Command points: 4 Junction points

Junction points provide a link between the yin and yang officials of an element, and in this way help maintain an element's balance.  They are also used as part of the procedure for transferring energy from element to element around the circle of the elements.

Yin and yang officials are usually happy to share their energy so to that there is no need for us to interfere with their naturally balanced communication with one another.  Very occasionally, though, one or other official is under greater stress than its companion.  This will appear as a discrepancy between the pulse pictures between them, with either the yin or yang aspect having less energy.  In this case the junction point of the weaker official should be tonified, encouraging it to draw increased energy to itself from its stronger partner.

 

Some pairings of junction points have very evocative names, such as those for the Outer Fire officials, Inner and Outer Frontier Gates.  Gates are always important points, helping energy move smoothly around the body, as needling these two junction points would do.

 

If a command point on either an element's yin or yang official is selected, treatment can then be completed by tonifying the junction point of the untreated official so that both of the element's officials benefit.  For example, you might choose HP (V) 8, Palace of Weariness, for its spirit, and add the Three Heater junction point TH (VI) 5 to finish the treatment.

 

Junction points are also used as part of the routine balancing of energy which forms part of our Akabane procedure.  Where an Akabane imbalance is detected on one official on one side of the body, the junction point of the weaker yin or yang official is stimulated to help it draw energy from the stronger official on the other side of the body.

Command points: 3 Element points: horary and seasonal treatment

Each set of command points also contains points which have a specific association with the five elements, creating a subsidiary circle of the elements. These points lie along the arm and leg in the order of the five element circle.  One of the points will be a Metal point, another a Wood point, and so on.  On yin officials the order of the elements on the arms and legs starts at the nail or first point with the first command points being Wood points and the final command points being Water points, whilst on yang officials the order starts with Metal points at the nail or first point, and finishes with  Earth at the elbow or knee.  The element points add the quality of their particular element to the official they form part of.  A Fire point on the Gall Bladder will therefore add some Fire quality to the Wood of the Gall Bladder.  

The element point of a patient's guardian element (Earth points on Stomach and Spleen for an Earth patient, for example) are the most frequently used of these elements points, because they are selected according to a specific time of day or season.  Treatment for the time of day is called horary treatment (from the Latin word for "hour"), and is based on the 24-hour Chinese clock.  Treatment chosen for a particular season is called seasonal treatment.

 

An element's element point has a particular resonance, as it emphasizes that element's qualities.  A Metal point on Lung or Large Intestine therefore increases the power of the Metal element.  This is particularly so when the element points of that person's guardian element are selected for horary or seasonal treatment in Metal's horary time or Metal's season, autumn, and doubly so if these points can be needled at the same time both in Metal horary time and in the right season.

 

For horary treatment, the twinned horary points of the yin and yang officials are needled to time exactly to correspond to that particular official's horary time according to the 24-hour clock by the sun.  It will therefore be impractical to choose horary points for some of the officials whose horary times are at unsocial hours during the night, such as those for Wood and Metal patients. It is much easier to arrange for Earth, Fire and Water patients whose horary times are during practice hours.  For these patients, the time of treatment has to be during both officials' horary times.  For an Earth patient, with Stomach's horary time from 7- 9 am, and Spleen's from 9 - 11 am, XI (St) 36 must be needled before 9 am by the sun (in other words around 8.45), and then there will be a slight wait until XII (Sp) 3 can be needled after 9 am. 

 

There is much discussion and some disagreement among five element practitioners as to whether we should consider giving horary/seasonal treatments to people whose element has no particular relationship to that time of day or season.  In other words, should we give a Fire person a Wood seasonal treatment in spring.  I have not myself included this as part of my treatment protocol over the many years of my practice, but I know many other practitioners who do.  I think my decision was based on one example of a Fire patient who I gave a Water seasonal treatment to in winter and who told me that she had felt a bit odd after the treatment, but this might have had nothing to do with the Water points but instead related to what was going on in her life.  Perhaps practitioners should do their own research on this to discover how far giving seasonal treatments for any season which is not that of their patient's guardian element appears to support their patients.  The problem here is that I believe that the positive effect of treatment is based on the cumulative effect of a number of treatments on their element, rather than on the effect of a single treatment.   

 

Apart from horary and seasonal treatments, we enter a complex area of five element treatment when we consider whether we should select other element points, such as a Metal point on a Water patient, or an Earth point on a Fire point.  Leaving aside the fact that some element points are chosen as part of tonification or sedation treatment, I think it is not advisable to think that it might be useful to add some Metal to Water points for the Water patient, or more Earth to Fire for the Fire patient.  This requires great insight to pinpoint whether the Water patient would indeed benefit from more Metal, or the Fire patient would benefit from more Earth, because this is a very subtle area of diagnosis.   During our training we were strongly advised just to use the element points for tonification or sedation and for seasonal or horary treatment, and for no other reason.  This is the advice I am therefore passing on here as it is what I have always done.

Command points: 2. Tonification and sedation points

Element points are used both to tonify and to sedate the energy of a patient's guardian element, and are chosen as a frequent alternative to source points.  Tonification is selected as treatment when our pulse-reading tells us that there is more energy in the mother element of our patient's element than in the element itself.  It is then preferable to draw energy from the mother element to the guardian element by needling its tonification points rather than its source points, since this is a way of spreading energy evenly between mother and child.  We should remember that the aim of all five element treatment is to balance the energy so that it flows smoothly from element to element.¬

When we decide to use a tonification point, we select the element point of the mother element.  For example, the tonification points for an Earth patient will be St (XI) 41 and Sp (XII) 2, the Fire points on Stomach and Spleen.

 

It is much more usual for the guardian element to reveal its imbalance as weakness rather than by showing an excess of energy, which is why tonification rather than sedation is overwhelmingly used in five element acupuncture.  If there is any excess energy in the guardian element it is also likely to be dispersed through the standard procedures that we use to clear blocks.  The initial check for Aggressive Energy may show that some pulses seem to have excess energy, but the AE procedure encourages this excess to disperse through the needles to the outside air.  A Husband-Wife block may reveal excess pulses on one hand, and in the case of Entry-Exit blocks the exit points of one meridian may show that they are retaining a build-up of excess energy which is prevented from releasing itself by passing it on to the adjacent entry point.  These are just temporary signs of blocked energy, and each of these blocks can be cleared, not by using an element's sedation points, but through specific procedures.

 

For the the purposes of five element treatment, I think we need to ignore the category of sedation points, and concentrate instead on the frequent use of tonification points.

 

 

 

Command points: 1 Source points

Source points are probably the most important group of points of all those we call command points (see Chapter 6, pages 84 - 98 of my Handbook of Five Element Practice).  These all lie on the arm, between the fingers and the elbow, and on the leg, between the toes and the knee.  If we were to stretch our arms and our legs out, as in the Leonardo da Vinci cartoon, these points would be on the two extremities of the body, on our legs tethering us to the ground beneath our feet, and on our arms as we reach up to the heavens above our head.  We can see them as forming a protective ring around us, sheltering our energy, before the meridians draw their energy to the main area of our body.

Each set of points contains the following: a source point, a tonification point, a sedation point, a junction point, and five different element points.  Some of the officials also have other points such as entry or exit points which are not considered to be command points.

 

All points other than command points can be regarded as in some senses interfering with a patient's energy by manipulating it in some way.  The most important feature of command points is that they are regarded as being the safest points of all, because they have what is described as their own in-built safety factor.  They are therefore selected to complete each treatment and bring energy back under the patient's control.  They are always used together in their paired yin/yang relationship. 

 

The most important points of all these very important command points are what are known as source points.  For the six yin officials, these are the Earth points within the circle of element points, whilst the six yang officials have no equivalent association with an element point.  A yin source point can therefore be seen as drawing upon some of the energy Earth adds to whatever guardian element treatment is directed at.  In other words, this additional Earth quality provides some of the centring which is Earth's particular quality. It is probably also the reason why I choose to needle a yang command point first, before a yin command point, starting with the left side and then the right.  It is as though yang command points offer the external support which all yang officials bring before we delve deeper within to access the deeper, more internal qualities yin officials provide.

Helpful hints for the novice five element acupuncturist: 6 Watching the way we walk

In everything we do we reveal the element which guides our life.  It is therefore worth learning to focus on one or other particular aspect of a person’s behaviour to help us begin to perceive how what may appear to be an almost irrelevant diagnostic indicator can, on the contrary, become the one which may confirm our diagnosis of a person’s element.  

I was thinking of this today as I sat having my morning coffee in my favourite café, and found that I was observing the crowds of people passing the window along the street outside.  I became aware of the very different ways they walked, some with quick, hurried steps, others more slowly and steadily, some with each foot planted firmly on the ground, others light-footed, almost floating past.

 

I was sure that each of these different ways of walking was telling me something about their owners’ elements, if I could learn to interpret what I was seeing accurately.  So which elements was I observing, I asked myself.  The feet firmly planted on the ground group might well have a kinship with the Earth element, for I had often noticed how much Earth relied on its contact with the ground beneath its feet.  Those walking more lightly seemed to be pointing me more towards the Metal element, having often noticed how Metal moves quietly through the spaces it occupies.  With Wood and Fire, two yang elements, there seems to be more energy in their movements, with Wood definitely showing its natural strength and firmness, as though it is striding forward into life.  Fire, too, has energy in all its movements, but these movements are much less clearly directional than Wood’s, being rather more jerky, as though they are darting from one side to the next, much as fire itself flickers.   

 

With Water I draw a slight blank in my mind, reflecting some of the uncertainty Water’s somewhat ephemeral nature always tends to evoke in me.  It is as though its movements mimic its capacity constantly to change shape to survive (from ice, through water to steam).  Water can either seem to be holding itself quite still, before darting rapidly forward.  But I must look more carefully at Water’s walk before describing it in greater detail.

 

So everything we do, from sitting in a café to enjoying a party with our friends, can turn into another lesson in learning about the elements, if we encourage it to do so.

Helpful hints for the novice five element acupuncturist: 5: Eyes: The windows of the soul

I am very aware of how few people, in this age of social media, appear now to be looking each other in the eye as much as I do.  I don’t have a smart phone, and rarely even use my old-fashioned mobile, so I look around me all the time I am outside, both when I’m walking around and when I’m sitting in my favourite café watching the world go by, as I like to do.

 But looking into the screen of your phones as people constantly now do means that you may be losing one of the important skills we five element acupuncturists have to develop, that of learning from our eye-to-eye contact with our fellow human beings.  For the eyes, as we have often been told, are the windows of the soul, and it is on our patients’ souls that our attention should be focused.  It is only at this deepest level of our patients’ being that we can assess the true nature of their needs.  The soul does not lie, nor do the windows which open on to them, if we learn to look through these windows with our unblinkered gaze.

 

So when you are with others, put aside your smart phone, look up and catch the glances of those you are with.  You will learn more about the nature of human interactions, and thus the nature of the elements you are trying to diagnose, than any book-learning can ever teach you.