Helpful hints for the novice five element acupuncturist: 3 Keep it simple

One of the mantras I can still hear my master JR Worsley telling us was: "Even a little child can understand this", and by "this", he meant the underlying principles of five element acupuncture.  One of my own mantras, following on from this, is:  "Find the element and the element will do the work".  A person's element is the imprint which nature gives each of us as the stamp of our unique individuality. By supporting this element through treatment directed at it we are helping nature do its work, with each treatment strengthening the element and allowing it to return our patients to a state of balance and harmony within themselves.

There is never any need to reach for complex point combinations.  We should rely instead on the simplest treatments, and the least number of them to help the elements.  We should also avoid over-treating our patients.  We should wait until we have proof that the element we have chosen confirms our diagnosis, before gradually spacing treatments out from one to two weeks, then to a month and eventually longer.  

It is good to understand that each time we insert a needle into an acupuncture point this can be seen as an interference with a patient's energy, and to some extent as disempowering the elements.  We should therefore interfere in the most gentle way and as least often as possible to allow the elements to regain the control over patients' energy which nature intends for them.  Unnecessary treatment encourages the elements to continue to hand over control to us rather than empowering them to do their own work.

 

And finally, always remember when in doubt choose a command point.  Unlike other points, you can use and re-use them as often as you like.

Helpful hints for the novice five element acupuncturist: 2 Curiosity

One of the most essential qualities a five element acupuncturist should aim to develop is the gift of curiosity.  If we want to help other people, we have to be curious about what is going on inside them and what makes them tick.  This also means that we have to be just as interested in what goes on inside us, too, so that we are able to relate their experiences to our own.  With every therapy there is a risk that the therapist will, often quite unconsciously, stand apart from their patient, viewing them as though through a glass screen.  This can create a kind of "them and us" divide which ignores one of the simplest, most profound truths underlying all human interactions.  It is that we all, therapists and patients alike, form part of a common humanity,

 We must therefore use what we have learnt about ourselves to help us understand our patients.  We, too, are formed of the interaction of the five elements, amongst which we have one dominant element which imprints us with its signature.  We, too, show, in balance, this dominant element's strengths, and in times of imbalance, its weaknesses.  But being therapists, whose task is to help patients representing all the elements, we have to learn to adapt ourselves to the needs of elements apart from our own, and that requires much insight.  We must learn to accept that everything our patients may be experiencing is to some extent also something that is familiar to us from our own life experiences.

 

Helpful hints for the novice five element practitioner: 1 Learning to be alone with a patient

There is nothing more daunting than to find ourselves alone in the practice room with our first patient, just the two of us.  There are no reference books we can take with us into the room to remind us of what we need to do; all we have is ourselves and the experience we have gained during our training.  Nor, unlike Western-trained doctors, do we have any physical information to help us make a preliminary diagnosis, such as blood or other clinical tests.  We just have ourselves, and our senses of seeing, hearing, smelling and, above all, feeling to guide us.

 What novice practitioners often forget, however, is that we should not think that it is diagnosing the element which is the main purpose of our initial interactions with our patients.  Instead, we should first concentrate on establishing a warm and caring relationship with them.  The more at ease a patient feels, the more comfortable they will be in telling us what is really going on in their lives, and this in turn will allow their guardian element to reveal itself more clearly.  And the more relaxed we feel with our patient, the more we give ourselves time to explore the feelings our patient evokes in us, and the sensory impressions we are receiving from them.  All this will gradually point us in the direction of the right element.

 

I would therefore advise each novice five element practitioner to worry less about trying to diagnose the patient's element, and concentrate instead on making sure that their approach is making their patients feel safe and at ease.  It is by doing this that their element will also reveal itself more clearly.   

A lovely compliment from an American subscriber to my second Net of Knowledge course

It is always very rewarding and heart-warming to receive such a nice compliment about the second of our Net of Knowledge courses, On Being a Five Element Acupuncturist, which has just been published. 

"Thank you for your honest, practical, and grounded perspective. I really liked how this course gave a general, global perspective on what it means, from the teacher's years of experience, to be a five-element practitioner. I found it very interesting and relatable.”

So I thank the American subscriber who took the time to write to me telling me how much she had enjoyed learning from the course. 

The link to my two Net of Knowledge courses, The Handbook of Five Element Practice and On Being a Five Element Acupuncturist, for anybody else also interested in learning from either of them is:

 https://netofknowledge.com/Discover?search=Nora+Franglen