Learning the skills needed to detect change

One of the skills of being a five element acupuncturist is that of learning to detect the changes in our patients as a result of treatment.  When I was a novice practitioner I had to use quite crude criteria for assessing whether my treatment was helping a patient or not. The most widely used, I admit rather shamefully now, was asking my patients themselves to tell me whether things were changing for them.  Questions like, “How are you feeling now?”, or “ Has your sleep (or any other symptoms they have told us about) improved?”  I am ashamed now of asking such questions because I realise that patients often don’t know how to reply, as I didn’t when asked by one of my practitioners whether treatment was helping me.  I felt I needed to encourage her by giving some positive response which might not be true, unsure what kind of improvement I should be experiencing, and worried, too, that she might lose interest in helping me.

A patient should never be the one to judge whether their treatment is helping them.   We should Instead develop an ability to detect often the slightest physical or emotional change as a result of treatment.  It is these which I would probably not have recognized early on in my practice.  The changes are often very subtle:  our hand held more firmly during pulse-taking, or a slightly softer outline or less tension to a face. They may talk less or more, or seem no longer to be so preoccupied with some symptom or another.  Any change, however slight, is significant confirmation that the patient’s elements are welcoming the direction of the treatment they are receiving.   

 

The flipside to this is, of course, our growing awareness when treatment is having no effect at all.  This is again a skill we need to develop.   As the years pass I have become more quickly aware that nothing has changed, acting as a warning sign that I may need to change the emphasis of my treatment to another element.  It requires some courage to admit to ourselves that we are on the wrong track, sometimes even wrongly blaming the patient for not responding to treatment as we think they should.  But if somebody comes back week after week with no evident change in themselves or their condition, we must be prepared to query our diagnosis, and be brave enough to pause and take stock.

 

I have learnt to do this by telling the patient that I am not yet satisfied with the effect of treatment, and asking them how they feel.  This is often the point where a patient will admit, with relief, that they, too, do not feel the treatment has yet helped them.  I then ask them to allow me some more time, sometimes even by coming more frequently, so that I can re-assess the treatment.  None of my patients has ever refused to do this.  Very often this honesty between us helps put our relationship on a better footing, which in turn gives me the time to work towards finding the correct guardian element: a win-win situation for us both.

Devising a new way of diagnosing the elements

One of the effects of my visits to China over the past 14 years is that they have forced me to change my approach to diagnosing the elements.  In China we were asked to help diagnose many hundreds of five element students and practitioners at each of the seminars we ran there.  The main reason for this was that I always emphasize the importance of a five element practitioner being confident of their own element, since this colours their approach to their patients. The sheer number of people wanting our help to do this therefore inevitably made it essential for us to adapt the procedure for diagnosing the elements which I had until then accepted as being the only correct one, one that I had learnt during my training and have practised ever since.

 

In my own practice I had the luxury of giving each new patient and myself the time gradually to get to know each other, and thus to develop the good relationship necessary to help me towards a diagnosis of their element.  The initial interaction could be as long as two hours, with each subsequent treatment being at least one hour.  This gave me plenty of unhurried time to work my way towards a patient’s element.  In China, on the other hand, no such luxury was possible.  We were at the most three five element practitioners, and were expected to diagnose the elements of sometimes up to more than 300 people over a mere seven days.  We could only do this by devising a different approach to diagnosis, and this in turn changed my understanding of how the elements manifest themselves when seen in groups.  This led us to develop what I regard as an effective method of diagnosing the elements of large groups of people. 

 

We modified our new approach to diagnosis slowly over the first few years of our Chinese seminars, and only developed it fully as the numbers in our seminars increased (from the initial 20 or so 14 years ago to the final 500).  To start with I kept the protocol I was familiar with in my own practice:  an hour or so quietly alone with each new patient.  This quite soon became impractical.  Initially I tried to adapt the interaction of a private diagnosis by talking to volunteer patients in front of the whole seminar as though pretending that this was in some way equivalent to a one-to-one interaction.  Apart from the fact that I always tried to avoid any very personal questions which might embarrass the person in front of the large audience, it also meant that we could diagnose far too few people.

    

I therefore had to start devising other ways of diagnosing, helped by the fact that those coming to the seminars had first to attend the preliminary seminars given by the growing group of what we call five element teachers (those Chinese practitioners who had attended many of our seminars and were themselves practising only five element acupuncture).  All attendees had therefore been given what they called a provisional diagnosis of their elements at these seminars.  This meant that we could subdivide the large group into five element groups, and use these subdivisions as a way of moving towards what could be called a group diagnosis.

 

What was so interesting was that I found that when there were several people of the same element together this seemed to exaggerate the characteristics of that element, making it appear in starker outlines.  It also revealed, again more clearly, the fact that one or more of the people who had been assigned to one element did not appear to belong to that element.  The differences between them emerged much more clearly when, for example, a Water person was amongst a group of mainly Wood people.  This became even more obvious when the very interesting element games Guy Caplan created for the different element groups showed very clearly the presence of one or more people who reacted quite differently to the instructions given to a group.  In other words, we learnt that groups of people of the same element acted in a similar way, as would be expected of that particular element.  For instance, Water huddled together, as did Earth but in a more comfortable way, Metal worked individually at the tasks Guy had set them, Fire was very conscious of being observed by video, and laughed at the camera recording their reaction, whereas Wood started to try and take individual control of the tasks, as though each wanted to be in charge.

 

The result of all these interactions between different groups of elements was that I became more than ever convinced of the truth underlying five element acupuncture,  which is that each person expresses their unique individuality through the prism of one of the elements.  And the elements appeared to reveal their characteristics even more markedly when viewed in groups.

 

 

  

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump: Learning more about the interaction of Fire and Wood

My readers know I like to use my interest in famous people as an excellent way of adding to my knowledge of the elements.  So over the years I have spent much time watching TV as a way of doing this.  One of the reasons is that famous figures show themselves in the merciless light of public scrutiny, and the high level of stress they are under reveals their elements more clearly.  Watching Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal fighting to win a match, for example, became for me an excellent way of seeing Water (Federer) or Wood (Nadal).

Of course, since none of the famous people I have written about are my patients, for if they were I could not write about them for reasons of patient confidentiality, I have no way of confirming whether my diagnosis of their elements is correct or not.  But at least my choices demonstrate some of the aspects of an element which lead me to a diagnosis.  Sometimes, of course, I may later change my diagnosis because somebody has shown some characteristic of a different element. 

 

So here goes with my latest attempt at diagnosing two elements and their relationship to one another which are very much in the public eye at the moment.  These are the two elements, Wood and Fire.  Watching how Donald Trump (Wood, I think) and Kamala Harris (Fire, I think) are dealing with each other makes for a surprisingly interesting lesson in the interaction of their two elements.  We have endlessly-smiling Kamala Harris confronting a very disgruntled Donald Trump who clearly doesn’t know how to deal with an opponent who is not frightened of him.  To support my diagnosis, I read the following in today’s Guardian newspaper: “Trump has only grown more infuriated as his poll lead evaporated as Harris opened up a clear, if narrow, lead.  Her tactic of mocking Trump more than arguing with him appears to have incensed him further.”  He is angry because she finds him laughable, and quite openly laughs at him.  It is interesting, too, to see that when he is not talking he looks very angry, with glaring eyes, tightly closed lips and rigid neck muscles.

 

I also use watching Kamala Harris as a further lesson in observing the difference between the two aspects of Fire, which I have called Inner and Outer Fire.  Inner Fire describes the Heart and the Small Intestine officials, Outer Fire the Three Heater and the Heart Protector (Pericardium).  These are two quite distinct aspects of the Fire element, distinct enough for me once to have asked JR Worsley whether there were six rather than five elements.  I like to think that he nodded, but that may have just been my imagination.

 

The two Fire aspects have the same sensory signatures: a scorched smell, red colour and of course the laughing voice and joy which so seem to disturb Trump.  The way they present themselves, though, is very different.  I think Kamala Harris is Outer Fire, which is by far the easier of the two Fire aspects to be with.  She exudes the comforting warmth of the Three Heater.  Inner Fire, by contrast, is a much more prickly manifestation of Fire.  It houses the most important official of all, the Heart, and its yang official, the Small Intestine, has to be constantly alert for anything that may hurt the Heart.  This watchfulness makes for a much less easy person to be with.  I see none of this Inner Fire aspect in Kamala Harris, nor do I hear the hesitancy in her voice, characteristic of Inner Fire, as it tries to sort its thoughts out.  She is very articulate, speaking so easily and smoothly.

 

If either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris were my patients, I ask myself how I would treat them.  Since Fire is my own element, it might seem that I would find it easier to treat Kamala Harris, but that is often not the case when treating a patient of your own element.  And I think she is Outer rather than Inner Fire, which I am, so there might be some slight tension there for me to deal with.  Treating a patient of one’s own element can seem to be deceptively simple, but often is not, because with Fire patients I have to hold myself back from being irritated by those aspects in my patients which I find irritating in myself!  

 

Treating Trump, on the other hand, would require of me some of the light-heartedness Kamala Harris is showing towards him and quite obviously annoying him.  His Wood element seems very out of balance, as shown by his bouts of irrational anger, and I would need to be firmly in control in the practice room, laying down clear boundaries.  Perhaps by laughing, this is Kamala Harris’s way of laying down her boundaries, and doing so very effectively.  

 

Some people may think that I should not be trying to diagnose people from afar, but on the principle that a cat may look at a king, I think I have a right to do so, as this teaches me something new about the elements.

New thoughts about the Water element

These new thoughts were sparked by a comment I read recently about our new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, that “the most frequent complaint about the Labour leader was that he was impossible to pin down.”  I had already thought that his element might be Water, primarily because of his voice was a very clear groaning, added to the fact that I wasn’t initially at all sure about his element.  I think this comment can point only to the Water element.  

One of the things my Chinese students taught me was that, when, as I often did, I would say about a patient, “I’m not sure what there element is“, the whole group would shout out “Water!”.  They had learnt that my initial reaction to being in the presence of Water often led to my indecision, which reflected the kind of hesitancy which Water seems always to arouse in me.  It seems that the fear which is Water’s emotion appears to transfer itself to me in the form of uncertainty.     

One other reason why my Chinese students are so sure about my response to Water is because the Water group among those attending our seminars over the years constitutes by far the largest element group of the five, so they have had amply opportunity to observe me diagnosing this element.   At one of our recent seminars, for example, of the 400 or more students who wanted us to help diagnose their elements at least 200 of them we eventually decided belonged to the Water group, whereas only 30 – 50 were spread over each of the other four elements.  This ratio remained surprisingly constant over the many seminars we held there.   

 

I would ask myself whether this was merely a coincidence, but if so, it was a surprising one.  There seemed to be no such emphasis towards Water in the groups we diagnosed in this country.  Could it possibly be that there was some specific environmental reason in China that could offer some explanation?  And, if so, did environmental factors enter into the equation as to which element we are born into?  Nobody can ever know why each of us is handed the gift (or sometimes the burden) of living our life under the influence of one particular element, though I have occasionally wondered why one member of a family is of a particular element which brings something essential to the family (perhaps warmth (Fire) or strength (Wood) or comfort (Earth) for example), which may be qualities needed by other members of the family,.  But then I have thought that this might just be one of my more fanciful ideas.  But what if the larger habitat into which we are born could indeed influence which element dominates in our life?  Could, therefore, the extreme cold which China suffers each winter be causing Water to dominate in this way?  And is it fanciful to wonder whether those born in very hot climates might have a greater affinity with the Fire element?

 

These are fascinating questions, ultimately impossible to answer, but I find it both exhilarating and disturbing to think that the element which our destiny seems to stamp upon us might have its origin in the climate of the place where we are born, or at least be partly due to this.  Are these just idle thoughts, or is there some truth hidden here, as explanation for the many Chinese to seem to owe allegiance to the Water element?   

My farewell thanks to China

I was asked by Mei Long to write a note of welcome to the participants of a five element seminar she is giving in Beijing in July.  This is what I wrote for her:

On the last afternoon of my seminar in China in April, when we had planned our usual emotional photo-shoots and tearful goodbyes, I made a last-minute change of plan for myself.  I realised afterwards that this decision had, in a strange way, symbolized my personal legacy for my time in China. As part of the programme for our seminar, we had planned to treat a certain number of patients, and I was told that they had added one or two more stand-by people in case somebody didn’t turn up on the day.  In the event, by the last day there was just one person left on the list.  I had read her notes which told me that she was a long-time cancer sufferer, somebody who could definitely benefit from receiving treatment.  She must have been waiting all week on standby, hoping that she might be able to take one of the places, but assuming now that this was not going to happen.  I could imagine how she might be feeling having her hopes dashed, and it suddenly felt right to me that I should offer to see her privately during our last afternoon, leaving Guy and Mei to take over the final hours of the main seminar.

 

In the event this decision turned out to be a very moving experience for me, proving to be an excellent example of what my time in China has meant to me.  For after the patient left, looking transformed by her treatment, it summed up for me in a very moving way what the practice of five element acupuncture offered its patients at the highest level.  I left the seminar so happy that I had chosen to finish this last day in China on such a personally high note.  What was it about this one treatment which encapsulated so significantly what I had hoped to bring to China as my contribution to the return of this healing discipline to the country of its birth?  

 

There are many lessons about five element practice that my many visits to China over the past 14 years have taught me.  All have enriched my understanding of my own practice in often surprising ways.  Firstly, I became aware of the fact that to all Chinese, unlike to people in the West, the Dao, yin yang and the five elements, these simple but profound words which encompass the whole of Chinese thought, are totally familiar concepts.  There was therefore no need for me to start my introduction to five element practice at this most basic level, as it had been in the West, for everybody was already totally at ease with these concepts.  This made teaching an absolute delight from the very first day.  Then the groups mainly consisted of people who were already trained acupuncturists or in training to become acupuncturists, so that I had no need to spend time teaching them the anatomical locations of acupuncture points or how to palpate for them.

 

Another fundamental difference which made my work in China so rewarding was the speed at which everybody so quickly understood the new concepts underlying five element practice.  They were quick to learn how we diagnose the elements through our senses, and proved surprisingly skilful at training these senses.  Perhaps I was lucky that there were so few who doubted the truth of what I was teaching them, although there must have been some who did, but the vast majority of the many hundreds who came to our seminars over the years accepted almost without question that this was a profound healing technique.  As I often told them, I was so grateful that their ancestors, the ancient Chinese, had created such a simple way of restoring health and balance to human beings.

 

The need to help practitioners with a diagnosis of their own element, which I see as an essential part of five element practice, meant that we also had gradually to devise a method of diagnosing the many hundreds of people who came to our seminars.  This taught me that looking at the different elements in small groups, as we did, proved to be an excellent way of diagnosing the elements, as the qualities of the different elements emerged most clearly when groups of the same element were observed together.  This was another important new lesson which my visits to China taught me. 

 

A very significant moment in the return of five element acupuncture to its country of birth was the meeting between Mei Long and me at a seminar I gave in the Netherlands at which Mei for the first time heard me talk about five element acupuncture.  This was the catalyst which led to her contacting Professor Liu Lihong to tell him about what she had learned, and for both of us very soon being invited to China for our first five element seminar in Nanning in 2011.  This led directly to what has become today the very large and vibrant groups of Chinese five element practitioners, with firm roots now spread throughout China.  You, who are coming to this seminar with Mei, are some of these practitioners and students.

I am sure that you will be relieved to be able to listen in your native language to what Mei will be teaching you, rather than having to listen all the time to me talking in English and waiting for the translators to help you understand what I am saying!

 

I send you all my love and best wishes for your future five element practice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are ourselves our best diagnostic tool

We often tend to forget that we have, in ourselves, the very best and most essential of diagnostic tools by which to track down our patients’ guardian elements.  For it is only through us, rather than through medical equipment or clinical tests, that we can work our way towards a diagnosis. It is our own sense of smell, our eyesight, our hearing and our emotional antennae which create the sensory mediums through which we assess what is coming from the patient towards us.

 

Above all, though, none of the diagnosis we make through our senses, however acute they may be and however accurately they lead us towards a particular element, will be sufficient in itself to encourage a patient’s elements to respond well to treatment directed at them, unless the practitioner has first managed to establish a good relationship with their patient.  It is the strength of this relationship which helps the patient’s elements to respond positively to treatment.

 

We often overlook the need to establish the groundwork for this relationship as early as possible.  The elements will be reluctant to respond positively to treatment, however well it is focused on the correct element, if this relationship has not yet established itself on a secure enough footing to make the patient relax sufficiently to trust his/her practitioner.

 

The order of priority in treatment should, therefore, always be, first to establish a good and caring relationship with your patient, and then to concentrate on trying to pin down their element, rather than doing this the other way round, which we often tend to to.  If our patient is at ease with us, it means that we are offering them something which is helping to relax their element.  It is then by taking steps to trace what it is within ourselves that we are actually offering our patient that we will find that, often unconsciously, we are basing our interaction with our patient on a correct assessment of their needs.  And that means that at some deep level we are responding accurately to our patient’s element.  And we should, of course, then use this information to help us in our diagnosis, 

             

The hidden pathways of energy which flow through us

As five element acupuncturists we often take for granted that the medium through which we work is created by lines of energy running through us, and from the world outside us, connecting all things in an inextricable web of energy.  We take this for granted whenever we do a seasonal or a horary treatment, for we are assuming then that each of us is linked into nature’s energy and will respond to it when we stimulate these points.  But each time we lift a needle and prepare to treat a patient, we will be effecting a similar transfer of energy between the patient and practitioner, and of course through both of them with the cosmic forces which feed us all.

 

We also need to accept that there is much more going on between us and our patients which underpins our treatments at a deep level, and may determine whether they are successful or not.  This helps explain why exactly the same treatment with the same points on the same element from one practitioner can appear to be falling on fallow ground, whereas the same treatment from another practitioner proves remarkably successful.  What may well differentiate the two practitioners may be their belief in what they are doing.  I learnt that this might be so from a comment from a fellow practitioner some years ago, who told me that he could not understand why the treatments he was offering his patients did not seem to have the same results as mine.  I realised that this might well be because he had told me he doubted the efficacy of five element treatment, and eventually moved on to practising another form of acupuncture.  His spirit which doubted what he was doing appeared to be affecting the treatment his hands were offering his patients.

 

This was the first time that I began to be aware of the power of the practitioner’s spirit in determining the outcome of the treatment he/she was giving.  The most profound lesson of all that I learned was when JR Worsley told us that he did not really need to light a moxa cone because his fingers warmed the point to the same degree.  Rather arrogantly, I thought I would see if I could also do this, and was amazed when my patient said,”Hot!” as my fingers hovered over a point, with my intention firmly focused on warming the point.  I never repeated this experiment, probably because I saw this as belittling the power of what JR had told us he could do.

 

Another profound experience of a slightly different kind was when I was marking up the points for a Husband/Wife treatment, and, being very early on in my practice, was concerned that passing energy from Metal to both Water and Wood as part of this procedure, would somehow be harmful to what I thought of as my Metal patient.  (It isn’t, because I would have followed the H/W procedure immediately with the Metal source points.). As I finished marking the points, and hesitated before actually inserting the needles, my patient suddenly said, “It does sound a dangerous thing, that Husband/Wife imbalance which your teacher mentions in his book.”  I sent thanks up to whatever spirit guides this universe, and carried on with the treatment.   I am still in awe of what was happening at some deep level at that moment in the practice room.  It was as though my patient had picked up on my doubts, and somehow felt she must reassure me that the Husband/Wife treatment was necessary.  She had never mentioned before that she had read JR Worsley’s book, and never mentioned it again, but some need in me was being answered by what she said.

 

Another instance of the power of the forces we engage with when we needle was given me during a possession treatment.  In those days, I think I was not focused enough to clear possession through the Internal Dragons, and so moved on to External Dragon treatment which involved needles in the AEPs (back shu points) of Water.  Once all the needles were inserted, my patient suddenly called out in pain, “Something is hurting me on my back!”.  When I looked, I could see that the AEP needle on one side of the Water AEPs was being dragged under, almost disappearing below a fold of skin, as though the needle was trying to position itself slightly higher than I had placed it.  I tried to remove the needle, but couldn’t, as it was held so firmly held in place.  All I could do was wait and see if the needle’s tug on the skin would lessen, and I could then take it out, which it did very easily after a few minutes.  I realised, too, that the treatment had cleared the possession.  Thinking of this afterwards, I interpreted this as my having marked the Kidney AEP point wrongly on one side, and the patient’s energy had directed the needle towards where I should have placed it.  

 

Again, this was one of those incidents which made me aware of the forces I was dealing with, and how much a patient’s own energy was trying to support the treatment I was trying to give.  These few examples have convinced me of the power we can unleash if we focus our thoughts clearly on what we are trying to achieve.

 

Finally, I am always thankful for whatever universal forces hovering above me have helped me in treating very ill patients, when I was given no time to carry out even the most basic diagnosis, since they could not even talk to me.  One such patient was somebody who had suffered a severe stroke, and another who was so severely ill from cancer that she could not speak to me.  I always felt that some hand was hovering over me, guiding me towards the correct diagnosis of these patients’ elements, and the treatment I should offer them.  The universe, I felt, was leading me to help my patients when I could not carry out he usual procedures.

 

As I have said before, I am not a fanciful person or one who had much belief in powers beyond me before I started my acupuncture practice, but my experiences over the years have taught me that what I am doing with these often rather clumsy fingers of mine can often stir into life some of the profound forces which surround us.