My legacy lives on

When I decided, reluctantly, that my age was forcing me to accept that my time of teaching in China had to come to an end, I did not think that I would be continuing my teaching of five element acupuncture to Chinese students here in this country.  But two of my students, Yiwen and Shurui, were determined to pursue me to England, and persuaded Guy Caplan and me to offer a group a seminar in this country to replace what they felt was a great loss in China.  And with surprisingly little input from our side, but obviously enormous effort on theirs, it came to pass that I found myself once more welcoming a group of about 40 Chinese five element students and practitioners to London in March.

 

They planned to spend 10 days in this country, with the principal aim being a three-day seminar run by Guy and me at his clinic at Westminster University in central London.  The remainder of the time would be dedicated to sightseeing in London and the surrounding area.  Slotted into this was also a day at the Acupuncture Academy in Leamington Spa where Guy teaches.

 

I made the inspired decision to welcome the group with a slap-up tea at the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square, and won’t forget for a long time my joyful reunion with them on its steps as they poured out of the coach bringing them into London, greeting each other with hugs and kisses.  Quite a few of them had not seen me in person before, so I went from table to table introducing myself and acquainting myself with the different members of the group.  It was a lovely start to what became a highly successful visit to this country, and one which we will be repeating in October.

 

I enjoyed slotting back easily into the procedure of teaching in English and waiting for the Mandarin translation, as I had learnt to do over my ten or more years in China.  It was good for me to be able to continue to hand over my many years of practical five element experience in person in this way, and always with Guy’s support.  I am happy that he is continuing to carry on my work in China, his next seminar coming up in May over there.

 I can’t wait for October to come round, when I will welcome with joy another group of my Chinese five element students. 

A five element circle drawn around the world

There is always something very magical about my Chinese visits, this the seventeenth over 12 years.  My days in China always seem to feel as though time pauses when I am there, as we run our week’s seminar, and then time restarts as I get on the plane back to London.  Much of the credit is due to my hosts who welcome me each time in their hundreds as though they are greeting a beloved friend, and cocoon me within what they express as their love for me from first to last day. From the moment we arrive in Beijing we are greeted by a large group who present us with lovely bouquets, with much hugging and kissing.  And this continues until the day we leave, accompanied again by another large group, which includes both times my host of hosts, Professor Liu Lihong, the inspiration behind five element acupuncture’s so eagerly awaited return to its homeland.

 

Liu Lihong and I go back now a long way.  Many years ago I remember our looking critically at one another as Mei Long introduced us at a Rothenburg conference.  From the moment we laid eyes on one another, though, I think we both relaxed, because here were two fellow souls each in our own way determined to nurture the damaged roots of traditional Chinese medicine and restore them to the healthy condition they deserved, he through his practice of herbal medicine and I through mine of five element acupuncture.  And between us there hovered the much-loved presence of my own great master, JR Worsley, who some years ago with his usual omniscience had foreseen the return of five element acupuncture to the place of its birth, telling me, “They will want us back in China soon, Nora”, as they now do in their hundreds.

 

I come back to England, as I always seem to do, inspired by the enthusiasm and warm response to what we teach them.  At a deep level they understand what five element acupuncture is all about, since the elements are in their blood.  I hardly needed to say anything before I could feel the agreement of all the 500 people who attended this seminar.

 

I spent a very warm last evening at a simple supper with Liu Lihong and a friend, accompanied as I always am by my good friend and translator, Lynn, to help Lihong and me understand one another. (Oh! how I wish that I, as a former linguist, had had the good sense to learn Mandarin many years ago before my old ears found it too difficult).  It felt to me then, and it feels increasingly to me on my return, that together Lihong and I have drawn a five element circle around the world, with JR Worsley, smiling, there, holding out his hands to both of us.  A slightly over-impressionist image, perhaps, but one that corresponds to how I feel as I reflect on my latest trip to China.

  

22 - 18 Why people seem to be frightened to teach five element acupuncture

I think that one of my current aims is to encourage as many five element acupuncturists to pass on as much of their knowledge to others as they can.  And that means, of course, daring to think of teaching.  I have often said that I am dismayed that so few five element practitioners seem to have the confidence, and therefore the desire, to take on such an essential role for the continuing future of this precious branch of acupuncture.  I have often wondered why this is so, because it is so different from my need to do all I can to help such a pure discipline survive in a world still dominated and controlled by orthodox medicine.

 

And yet what the world and its many ills and distressed patients want is so much more akin to what we offer our patients, which is the ability to help overcome many of the very profound stresses of modern life at every level of our being.  So what is holding back so many of my fellow practitioners from following in my footsteps, and even when actively encouraged by me, rarely accepting the suggestion to go out and teach?  

 

I have thought a lot about this over the years, and with only a few notable exceptions, such as my close associate, Guy Caplan and a few others five element practitioners scattered around the world, I see an acupuncture world now mostly deprived of any possibility of studying five element acupuncture in its purest, and often therefore simplest, most authentic form.  It is why I am so delighted that the one exception appears now to be China, with its vast resources in training practitioners of all areas of complementary practice.  It is now supremely able to include five element acupuncture in its huge university faculties devoted to the study of all forms of complementary medicine.  It pleases me greatly that a recent video celebrating my 10 years of teaching in China listed the number of seminars held in cities throughout China as being about 150, at which around 4000 students received their first introduction to five element acupuncture.

 

But I have just received some good news in a lovely email from Pierre in France.   As he says in his email, he has been on the trail of five element acupuncture for some years, before finally attending one of our seminars, and himself receiving some five element treatment.  Since then, he has been devotedly following a path in his life leading now to the decision to teach five element acupuncture.  Here are his own words:

 

"I'm announcing to you that I have decided to follow your advice about FEA, and the duty we have as practitioner to try to pass on what we have learnt, and what we know about this specific style of acupuncture, to help it to stay alive, and more important, to help it to spread out. 

 

Here in France, there is nothing I know about FEA of Worsley's lineage teaching. 

 

So I would like to start a teaching in the right way of the purest form of FEA, ..... with your allowance and benediction."

 

I herewith happily encourage him to do this, and send him my blessings.

 

I do not know what he is intending to do.  Whether it will be by founding his own college or just teaching a few practitioners in the age-old system of master-pupil transmission of knowledge. Maybe he doesn't yet know, but I am delighted that my words of encouragement, repeated endlessly over the years at each of our seminars and in many of my blogs, is bearing this unexpected fruit.  

 

"Well done, Pierre", and as the French say, "Courage, mon vieux!"  And he will certainly need all the courage he has.  Of course, Guy and I will do everything we can to support him in this exciting new venture.  I am also already gearing myself up to freshen up my somewhat stale spoken French.  Years ago, being a linguist, I could speak it almost like a native, but that skill has faded with many years of disuse.  I must get back to reading more of my French books as a first step in the right direction to helping Pierre, if he decides a visit from us to France would be welcome.

 

Any prospective five element teachers can also take heart from the examples of Guy and me.  We never claim to "do a JR", and within a few minutes state categorically what a patient's element is. Instead, we are are humble enough to insist that our first attempt at a diagnosis is only a hypothesis, a preliminary diagnosis, to be confirmed subsequently by evidence from the effects of treatment.  None of our many Chinese students are therefore remotely concerned when we do change our diagnosis.

  

22-7 How I see the future of five element acupuncture in China

One of the things I had to learn as I started teaching in China was that I had to be quick at adapting to the different conditions under which acupuncture was taught and practised in our two countries.  I made the mistake of not acquainting myself more closely with this, both before I travelled, which I could have done through my association with Mei Long, the Chinese-trained acupuncturist in the Netherlands, or soon after I arrived in China.  Perhaps beginner's luck favoured me, and perhaps, too, I would have been daunted by discovering what was often a wide gap between what I had experienced in the UK and what my Chinese students had to deal with.

I realise now, after my 10 years of experience there, that it is absolutely inevitable that, as with the development of all disciplines through the passage of time, the teachings will change as they pass through different hands.  But this will be particularly so as they pass from country to country, as five element acupuncture is doing now.  I think I see my task as ensuring that the fundamental essence of what I was taught by JR Worsley, and what I have wished to pass on through my 40 years of practice and teaching, should stay true to what I have always recognized is a profound truth about the human condition.  This was formulated more than two thousand years ago by the ancient Chinese, set out in their traditional texts, such as the Suwen, and now practised under the name of five element acupuncture.  This is now a long, unbroken tradition which continues to offer profound healing, and is particularly relevant for a 21st century which manifests deep levels of distress and conflict.

 

It therefore heartens me to discover the large numbers of Chinese acupuncturists now studying five element acupuncture.  The five element bud which I brought with me for the first time in 2011, and which started to open up with just 10 or so students, is now, 10 years on, a flourishing branch on the great tree of acupuncture.  In the last two years about 800 students a year have attending preliminary five element courses organized in 23 cities in China and Singapore, with an estimated 400 - 500 practitioners practising five element acupuncture throughout China.  I was recently told that there were now over 5000 five element students on the Tong You San He five element database.  This is heartening recompense for my 10 years' work.

 

With China's re-emergence as a dominant world power, it is also appropriate that this profound healing discipline should gain fresh impetus in the country of its origin just as its practice sadly started to fade in the West.  I like to describe my visits to China as representing hands stretched from West to East across the world.  It is lovely for me to feel that the future of five element is now safely back in the hands which first released it to the world those thousands of years ago.

 

 

84. Five element acupuncture comes full circle in China

How odd that I am now beginning to write about my life coming full circle just as I receive an update from my Chinese contacts at the Five Element Society of the Beijing Tongyou Sanhe Foundation about the number of people attending their five element preliminary courses, as well as the number of five element practitioners who have enrolled in my seminars over the 10 years I have been holding them in China.  I was prompted to ask for this information because the  Chinese publisher of my Handbook of Five Element Practice is about to publish a celebratory edition in honour of the 10th year of its publication (and presumably also of the 45,000 copies he has sold in that time).

I find that there are more than 5000 five element students and practitioners on the Society's database, and there may well be more, since the Society was only established about five years ago.  More than 800 students enrolled in five element introductory courses in both 2020 and 2021, which have been held in 23 towns, 22 around China and one in Singapore.  There must now be between 400 and 500 qualified five element acupuncturists practising in China.

 

This is a goodly number, by any measure, and particularly when set against what to me is the sad picture of five element acupuncture's position in this country and in the West as a whole. The insidious creep of other branches of acupuncture, particularly modern Chinese acupuncture (TCM), into every aspect of acupuncture, has had a depressing effect upon the teaching of five element acupuncture.  Nor did the forced closure of my School of Five Element Acupuncture (SOFEA) in 2005 help, a closure partly due to the credit crunch, but principally due to the covert and often quite overt pressure from other colleges claiming that five element acupuncture must no longer be regarded as a stand-alone discipline.  It is sad that I know now of only one or two training establishments of any kind over here who can claim to teach pure five element acupuncture without feeling themselves forced by accreditation requirements to include a more than substantial dose of TCM in their syllabus.  I find it ironic that TCM-based colleges do not have a parallel requirement to include five acupuncture in what they offer their students.  I have never understood why TCM should be considered to be a stand-alone acupuncture discipline whilst five element acupuncture is not. 

 

It is a tragedy that this country, the home of five element acupuncture under JR Worsley, who was the principal agent for the re-emergence of this ancient discipline, should, in just a few years, have concluded that five element acupuncture could no longer be regarded as a valid discipline in its own right.  And it was only by chance, or good happenstance, that I was invited to China to re-introduce it to its place of birth those 10 years ago.

 

Now, though, to my great delight, China is leading the world in promoting this branch of acupuncture.  I am honoured to have been an instrument in its route of transmission back from West to East, reversing the route taken by JR Worsley from East to West more than 50 years ago.  I am happy to witness five element acupuncture's journey coming full circle, as it blossoms once again in the country of its birth.  

 

I like to think of JR sitting up there looking down at us and smiling.  I remember him saying to us one day, "They will want it back in China soon."  And they did!

 

 

81. Necessary short-cuts to a five-element diagnosis

I have been thinking a little more about the lack of five element teachers, which I mentioned in my last blog (no.80). There is always a problem venturing in the footsteps of a proven master.  Jung had difficulty in emerging from under the great shadow which  his master, Freud, had cast over him.  All JR Worsley's successors have to deal with the same problem.  Those who learnt directly from JR Worsley himself, and the following generations who were taught by this first cohort, have a natural reluctance to claim to "do a JR" when diagnosing patients, particularly in front of a class of students.  This term was a shorthand for being able to do what he told us was his ability to diagnose colour and smell as he came into the practice room, and follow this up in a very few minutes with sound and emotion as soon as the patient had responded to his questions.

 

Because we have been asked to diagnose hundreds of Chinese practitioners and patients on our seminars over in China, I realise that I am getting much better at making quick decisions about the elements I am seeing.  I have had to be, in view of the time constraints we are working under - perhaps only a morning to make over 150 diagnoses.  But then I have always emphasized that this is completely the wrong way to make a good diagnosis.  I should be sitting down alone with each of these 150 people in a practice room, and giving them all the attention and time that carrying out a good TD (Traditional Diagnosis) demands.  But as the saying goes, "needs must when the devil (here simply the time available) drives"!  If we (and that includes my five element companions, Guy Caplan and Mei Long) were not to do this, none of these enthusiastic five element practitioners and students would ever have the slightest inkling of their own element, something I consider essential for any five element acupuncturist.  And we know that we are always very bad at diagnosing our own element, for all sorts of reasons, often choosing an element which we long to be!

 

I have therefore had to learn to do the best that I can, calling these initial diagnoses simply our first hypothesis about the element, to be amended as we get to see things more clearly in the light of how treatment on that element has or has not brought about any changes.  Luckily during these seminars in China we see everybody for a full week, and so have many opportunities of observing closely those whose diagnoses we are unsure about, and then changing these where necessary accordingly.  As I said before, Chinese acupuncturists, probably because of our emphasis on the provisional nature of our initial diagnosis, are quite happy to have their elements changed, happier, I think, than their European counterparts, certainly their British.

 

Also, if we see examples of possession in the group (surprisingly often, perhaps for cultural reasons), we make sure all these patients are treated before we leave, as this is not a simple treatment for apprentice five element practitioners either to diagnose or to recognize when it has been cleared.

 

I know that my own 40 or so years of five element studies have helped me pinpoint the elements more quickly, and, I hope, more accurately, but I do wish that more of all those competent five element acupuncturists out there would take a leaf from my book and venture out into teaching.  I always remember one of my wise teachers, Dr Oskar Adler, master musician, teacher of the violin to the composer Schoenberg, and astrologer, author of some fascinating books on astrology, writing how important it was for everybody to pass on whatever they have learnt.  In a lovely quote, he said, "What would have happened if Mozart had not written down his music?".  And Mozart, after all, was almost hounded to his death through poverty and many of his manuscripts only survived by accident.  Think!  We might not now have his Magic Flute or Marriage of Figaro, or hear his sublime piano concertos!

 

So any of you experienced five element acupuncturists out there, please take courage in your hands and offer up to the next generation whatever you have learnt from your own practice.  Only in this way will any discipline survive, and particularly such a rare discipline as five element acupuncture.

 

78. Welcome to my 8th book!

Unexpectedly I was approached by my Chinese publisher who asked me whether I would be happy if he published another book of mine, this one intended just for the Chinese market.  As readers of this blog know, I have been sending teaching videos recorded on my sofa at home to create various series of online seminars for Chinese five element acupuncturists.  The latest, to be made available on subscription in a few months' time, describes my life as a five element acupuncturist from my earliest days as a student under JR Worsley to now, as the lead tutor for the five element programmes being run all over China.  What I did not know until I received this request was that these recordings, which I thought simply had Mandarin subtitles added, have been translated in their entirety.  It is this translation that the publisher wants to make available in book form with the title of "Learning five element acupuncture with Nora". 

Of course I agreed to this unexpected offer, who would not?  Perhaps at some point in the future somebody will want to publish an English version!

 

This will become my 8th book, and has prompted me to look at the other seven books I have written, and see what I think about them now.  I have talked before about the need for each of us to leave behind a legacy of our life.  It does not matter whether this is a private legacy, one known only to oneself and perhaps a few people close to us, or one on the public stage, known to a wider audience.  I wonder where I would place myself on this scale.  In the world of five element acupuncture I am quite a well-known figure, particularly now in China, but in the acupuncture world as a whole I think I only occupy a very peripheral role.  And this does not worry me, for my greatest concern has always been to ensure that five element acupuncture survives, not to have my own contribution to its survival recognized 

 

I don't often write about my books, thinking each one should promote itself on its own, but perhaps now is the time to grade them according to how I value them.  Far ahead of the field, perhaps almost out of touch with the others, is what I call my magnum opus, my most favourite of all, my Keepers of the Soul.  Funnily enough this was my first book, written in the full flush of the excitement of my discovery of five element acupuncture.   I have been told that it is a difficult read, perhaps because, coming as I do from a rather literary background, I am very conscious of the need for my writing to reflect the beauty of words.  In the pursuit of exactly the right cadence to what I wish to express, I make few concessions to my readers, for which I make no apologies. After all, if they don't like what I write, they only have to put the book aside. 

 

My other books all express my thoughts about the practice of five element acupuncture in different ways, two, Blogging a Five Element Life and On Being a Five Element Acupuncturist, offering a selection of my blogs over the years.  The Simple Guide to Five Element Acupuncture was originally intended for acupuncture patients, but has proved to be a useful introduction for anybody interested in learning more about the five element approach to life.  The Handbook of Five Element Practice is a practice manual for acupuncture students and was the first of my books to be translated into Mandarin.  It has proved so popular over there, with more than 45,000 (yes, thousand!) copies sold in the past 10 years that the publisher tells me that it is the highest selling book on acupuncture in China.  Its popularity reflects the great interest in learning about a branch of acupuncture up till then almost completely unknown in China.

 

So on now to my 8th book.  Will it be my last, or will more of what I talk about in the series of videos I continue to record prompt me or my Chinese publisher to propose a 9th book?

39. The transmission of a five element lineage

We are not good at lineages in the West, and we also appear to have surprisingly little respect for the expertise of others.  In fact, most of our educational system appears to be built, not so much on the idea of learning from those of greater experience than us, but more of teaching students to discover things for themselves, almost as if the hard-won knowledge of those preceding them should be discarded as somehow not so relevant.

I have spent many weeks in China since 2011, introducing five element acupuncture to what must now be many hundreds of Chinese acupuncturists, and have learnt from these visits how much respect they show the lineage of five element acupuncture which they view me as representing.  This is why, there on the wall of the Tong You San He Centre in Beijing where I teach, I am greeted - each time with a slight sense of surprise - by a large panel of photographs, the first showing my teacher, J R Worsley, followed by my own photograph and those of the two teachers who accompany me, Guy Caplan and Mei Long, who initiated my first contacts with China through Liu Lihong, the Centre’s director.  Through his writings and teachings he is the person who has done most to stimulate Chinese traditional medicine’s search for its past roots.

For the Chinese, the line of transmission extending back to the Nei Jing, and on through the centuries to reach J R Worsley, then me and beyond, represents what they feel they have lost, a direct connection to the past.  In the West, on the other hand, we seem to be, if not exactly indifferent to this, then somewhat disinterested in the routes of transmission, as though we are not ourselves quite clear what lineage we are heir to.  This probably stems from the fact that generally both in this country and in China there is little clarity about how to integrate the precepts of traditional medicine with modern attempts to draw acupuncture closer to Western medicine.

The display of photographs which confronts me each time I return to China has made me re-evaluate my own thoughts about the transmission of a lineage, and led me to a new appreciation of what has been transmitted to me.  The way the Chinese view what I bring to them makes me more aware of the precious inheritance which has been passed down to me, and which the Chinese now clamour for me to pass on to them.  Here I am, coming from a far-off land, the bearer of an unknown treasure, my knowledge of an acupuncture discipline which fascinates them.  And, most importantly, somebody with about forty years’ clinical experience, which is something they value particularly highly.  I bring them a precious gift, the transmission of what they regard as the esoteric knowledge contained within the lineage of a particular branch of five element acupuncture handed down over the centuries from master to pupil.  This has found its way through devious routes to the West and is now finding its way back to its country of origin through me, an inheritor of this lineage.  It is useful to read Peter Eckman’s In the Footsteps of the Yellow Emperor, Long River Press 2007, as the best, and in my view, so far the only, in-depth study to trace these routes of transmission.

In England we often forget how precious the legacy of the past can be, tending to take this past for granted.  To the Chinese, anything which helps them trace this past is a gift to be nurtured.  Even though all practitioners are brought up on rote-learning the Nei Jing, they are aware that they have lost many of the connections between what is in these old texts and their practice of today.  In their eyes, the branch of five element acupuncture I represent makes these connections clear to them.

To the Chinese acupuncturists that I teach, therefore, five element acupuncture embodies a spiritual tradition which they regard as lacking in much of the acupuncture now taught in China, and connects them to a past which they feel they have lost.  Its emphasis on ensuring that so much attention is paid to the spirit is something they respond warmly to.  It echoes what they have learnt from the Nei Jing, but is something which is ignored by the TCM they are taught in their acupuncture colleges.   

To witness the joy with which they greet all the five element teaching I offer them is to raise an echo within me of a similar joy that I experienced sitting on my first day in the classroom at the Leamington college all those years ago, and learning about the Fire element with the Heart at its centre.  It seemed to me then, as it still does, and does, too, to all my Chinese students, that to base an acupuncture practice upon treatment of the elements was to state a natural truth about life.  Learning from the Chinese approach to their past, I can now see more clearly than ever that I, and every other five element acupuncturist, form one link in the unending chain stretching from the earliest days of the Nei Jing down the years to today.  This path of transmission passed to the West in the 20^th century and is now coming full circle on its return to its birthplace, China, in the 21^st century.  This is indeed an inheritance to treasure.