Saturday, December 7, 2024

Changing the direction of my life

I made the life-changing decision to call a halt to my travels to China during my very last seminar there in April. I had been mulling over the need to do this for the previous year, coming to accept that in my 88th year, a year of great significance in Chinese numerology, it was surely time to hand over my work to others and retire gracefully, or perhaps not so gracefully, from my Chinese ventures of the last 15 years. Fortunately I have two such successors already to hand, Guy Caplan, who has been steadfastly at my side ever since enrolling all those many years ago as a student at SOFEA, and Mei Long, who had so fortuitously come into my life, just as the door to my five element teaching in this country appeared to close.  It was at a teaching day in the Netherlands that she and I first met each other, leading immediately to my invitation to teach five element acupuncture in China through my introduction to Professor Liu Lihong.

Now that I feel that five element acupuncture is so firmly established in China as a discipline of traditional Chinese medicine in its own right, I am no longer fearful that handing my work over in person to others is going to bring a halt to its continuing spread over there.  And I am reassured that all the modern methods of transmitting information fit very neatly into what I will continue to offer in person through my online recordings and teaching.  Over the past years I have recorded many video series for my Chinese students to watch, and I will continue to do this from my home.  I very much enjoy sitting on my sofa and using my iPad to record myself talking about many aspects of the more than 40 years of my five element practice.  I will also continue to interact with my students through the many online platforms now available to us, such as Zoom.

Finally, a large group of Chinese five element practitioners, many my students of many years’ standing, will be coming to England in March, when Guy and I will be offering them a three-day seminar at the Calm Clinic at Westminster University before they set off for a tour of England.

 

And before that, in this part of the world too, Guy and I are holding another one of our regular SOFEA clinical seminars here in London, on Monday 24th February 2025.  To book a place click:https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sofea-seminar-clinical-seminar-tickets-1071783927579