The Water element: 2

Water people tend to make us feel uneasy, even if they themselves look quite calm.  They can have a kind of frozen stillness, which can change into a leap into action if they feel threatened, as when something unexpected happens.  Then their eyes are the give-away.  Water eyes are always wary, watching everything carefully, and ready to swivel away to look at anything unexpected which might be happening to the side or behind them.  They can then suddenly look startled, even though the rest of their face can remain surprisingly still.

I see Water’s colour as being of two kinds.  There can be a very dark shadow over the whole face, in men often accompanied by the typical blue shadow around the beard area which Richard Nixon showed, particularly when he was under threat politically.  You can then think of the whole face as being dark, even though when you look closely you wonder why you think that it looks so dark.  Then there is the other kind of Water colour, when it has a kind of translucence, so that other colours show through it.  I like to think that the dark-bluish colour is the Kidney, the more hidden, deep yin aspect of Water, whilst the translucent, lighter colour is the Bladder, its more outward-facing, flowing yang aspect.  Those who have the Kidney as their guardian official give the impression of being much like still waters, which run slowly and deep, whilst Bladder people are much more like quicksilver in their movements and thoughts.

The Water element’s yang official, the Bladder, has the widest reach of any meridian, even dividing into two parallel pathways as it spreads over the back, and having the greatest number of acupuncture points, 67 in total.  Its function is that of being in charge of the storage of water, whilst the Kidney, its yin companion, is more simply called the controller of water, with a mere 27 points.  But even this number is the most of any other yin official.  Merely by adding together the total of Water points we are made aware of Water’s importance to the whole energy network, understandable, when we remember that our bodies are composed of more than 80% water.

I have grown increasingly better at detecting a Water smell.  It can be very obvious if there is great imbalance, when the smell of stagnant urine can be quite clear.  At a more balanced level, I have found that when I am standing by the couch, what comes up to me is a feeling that there is some dampness around, as though I am near a pond or a bath full of water.  This is when the smell just wafts upwards to my nose.  This is certainly not an unpleasant smell at all, which the word “putrid” seems to indicate, but instead just a rather pleasant dampish smell.

I find the sound of a Water voice is rather tiring to listen to for a long time.  It has a droning sound, which seems to drill into me, but in a more hidden, less direct way than the force in Wood’s voice.  Listen to Bob Geldof or David Beckham talking (extracts on YouTube are an excellent way of doing this), and this drone, like a bee buzzing away at us, becomes very clear.

But, above all, we need to examine how we feel in the presence of a person, and ask ourselves whether it is we who are experiencing a kind of uneasy fear, and, if so, whether this is the fear in the other person, well-hidden.  It is important to remember that Water will always try to hide its fear, transferring it instead on to us.  Water is therefore often misdiagnosed, as it is very adept at hiding itself behind other elements.  When I think I can see many different elements in one of my patients, then I have found it is often Water that is the element underlying them all.

   

Showing patients that we really care

Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, is said to have replied to a reporter who, seeing her looking exhausted, asked her simply, “Are you OK?”, by saying, “Thank you for asking.  Not many people have asked if I’m OK.”  She then went on to say that the new normal, with masks concealing faces, was forcing people to look into each other’s eyes, adding, “For the first time in a long time, as human beings we are really seeing one another.  Are we OK?  We will be.”

In this short exchange of words, she pinpointed two very significant areas of interest for five element acupuncturists.  She emphasized the importance of giving another person the chance to say honestly how they are feeling, and she is aware of how important eye contact is for every human interaction.  By chance this second point also illustrates what I wrote in my recent blog about the Metal element “Are we living in an age of Metal? https://afiveelementcompanion.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-metal-element-5-are-we-living-in.html.    Both these examples illustrate something which should remain constantly at the forefront of our minds in our dealings with our patients, which is the importance of showing them that we are genuinely concerned to find out how they really feel.

Obviously Meghan Markle’s comments hit a nerve, because I have just read a reader’s letter in a newspaper in which the writer says, “Can I suggest that when you meet people who are grieving, you ask, “How are you today?”  My husband, who died from motor neurone disease in 2017, said this acknowledged that some days were better than others.”

In this context, I often recall the many times a health worker, be it a doctor, a nurse or a dentist, has offered me the standard greeting of “How are you?”, which I never know how to reply to.  Does he or she really want to know how I am, as I walk into the consulting room, and well before I have seated myself?   Are they, or are they not, expecting me to answer this question truthfully?  Surely not.  And yet the conventional greeting has already opened up a slight gulf between us, making it more difficult for me to say what I had come to say.  Every time I am greeted in this way I feel a tiny stab of disappointment, because I would like to answer genuinely, but realise that an honest answer is not being expected of me.  I only remember one occasion, which stood out so sharply because of its rarity, when a nurse unexpectedly said, “You hate being here, don’t you?”  This was a really welcome moment of appreciation of how acutely she had been observing me, and I can still recall the relief I felt at realising that at last somebody was interested enough in me to see beyond the conventional mask we all put on.  I always emphasize to my acupuncture students how important it is not to engage in this kind of idle chat as they greet their patients, but wait until they have settled themselves down and are composed enough to answer such a question honestly.  

We always say that the purpose of a good five element diagnosis is to help patients feel safe enough to remove their mask, and it is our eyes, those windows of the soul, which show our true selves the most clearly.  At this time of COVID 19,when the physical masks we all now have to wear hide all but our eyes, we are given a wealth of opportunity as we walk past people in the street to catch glimpses of the real people through their eyes.  We should take every opportunity to use these brief interactions to try and help us diagnose the messages the different elements are sending us, for each element will look out at the world in a different way.  Each encounter can then become a useful diagnostic lesson if we choose to use it for this.

What distinguishes a merely competent practitioner from a really good practitioner is the degree to which they are genuinely curious about every aspect of their patients’ lives.  I think that having a good memory is a blessing for any therapist, because our interest in building up a complex picture of our patients’ lives helps us establish close and lasting relationships to them, to the extent that not long ago I happened to meet a patient in the street after many years had passed, and could immediately recall that she had problems with one of her children.  It was fortunate for my future calling as five element acupuncturist that since childhood I have always been fascinated by human interactions, enjoying watching groups of people wherever they gather, so that although my memory for facts is not very good I can build up very clear pictures of my patients’ lives which stay with me for years.  That is a skill we could all usefully develop if we wish to help our patients.

The Water element: 1 The most mysterious element of all

I find it interesting, and significant, that I seem to have written the least about this most mysterious of elements, Water, than I have about the other elements.  Looking at my writings, I realise that the number of words I have dedicated to the different elements has varied.  Perhaps it is understandable that Fire has occupied my thoughts the most, and that may not just be because it is my own element, but additionally, and perhaps more importantly, because it shelters what are in effect twin elements, Inner and Outer Fire, each with its own circle of influence and its own paired officials.  Though they both quite obviously have the same sensory signatures, they are distinct enough to have characters quite their own, to the extent that I was delighted one day to see JR Worsley nod his head slightly when I dared to say, “Really I think there are six elements, not five.”

If I count up the numbers of words I have written about each element, there appear to be more about the two yang officials, Wood and Fire, a little fewer about Earth and increasingly less about Metal, before finally dwindling down to the least number for Water.  I have concluded that this is probably because it is much easier to write about Wood and Fire, because their yang nature makes them very visible, whereas the more yin characters of first Earth, then Metal, and finally the almost ephemeral of all, Water, are less easy to grasp in words because of their more hidden, yin nature.  Or at least I find them so. 

When I have given talks about the elements, inevitably I always start with Wood, since its upfront character appears to be the simplest for me to describe and  it is therefore the easiest element for my audience to identify with.  I once tried to change my routine and started with Water, but I felt very uncomfortable doing so, particularly as I could feel that I was losing my audience as I stumbled through my description of Water’s qualities.  In a similar vein it is much easier to talk about the glories of spring with all nature’s abundance on show than the unremittingly passive picture of the dark days of winter, Water’s season, with a landscape lying apparently fallow for months, often buried beneath snow.

Water is the element that I always feel quite wary of.  And this is such an appropriate word to use when describing anything to do with this element, particularly if you are, like me, of the Fire element.  Because Fire is always slightly apprehensive whenever it comes into contact with Water, just as Water is equally just a little nervous when it comes into contact with Fire.  I believe, however, that Water has this effect upon people of all elements, but perhaps to different degrees.

It is always good to think of the way these elements manifest themselves in the natural world, for their appearance and their actions in nature are why the elements have originally been given the names that they have.  There is something which makes us think of the earth beneath our feet when we think of an Earth person, just as there is something very specific to our thinking about metal objects or things made of precious materials, such as gold or silver, when we think of a Metal person.  It is therefore not by coincidence that the ancient Chinese named the five elements as they did.

Everyone should at some level be wary of Water, because in its often silent and rather hidden way it is quite remorseless in ensuring that it finds its way to whatever goal it has set itself.  If you think of the force of water in the natural world, you can see that it has the ability to transform itself in seconds from being something as apparently harmless and peaceful as the smooth surface of a small pond into becoming the awesome, overpowering force of a torrent drowning whole villages and towns in its path.  It represents our determination to achieve whatever we have set out to achieve, come what may, and at the deepest, most primitive level, is our survival instinct.  This is why so many people who have reached the top of their profession often owe allegiance to this element.

I call it the hidden element, being the most deeply yin of all the elements, because it is not as obviously aggressive as Wood, a yang element, but the power it can exert can be all the greater because it can be so unexpected and catch us unawares.  I always feel that Water people can creep upon on us without our being conscious of their presence, whilst the more yang movements of the Wood element announce themselves much more openly

People often underestimate Water’s power and single-mindedness because these are often disguised by its apparently gentle, pliable nature.  So what is there about water as we observe it in nature which will help us understand the nature of this element better?  At its deepest level, I think it has much to do with one of its characteristics, which no other element shares, and that is its ability to change its shape at will whenever it feels the need to do so.  At a stroke, often associated simply with changes in environmental temperature, it can transform itself, becoming in turn steam or ice, and in so doing turning the soft flow of water into ice-bound glaciers, a boiling kettle or the steam of hot geysers.  I have always seen Water’s ability to change its shape and consistency as offering it different escape routes enabling it to avoid capture, the thing that Water most fears, for to become captive would be to hold it back from performing its main task, which is to be on the move, with the aim of drawing things together into a whole, and thus to create the image of wholeness, which is that of the unbroken circle of the Dao,  

As a footnote to these thoughts about Water, I was sent some very illuminating insights into this element all the way from India by a friend of mine whose guardian element is Water.

“I read your recent blog, which was interesting. These short, simple observations of each element in a particular situation are very easy to remember and think about. It's also certainly a fact that on the street, I would look at people but immediately look away! I think it is because I don't want them to know that I am looking at them unless they want to initiate contact. If they smile, for example, I would spontaneously smile back and maintain contact for a short while before looking around. It's as if I feel I am transparent and everyone is always able to see through me (literally I mean) and that everyone is trying to read my mind and judge me. And I need to distract most people (except those I am very comfortable with) from something I may have been focusing on by looking here and there, away from what originally caught my attention. I think this is what partly causes the jerkiness that is experienced by others in Water. It's also as if I need to constantly check the environment to condition my own response or state of being to it, perhaps a bit like water which changes its state so often. This takes up a lot of physical and mental energy unconsciously in its own way (as Fire does in its attempt to reach out and every other element does in their individual ways).”

 

 

  

The Metal element 5: Are we living in an age of Metal?

I would recommend all of you to read a book by Andrew Keen, called The Internet is not the Answer (Atlantic Books 2015).  It contains important warnings about the world we live in, and the risks we are running of remaining, not the free agents in a free world we like to see ourselves as, but ever more like slaves entrapped in a world controlled by the large corporations, such as Apple, Amazon and Google, whose power over us grows by the day.

The author points to a worrying aspect of today’s world, our current obsession with ourselves.  The rise of the mobile phone and Instagram have disturbing consequences, one of the most frightening being what he calls our “self-centric culture”, in which “if we have no thought to Tweet or photo to post, we basically cease to exist.”  And “the truth about networks like Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook is that their easy-to-use, free tools delude us into thinking we are celebrities.”

I have often thought that the electronic equipment most of us feel to be absolutely indispensable to our modern lives, and which is intended to link us ever more closely to one another, ironically leads instead to our distancing ourselves more and more from each other.  The cameras in our mobile phones are encouraging us to look at each other through a lens, rather than in the eye.  The messages we send are beginning to stop us speaking to one another, voice to voice.  We now text rather than talk.

The young woman sitting opposite me in the café a few days ago made no contact with anybody during the time that I watched her, all her human interactions being through her electronic equipment.  It felt as though she lived in a bubble all on her own.  As Andrew Keen says, “The truth…is that we are mostly just talking to ourselves on these supposedly “social” networks…. (It is) an Internet in which the more social we become, the more we connect and communicate and collaborate, the lonelier we become.”  Are we perhaps starting to live in an age of Metal, that element which mourns the loss of what is valuable, and in its imbalance may cut us off increasingly from each other and from the world around us?

Finally, to add to these rather depressing thoughts, a little comment by the writer, Robert Macfarlane, whose lovely books about walking in nature and in the wild all of us should also read.  In an article of his in the Guardian newspaper, I read that the new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary now includes words like “chatroom” and “broadband”, but not “bluebell” or “kingfisher”.  I also read that they are now discussing whether children should continue to be taught handwriting in school, presumably because it is assumed that they will no longer be using pen and paper but tapping away on their keypads to communicate.  All these different developments underline the seismic changes going on around us.  No doubt many of these may herald exciting new departures which we should welcome.  Others, though, represent losses.  I am sad that children’s vocabularies may no longer include bluebells or kingfishers.

 

The Metal element 4: A Metal patient's story

Every day I receive confirmation that the elements do indeed imprint a personal stamp upon each one of us in the shape of one of the five elements.  It is both exhilarating and humbling to receive these continuing proofs of the truth of what I practise.  I received one such confirmation at a fellow acupuncturist’s practice some time ago, when I was asked to help a patient of hers.

A few years ago this patient had suddenly begun to experience severe pains down his body, accompanied by strange involuntary jerking movements of his left leg.   I asked him whether he had been suffering from any particular stresses at the time the pains started, perhaps something which he might experience as a shock to the system.  “No“, he said, but then I noticed his eyes suddenly filling with great sadness.  “Is his element Metal then?”, I began to ask myself, as I saw this look of grief.  We are always being given pointers to the elements if we are sensitive enough to notice them, however slight they may be, little gifts of help.  And then came another gift.  He was silent for quite a while as I took his pulses, and then, out of the silence, unexpectedly he said quietly, “I always wished I had had some relationship with my father.”  Aha, I thought, who but Metal is likely to say this?  For of course we know that Metal has a particularly strong association to the father.

Metal is the “if only” element, the element that looks back into the past, and often thinks more about this past than about the present.  So here was a double pointer to Metal, the grief in the eyes and the immediate connection with a father who, though still living, is as though lost to him.

So I continued with my questioning, guiding it now along a path that my experience tells me that Metal will accept.  It wants to be left alone to make its own connections and assess for itself what is relevant or irrelevant.  So I suggested lightly that maybe something had indeed happened around the time all this pain appeared. “Maybe some stress at home or at work, perhaps?  But only you will know what that might be.”  And I added, “Perhaps the involuntary jerking of your leg is because you want to kick somebody!”  We both laughed, and then he was given his first treatment on Metal, just the source points, and I left him with this rather light, almost joking remark hanging in the air.

 A few hours later he phoned, and wanted to tell us something he had never told anybody else before.  Two years ago his wife had had an affair with his best friend which had devastated him.  They had worked through this now, but he could not forgive his friend, and never wanted to see him again – another great loss in his life.  I suspect that now that he has admitted to his anger, he will no longer unconsciously need to kick out, either at his wife, or more likely at his friend, as good treatment focused on his Metal element helps him gradually heal.

This was further evidence for me that we need only lightly suggest something to Metal, and then stand back to allow them space to work out their own solutions, since Metal is so acute and quick at making connections for itself.

How much we achieved in such a short time!

I’m sure five element acupuncturists reading this will expect me to write about any other signs of Metal I noticed in terms of the other sensory signs.  His emotion I have talked about;  his colour was not very clearly what I associate with Metal.  I couldn’t detect any smell at all, but the sound of his voice was very flat, very yin, dragging me down with it.  This is the sound which I associate with Metal’s weeping tone.  

 

 

 

The Metal element 3: Metal's two officials

Of all the elements, Metal is the one whose two associated officials, the Lung and the Large Intestine, have the widest reach, spanning the whole body from top to bottom, from the nose and the lungs down and through the colon as far as the body’s lowest point.  The Lung, our organ of intake, is the element’s direct connection to the world outside, and establishes this connection through the act of inhaling air as well as through the pores of the skin, which are called the third lung in Chinese medicine.  The Lung passes oxygen on to every cell of the body, before the Large Intestine takes over to carry out the final processing and elimination of all needless waste material from the body.

When we think of Metal’s season, autumn, we can see that nature’s work at this time is to filter as much goodness from what Earth’s harvests have left behind, before sending all this goodness down to the roots below ground, to the Water element, to feed the next cycle.  Metal not only has to help the Lung inhale life-giving air, but help the Large Intestine sift through and discard all the waste material from the other elements, retaining only those few which are sufficiently pure to support the renewal of life.  If we look at the components listed on bottled water, for example, we can see that they include a great number of essential trace elements, the products of Metal’s work in filtering all the purity from what has gone before.  These trace elements leave no actual trace for the human eye to perceive, but without them no seed will grow.  The Water element will then stores these trace elements as nutrients for the seeds it nurtures throughout the winter.

The process of breathing becomes what we can think of as an act of purification, as the nasal hairs catch as many impurities as they can, acting as filters to remove them, and expelling them in our sniffles and sneezes as we breathe out.  The Lung is therefore one of the body’s purifying agents for all the physical activities involved in breathing, as well as for the deeper mental and spiritual activities for which it is responsible.  It then passes on the residue of these activities which it no longer needs to Metal’s companion official, the Large Intestine.

The Metal element can therefore be seen as bearing a heavy burden, that of being responsible for ensuring both the purity of what we take in and the removal of all the impurities and waste material no longer of use to us.  The wide range of its responsibilities has always made me regard Metal people as having to live their lives under a surprisingly great level of strain, for if they fail in their task, they will allow through that which the Lung should be filtering out.  I remember well one of the most important lessons I learned about this element was from a Metal patient who told me one day, “I feel dirty inside all the time”, a description which could be seen as clearly reflecting her Lung official’s inability to maintain the purity which she craved.  It was very significant that this patient always turned up for treatment to start with in what I could only imagine was a set of fresh white underwear, as if by wearing these she could somehow hide the pollution she felt deep inside her.  I regarded it as visible evidence that her treatment had been successful when, after a few months, she turned up in coloured underwear, as if she now no longer needed to hide her body in what most of us would consider the purest colour of all, white.

  

The Metal element 2: Some of the difficulties in diagnosing and treating Metal patients

I have always found Metal people to be the easiest patients to treat, provided (and this is an important proviso) that I am quick to diagnose that Metal is really their element. I have therefore had to work out my own ways of pinpointing specific Metal characteristics which help me with my diagnosis.  A person’s first impression upon us is always very revealing, particularly if we can catch a glimpse of some similarity with how we have previously reacted to somebody else, and perhaps revealingly so if the person we are reminded of is a patient whose element we are sure of.  This makes life much easier for us, of course.  A very clear comparison of the similarities between our reactions to the two people is very helpful.  Less helpful is what happens more often, which is that some little quirk in appearance or behaviour, something like the way they move their mouth as they smile or talk, or the way they look at us, sets off a vague memory of somebody else we know who smiles, talks or moves in a similar way.  We may not immediately track back to work out who this is, and it may take us a few hours or even longer to pinpoint the person we are thinking of, but once traced this is a nearly infallible way of finding an elemental signature to help us.

There is an added factor to making a diagnosis when we treat a Metal patient, which is that the relationship between patient and practitioner is always a very delicate one, but with Metal it is especially so.  I have sometimes described it as one where I have to tread lightly, as though on glass.  Metal is the most sensitive of all elements in detecting a slight of any kind directed towards it, and will harbour the memory of it for a long time.  It regards anything as a slight as something which implies some criticism of its behaviour.  Buried deep within Metal is a search for perfection, and this is what lies behind all that it does, as it tries to weigh up what is right and good and to discard what is wrong.  This, of course, includes judging its own actions.  It is prepared to do this itself, but allows no-one else the right to do this.  Any criticism will therefore imply a negative judgement and will be resisted.  No element wants to be taken as seriously as Metal.  To mock it or make it feel unworthy in any way is to lose any respect it has for us as a person and even more so for us as its practitioner.  This is why the first interactions with a Metal patient are so crucial, and can be very tricky if we do not pick up on a patient’s need to be allowed to do things their own way with as little interference as possible from others, and thus from us as their practitioner.

One of the pointers to the Metal element is the strong feeling that I have to tread warily in what I do and say.  This is my particular reaction to sensing the space that Metal people like to keep between themselves and others, even between those to whom they are emotionally most closely related.  I feel under inspection, being observed almost dispassionately, as though I am being assessed from a distance.  This is something Metal is likely to do to everybody who approaches it, and also does to itself, since it is the harshest self-critic of any element, constantly judging its own actions.  If it feels that I am not offering it what it thinks I should, I will be dismissed as having no further use.  This will translate itself into a Metal patient abruptly deciding to discontinue treatment.  On the other hand, once it has accepted that what I am offering as a practitioner is something it can value, it will be remarkably easy to treat.  It is no coincidence, I feel, that when I was palpating the wrist of one of my Metal patients to locate the position of the Metal source points, he told me quietly, “That feels very pertinent to me,” as though such a sensitive response to my touch had activated some reaction which he recognized as profound even before the point was needled.

I have noted over the years that many practitioners including myself fail to recognize the signatures of the Metal element for some reason which I have found difficult to decipher.  It may well be associated with its yin qualities, which it shares with the other yin element, Water, for what is yin is inward-looking, unwilling to reveal itself, quite unlike the outward-looking qualities of the two very yang elements, Wood and Fire.  Neither of these hesitates to express openly what it feels, whereas the two purely yin elements tend to be more comfortable keeping their feelings in the shadows, as though unwilling to reveal their true nature.  In other words we are always slightly uncertain where Metal and Water people are positioning themselves, unlike Wood and Fire who are so unmistakably there in front of us.  Earth, of course, being a combination of both yin and yang, can be both very visible, as though partly living life above-ground and partly more hidden, as though below-ground, as befits the rather ambiguous intermediate position it takes up.

It is therefore all too easy to mistake the face Metal turns towards the world as revealing what is truly going on below the surface, which I feel helps explain why practitioners may find Metal difficult to diagnose.  We are not quite sure whether what we are seeing is revealing how Metal really feels and acts.  One of the ways I have learnt to deal with this is by understanding that Metal, whose function is to assess the true nature of things, must rely on itself to do this, not ask for help from others.  Metal people may listen to what others advise, but will then take this advice quietly away inside themselves to mull over it, and decide whether it is sufficiently or insufficiently valid to take or reject. 

I learnt this lesson quite early on in my practice, when I happened to be treating a Metal patient immediately after an Earth patient.  The Earth patient was very happy to discuss openly what she was concerned about.  This was something which had been occupying her during many of our previous sessions, and was continuing to do so now.  On the other hand, when I afterwards went in to see the Metal patient, who had told me at the last session that he had some difficult decisions to take in his life, he said without prompting, “I’ve decided what I will do,”, and that was that.  I felt that he had come to this decision by himself, presumably, I hoped, after feeling the benefit of the treatment which he had just received, and there was now no further need to discuss it.  Nor did I feel he would welcome my questioning him further.  He had moved on in that quiet but determined way that Metal has.