Looking back at the early years of my practice, I sometimes
cringe with shame at some of the mistakes I made. These were not, as some people might assume,
to do with my very basic understanding of the elements, or my choice of
treatments, although they, too, were with hindsight often rather naïve or even
somewhat inappropriate. Instead they
were nearly all to do with my relationship to my patients. Based on something which JR Worsley had
impressed upon us, I somehow thought that I had to make myself available to my
patients at all times, even interpreting what he said as meaning that a patient
should be able to contact me at any time they wanted to. Those were the days well before emails and
mobile phones when patient-practitioner contact was nearly 100% by good
old-fashioned telephone. Since I worked
from home, I soon realised that I needed to install a dedicated practice line
so as not to confuse my private with my professional phone calls. This meant also having two answering
machines, making quite an impressive array of phone equipment lining my kitchen
shelf.
I still remember the excitement of coming back home and
seeing the “message received” light blinking on my practice phone. I would always hope that this meant that a
new patient was making contact, for each new patient was then a highly exciting
event. There was, however, one definite
advantage of patients having to get in touch with me by phone, and not, as
usually happens nowadays, by email or text message. This meant that when I answered them our
first contact was always person-to-person, and not the much more impersonal
contact of the written word through emails.
It is now often overlooked how important this initial contact can be,
not only because it offers both patient and practitioner a bridge to that key
aspect of five element treatment, which is the setting up of a good
relationship with our patients, but it also gives us the luxury of a first
attempt at trying to diagnose two key components of an element’s presence, the
tone of voice and the emotion the patient is showing. On the patient’s side, it helps get them past
the often challenging situation of a first meeting in the practice room. I felt that this first phone call shaped the
nature of my future relationship to my patients.
But the flipside of these personal phone calls was that it
gave my patients the impression that they could phone me whenever they wanted
to, and this was where I started to make things difficult for myself. I didn’t then have enough confidence to lay
down careful guidelines as to when they could phone and what they could phone
me about. And I soon found this led to a
further mistake. Patients got used to
phoning me at odd hours of the day, either early in the morning or, most often,
rather late in the evening. And I would
find myself engaged in long conversations with them, all of which, I should
have told them, were best suited to being continued at their next treatment. It took me quite some time, and many
interrupted evenings of phone calls, before I realised that what the patients
and I were talking about belonged much more appropriately to the practice room,
where it would help me determine the kind of treatment the patient needed. As five element acupuncturists it is the
treatment we offer our patient which helps solve their problems, and although
five element acupuncture is partly a talking therapy, because of course our
patients need to talk to us and we to them, it is good to remember that it is
the needle, not our words, which eventually helps them.
This open-door, or rather open-telephone, policy of mine
also opened the door to the thorny question of discussing the element I was
treating them on. I learnt to my cost
that it is never a good idea to talk this through with a patient, because often
one of the reasons for doing this can be our unconscious desire for reassurance
from the patient that we are on the right track, and it is surely not their
task to help us. We are often hoping that
they will confirm that we have made the right choice. I have come to realise that nobody, even the
most experienced five element practitioner, is good at diagnosing their own
element, though practitioners often like to feel that they are the best judge
of this. Unfortunately this is rarely
the case, since we all tend to be rather blind to our own faults and like to
think we have a special relationship to an element whose qualities we admire. If you mistakenly start to discuss a
patient’s element with them, what do you do when you change your mind and
change element, or change it several times?
Do you tell your patient this, or leave them with the mistaken idea that
they are of the Earth element when you have perhaps moved through Fire before
finally landing on Wood? We all know
how often we find ourselves trawling through the elements before finally
finding the correct one. Thankfully,
though, this happens less and less for me now.
So take heart all you novice five element acupuncturists out there.
I always advise practitioners to lay down firm guidelines
for their patients on when and how to get in touch with them between treatments,
particularly now in the age of social media.
If we don’t do this, we are
laying ourselves open to the possibility of patients controlling treatment.
Finally, it is not a good idea to tell patients what points
you are using apart from very occasionally.
It is difficult enough for us to put into words why we are choosing a
particular point or set of points, let alone explain this to a lay person. If they ask, I have learnt to say, “I am not
here to teach you to be an acupuncturist.
If you are interested in learning more, I suggest you read my Simple
Guide which explains my approach to treating you”. The following are some of the few exceptions
to this rule: telling patients about
horary and seasonal treatments (because we have to book our patients in at
specific times for these), and correcting an Akabane imbalance, because
patients are often fascinated to find that the readings change after
treatment. I have found that this is a
very good way of convincing rather sceptical patients, particularly hard-headed
businessmen, at the very start of treatment that there is something in what I
do.
It is also useful to explain to patients that some of their
symptoms may be the result of an entry/exit block, and obviously we need to
explain in a little detail why we think a CV/GV (Ren Mai/Du Mai) block needs to
be cleared. In the case of this block I
always first ask if the patient feels very exhausted all the time, a very good
sign of a CV/GV block, and tell them that this is because the main pathways of
energy running up and down the body are blocked, draining them of energy. Sometimes I add the fact that JR Worsley told
us that if only these points were on the wrist we would do them on every
patient!
On the other hand for obvious reasons I never tell a patient
that I am about to clear a Husband/Wife block or do Possession treatment,
because the last thing you want to do is worry the patient by giving them the
idea that there is something seriously wrong with them. With Possession, however, I tell the patient
that I am doing some lovely connecting treatment, and that I need their help to
make sure that they feel each of the seven points properly. I have noticed that patients needing this
treatment really understand what I mean when I say this, as though I am reassuring
them that I know that they feel disconnected.
This is also a good way of describing Possession, which is in effect a
level of disconnection of the spirit.
I am passing on some of my tips for what to tell patients
because I wish I had been told much of what I learnt by hit and miss through my
own practice. It would have avoided some
of the problems I created for myself.
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