The burdens and joys of living life under the control of one element

As I grow older, I have been increasingly aware of how much my life has been lived in the shadow of the Fire element, and one of its innermost manifestations, the Small Intestine.  One of the joys of learning about the elements over the 40-odd years I have been doing this is to realise how far our own element colours deeply every aspect of our life.  Whenever I turn my attention to something that happened to me during this life of mine I am increasingly aware of how everything I have experienced, either done myself or had done to me, reflects the overarching influence of the Small Intestine’s power over me.  It has a power I cannot escape, even though at times I would wish it to be otherwise, particularly since learning about how it influences those under its control.

 

Being the kind of person I am, moulded by the Small Intestine’s characteristic hold upon me, I am constantly questioning everything I do, and questioning it in order to see whether I can do better, whether, in particular I can act more kindly and generously to those around me.  This starts of course with my nearest and dearest, but spreads out to everybody I am in contact with.  For this official, right at the heart of the Fire element, and closest to its companion the Heart, has the task of checking that only the purest of feelings and actions pass through it on their way to the Heart.  If it gets things wrong, there is always a risk that polluted material will be passed on to the Heart, the supreme commander of body and soul.

 

I am particularly conscious of how much the Small Intestine influences what I do in my work as a five element acupuncturist, for here what I have offered my patients has been shaped to a great extent by the relationships I have learnt to set up with them, and it is my Small Intestine which controls how I develop these.  Perhaps I am conscious of this because it is the Fire element above all the other elements whose major concern is the importance it pays to the relationships it enters into with all it meets.  And the good relationship between patient and practitioner is one of the cornerstones of five element practice.  Fire is acutely aware of all the delicate intricacies involved in maintaining a good relationship of this kind.  Of its four officials, this is true of none more so than the Small Intestine because of its closeness to the Heart, with its need to protect the Heart.  Therefore I see it as both a blessing and a curse to have the Small Intestine as my dominant official, for it demands a great deal of me in terms of what I have had to learn about my approach to my patients.

 

Whatever a practitioner’s element, however, the challenges each element presents to the practitioners under its control differ, and all have their difficulties.  I have mentioned Fire’s challenges.  What of Wood’s and Metal’s, or Earth’s and Water’s?  Each challenge will be shaped by the demands an element places upon those under its control and will differ according to this.  This means that each practitioner has to draw together their own insights into how their own element relates to the elements of the people they meet, especially, of course, their patients, for these insights are gained only from looking through the filter their own element places between them and the world around them. 

 

I will therefore always see the Wood element, for example, through the filter of my Fire element, just as somebody who is of the Earth element will always see their patients through Earth’s filter, and so on.  Even if I am with a patient of my own Fire element, the filter through which I see this patient will reflect my specific relationship to this element.  We must never forget that as unique human beings we are unique representatives of the elements within us. This is what I have called our personal elemental DNA.

 

There is therefore no short-cut to understanding our patients and communicating with them unless we first spend time looking within ourselves and recognizing how the elements within us function.  At the very centre of them is our individual guardian element, which moulds the whole family of elements within us to its shape.

  

New year thoughts about my legacy

Every life has a legacy, something each of us leaves behind as testimony that we have lived.  Some, those of the most famous and well-known amongst us, leave what many would call proud, fulfilling legacies.  Others, the less well-known or the completely unknown, leave much more humble, more private legacies, which only they or those nearest to them acknowledge.  At the start of a new year and the renewal of life which this betokens, I like to think of what my own legacy will be, before steering myself in new directions.

 

In my last blog, the last of the year 2024, I wrote of my decision to call a halt to my travels to China.  In many ways this represented a momentous step, because it brought with it the recognition of an ending, with an acceptance that I felt that I was now physically too frail to travel, even though, as my children insist, luckily I am apparently not yet too frail of mind.  In fact quite the reverse.  My mind seems to be more active than ever, ferreting away at new thoughts as it always has done.  

 

And the new thought with which I woke at three this morning with it fully-formed is that it was time that I wrote about the importance of acknowledging that the five element legacy I inherited from my apprenticeship with JR Worsley was to be seen as forming part, not of a fixed, immutable tradition, to be adhered to in every one of its aspects, but of a living, evolving tradition of which each five element acupuncturist forms part and to which each contributes in their own way. The five-element tree has a large trunk with its roots embedded deep in the Chinese past, and with branches spreading over generations of acupuncturists in the millennia since then.  Each of us current five element acupuncturists is then a bud on one of these branches.  

 

This is therefore a living and hence evolving tradition.  And no tradition, whether in the world of healing or elsewhere, can survive unless it has fresh life breathed into it.  During my own training I was myself witness to how the tradition I was inheriting from JR Worsley was in the process of changing, with two very clear examples of this taking place before my eyes during my training.

 

The first example occurred during my final undergraduate year when we started treating our own patients under supervision.  My patient, who my supervisor confirmed was a Fire patient (Outer Fire, V/VI), had the following pulse picture:  weak Fire V/VI pulses, stronger Wood VII/VIII pulses, weak Metal pulses IX/X, stronger Earth pulses XI/XII.  I was told to tonify both Fire and Metal, using the following points (VI3, V9  and X11, IX9) in the same treatment.  There was no discussion at all about whether I should only be treating Fire.  In other words, it was then accepted practice in JR’s college that we should take from whatever element was stronger to treat the weaker element, rather than only treating the dominant element, in this case Fire.

 

Very soon the practice of treating off the dominant element was discontinued, and in all the years of my observing patients with JR he never recommended treating anything but this element (except, of course, for specific treatments for clearing different energy blocks).

 

The second example comes from my searching in the famous Red Book, JR’s Traditional Chinese Acupuncture, Volume 1: Meridians and Points, for the points called Dragons which I needed to learn to clear what we call possession.  Three series of points are listed, one for External Dragons and two for Internal Dragons.  Again, in all the years of observing patients with JR the series of points listed for treating Internal Dragons in the Red Book for “Dragons with depression” was never taught to us or used.  I always regretted that in the many years I sat in class listening to JR that I did not ask him when we should use the first of these two series of points, since he always chose the second ,“without depression”.  Is the unused series of points merely a residue of the past which JR no longer thought was of value for us to learn in the world of today?  If so, it is a subtle reminder that traditions have to evolve to survive. 

 

This confirms to me the need to accept that through my own practice, I, too, have added a further bud to the great five-element tree, through my decision at the end of my postgraduate training with JR to start thinking of the controlling element as a guardian element, and giving it this name, initially just for myself.  For did not JR always ask us to visualize how each of our patients would be if they lived their life in balance and harmony with their particular element?  That made me think of this element as sheltering us and giving our life meaning – in other words acting as guardian to us.

And I remember that I was drawn to using this term because it so closely echoes the familiar phrase “guardian angel”.

 

 

 

The concept of a guardian official

I have been convinced from the first day that I encountered five element acupuncture that we each have what I call a guardian element, one element under whose protection we live our lives.  It is the element which gives us our individuality, and helps distinguish you from me.    I have now decided to extend the term guardian element, which I coined to describe this particular element, to include the yin and yang officials which together form each element, calling them our guardian officials.

 In my last blog (17th March) I discussed the Small Intestine's relationship to the Large Intestine official.  This set me thinking about the relationships of yin and yang officials in general, not only within the circle of the elements but also with respect to how they relate to each other within their own element.  This raises the question of whether part of our diagnosis should be be looking at which official of this pairing is our patient's dominant official; for one of them certainly is.  When we compare one Wood person with another Wood person, or one Metal person with another, we can detect differences which relate to the characteristics of either their yin or their yang official.

 

There are various features specific to all yin and yang officials.  All the yang, for example, have longer meridians than the yin, with more acupuncture points along them.  They are also said to have direct access to the outside world, whilst their companion yin officials are shorter, have fewer points and are hidden deep within us.  This distinction also provides an explanation for the procedure for tapping Aggressive Energy, where we only insert needles into the yin AEPs.  This is because the yang AEPs are able to release to the outside air any negative energy they have accumulated, whereas the yin have no such points of release, retaining any AE deep within the body and requiring the insertion of needles to draw this AE to the surface.  

 

I remember when I began to understand why this might be so.  Many years ago as a student, I was in a classroom watching JR Worsley draw 3 parallel horizontal lines one above the other on the blackboard.  He told us that the bottom line represented the level of the spirit, the middle line the level of the mind and the top line the level of the body.  When we tap for AE, we must therefore only insert needles superficially into the yin AEPs which enables them to make a slight opening at the physical level.  This creates an escape route to the outside enabling any AE trapped at the lower two levels, the mental and the spiritual, to be drawn up and expelled from the body.  This has always seemed to me to be such a simple explanation for why we tap for AE in the way we do.  

 

It also provides an excellent description of the different functions of the yin and yang officials within each element.  The yin can be understood to carry out an element's fundamental functions deep within us, whilst their yang companions open pathways to the outside world.  I use this understanding to help me differentiate between the different characteristics which yin and yang officials within an element imprint upon us, enabling us to see how a person's element may be manifesting in a more yang or a more yin way.  On this basis, all yang officials can be thought of as playing a more active role, reflecting their connection to the outside world, whilst the yin officials play a more passive, static role, reflecting their position deep inside us.    

 

The problem with trying to include a micro-diagnosis of this kind to the diagnosis of a patient's element as a whole is that, whilst our diagnosis of an element can eventually be confirmed by the effects of treatment, we have no way of corroborating our diagnosis of guardian official.  Nor can this be said to be clinically important, since we always treat both officials equally (for instance needling both source points or both AEPs).  It is however interesting to try to pinpoint whether somebody's element has a more yin or yang emphasis, because it helps us to a deeper understanding of the qualities of all 12 officials.  This may also help us gain greater insight into our patients' needs at a deeper level, something that should always be our aim.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          

"We must not simply visit this world"

I have just come across a lovely poem by the American poet, Mary Oliver, called "When Death Comes", and this is its last stanza:

..."When it's over I don't want to wonder

If I have made of my life something particular and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

 

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world."

 

I love the thought that none of us should "end up simply having visited this world".  Sadly, perhaps, too many of us do, and so few, the rare ones, can say at the moment of death that their life has been more than just a mere "visit", but added something, gave something back.

 

I have been thinking deeply about this, and realise that I see one of the aims of my work as a five element acupuncturist has been to help patients transform a life which may be being lived at a quite superficial level, that of the "visit" described by Mary Oliver, into one which adds significance and depth to that visit, in other words gives us the ability to recognize that each life has a purpose to fulfil.  I always remember the thrill I felt when I first heard JR Worsley say that we should always try to visualize for ourselves a fulfilled life for each patient, and that we should hope that this can be achieved through the treatment we offer.

 

The implication here is that a patient's guardian element should become the focal point for this fulfilment, enabling a patient to find the means within themselves not just to "visit" the world, but to add something significant to the world.  I have always found that a lovely thought, which has inspired me in my practice and my teaching.

22 - 34 What do we hope five element acupuncture can offer our patients?

There are many reasons why we find our way to a calling such as five element acupuncture, probably as many reasons as there are acupuncturists.  I have often written about my own surprising journey towards my first day sitting in JR Worsley's Leamington College hearing the magical words, the Fire element and the Heart.  That journey had started a year earlier at an encounter with an acupuncturist at a party and the subsequent overwhelming effects of the treatment I received.  So my understanding of why I eventually decided to follow the same route as my acupuncturist and study at the college he had studied at was quite clear.  My treatment had transformed my life and I wanted to be able to offer the same transformation to any future patients I might treat.

 I have always had a strong belief that each of us owes it to those around us and to the world in general to leave this world in a slightly better place than when we first entered it.  We need to feel that we have added something by our presence.  It is as though we are each given a task to do.  In five element terms I like to see this task as expressing itself through the needs and aspirations of our guardian element.  I have therefore come to see each successful treatment as in some small way forming one step along this path for each of my patients.

 

These thoughts, which have been mulling within me for many years, were originally sparked by something JR Worsley said during my undergraduate training all those years ago, and have stayed with me ever since.  He said that we should visualize how our patients would be if their element was able to express itself fully in the most creative and harmonious way.  By strengthening this element and helping it to greater balance, we are therefore making it possible for our patients to fulfil whatever destiny fate has laid down for them, as expressed through this element.  

 

I like to think that each patient leaving our practice in greater harmony within themselves is adding a tiny but important bit to the sum total of human experience, and, with it, I hope, human happiness.

 

22 - 30 The guardian official

It was during a postgraduate seminar at my Leamington college all those years ago that I for the first time dared to share my use of the term "guardian element".  Before that, I used to call it the CF, meaning the Causative Factor of disease, as most people still do.  I have always thought that the term CF has a slightly negative overtone, which JR himself did not seem to agree with.  I remember very clearly him telling us that we should always visualize our patients as expressing the most positive qualities of their element, rather than regarding this element as a symbol of their imbalances.  And I like to hear the echo of the words guardian angel behind my coining of the phrase, because this is how I think of this element.  I see it as a protective force when we live our lives wisely in tune with its demands.

 

I have now decided to add a companion phrase, and call the yin and yang officials which together create an element our guardian officials.  I am only surprised that it has taken me so many years to think of this.

 

We know that we are each marked by the characteristics of one element, and that each element is formed of the close association of one yin and one yang official.   These two officials within the element also imprint specific characteristics upon us, making some people of that element have characteristics which are more yin in nature, and others more yang, reflecting the different qualities of their particular dominant official. This distinction further defines who we are, so that a Wood person, for example, will have a closer association with the characteristic qualities of the Liver and another with those of the Gall Bladder, making either the Liver or the Gall Bladder their guardian official.  

 

It is rarely clinically necessary to diagnose this further level of differentiation.  First of all because it is difficult enough tracking down a patient's element, let alone trying to perceive even more subtle differences within an element, and secondly because we rarely need to move to this deeper level of diagnosis from the point of view of treatment, since we treat both officials equally.  It is, however, interesting to try to recognise the different qualities which one or other official gives us, since this is a way of helping us understand more about the role of the individual officials within the cycle of the elements.

 

Occasionally, we need to think more closely about this, particularly in the case of Inner Fire and its yang official, the Small Intestine.  This is because we are taught to avoid treating the Heart, the Supreme Controller, more than is necessary.  It is regarded as a sacred organ, and we should where possible avoid interfering in its functioning by treating it.  Instead we should concentrate treatment upon its close yang official, the Small Intestine, making this an exception to the general rule that we treat both official pairings equally.

 

This brings me neatly to another important question, which is how we make our choices about selecting points other than command points, those points which are often called spirit points.  As I have often written, all points should be recognized as having their own spirit, but in general parlance the term appears to be given to any point which is not a command point.  I have often thought that this is perhaps one of the most discussed, but least understood areas of five element practice, precisely because by calling some points spirit points we appear to assume that they have a more profound effect than those that are "merely" command points.  This is a misconception which bedevils five element practice.  In the right hands and with the right understanding command points can effect the most profound treatment of all, whilst spirit points, in the wrong hands and with the wrong understanding, can have very little effect at all.

 

I see non-command points as being able to offer specific qualities, often associated with the names they have been given over the centuries, which can add to what the officials on whose meridians they lie are there to offer.  Often we may use one point on one of the two guardian officials, rather than choosing points on both, as we do with command points or Associated Effect points, for example.  The selection of non-command points has often come to be regarded as a somewhat mysterious area of expertise, which I think it should not be. Different practitioners will choose different points, often having a long-term preference for a few, usually because they have learnt about them at some point from a more experienced practitioner, as I have done.  Or perhaps a fellow practitioner will tell me about a point they have used, either one I have never used, or, as happens, one I have forgotten about over the years, and I will be glad to welcome such points back into my repertoire of point selections again.  This is, after all, how we widen our range of points, although having observed JR Worsley recommending points for the many hundreds of patients I saw him with I can confirm how beautifully simple were always the treatments he recommended for our patients, suggesting the same small range of points for each element.