement with my hand? I tried to mimic this movement and realised that I was using a gesture which was totally alien to me. I wondered why this was, and came to the conclusion that, even if my thoughts become confused, which they often do, I clear my mind by talking, as if translating them into a verbal form is what I need to do before I can develop my thinking.* (See footnote added on 24 July 2010 below) By contrast, what my Earth patient apparently cannot do when she is out of balance is put her thoughts into words. Her hand movement was in effect telling me that her thoughts had somehow got stuck inside her head, and the movement could therefore be seen as an attempt to dislodge them.
When I translated this into the kind of treatment that might help her, I came up with the lovely point, St 8 (Head Tied!), located on her head exactly where she had placed her hand, and with a function we could say perfectly fitted what she needed, which was to disentangle the thoughts tied up in her head. Whereas these thoughts of hers had not yet been processed sufficiently to emerge as words, mine, by contrast, never seem to need this kind of help. Rather it is the words themselves which I speak which have to act as sieves for my thoughts, a completely different process, which highlights one of the differences between Fire and Earth.
Such distinctions may seem very slight, but they are significant as pointing to one element or another, as everything is that we do. And one of the best things to do is to mimic the words or the movements of another person to see how far the feeling this mimicry evokes in us can lead us to some new discovery about a particular element. Certainly my experience with my Earth patient today has taught me something both about her and about myself, and thus at a subtle level helped me to a deeper understanding of the contrasting thought processes employed by Earth and Fire.
*Footnote to this, posted on 24 July 2010
I have just read the obituary to Edna Healey in the Guardian of 23 July 2010. They quote her as saying. "Somehow the thing that's in my head is never matched by what's on paper....If only I could write what's in my head I might never have wanted to do anything else. But sometimes, it seems, I only really know what I think when I've heard what I've said."
I will give an example of this from my practice today. An Earth patient told me of the feeling of mental confusion she often experiences. As she did so, she lifted her hand and pressed it close to her head as if trying to still the thoughts she said churned around inside her. I asked myself whether this gesture could be considered significant as pointing to something particular to Earth. Would I, of the Fire element, ever make a similar movement with my hand? I tried to mimic this movement and realised that I was using a gesture which was totally alien to me. I wondered why this was, and came to the conclusion that, even if my thoughts become confused, which they often do, I clear my mind by talking, as if translating them into a verbal form is what I need to do before I can develop my thinking.* (See footnote added on 24 July 2010 below) By contrast, what my Earth patient apparently cannot do when she is out of balance is put her thoughts into words. Her hand movement was in effect telling me that her thoughts had somehow got stuck inside her head, and the movement could therefore be seen as an attempt to dislodge them.
When I translated this into the kind of treatment that might help her, I came up with the lovely point, St 8 (Head Tied!), located on her head exactly where she had placed her hand, and with a function we could say perfectly fitted what she needed, which was to disentangle the thoughts tied up in her head. Whereas these thoughts of hers had not yet been processed sufficiently to emerge as words, mine, by contrast, never seem to need this kind of help. Rather it is the words themselves which I speak which have to act as sieves for my thoughts, a completely different process, which highlights one of the differences between Fire and Earth.
Such distinctions may seem very slight, but they are significant as pointing to one element or another, as everything is that we do. And one of the best things to do is to mimic the words or the movements of another person to see how far the feeling this mimicry evokes in us can lead us to some new discovery about a particular element. Certainly my experience with my Earth patient today has taught me something both about her and about myself, and thus at a subtle level helped me to a deeper understanding of the contrasting thought processes employed by Earth and Fire.
*Footnote to this, posted on 24 July 2010
I have just read the obituary to Edna Healey in the Guardian of 23 July 2010. They quote her as saying. "Somehow the thing that's in my head is never matched by what's on paper....If only I could write what's in my head I might never have wanted to do anything else. But sometimes, it seems, I only really know what I think when I've heard what I've said."
Friday, June 11, 2010
A tragic example of the failure of the body’s coping mechanism
It may seem insensitive to write about the recent massacre of 12 people in the North of England in five element terms whilst events are so fresh in our minds, but I think I am justified in writing about this because five element acupuncture may be able to offer an explanation.
The question everybody is asking is how an apparently mild-mannered, “normal kind of a bloke” could turn into a mass-murderer overnight? Those who have studied five element acupuncture will recognise this as being, in all likelihood, an extreme example of what we call possession. I have always disliked this word because of its rather spooky, and totally mistaken, suggestion of alien forces invading us from outside, but it is the word in common use and, although not a helpful description, I cannot at the moment think of an alternative. A less emotive way of regarding this state is to think of it as being one step beyond obsession, at the point where obsessive thoughts and feelings become overpowering. Hence the poetic description which compares such a condition to being akin to internal demons taking over control. Luckily, as five element acupuncturists we have at our disposal the means of treating this, to which we give the name, again poetically, of summoning the dragons to fight the demons. Seven points are used in combination for this treatment and their aim is to help to re-balance the spirit and reconnect it to the outside world. If treatment is successful, it will in effect bring the patient back to himself/herself again.
All the many descriptions of Derrick Bird emphasize the look in his eyes, or more accurately, the absence of the kind of eye contact we expect when we look at another person. Without exception, they describe his face as looking blank and his eyes as staring past them as though he was not seeing them. From a five element perspective he is indeed not seeing them as you or I would. Instead he is looking at something inside himself, as though listening to some command from within himself which is driving him to action. It would be accurate to say that the connecting links between himself and the world have become stretched almost to breaking-point, but not totally severed until the moment when he turned the gun on himself and broke this connection. He is literally in a world of his own, in which what is going on in such a devastatingly disturbed way has now become divorced from any semblance of reality against which he can measure what he is doing.
The point at which a state of possession so alters a person’s ability to function normally that their behaviour becomes visibly disturbed varies from person to person. People may continue to function surprisingly normally until something causes a collapse. Up to this point, possession can be said to provide a form of safety valve for the internal chaos within, but if there is no release over time, this valve may blow, as it did in Derek Bird’s case, where the apparent trigger appears to have been his fear of going to prison for failure to pay his taxes. Fortunately in most cases it does not manifest in such an extreme fashion, and can also appear in very mild form which can only be detected by the most acute observer. I have for example recognised it in well-known people on TV.
Possession could therefore be said to have developed as one of society’s ways of coping. It is only when this coping mechanism fails that we see the kind of actions which we have witnessed this week. As a five element acupuncturist I always feel that I am fortunate in having a treatment at my fingertips which I can offer to help patients release the build-up of pressure such as that apparently experienced by Derrick Bird and, by this means, hope to re-establish a proper connection to the everyday world. If treatment is successful in doing this, people are then better able face up to whatever deep-seated problems have led to such despair. I see the dragon treatment therefore as offering a kind of rebirth.
The question everybody is asking is how an apparently mild-mannered, “normal kind of a bloke” could turn into a mass-murderer overnight? Those who have studied five element acupuncture will recognise this as being, in all likelihood, an extreme example of what we call possession. I have always disliked this word because of its rather spooky, and totally mistaken, suggestion of alien forces invading us from outside, but it is the word in common use and, although not a helpful description, I cannot at the moment think of an alternative. A less emotive way of regarding this state is to think of it as being one step beyond obsession, at the point where obsessive thoughts and feelings become overpowering. Hence the poetic description which compares such a condition to being akin to internal demons taking over control. Luckily, as five element acupuncturists we have at our disposal the means of treating this, to which we give the name, again poetically, of summoning the dragons to fight the demons. Seven points are used in combination for this treatment and their aim is to help to re-balance the spirit and reconnect it to the outside world. If treatment is successful, it will in effect bring the patient back to himself/herself again.
All the many descriptions of Derrick Bird emphasize the look in his eyes, or more accurately, the absence of the kind of eye contact we expect when we look at another person. Without exception, they describe his face as looking blank and his eyes as staring past them as though he was not seeing them. From a five element perspective he is indeed not seeing them as you or I would. Instead he is looking at something inside himself, as though listening to some command from within himself which is driving him to action. It would be accurate to say that the connecting links between himself and the world have become stretched almost to breaking-point, but not totally severed until the moment when he turned the gun on himself and broke this connection. He is literally in a world of his own, in which what is going on in such a devastatingly disturbed way has now become divorced from any semblance of reality against which he can measure what he is doing.
The point at which a state of possession so alters a person’s ability to function normally that their behaviour becomes visibly disturbed varies from person to person. People may continue to function surprisingly normally until something causes a collapse. Up to this point, possession can be said to provide a form of safety valve for the internal chaos within, but if there is no release over time, this valve may blow, as it did in Derek Bird’s case, where the apparent trigger appears to have been his fear of going to prison for failure to pay his taxes. Fortunately in most cases it does not manifest in such an extreme fashion, and can also appear in very mild form which can only be detected by the most acute observer. I have for example recognised it in well-known people on TV.
Possession could therefore be said to have developed as one of society’s ways of coping. It is only when this coping mechanism fails that we see the kind of actions which we have witnessed this week. As a five element acupuncturist I always feel that I am fortunate in having a treatment at my fingertips which I can offer to help patients release the build-up of pressure such as that apparently experienced by Derrick Bird and, by this means, hope to re-establish a proper connection to the everyday world. If treatment is successful in doing this, people are then better able face up to whatever deep-seated problems have led to such despair. I see the dragon treatment therefore as offering a kind of rebirth.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
The Wood element in full flow
I saw an excellent example of the Wood element last night on BBC TV. In a programme on BBC2 called “Mary Queen of Shops”, the presenter, Mary Portas, had been asked to help a woman who runs an independent bakery in London now under threat from the local supermarkets armed with their much larger selection of specialist bakeries. Mary’s task is to try and identify what could be called a shop’s unique selling point, and encourage the owner to change their approach. You can watch the programme for yourselves on BBC iplayer, and you can see that, although the owner originally asked for help, she is determined from the start to prove that she knows better than Mary. So the whole hour-length programme shows the battle which arises between Mary’s attempts to guide the owner towards the necessary changes and the shop-owners’s steely determination not to change anything she has been doing “for 26 years”, the leitmotiv of everything she said. It seems obvious that the shop-owner and the presenter are both Wood people, neither happy to cede ground to the other, and both quite enjoying the ensuing fight. As a counterbalance to this, there is also the baker himself, who is sidelined by the two battling women, but I think is soft Earth, just getting on with things in the middle and trying not to get involved.
It is amusing and rather sad to watch, because of what it shows of human frailty and Wood’s inability to “see” when it is out of control, as this woman so definitely is during the programme. You could say that she made the wrong decisions and was a bad planner, first in contacting Mary Portas for help and then not planning for the effect of this help. But it teaches us more about Wood in an hour than we would learn in a year’s study of what is written about the element.
These are the kind of TV programmes which any five element acupuncturist or student should be watching, ones in which people are under stress and show all those unbalanced sides of themselves which place their elements in starker relief than normal.
It is amusing and rather sad to watch, because of what it shows of human frailty and Wood’s inability to “see” when it is out of control, as this woman so definitely is during the programme. You could say that she made the wrong decisions and was a bad planner, first in contacting Mary Portas for help and then not planning for the effect of this help. But it teaches us more about Wood in an hour than we would learn in a year’s study of what is written about the element.
These are the kind of TV programmes which any five element acupuncturist or student should be watching, ones in which people are under stress and show all those unbalanced sides of themselves which place their elements in starker relief than normal.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Five element acupuncture comes full circle
A few days ago I gave a seminar for five element acupuncturists in the Netherlands. It was a fruitful experience for me because I was talking to a group of acupuncturists who have learnt their five element skills from a practitioner, Koos van Kooten, who in turn came to our courses at SOFEA. He has moved on, developing his own insights and his own approach, and has drawn in his wake an increasing number of Dutch practitioners devoted to deepening their five element knowledge. All this is very satisfying to me, and provides just the kind of justification for my work at SOFEA which warms my heart.
Amongst his group was an acupuncturist, Mei Long, who trained originally in China and who told me that, after much exploration of different branches of acupuncture, she had come across five element acupuncture, and recognised it immediately as representing a calling for her. As part of this calling, she had felt driven to get in touch with a well-established contact of hers in the world of acupuncture in China, who still has links to acupuncture's traditional roots and wishes to strengthen them, a rare thing in modern China. As a result of her approach he has asked her to run a week’s course on five element acupuncture for acupuncturists in Guangxi College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China.
This person turned out to be Liu Lihong, whose name I had come across whilst looking at the work of Arnaud Versluys. Liu Lihong is said to be “at the forefront of a Chinese renaissance movement that aims at reviving the depth and the core values of Classical Chinese Medicine”. This is where things come full circle, for JR Worsley said to an acupuncturist friend of mine, Sarah Matheson, some years ago that “the Chinese will be asking us to bring five element acupuncture back to China”, and it appears that they have indeed at last come calling.
Amongst his group was an acupuncturist, Mei Long, who trained originally in China and who told me that, after much exploration of different branches of acupuncture, she had come across five element acupuncture, and recognised it immediately as representing a calling for her. As part of this calling, she had felt driven to get in touch with a well-established contact of hers in the world of acupuncture in China, who still has links to acupuncture's traditional roots and wishes to strengthen them, a rare thing in modern China. As a result of her approach he has asked her to run a week’s course on five element acupuncture for acupuncturists in Guangxi College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China.
This person turned out to be Liu Lihong, whose name I had come across whilst looking at the work of Arnaud Versluys. Liu Lihong is said to be “at the forefront of a Chinese renaissance movement that aims at reviving the depth and the core values of Classical Chinese Medicine”. This is where things come full circle, for JR Worsley said to an acupuncturist friend of mine, Sarah Matheson, some years ago that “the Chinese will be asking us to bring five element acupuncture back to China”, and it appears that they have indeed at last come calling.
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