Another profoundly moving experience which has coloured the
whole of my acupuncture life occurred when JR Worsley came to my practice for a
day. He had agreed to see six of my
patients at hourly intervals. I was
therefore dismayed when he diagnosed that four of them needed what we call
possession treatment. I was shocked that
I had not seen this myself beforehand, for this is a long treatment, which
could easily last more than the hour I had allocated to each patient. To help speed up treatment, JR said that he
would stay the whole time in the practice room with me.
The treatment protocol requires the insertion of seven
needles in a certain order, each needle having to be accurately placed so that
the seven act as a combination to release this block. We were also told that the needles should be
left in for up to 20 minutes. Locating
these seven points is usually quite a lengthy business. They are spread over the body, and since a
few are particularly difficult to locate, it would normally have taken me quite
a long time to find the points and insert the needles correctly, but with JR
standing behind me and watching me as I worked, I relaxed completely, knowing
that he would correct any misplaced location.
In the event, to my surprise I located each point without any difficulty
for each of the four patients. I heard
afterwards from a fellow acupuncturist who was in the room with us that at each
insertion JR simply nodded his head as if to say, “yes, that’s right”, and a
mere few minutes after all the needles had been inserted, he would look at the
patient and again nod his head, telling me to remove the needles. Each treatment had barely lasted five
minutes, and each case of possession had cleared.
Afterwards, thinking back on what had gone on in the
practice room, I was convinced that JR was guiding my hand, such was the power
of the energies he must have been directing towards my patients. In effect I felt that he was treating my
patients through me, and I did not think that it was fanciful to believe this. It is this concentrated focus of all our
attention with the aim of helping our patients, like a beam of light directed
at one spot, which transforms what can become a purely physical procedure, the
insertion of a needle at one point on the body, into something profoundly
healing.
I also remember JR saying that he did not really need to use
moxa to warm a point, because he could do this simply by gently placing his
finger over the point and the patient would feel the heat. I thought I would see if I could do the same,
and to my surprise found that the patient said “Hot!” as I palpated the point
and before I had inserted a needle. This
confirmed to me that there is some transmission of energy between the
practitioner and the patient which can become a powerful force if directed
correctly.
To persuade myself of the truth of this in a more everyday
situation, I rather mischievously decided that I would test out my theory when
sitting on the top deck of a bus watching the world walk by on the pavement
below. I stared hard at the back of the
head of a man passing below in the street.
To my delight, but perhaps not to my surprise, the man started to look
around, gradually turning his head towards the bus, before finally raising his
eyes to meet mine on the upper deck.
There was no doubt that whatever impulses I was sending out had somehow
alerted him that somebody somewhere was watching, and he did not stop looking until
he had homed in on me. The same thing
happened when I was sitting in the cinema and noticed a friend sitting many
rows in front of me. Again I
concentrated on looking at the back of her head until I noticed her growing
uncomfortable and starting to look around almost uneasily, before finally
turning herself round completely in her seat and searching the back of the
cinema until she had located me.
If my eye could send out such powerful signals quite a
distance away, I could understand that the much closer contact with a patient,
both through my eyes and through my touch, could have a correspondingly greater
effect. In my training much emphasis was
placed on touch and its power to heal.
If this power is added to the action of a needle, then treatment can
reach a profound level of healing in the hands of a caring practitioner.
When I am teaching, a question I am asked often serves to
remind me of some important incident which took place during my training or my
early years as a practitioner, which I now know set me thinking quite
differently about my practice. Each of
these incidents proved a catalyst, opening up new directions to my
thoughts. I am surprised to find how
many such important events have occurred in my acupuncture life, and appreciate
now that without them I would not have made the often unconventional detours I
did. Much of my development as a five
element acupuncturist, and reflected now in my writings, has been based on what
could be considered the rather unconventional approach I have adopted when
measured against that of many of my peers.
I have often thought that the tone was firmly set early on
when I was asked to teach an evening class about acupuncture at a London evening institute
at a time well before complementary practices were in such common use as they
are today. This was also when I had only
just qualified. It meant that I was free
to develop my own thoughts about my practice unhampered by others, since there
weren’t any others around doing what I was doing. I found myself talking about five element
acupuncture to a very wide range of lay people, and therefore had to couch my
thoughts in very general terms, rather than assume that my audience and I spoke
the common language familiar to all acupuncturists. I taught at several of these institutes
during the first few years of my practice, allowing the differing groups of people
who came to my classes to influence how I expressed myself and how far what I
was learning from my practice could be translated into a language they could
all understand, from the builder, the retired postman, the young student, the
bank clerk and the unemployed people who crowded into my classes evening after
evening.
This allowed me a freedom to be cherished, something I did
not realise until later, for I was able to develop my own ideas quite
independently of other professional acupuncturists, and quite unhampered or
inhibited by opinions about the practice of acupuncture which might well have
differed from mine. When I rejoined my
fellow acupuncturists two years later as part of my first advanced training
course under JR Worsley, I brought the often rather odd ideas I had developed
into my time with him, a time which proved to be the most exhilarating of all my
years of acupuncture training. It also
proved to be a time of heightened tension in the five element world as it
coincided with JR Worsley’s own fight to keep the college he had nurtured so
carefully for the past 20 years untainted by the introduction of other less
traditional forms of acupuncture as he felt strongly it would be. Eventually he lost this fight and had to
resign, and this led almost directly to my starting the School of Five Element
Acupuncture (SOFEA) with the express intention of continuing his work of spreading
the practice of this branch of acupuncture, and often, to my delight, with his active
support.
I took every opportunity I could to observe JR in his
interactions with patients, and was fortunate that the time of my postgraduate
training with him coincided with his last years at Leamington.
There was therefore a rather febrile atmosphere at the Leamington
college during my last years there, with acupuncturists lining up on one side
or the other of unfortunately an increasingly hostile divide. Sensing this, I made every effort to stay as
close to JR as I could, attending all his seminars and taking many patients to
private consultations with him. I view
these few final years at Leamington as forming
my own personal apprenticeship to the master of five element acupuncture.
It was during this period of intense activity that I
experienced many of the seminal moments which have set my acupuncture practice
on such a fulfilling course. In
particular I am now enjoying reliving some of the profound lessons I learnt
when studying with JR. The first of these occurred when I was sitting in the
classroom at the Leamington college during a
lunch break watching a video of JR with a patient, in which he was asking the
young patient a question. I remember her
looking puzzled, thinking for a minute, and then saying, “I’m not sure how to
answer that”. Unnoticed by me, JR had
come into the classroom, and was standing behind me. I heard him murmur, “Only a II CF would say
that”. Translated into the acupuncture
language in common use now this meant that only a Fire person who was Inner
Fire (the Small Intestine is given the Roman numeral II in five element
acupuncture) would express herself in those terms. Not only did this teach me a lot about the
distinctions to be made between Outer Fire’s much more articulate responses to
a question and Inner Fire’s verbal hesitancy as it tries to sort its thoughts
out, it also taught me a lot about myself, and has continued to do so over the
years, for it has made me, an Inner Fire person, so much clearer to
myself. So, I asked myself, was this the
way I respond to questions, with the initial brief air of puzzlement this patient
showed, before finally deciding on an answer to give which satisfies the Small
Intestine’s need to pass only what is pure on to the Heart? Now, whenever I try to work out whether a
person’s Fire element is that of Inner or Outer Fire, I always draw on the
image of this girl’s puzzled face to help me decide.
One of the tips I also learnt from JR Worsley, which I have
followed successfully ever since in all cases where my relationship to my
patient is under some strain, is always to be honest with the patient, and tell
them as soon as I sense that there is a problem. You need to be brave enough to ask them
whether they, too, feel that this is so.
I always preface what I say with the words, “I feel that ….” Saying this removes any risk of the patient
feeling that we are blaming them for what is not right, and gives them the
courage to be open with us. I am then
often surprised by my patients’ answers, which may be quite different from what
I have imagined. This frankness between
us goes a long way to solving some of the tricky patient/practitioner issues
which complicate our work.
For treatment to be successful it is always essential that
both patient and practitioner are equally involved, 50% the patient and 50% the
practitioner. We cannot do good work if
we are not sure what is going on in the practice room. It is therefore good to remember that we can
never help a patient who is reluctant to receive treatment. As soon as we sense this, we need to stop
what we are doing and address the issue.
Both of these two cases concerned two very ill patients of
mine, each, because of the severity of their condition, unable to talk easily
to me to help me make my initial diagnosis.
The first was a friend’s mother, who was in a very advanced stage of
bone cancer, in great pain and with a body with many tumours. I really didn’t know how I could help her,
but was determined to do something. She
was lying in bed, and severe back pain prevented much movement. This was obviously not the time to carry out
even the most cursory diagnosis, and I had prepared myself for this by asking
my friend beforehand to describe her mother to me in as much detail as she
could. From this I gained the impression
that she might be Earth, something reinforced by the yellow colour I thought I
could see on her skin, although I did wonder how far this rather unhealthy
yellow was not so much an accurate pointer to Earth but the result of her
illness.
She could hardly move, but her daughter and I managed to
prop her up sufficiently for me to put needles in the three upper series of
points for the AE drain (Lung, Heart Protector and Heart), where a great deal
of Aggressive Energy appeared as angry red circles around all six needles. I could only hope that there was no further
AE on points lower down the back which I could not reach. As the AE drained, I was amazed to see that
the patient’s initially very burnt-looking back caused by so much radiotherapy
treatment gradually lots its angry red and returned to a good, clear skin
colour. After this, I cleared a
Husband/Wife block, and ended with Earth source points.
When I had finished the treatment, the patient looked much
more peaceful and less distressed. I
tucked her up with a kiss, and went downstairs, leaving her daughter to sit
with her. About half-an-hour later, to
my surprise, my friend walked into the kitchen where I was sitting with the
rest of the family, saying, “Mum is coming downstairs behind me.” She told me that her mother had not been able
to stand on her own for the past few weeks, but now felt strong enough to join
us. My friend said that this was also
the first time that she had seen her mother smile for a long time. And there was her mother slowly walking
towards us.
I continued to treat the patient, and from that point onwards
until her death six months later her spirit never faltered, even though it was
obvious to all that she had not many more months to live. This was a very moving experience for me,
because it showed me so clearly that my acupuncture treatment could help a
patient cope so much better even with a life-threatening disease and even in
the last few months of life.
The second instance of what I learnt from treating a very
ill patient occurred at much the same time, when I was asked to go to hospital
to treat a man who had just suffered a very severe stroke. Again the patient was too ill to talk, but I
did the best I could to make a diagnosis with all my senses on full alert. He had been propped up in a wheelchair, so I
was able to take his pulses, but he could not be moved sufficiently for me to
do an AE drain. Those were the days when
the thorough early training I had received had inculcated into me a rigid adherence
to taking all the preliminary steps we had to take before the first
treatment. Even in such a serious case,
I thought that I should do the Akabane test, particularly as I thought this
might show some significant readings because there had been such a severe
left-sided stroke.
Carrying out the Akabane test was not easy, although easier
on the hands than on the feet which were on the footrest of his
wheelchair. By dint of kneeling on the
floor I managed to do the reading on all the meridians, but when correcting the
block had to be careful to make sure that the lighted moxa stick did not burn
my patient, because he only nodded slightly or blinked an eye to show me when
he felt the heat. To my surprise every single
Akabane reading was out, with excess readings all on one side and almost no
reaction at all on the other side. I
assumed that this was the effect of the stroke.
So I set about correcting them as best as I could, remembering that we
were told that often correcting just one meridian’s imbalance would be likely
to correct any others that were out of balance.
And this is what happened. By
this time I thought that he might well
be Metal (from the strong Metal smell and his colour), so decided to correct
the Lung and Large Intestine Akabanes first, to offer immediate help to his
Metal element in this way. After having
done this, I re-checked the other Akabane readings, and found that they had
indeed returned almost to normal, with much less discrepancy between the two
sides. I also corrected a Husband/Wife
imbalance I found, something I imagine may often be the result of a severe
stroke (the Heart under attack), and I completed the treatment with the Metal
source points. When I had finished I was
delighted when my patient suddenly said, “I feel better now”. When I had first seen him, I had thought he
was very close to death. Now I no longer
felt this.
The treatments of these two patients confirmed for me the
simplicity of the five element protocols I had been taught. It was good see how the elements responded so
powerfully to the simplest of treatments, and confirmed for me what JR Worsley
had often emphasized, that to treat an element it would be enough to needle its
source points again and again, and we would achieve the same results “only
perhaps it would take just a little longer” than if we moved on to more complex
element points.
What I learned from these two treatments also convinced me
that the urgency of helping a very sick patient feeds some power with us, which
can raise what we do to another level. I
did not think it was a coincidence that I had somehow been led to home in on
the right elements and choose the right treatments. The words, a practitioner’s intention, are
bandied about rather too blithely, but I do think that if we are focussing all
our attention upon trying to help somebody, our heightened senses may well be
guiding us to select the right treatment.
At least this is what I have learned.
This also reminds me of the time when a young practitioner
friend of mine told me sadly, “I use the same points as you do, but I don’t
seem to get the same results.” I puzzled
about this for a time, but eventually realised that he and I had a very
different approach to our practice. I
was totally convinced of the power of what five element acupuncture could
achieve. He doubted it, and eventually
moved on to practising another kind of more physically based acupuncture. His doubts must have conveyed themselves to
the treatment he was giving, whereas I came to realise my absolute conviction
added power to the treatments I gave.
This was another of those profound lessons my practice taught me which
have have stayed with me to support me over the years.
An experience in my early acupuncture life had a
long-lasting effect upon me, because it brought me face to face with an area of
life which until then I would probably have denied existed or would even have
ridiculed. These were very early days in
my practice and I was still a very uncertain practitioner, often unsure of what
I was doing. I doubt if I had treated the
condition we call a Husband/Wife imbalance on my own before then, and found myself
faced with diagnosing a case obvious enough from the pulse picture and my
patient’s distress for me to be certain that this block was there. At the time I had the mistaken idea, culled
from I know not where, that it would be dangerous on a Metal patient, as this
patient was, to do the part of the treatment which required me to transfer
energy from Metal to Water (the Water tonification points) to help re-establish
the smooth flow of energy from the pulses of the right hand to those of the
left hand. I felt that this would be
going against the principle that we always need to strengthen the pulses of the
guardian element, in this case, the Metal element. In fact the rule is always to treat the
Husband/Wife imbalance, whatever the patient’s element is, and then continue
treatment with the source points of the chosen element, whichever that is.
I remember freaking out a little, wondering if I would be
doing the patient harm by needling these points, so calmed myself by very
slowly marking the points whilst trying to gather my thoughts. I had forgotten that I had given my patient a
copy of JR Worsley’s Talking about
Acupuncture in New York in which he mentions the importance of treating
this block. As my fingers felt for the
points to locate them before needling, she suddenly said, unprompted and after
a few moments of silence, “That sounds like quite a dangerous thing that
Husband/Wife imbalance your Professor writes about in his book.” I remember sending up silent thanks to the
good lord of acupuncture hovering over me, and with a sigh of relief, carried
out the treatment and cleared the block, emboldened now by my patient’s
unconscious confirmation that it needed to be done. She never mentioned JR’s book again to me
afterwards in all the many further treatments I gave her.
I have always asked myself what had moved her to help me in
this way. And this proved to be the
first of many examples of the power of the often hidden forces which can stir
the elements to life through connections set up by something as apparently
simple as stimulating the points as I mark them, or, as here, some unconscious
request I must have been sending out for help in dealing with a difficult
treatment situation. I have found that,
at other difficult times in my practice, help has surprisingly been forthcoming
in odd ways, as though I somehow offer up a prayer for help to whatever powers
rule the universe and summon an answer when I feel an answer is desperately
needed, as in the case of this patient.
This is when the rational part of me, nurtured since
childhood in the atmosphere of an agnostic family with no particular interest
in spiritual matters, and with an unshakable trust in the power of orthodox
medicine to heal, for the first time encountered something I could find no
rational explanation for. And yet my
family had been prepared to welcome a rather odd cuckoo into their nest, an
eminent astrologer whose writings I later learnt were evidence of a belief in
much esoteric thought. So perhaps there
was something in the atmosphere at home that prepared the ground for my growing
realisation that somehow my practice of acupuncture had the potential to tap
into forces in the universe which lay beyond my experience so far. The incident with my patient with a
Husband/Wife imbalance first alerted me to this. What had made her mention JR’s words about
Husband/Wife at the very moment when I was unsure what to do? I don’t really know the answer to this, but
the feeling that my acupuncture practice stirs into life forces so far unknown
to me or ignored by me has grown increasingly strong with my years of practice.
