I learnt something new about my relationship to the Metal
element this week as a result of treating one of my Metal patients. At one point during the treatment I found
that I was talking too much, and noticed that my patient only seemed to talk
after prompting from me. The two-way
communication I was engaged in appeared to be heavily weighted towards one side,
where I was doing the talking, whilst the other side, my patient, was mostly
doing the listening.
This set me wondering afterwards how far this was in general
true of my interaction with Metal, and I decided that it was. I then looked at my interactions with all Metal
people, and found that as a general rule it is as though Metal
needs to wait to hear what I have to say before entering the conversation. I interpret this as a sign that Metal wants to assess the
quality of what I am saying before deciding whether and how to take part in a dialogue with me.
I have now gone on to look at where my interaction with Metal might differ from those with patients of the other elements. The most obvious difference here is in the case of
Fire, because, unlike Metal, it is generally unhappy with the kind of silence Metal feels at home in. A Fire
patient is likely to be the one to start talking even as they come into the practice
room, although, being a Fire practitioner myself, the chances are that they
will have to be very quick of tongue to outpace my own need to speak to
them!
Earth, too, is one of the elements most consistently engaged
in speech, a sign of its need to make the listener understand what is going on
for them. Conversations with Earth
patients may sometime be more in the nature of a monologue than a dialogue,
unless the practitioner steers the talk carefully. Wood may also need no prompting to talk if it
has something it needs to say, and wants to make sure the practitioner is listening to what they are being told. Again, here, speech can descend into a
monologue if the practitioner loses control.
Finally, my verbal interactions with Water patients always
seem to have a very distinctive character of their own, which makes of them not
so much a dialogue where one person talks, then listens whilst the other person
talks, but a conversation where both talk at the same time in a kind of
concerted murmur. It is as though the
sound of the words, rather than the meaning of the words, is more important,
offering the kind of reassurance that Water is not alone which it craves in
order to still its fear.
Of course, all these observations are based on the fact that
my reaction to everybody I come into contact with will be strongly coloured
by my Fire element. In trying to look at their experiences with
patients, each practitioner must therefore take into account how far their own
guardian element shapes the way they interact with their patients and their
patients interact with them.
I am now determined to watch myself more closely to see whether my
own talking in the practice room is an appropriate response to the needs of my
patient rather than an inappropriate response to my own needs.
Please note here that I do not say “how to deal with a difficult
patient”. It is not that patients are
simply difficult in themselves, but that we as people find them difficult to
deal with. For practitioners, that is a
crucial difference. As Shakespeare might
have said, “the fault lies not in our stars (or in this case our patients) but
in ourselves…”
So here goes about this particular difficult situation. The patient was one who came for treatment as
part of a clinical day I spent helping another practitioner with his patients. She is a woman of 35 and moves around in a
wheelchair. Her medical notes show that
she was diagnosed as autistic and with attention deficit problems as a
child. She has a long list of other
medical conditions, the main being a spinal accident which left her confined to
bed for a year when she was 8 and meningitis when she was 10.
What interested me was noting that she appeared to be quite
capable of moving without help from the wheelchair to the treatment couch, nor
did she have any difficulty in turning over on the couch. Her legs, too, did not have the look of ones
where the muscles have atrophied from little use. She was wearing very heavy short boots, much
like men’s army boots, which looked incongruous on a wheelchair-bound person by
reason of their sheer weight alone. She
brought with her a little doll, the kind a five-year old child might have,
which she insisted on tucking next to her on the couch. I also noticed other disconcertingly
odd things which made me question how far she was actually incapacitated.
Having expected from the notes that contact with her might
be difficult because of her autism, I was surprised to see how easily she
seemed to relate to us, and in particular noticed that she was darting hidden
glances at me when she thought I wasn’t watching.
The practitioner is also her medical practitioner, and had started
his five element treatment by relying only on her medical diagnosis rather than on a
much more extensive five element diagnosis which would not have concentrated so
exclusively on her physical conditions.
The distinction between his role as her physician and as her acupuncturist
had become understandably blurred. Initally, I, too,
made the mistake of going along with this.
The practitioner and I therefore assumed all sorts of things
about her condition, basing ourselves on very little information about her
current medical condition. Did she in
fact need a wheelchair at all, and could she be described as still being
“autistic”?
As is obvious to any five element acupuncturist from what I
have written, we decided to treat her with Internal Dragons. We followed this with an Aggressive Energy
drain and the source points of her element which I thought was Fire. I had a question mark around Inner Fire
(Small Intestine), something to do with the quickness of her understanding (even
though she didn’t like to show that she did understand) and the sharpness of
her glance!
I felt surprisingly angry at the end of the treatment, as
though she had got under my skin and had outmanoeuvred us. And I went so far as to tell the practitioner
that I wasn’t sure there was any point in continuing treating her with
acupuncture because she appeared to be manipulating the situation in a way that
made treatment impossible.
It was my anger which brought me to my senses, and I told
the practitioner later that I did not think I had dealt properly with the
situation. I had failed to take the
right steps to get her treatment back in the correct five element groove. We should have done a proper Traditional
Diagnosis after the treatment in whatever time we had available, to be
continued at the next treatment. She
should be asked to demonstrate how far she can stand and walk by herself, and
the practitioner should get some answers to more detailed questions about her
life. We were not even clear about her
living situation. Does she live alone or
with her family? Does she have friends? What does she do with her time?
But all is not lost.
I have suggested to the practitioner that he should now start as though from
scratch, trying to forget the wheelchair and the label of autism. Nor must he
allow himself to be manipulated back into the old relationship where she
appeared to be dictating how she wanted him to treat her. My mistake was to allow her to do the same to
me.
This is the only way in which we can help this patient. And we should try to do that, rather than walk
away. She is really crying out for help,
and has probably been crying out for this help all her life in the only way she
knows how.
It may be helpful to read this blog in conjunction with my
blogs of 13 September 2011 “Losing control in the practice room” and of 9
October 2011 “Regaining control in the practice room”, which complement this blog and deal with other
problems in the practice room.
And so my learning continues!
It’s funny how often I come across some quotation which seems
particularly relevant. A few days ago, I
read the following in, of all things, a detective story: “Things always have to even themselves out between plus
and minus. Between going forward and
going back. That’s the only way to
live.”
I like the to think that life has to balance itself between
pluses and minuses (acupuncturists would say, between yin and yang). We tend to hope, unrealistically, that
somehow the life we live should always be lived on the plus side. Far better to accept that every plus needs
its minus, for this brings the necessary
tension which moves us towards change. Time always hustles us along
despite ourselves, jolting us out of complacency, as a minus does its
companion plus and plus its minus, and as yin does its yang and yang its yin.
Interesting to find such a potentially deep thought tucked
away between the covers of a simple detective story.
My flight to China
on November 9th has now been booked.
Mei and I will be over there for 3 weeks and return on December 2nd. We will spend the first two weeks at the Tong
You San He Centre of Chinese Medicine in Nanning,
where I will be concentrating on helping my dedicated group of five element
practitioners. We will also be
expanding this group to include some of the many other practitioners clamouring
to learn.
We then fly to Chengdu for
the final days, where I will be giving another seminar at a conference similar
to the one I attended last November in Beijing. The title of my talk this year will be “The
Significance of Five Element Acupuncture for life in the 21st century”.
I now have to think carefully about what I see as the stresses
of modern life which are common to all of us, and whether these are the same
for people living in the East as they are for us in the West. Some interesting thoughts here for me to
explore.
If you walk from Gower Street to the back of the British
Museum, at the corner where Keppel Street meets Malet Street you will find the
most delightful sound installation called ‘Phantom Railings : an interactive
sound sculpture’. The old iron railings
along a high wall surrounding the gardens at the back of Gower Street were
removed during the Second World War to be used for the war effort, as all
railings were, and for some reason have not been replaced. You can still see the metal stumps left
behind. As I walked
past, my walk was interrupted by loud plinking and plonking noises. I stopped and looked around to see where they
were coming from, only for the noises to stop, too. When I started walking again, the noises started
up again, and I realised they were being controlled by the pace of my steps. By this time I had reached the large gates to
the garden, which displayed a notice explaining that this was an installation “to
evoke the phantom of a lost iron fence”.
The footsteps of passers-by recreate the sound of somebody running a
stick along metal railings.
Delighted with this unexpected source of art displayed so
discreetly in quite a hidden corner of Malet Street, I walked up and down
several times, changing the speed of my steps and creating my own tiny symphony
of sound.
And to round off my morning, I settled down to an Espresso
at a little café round the corner, only to be charged £1.00 for it, the
cheapest in London yet right in the centre of town. And it was served with a smile and piping
hot, just as I like it!
What pleasures
we come across in such unexpected places!
It was dark and murky outside, a damp, almost autumnal feel
to the day, when I first wrote this blog.
We have hardly had any summer at all in this country. To relieve the gloom of the day I am looking
ahead, and drawing up a summary of my plans and projects for the autumn, a form
of taking stock which we should all do before the year closes down fully.
So here goes:
1. A series of SOFEA seminars, two in September and two in
October (see SOFEA website for details);
2. Two trips to Europe in September (to Holland
and Switzerland) for
clinical work with practitioners, then a gap in October, before my third trip
to China
in November;
3. Preparing my books for publication in e-format (the Keepers of the Soul is already available
in e-format);
4. Completing my translation for Elisabeth Rochat de la
Vallée of her 101 Key Concepts of Chinese
Medicine, which Monkey Press will be publishing (nearly done!);
5. Reviewing my translations of some of Elisabeth Rochat’s
very detailed work on point names. I’m
at the moment looking at Heart Protector (Heart Master) Points 1 - 9, and Lung
Points 1 - 9;
6. Trying yet again to find a publisher for my translation of one of Jacques Lavier’s books, this time in America. Has anybody reading this got any contacts with publishers who might be interested in publishing this very important book which provides one of the key links in the route of transmission from East to West?
7. A French translation of my Keepers of the Soul has been commissioned, and a Mandarin translation of The Simple Guide is at this moment winging its way to China. It will be interesting to see if they want to publish this in addition to the Mandarin version of my Handbook of Five Element Practice which is now well into its second edition of 5000 copies over there.
So that makes for a very five-element orientated autumn! And today the sun is shining again, so thoughts of autumn have receded.
I have been watching Usain Bolt very carefully, trying to
work out whether he is Outer or Inner Fire. And I think now that he is Inner Fire, or, as we
five element acupuncturists say, a II CF, with the Small Intestine as his
dominant official.
Watching him has made me look again at the
differences between these two sides of Fire.
And there are great differences.
I remember saying to JR Worsley that I thought there were really 6 CFs,
not just 5, because Fire
could be considered to consist of two, and he nodded.
So here is what my observation of Usain Bolt tells me about
what I see as being typical of the Small Intestine:
1 He is able to multi-task in a way very familiar to me from my
own Inner Fire abilities, and in a way no Outer Fire person would do. I realised this when I saw him chatting
happily to one of the stadium volunteers standing behind him just before the
200 metre final only a minute before settling down in his blocks. He is obviously able to switch quickly from
one task to the next without apparently any loss of focus. This may even be his way of
concentrating more on the next thing, even if that is an Olympics Final.
2 He likes to include everybody in his joy, chatting to all
his fellow competitors after the race, addressing the camera, running up to
the crowd and talking to everybody there.
Remember that the Small Intestine is the closest official to the Heart,
and it wants to help the Heart express joy, particularly at these very intense
moments. Contrast this with Jessica
Innes drawing her joy back into herself when she won, and her quiet
self-absorption throughout the heptathlon.
(I think she is probably Metal, so quiet and self-contained.)
3 He has great awareness of what is going on all around him,
seeing exactly which camera is on him, responding quickly with a joke and a
smile when he knows the world is looking at him. He watches everybody and everything all the
time, as though using his Small Intestine’s ability to sort so that it can send
the right information on to the Heart.
You can’t have a better example of Fire than Usain
Bolt. Anybody who can make a whole
stadium of people smile, let alone the billions
watching on TV, must be Fire. And he
loves acting the clown.
Apart from enjoying the Olympics, which have lit up this
country with a very English kind of enjoyment, I love watching how the
different athletes respond to the stresses and joys of competition from a five
element point of view. It’s fascinating
seeing all the different expressions of the elements so clearly visible, and
there’s no better way of adding to our knowledge of the elements than watching
people under stress.
I love passing on heartening news about the results of
simple five element treatments. And this
latest anecdote, from the practice of a friend of mine, encouraged me to think
a little more about our approach to treating children.
An 11-year old girl suffering from severe migraine came for
treatment. The practitioner felt that
her element was Fire, and this is the first treatment she was given:
AE drain (great deal of AE on Lung, Heart Protector and
Heart)
Source points of Outer Fire, VI (TH) 4 and V (HP) 7
The migraines stopped completely the day after treatment,
and have not recurred since. She will be
given one more treatment in a few weeks’ time (summer seasonal: VI 6 (TH 6) and V 8 (HP 8)), and will come
back for occasional top-up treatment if necessary.
The migraines started after she moved school, leaving many of
her close friends behind. She was also
now being bullied by another child. All
this meant that her Fire element was suddenly placed under a great deal of
stress with which it could not cope.
Hence the migraines and hence, too, the Aggressive Energy.
This made me think about the treatment I have given
children, and why I have always, without exception, found Aggressive Energy to
be there, and often a surprising amount of it for such young children. This then set me thinking about AE in general, and what its presence signifies. So why so much AE in children, when very sick
adults may not have any?
I like to think that this may be because in children the
imbalances are usually still at a fairly superficial stage, and have not had
time to infiltrate deep within the elements.
We were always told that AE was the result of one element under stress
flinging the negative energy which is weakening it across the K’o (Ke) cycle to
its grandchild element in an attempt to avoid harming its own child element. If the element under stress (which does not
need to be the guardian element) has sufficient energy to get rid of negative
energy in this way, it is still strong enough to maintain a good level of
energy. An AE drain may therefore help
to deal with the first attack on the elements, and it may be that it is only
when elements are deeply weakened that more sustained treatment at a deeper
level is required.
When we treat children, we use exactly the same five element
protocols as for adults, but we use less of them and treat far less often. We don’t need to treat children more
frequently than once in two weeks, even at the start of treatment, and then
only for a few treatments, spreading treatments out more quickly than for
adults. We also use less moxa on the
points (though children will be fascinated by moxa if you show a cone being
heated on yourself first to calm them).
We also needle on one side of the body only, to reduce the stress for a
child, except in the case of the AE drain and Entry/Exit blocks.
We also have to get used to needling a struggling
child! I use short needles, and always
hold the needles carefully covered by my hand so that the child doesn’t see
them. It is important to needle quickly,
and not delay things by trying to talk a child through its fear, as you would
with an adult. With the AE drain, if the
child is young enough I ask the parent to take the child on their lap, and hold
the child very firmly as I insert the needles.
The needles often fall out when the child struggles, so have a good
supply to hand.
And pulse-taking in these circumstances is also quite
difficult! So we do our best with
whatever information we have. Obviously,
too, we have to learn about the child not only by observing it ourselves for as
long as we can, but by talking to the parent(s)/guardian. Again, obviously, this should if possible be
done when the child is not present. A
phone call or meeting before the first treatment, in which we ask the
parent/guardian the kind of questions we would ask an adult at the TD
(Traditional Diagnosis) is essential to give us a picture of what is going on
with the child and the family’s approach to this.
What is interesting, though, is that children themselves
respond very quickly to the effects of treatment. Though they may shriek or struggle a bit, the
little child who makes a terrible fuss about the actual needling will often be
the one who rushes into the practice room and greets me with a kiss, as though
it knows I have helped them.
The important thing is always to bear in mind that the reason
why a child needs treatment is, as we know, not simply because of something
physical, but, as with any patient we treat, inevitably has a deeper emotional
cause. All those terrible cortisone
inhalers now lined up on primary school shelves which the young children are
told to take for their asthmas could be thrown away if only people realized the
stress their children’s Metal elements are placed under in this modern
world. When we are asked to treat
children, therefore, we must always look beyond the child first to the
parent(s), and then beyond the parent to the world in which the child lives.
Usually, unfortunately, we are not asked to
treat the parent, although we can clearly see that this is where the trouble
lies. In the case of this young girl, it
seems that her parents may not appreciate how much the change of school and the
bullying is affecting their child, and are not acting to support
the child’s Heart Protector in a way that will help it protect itself from the
bullying. As we know, bullies always
pick on a child which shows weakness, so the stronger her Heart Protector
becomes, the more it will be able to stand up for itself.
It isn’t even April 1st, but a few days ago I
heard on the BBC that a university somewhere is doing research into this very
subject. Apparently cows are being
fitted with some kind of device which will help researchers find out how much
cows like to chew the cud together. They
will monitor how far the milk yield goes up if cows are allowed to stay with
their group, or down if they are separated from them.
I imagine the answer will be the obvious one, particularly
to a five element acupuncturist.
Presumably a happy cow will produce more milk than an unhappy cow, just
as a happy person will lead a more productive life than an unhappy person.
