The need to find our own support network

It has been increasingly clear to me how fortunate I was to receive my training as a five element acupuncturist when I did.  I was unaware of this at the time, and actually for a fairly long time afterwards, because I assumed for a long time that all acupuncture students benefited from the same training structure as I did.  I regarded this as the norm, eventually transposing this almost lock, stock and barrel to form the foundation of my own acupuncture college, the School of Five Element Acupuncture, SOFEA.  Having recognized the deep benefits of my own training at JR Worsley's Leamington College, I saw no reason whatsoever in exploring new approaches to teaching which differed from the way I had so expertly been taught.  I therefore passed through my own college's first few years without recognizing the need for deeper enquiry into the nature of the training I was offering my own students.

 

But gradually the increasing demands upon acupuncture education which the development of more stringent accreditation requirements made upon all acupuncture colleges also penetrated what I now consider my almost naive approach to setting up my own acupuncture college.  The acupuncture world as a whole was moving from being an outlier in the world of medical education to forming part of the mainstream, with all the requirements for more standardized education methods this entailed.  Whereas my own training at JR's Leamington college had a very practical emphasis, concentrating almost entirely on observing and treating as many patients as possible, often up to 20 on a clinical day, I was now expected to adapt the curriculum to conform with a less practical, more theoretical approach, more akin to a conventional university course, and therefore much less patient-orientated.

 

In the many years since then I have become aware of exactly what I and my fellow students gained and what many students of five element acupuncture throughout the world now search vainly for.  I had available to me teachers who were above all experienced practising acupuncturists, and a course which offered me the chance to steep myself in treating one patient after another under their expert supervision, over a period of something like seven years.  This covered the initial three years of my undergraduate training, plus four more years of postgraduate training, very fortunately mainly under the personal supervision of JR Worsley.  Since this included many visits not only to my own practice to be observed treating my own patients, but also many days of benefiting from observing the practice of those more experienced than me, all this combined to give me what I now realise was my own personal support network as I felt my way into being a competent five element acupuncturist.

 

When I compare this now to what a similarly enthusiastic novice five element acupuncturist is offered today in whatever country they live, I realise sadly what this novice acupuncturist has perhaps lost and which I am now trying in my small way to make up for in the way in which I teach.  This blog forms part of this, because I feel that in articulating what I see as the inevitable deficiencies of current five element training I may be able make good something of what we appear to have lost.  

 

I have often expressed my sadness at the increasing lack of experienced five element teachers.  I know that many of the older band of five element acupuncturists feel either that they no longer fit into the structure of the few acupuncture training colleges in this country, since these now feel obliged only to offer five element instruction when it is combined with modern Chinese TCM acupuncture.  Others appear to feel that there is no longer a place for them where their belief in a pure approach to five element practice is required.  Where this does not appear to be the case, luckily, is increasingly amongst the many hundreds of Chinese acupuncturists I have taught over the past ten years of my visits to China.  As of now, though, there are too few experienced Chinese five element practitioners to cover the needs of this vast territory, with just a few who have graduated to teaching concentrated in the larger cities, such as Beijing and Chengdu, whilst one or two are scattered in lonely exile in more far-flung places.  But it is precisely the needs of these hundreds of devoted five element practitioners that I am trying to address.

 

My next blog will discuss how I have had to develop my teaching methods to help support this large Chinese contingent of devoted five element practitioners.