We are increasingly screened from one another

I am aware that less and less people are looking me in the eyes as I walk along the street – which I often do now because I no longer drive a car and take public transport everywhere.  I have been thinking of this recently because watching Donald Trump on TV has made me aware of the very different kinds of ways people have of interacting with one another, and smiling is an important way of doing this.  It was the lack of warmth in Trump’s smile which first alerted me to this.  It set me thinking about how the different elements smile, and what they are conveying by their smile.  Each element, I decided, smiles in a distinct way, as the emotion which controls it dictates what its smile is intending to convey.  This led me on directly to the eyes, because it is through our eyes that we convey our emotions.

 

I then started looking at myself to help me gauge the emotional effect of my own smile on me and on others around me.  I have always known that I, a Fire person, love to smile; it is as though this opens a door into my soul, warming my heart.  I can feel the connection of my smiling mouth to my eyes, because they start to wrinkle, showing laugh lines around them long after my smile has faded.  

 

I have discovered that this is one of the tells for a Fire person, for in them the laugh lines around the eyes linger long after the cause for the laughter has disappeared.  I feel the effects for a surprisingly long time, as though the warmth my smile brings to my heart stays long beyond the cause of the smile. No other element leaves this signature mark of a lingering smile on its face.  I have therefore decided that my next object of study should be about how I feel in the presence of the smiles of the other four elements. 

 

Watching how people smile at each other has also made me aware that we increasingly screen ourselves from one another.  This is a result of the ubiquitous use of our smart phones, with their plastic screens.  Recently, whilst sitting in a café, I watched a mother with three young children. Each child had their own screen on some device in front of them, which they were looking at intently.  The mother, too, was looking at her smart phone.  During the time I observed them, which was a good half-hour, none of them exchanged a look or talked to another person, except to pass food and drink along.  They sat silently, engrossed in what they were watching.  What was interesting, but, to me, appalling, was that, in contrast to how we react in person-to-person exchanges, there was no change to the expressions on their faces.

We like to describe the eyes as being the windows of the soul.  It seemed to me that the screens between this family and the world they were contacting were closing these windows.    

How other elements interact with our own element

As five element acupuncturists, we tend to concentrate almost entirely on observing how each individual element interacts with the world.  But what is an equally interesting object of study is how each element interacts with people of different elements, and how such interactions add to our understanding of all the elements.  For example, I have been aware for a long time that I seem to have chosen close friends amongst one or two of the elements, but not all five.  And I notice, too, that my choices have varied over the years, presumably as I matured, or demanded more or less of my close relationships.

 

This has set me thinking about how far these changing choices of mine, for presumably they were choices rather than the result of random encounters, reflected some need in me which was satisfied by my interactions with people of other elements.  Nor must I discount the possibility that I might also have sought out people of my own element, Fire, too, or of  my particular aspect of Fire, which is Inner Fire.

 

These thoughts have led me to think more closely about the extent to which we choose our relationships with other people in such a way as to satisfy some deep need within us.  I said that I assume that it is by choice that we select our friends, even from amongst those that we may have found ourselves with by apparent chance, such as school or work colleagues.  If we look at the people we have drawn closest to from these groups, we will see that there is often a common thread to our choices.  I remember clearly that on the very first day at university, I immediately made a beeline towards the one other person who seemed to be making an effort to engage with as many of her fellow students as she could, rather than gravitating towards the quieter, more withdrawn and far less extrovert students.  This was clearly a deliberate choice of mine, which actually shaped much of my subsequent interactions with my student group.  And her element, I later decided, was definitely Earth.  Looking back I realise that what I was attracted towards was a need for somebody to replace the family support network which I had now moved away from for the first time, and the Earth in her fulfilled that need.

Later on in my life I realised that I often gravitated towards people of the Metal element, because they offered me the nuggets of wisdom which my Small Intestine was always looking for.  It was towards Metal people that I would turn, and still turn, to help me make up my mind about what I need to do.  Metal seems to be able to cut through my endless to-ing and fro-ing as I try to sort out the best way forwards.  Using myself as guide, therefore, I think it is good for all five element acupuncturists to use their own experience of how different elements impinge upon them, either positively or negatively, to help them gain a deeper understanding of the qualities of as many elements as they can. This will in turn help them towards making more accurate diagnoses of their patients’ elements.    

My favourite CV/GV (Ren Mai/Du Mai) points

I have now reached the final selection of my favourite points, those which are on Conception and Governor Vessels.  I have left these to the last because I think they should be viewed as a very special group, to be used always with care.  These two great meridians form the trunk of the great five element tree, from which each element branches out.  Unless there is the major blockage which we know of as a CV/GV block, where the energy from this trunk is unable to feed its branches as it should, I regard these points as adding something very special to the main body of a five element approach to treatment, to be drawn on only where necessary. 

One great distinction between these two series of points is that Conception Vessel runs over the front of the body, its yin aspect, and Governor Vessel over the back, its yang aspect.  In deciding which of these points I might consider adding to an element's points, my first thought is therefore whether my patient needs strengthening from a yin or a yang aspect.   Simply stated, do I think that he/she needs more backbone (yang) or more inner strength (yin)?

 

I also base my selection on a point's anatomical position, and on the name it has been given over the thousands of years of its use.

 

But I turn to CV or GV points only when I feel that all the good work I am doing to strengthen a patient's guardian element is somehow lacking something, and I need to add a deeper layer to my treatment.

 

 

CONCEPTION VESSEL (CV)

 

CV 1                Meeting of Yin             (5 points)

CV 8                Spirit Deficiency

CV 12              Middle Duct

CV 14              Great Deficiency

CV 22              Heaven Rushing Out

 

In addition, there are many CV points which have a special connection to individual officials, and are together known as the Alarm Points.  These points have a special relationship to each official, and on being palpated can provide information about the health of the official.    

     

 

GOVERNOR VESSEL (GV)

 

GV 1                Long Strength             (6 points)

GV 4                Gate of Life                 

GV 12              Body Pillar

GV 14              Great Hammer

GV 19              Posterior Summit

GV 20              One Hundred Meetings

 

 

 

Never underestimate the effect our personal experiences have on how we perceive the elements in other people

I am drawing together my thoughts on the Water element for a seminar we are dedicating to this element on Monday 27 February 2023 (see our website www.sofea.co.uk for details).  

 

I am always surprised by how different our individual take on the elements is, particularly those of other experienced five element practitioners.  Very often I notice that they are observing the elements from quite a different perspective from my own.  As practitioners, we must never forget that our own element will colour how we perceive our patients;  we must therefore do all we can to take this into account in our diagnoses.  This is something that can easily be overlooked.

As students we were given some key descriptions to help us define an element.  In the case of Water, these were words like "fear" or "ambition", as well, of course, as the well-known sensory signals of colour, sound and smell.  But each of us will react to the emotion "fear" in our own unique way, prompted by the particular life experiences which have formed us from an early age.  These lead us to create a unique vision of the world shaped by what we have each been exposed to.

 

At our Water seminar I will therefore be very interested to hear how other practitioners experience this element, particularly practitioners whose own element happens to be Water.  I know that I will learn much that will be new to me, as I always do, which is why I enjoy these seminars so much.

  

22-15 Sujata's take on Water's way of thinking

Here is my Water friend's answer to my question about how Water does its thinking. This follows on directly from the end of my last blog (22-14):

 

Thank you for asking me to write a bit about how Water expresses itself.  I have been thinking of getting back to writing for some time but nothing was flowing.  This will be a good beginning and I'm happy and grateful that you thought of me.  I am writing mostly about myself (and a few other Water people I know but I don't know how general this information will be).

 

Water, when unimpeded, flows.  It moves in an instinctive manner, not always logical, but usually by feeling its way - sending out sensors to the environment and modulating its response according to what it finds (or feels) is present around it.  Therefore, the way a Water person expresses himself (or herself) depends on how the Water person is feeling at the time and on who he (or she) is interacting with.  Water, in its comfort zone (as it often is with Fire), attempts to express its soul, or sometimes just bubbles along contentedly.  With Metal, Water tends to be more guarded, a bit on edge due to Metal's brevity and conciseness.  With Earth, Water can be very comfortable, but often slips into the mode of a listener, not revealing much of itself.  With Wood (depending on the intensity the Wood person displays), Water often has a disconnect, feeling sometimes unnerved by the push that Wood sends out.  Given a chance, Water would not try to push back (though if it gathers its resources, it probably can), but to bide its time and take a different direction at the earliest possible opportunity.  This is how Water functions when it is close to equilibrium or its natural state.  In times of stress, Water can be greatly affected by fear, reducing its natural flow to a frozen state, but Water, with its resilience, often finds a way to overcome this and continues moving on.

Thank you, Sujata, for these very illuminating descriptions about the way that you think.

22-14 How different elements express their thoughts

I have been thinking about how each element has its own way of expressing its thoughts, since I have noticed that their thought processes are so different.  This is very much in my mind at the moment because Covid lockdowns, whilst restricting my physical movements, seem to have accentuated my mental agility.  My element is Fire, the inner aspect of Fire, with the Small Intestine being what I call my guardian official.  The Small Intestine does the most sorting of its ideas of all the officials, and it likes to communicate the thoughts its very active mind is working upon.  I have often said that I think as I speak, sorting my thoughts out through the act of speaking. This can sometimes be confusing for the listener, for as I sift what I am thinking through, I may alter what I am saying, often in mid-speech, as my mind changes what I started to say.  It needs this form of communication, for in communicating with another person it is doing what all Fire people need to do, which is to set up a relationship with whomever it is with.  And what simpler relationship is there than the act of smiling at another person, one of the signature features of Fire people, and addressing words to another person.  Doing both at the same time is what makes my Fire element the happiest.  Smiles and words reach across the divide between one human being and another, bridging the gap in the quickest way possible, and thereby enabling a relationship to be set up between me and the other person.  

 

It is interesting to look at how the thought processes of the other elements manifest themselves, as far as I understand them.  The element I have always been most aware of, based on my close acquaintance with family members and friends, is the Metal element.  I always think of it as being almost the diametric opposite of my Fire, and have often envied it the kind of detachment it demands, which I can never achieve.  Its way of thinking illustrates this sense of distance between us.  Its thought processes reflect this, for it can stand back, look almost dispassionately at what it is considering as though from a distance, and then draw its conclusions before expressing them succinctly in very few words.  I have a Metal son who can be guaranteed to give me excellent advice about anything I ask him, and does this surprisingly quickly, as though he can think his way rapidly to the heart of the problem, see the solution and express it in the least number of words possible.  I may be talking through a problem to him for some time, going through all the ins and outs as I see them, and he will interrupt me in mid-speech, saying simply, "Just do this", or "Do that", and that is for him the end of the matter.  Metal's thinking is hidden, not out in the open as mine is, but this tends to make it all the more acute and to the point.

 

On the other hand, we can see Earth's thought processes in action quite openly, for it likes to think its thoughts through, often as part of a quite laborious process, going round and round a problem, like a cement-mixer churning things over, drawing the listener into this in its need to share its thoughts.  One of the burdens of being an unbalanced Earth person is therefore their inability to move their thinking on, as though they are a record stuck in the same groove, repeating the same words over and over again.  As practitioners we therefore have to learn ways of interrupting an Earth patient to prevent them from continuously working through the same thoughts in the same words time after time.  Here that lovely point St 9, Head Tied, comes to a practitioner's rescue.  I treasure the time when the moment I needled this point, my Earth patient, in the middle of telling me something, suddenly fell silent, as though he had literally at last been able to swallow his thoughts.  In balance, on the other hand, Earth will be very good at thinking problems through very thoroughly. 

 

Then we come to Wood, another quick-witted element, like Fire, its yang companion, but with none of the need to set up the relationships Fire looks for.  Instead, its thoughts are directed more upon action, ensuring that things are done properly and constructively, that the right structures are put in place to allow things to move forward.  It may send its thoughts out into the world almost in the form of orders (hence the shouting voice), dictated by its need to ensure that everything proceeds in good order.  A Wood friend told me that she thinks of her way of thinking as being like sending out branches from the trunk of a tree in many directions.  It does not matter to her if a branch gets broken off at some point, but each must first be firmly attached to its trunk within her.

 

Finally, I come to Water, and how often I realise that I delay writing about Water until the last, for I see it as the most mysterious of all elements, and even after all these many years of thinking and writing about the elements, at some level Water still remains a mystery to me.  So how do I envisage its way of thinking?  Perhaps its thoughts could be described as being much less clearly defined for me than those of the other elements, but nonetheless they often have the potential to surprise me.  For Water is a deep-feeling element, probably the one that can feel the most, just as the waters of the oceans hide more secrets in their depths than there are on land. 

 

Perhaps I should leave it to Water people themselves to describe their own thought processes for me, since these, much like what Water always does, puzzle me a little.   I have therefore decided that I will send this blog to a young Water friend of mine in India, who always gives me interesting insights into her element.  Perhaps she will be able to add something to my understanding of the way Water thinks. 

83. One of the challenges of writing about the elements

One of the challenges of writing about the elements is that, because of their different qualities, elements demand different kinds of approach from their practitioner.  That means that practitioners have to learn to adapt how they deal with their patients to take account not only of the differences between patients of the same element, but also the fact that their own element will respond in its own specific way to what the patients they treat will demand of them.  This requires a high degree of sensitivity and flexibility on a practitioner's behalf, and, above all, a degree of self-awareness that few of us possess before we start on the long road to becoming an experienced therapist.

 

Each of us, patient and practitioner alike, is formed of a unique blend of the elements, creating what we can call our own unique elemental DNA.  When this unique imprint meets the equally unique, but different, elemental DNA of our patients, there is clearly the risk of some misunderstanding between the differing needs of these two people in the therapeutic relationship.  For we must not forget that, whilst it is obvious that the patient arrives in the practice room with specific needs of his/her own, the practitioner, too, enters it with what may at first sight not be, or what the practitioner may think should not be, their own needs. So what are the patients' needs and how may they conflict with those of the practitioner?

 

We often don't think enough about this, as though taking for granted that we know why our patients are coming to us.  Surely, we may think, it is that they wish to feel better, to heal themselves of some symptom, usually something physical.  But if we look more carefully, beneath the obvious reasons lie often deeper ones, hidden sometimes from both the patient and the practitioner, and only gradually exposed as a result of the changes prompted by treatment.

 

The more experienced and adept a practitioner is, the more quickly these hidden areas of a patient's life come to light.  I know that I learned quite quickly to open the door to this more hidden world to patients by asking questions in such a way as to give them permission to talk more freely.  A good example of this was when a patient came to me complaining of bad neck pains.  After listening to him describing this, I turned the questioning in another direction, by asking, "And is there anything or anybody in your life who you also feel is a pain in the neck?"  I was almost amused to see how quickly my patient responded to this, by admitting that, yes, his youngest son was causing him a great deal of problems.  By connecting the two levels of his distress, the physical and the emotional, this allowed him to open up to the deeper problems in his life, to his obvious relief.  This was also likely to contribute to his physical pain, if not indeed simply being its cause.   

 

I therefore recommend that all aspiring five element acupuncturists should learn the techniques necessary to bridge the gap between patients talking about their physical symptoms to emphasizing that five element acupuncture is also there to help heal emotional trauma.  Patients and practitioners often find it easier to remain at the more superficial, physical level of their patients' lives.  Practitioners may therefore be happy to follow their patients' agenda in their approach to why they are coming for treatment, rather than venturing into the more challenging areas by touching upon what are usually the more deeply-rooted and therefore often more painful areas of patients' emotional lives.

 

And then there is the question of how far practitioners' own element dictates their approach to treating patients.  None of us cam remain untouched by the characteristics of our particular guardian element.  An Earth practitioner, for example, will, therefore, approach his/her patients quite differently from a Wood practitioner.  Each practitioner has to be aware of this, and counteract any particular bias which may start to creep into their practice because they may have their own personal response to the different elements of the patients they treat.  

 

I realised early on in my practice that I had problems dealing with my Wood patients which I seemed not to have with patients of other elements.  But I only became aware of this when I noticed that I seemed to have very few Wood patients.  It was only when I looked carefully into the reasons why this should be that I realised that my own slight fear of the forcefulness presented by the Wood element, which my Fire element often found difficult to counter, had unconsciously given me a bias to avoid diagnosing Wood in favour of elements I found easier to deal with.  This was a great learning curve for me, because it made me examine how far my diagnoses might be skewed by personal factors, rather than being based on the realities of the patients before me.  A salutary lesson indeed!

 

On the other hand, we must not ignore the fact that our own element also shapes the kind of relationships we develop with our patients in both a negative and a positive sense.  All Fire practitioners will want to engage more actively, perhaps too actively, in their patients' lives than will a Metal practitioner, who may well tend to give his/her patients more space to work out solutions for their problems themselves.  Perhaps some of Metal's patients, though, might prefer a more involved approach. And what, then about the other three elements?  

From observations of my fellow practitioners, I have learned that of all the elements it is Earth which may find itself burdened the most by its patients' needs, because it can so easily feel overwhelmed if too much is demanded of it.  It may also find the one-to-one relationship of patient to practitioner more difficult to cope with than other elements do, as it is usually happier when working in a group rather than on its own. On the positive side, Earth will be more than ready to empathise with its patients' distress.  Wood practitioners, on the other hand, have to hold back from expressing their tendency to think that they know what is best for their patients, and refrain from getting irritated by some of their patients' decisions.  They will, however, be very clear about the kind of help they can offer.  Water practitioners have the advantage of being very sensitive to their patients' needs, but may tend to be too susceptible to self-doubt in relation to their work, leading them to query constantly whether what they are doing is the right thing for their patients.

 

Of course everything I write about the elements is personal to me, and therefore to some extent only partially relevant to other practitioners' approach to their practice.  it is good always to remember that each of us has to develop our own relationship to the elements and establish our own understanding of them, which will inevitably differ in certain respects from mine, although I hope not completely.  Those reading this will therefore need to adapt what I say in the light of their own experiences. 

 

  

69. Five element acupuncture treatment of Long Covid symptoms

I am pre-occupied at the moment with thinking of ways in which five element acupuncture can help all those many, many people who have emerged from their bouts of COVID 19 still suffering the side-effects lumped together under the name of Long Covid.  I was prompted to think more about this by an article I have just read in the Guardian newspaper entitled "Don't be fooled.  Covid won't be cured by a wonder drug".  After looking at some traditional herbal remedies, including some from China, it comments very wisely: "It doesn't pay to rule out (remedies) just because there's no clear rationale for how they would do the job."  We could include acupuncture in the list of remedies to be considered when looking at ways of treating Long Covid.  

So how does five element acupuncture approach the treatment of the many Long Covid symptoms?  We know that these range from extreme tiredness, chest pain, heart palpitations to joint pain, nausea and high fever.  One of the things my years as five element acupuncturist has taught me is how effective we can be in treating conditions, such as these, which are described as being non-specific ailments with no obvious aetiology.  In five element terms a variety of symptoms affecting different organs must be caused by some severe attack upon the elements controlling these organs, to the extent that their ability to retain balance has been overwhelmed.  

It is likely that the elements will also have become sufficiently weakened to cause Aggressive Energy to appear, making this obviously the first treatment we should carry out.  We must also consider the possibility of having first to clear IDs, a condition that that might appear when a patient is facing a life-threatening illness.  And then we should look for any of the other major blocks to treatment, such as Husband/Wife, moving on to consider Entry/Exit blocks, starting with the major CV/GV block.  This may occur when severe illness has weakened the elements' connection to their main sources of energy the two great pathways of Conception and Governor Vessels (Ren Mai and Du Mai).  Other Entry/Exit blocks may also need to be cleared, before we move on to treat the patient's element.   I would also always think it advisable to re-check for AE at intervals after this if some of the COVID symptoms persist, because severe illness may have weakened the elements' ability to withstand stress and allow AE to creep in again.

 

I would love us to be able to offer this treatment to as many sufferers of Long Covid as we can, if only the conventional medical world would learn to accept the fundamental validity of what five element acupuncture can do.  But until this happens, all we can do is treat those patients who find their way to us, and hope that these people will spread the word to their fellow sufferers.

  

49. The Wood element: 1

I like to keep a picture of each element in my mind as a template against which I can measure those I meet, and from this I recognize whether they do or do not fit into this template.  So here let me first discuss my thoughts about the Wood element.

I always think that one of Wood’s most important functions is that of bringing order out of chaos, adding structure to the unstructured.  Its desire is to ensure order wherever possible, for it wants a world on which it can impose its own structure and design upon what might otherwise be disorganized and unstructured.  We order and arrange things into boxes when we want to tidy up our homes or our offices. This seems to me to be an accurate image of what Wood wants to achieve in life. The picture that comes to mind here are those TV pictures of bank employees leaving their offices with all their working possessions stuffed into boxes after the banking meltdown in 2009 as the banks closed their doors for the last time.  In a similar way I can see the Wood element trying to enclose everything it does within the narrow confines of individual boxes.

It might seem as if a bud, which is Wood’s signature in nature, appears to have a much less clearly defined contour than the boxes I have just talked about, but in fact each bud is a very structured object, whose shape has to adhere to parameters strictly laid down if it is to grow properly into a fully grown leaf, plant or tree.  Without this well-planned structure, laid down in what I like to call the DNA of the seed, a bud will wither and die. This is a symbolic representation of what the Wood element within us needs to offer us if it, too, is to fulfil the functions it is there to fulfil.

A world in which things move in straight, ordered lines, have their allotted place and move forward in their allotted ways seems to me to be an image of Wood’s ideal world.  If I were to put this feeling into words, I would describe it as someone saying, “And this is, and that is so, and yet again this other thing is so,”, forming a  kind of movement at right angles to itself, and in words always spoken with precision and with emphasis.  When I represent Wood graphically to myself, I visualize it as a series of straight lines, which run up and down, from right to left and from back to front, as though forming the squares of a Rubik cube which, when rotated, re-forms itself again into a further small square. 

Wood always tends to speak with precision and with emphasis, creating a sense of order with its words.  It can be said to want to “tell” rather than to communicate.  To tell somebody something is just as much a way of ordering things, this time through the structure of words.  Wood’s telling something can be described more as making a statement, rather than taking the form of a discussion with others. This is where its talking differs from some of the other elements, such as Fire, whose communications become a two-sided affair moving from one person to another and back again.  Wood’s is in one direction only, towards the person spoken to, with far less emphasis upon the need for the words to be returned to it by the person spoken to, or, if Wood is very unbalanced, with no attention at all paid to the need for discussion with the other person.  The image I have of Wood’s speech is to think of it like a tennis player practising alone by hitting a ball against a wall, whereas I see other elements as taking part in a game of two or more players, one or more on each side of the net, hitting a ball of words to one another across the net.

When I asked some Wood people what they want of their interaction with others, they all agreed that what they wanted was to “engage” with them.  This is an interesting word.   My dictionary gives it a very active meaning, which includes the sense of battling and grappling with, and is much used in military terminology.  It implies more than just interacting, for there is the sense within it of some kind of a struggle, or, at the very least, pressure from one side to push against the other, which we can see as representing the push behind all that Wood does.

When thinking of the Wood element it is always good to have in mind the image of nature outside on an early spring day.  We can see buds pushing themselves up from below the ground as though summoned into the warmth and daylight as the cold dark days of winter yield slowly to lighter, warmer days.  I did not fully appreciate the force required for each bud to break through the often hard soil to emerge above ground until one day I happened to be walking across a concrete wasteland where a building had once stood, and noticed tiny little patches of green here and there below my feet.  On examining them more closely I realised that they were the first vestiges of little plants, and was amazed to see how these tiny growths had managed, each individually, to break through what I could now see was a very thick layer of concrete, perhaps at least 1 metre deep, cracking it open to allow the plant to reach the sunlight.  Over the next few weeks I watched these tiny growths become taller and taller, until when I returned a few months later, I found small trees, now a few feet high, their roots embedded deep within the concrete, but creating large cracks in it as they grew.  The fact that a single bud has the power to split concrete apart in this way has always remained a vivid illustration for me of the force impelling the Wood element upwards and forwards.

And a sense of movement must always be associated with this element, for movement of all kinds is what Wood enjoys.  It can be said often to appear to enjoy activity for activity’s sake.  One of the traditional qualities associated with it is that it controls our tendons and ligaments, the parts of our body which dictate our movements.  They tighten and relax as they propel the body forward, back, up or down. If you clench your hand it is the Wood element which first tightens your fist and then relaxes it to allow it to lose its tension.  If you do this a few times in succession, you will feel how much effort is needed to keep this repetitive movement going.  Eventually your muscles will be too tired to respond to your brain’s command and simply allow the tendons to lie still there as though defeated.  All sportspeople have to concentrate much of their work on honing the Wood element in themselves.  Just watch footballers out on the pitch before a match gradually exercising their muscles to a condition which will allow them to work at full strength for the whole of the match.

We are usually quite unaware of all the normal effort involved in moving around in our daily life, unless we are ill, when every attempt to move is exhausting, or when we are too tired to make the effort and are just glad to sit still.  But there, hovering behind each everyday movement we make, is the Wood element doing its busy work without our noticing it.  We can see this easily when we watch a body on the move, as we observe Wood controlling every stage of this activity, from a blink of our eyelid to the lifting of a leg as we walk.  But we have to remember that the elements also do their work in all the other spheres of our life, those which relate to our mind and our spirit.  Wood’s influence extends to these, too.

It does this by adding impetus and strength to our mental activities and emotional impulses (those of our spirit).  If we translate this image of a Wood person striding strongly into the future into a mental image, we can see how the same impetus which guides our movements can guide our thoughts and the way we respond emotionally to life.  It is likely that a Wood person may not wish to dwell too long upon the intricacies relating to our approach to life, the decisions we need to make, the way in which we distinguish what is essential from what is not essential for us to do.  They are more likely to want to move on quickly to a new thought, a new decision, a new approach to life, not wishing to dwell too long in one place in the same way as their feet itch to move their body forward.

If we want to deepen our understanding of some of the qualities of the Wood element, it will be good to look at its role in forming the initial phase of each cycle.  Let us think first of the impetus needed to change things from a quiescent phase as they slow to a stop to a more active phase as they start up again at the beginning of their next cycle.  I have many mental images of the way the different elements display themselves.  I find a picture of the Wood element that I have is very helpful here, which is that of an old steam train.  We can all visualize the train gradually coming to a halt;  its engine slowly stops, releasing steam, its wheels slow down, each becoming visible as it emerges from the blur of its movement at speed.  The train appears to be releasing its breath until at last, with its final puff, it comes to a halt.  The movement from slowing down to halting leads forward from what we can call the Metal phase of the train’s cycle of movement, its ending phase, to its Water phase, almost its dormant phase, as movement stops and all falls quiet.

What then will need to be done to re-invigorate the train’s energy to allow it to be re-started?  All kinds of bustling activity will have to take place.  Similarly much effort is involved in moving things forward from the passive Water phase of winter to the active Wood phase of spring.  It is to Wood’s natural energy that we owe the ability for things to restart in this way.  In the steam engine, all is activity, as coal is heaved manually into the furnace, shovelful by shovelful, to power the furnace which will drive the engine forward.  The driver and fireman leap into action, as though trying to keep up with the fire devouring all that they feed it with.  Gone is the temporary peace of the stationary train.  All is hurry and bustle.  Activity has replaced non-activity.  Thus does spring’s Wood energy bustle in its attempts to bring life back to the apparently lifeless energy of winter.  Keeping this image in mind is a very practical way of understanding the power that Wood harnesses in restarting all cycles.   

What Wood finds difficult are situations which challenge its need to stay on the move, things which force it in some way to come to a halt.  We can visualize examples of this in physical terms as situations in which Wood people are prevented from moving, for example if they work in a sedentary office job.  This was true of a Wood patient of mine who felt that her working life was spent as though she was chained to her desk.  Inevitably this had an effect upon her health, and might indeed have been regarded, as I did regard it, as the main cause of her physical symptoms.  All of them, from her migraines to her back-ache, disappeared after treatment of her Wood element, and this treatment included my suggesting that she would benefit from changing her work at a desk for something more active, if this was possible.  I found it almost laughingly appropriate that when she returned for follow-up treatment some months later she told me that she was now happily working for a gardening company which involved much time spent in the open air tending to the growth of plants, such a Wood-like occupation.

It is always good to think of the elements as together creating a complete cycle of activity, with each element allotted its specific activity within that cycle.  I think of them as each waiting for the element before it to do its work before it takes over for the time of its activity.  In terms of the year, this reflects its particular season, before the change of season dictates that it is time to hand over to its successor element.  Because the demands of our element so dominate our lives, I feel that each of us is reluctant to allow our element to give up its place, as each season has to the next in nature.  In a profound way, each us, so closely tied in with our particular element’s demands and wishes and under its power, would much prefer to bask in the blessings our season showers us with, not merely for that one season each year but for the whole of the year.  In my case, Fire might like to enjoy a lifetime of summers, and Wood would bask in the joys of the year’s renewal in a lifetime of springs.  But, as we know, this can never happen, so instead each of us must make the most of what our element’s season offers us once each year.

We therefore also have to take the greatest advantage of where our element places us in terms of the cycle of any activity.   Wood is the element that most enjoys doing things just for activity’s sake, and is less interested in completing an activity that it enjoys starting.  The bud, after all, hands over to the summer, Fire’s season, to draw it up to its full height.  In a similar way, Wood people are not as interested in completing what they have started as perhaps we would assume they should be.

I had a Wood patient who was happiest in his retirement working on repairing a boat he had bought.  On asking him what kind of a boat, I was not surprised when he answered, “wooden, of course”.  Interestingly, his wife complained that he spent all his time fiddling around with different bits of the boat, but never actually completed it sufficiently to take it out on to the water.  I did not find this odd.  Wood people like working on things (particularly, as here, if they are made of wood), but are not so concerned with finishing them.  They just enjoy the doing of things, often just for doing’s sake.  Other elements, above all Metal, want things to be completed, or need to have things complete.  For Wood, completion can bring to an unsatisfactory conclusion what they most enjoy, which is actively continuing to carry on doing what they are doing.

A Wood patient told me this week:  “I always have these bright ideas, but then I never do anything about them.”  If we translate this into an image of the Wood element in nature, this is like shoots popping up on all sides above ground in spring, many of which simply get trampled underfoot without growing to full size, with only a few gradually given the time and space to develop into mature plants.  I cannot, for example, imagine any other element expressing itself in these words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

45. The seven ages of man (and woman)

I have always liked to see the five elements as each embodying one of what are known as the Seven Ages of Man (though two of those ages are shared between the five elements).  If we think of human life as circling in stages from birth to death, each life forms a similar progression to that of the elements, as it passes from its beginnings in Water on to Wood, to Fire, to Earth, to Metal and finally back to Water again.  As Shakespeare puts it in Jacques‘ famous soliloquy in As you like it:

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant…..

And ending with:

………………Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

I see each phase of this circle of life as imparting its own quality to that life, each adding the quality of the element which it represents to those whose guardian element it is.  There will therefore always be something of the child in a person with Wood as their guardian element, as there will be something of the exuberant joyfulness of the young adult emerging into the wider world of the adult in all Fire people, whatever their age.  Each Earth person will show something of the mature adult throughout their life, as will a young Metal person show something of the wisdom of those approaching old age even in childhood.  Water, always the most mysterious of all elements, the beginning and end of all things, will show both the naivety of the child which Wood always shows and the age-old wisdom of those living at the end of their days, which Metal hints at.

If a five element practitioner is unsure which element dominates in one of their patients, and they are unable to get enough information from their five senses to point towards one element, an attempt to see their patients in terms of how they appear in relation to the kind of stage of life they represent is a further way of helping our diagnosis.  In my book Keepers of the Soul  I gave the example of my mother, definitely of the Wood element, who showed a childlike enjoyment of life at nearly 90 years of age, and I have a Metal son who I turn to to put me right about decisions in my life which my Fire element does not appear mature enough to make.

In this context, it is interesting to note the emotional ages of the friends we choose.  I seem mostly to have chosen those who are further along the cycle of the elements than me, predominantly the Metal element.  I notice, too, that other people’s choices of friends reflect something about the need for their own element to receive support often from an element not their own which stimulates them.

I have never made a statistical survey of people’s elements compared with the elements of their friends.  This would indeed prove an almost impossible task, given that we need to treat a person for some time before really being sure of their element.  But I suspect that many of us choose friends from amongst elements other than our own.  I have always certainly done so, because, I have decided, I do not wish to have to observe in my friends the weaknesses I see in myself.   

42. Tips for novice five element practitioners

It takes time for new five element practitioners to become sufficiently comfortable and relaxed in the practice room to make their patients feel safe enough to remove their masks and tell us what their problems really are.  So those starting on their practice must not demand too much of themselves.  Many of the problems the novice practitioners have are learning about how to maintain control in the practice room.  I think their greatest worry is always at first directed at trying to diagnose the right element, rather than doing that most essential of all things, which is getting to know their patient and putting their patient at ease with them.  No patient stops coming for treatment if we don’t diagnose the right element, but they do stop if they feel uneasy in the relationship to us.  Rather than concentrating all our attention upon trying to track down the element, we should instead take as much time as is necessary to establish a sense of trust between our patients and us, and make sure that they feel we are really interested in learning about their lives.  This provides the necessary foundation for a good patient-practitioner relationship, without which no diagnosis, even of the right element, will ensure successful treatment.  If a patient is uneasy in our presence, I like to think that their elements cower away, and fail to respond to treatment, however focussed it is.

It is good if we take some time for what I call setting the scene for treatment for our patients, so that they understand better what treatment involves.  It is useful to have in our minds a checklist of the topics we should discuss with them before they start treatment. They need to be given some facts, such as how many treatments they should be prepared for, how spaced-out these treatments will be and how treatment might affect them.  We also need to give them time to ask their own questions, for most of them will arrive for their first treatment with very little idea about what treatment will involve and what they should expect from it.

This blog is also in answer to more of the questions the practitioners at our latest seminar in Beijing asked.  Thinking how best to answer them, I realised that it would be useful for me to work out a kind of protocol to act as a checklist for each of us to go through with any new patient.  In our eagerness to get started, we often forget that patients come to us usually unfamiliar with acupuncture, and very uncertain about what to expect; they are therefore often uneasy.  It helps both them and us if we prepare the ground before they come for their first treatment so that they are already to some extent prepared for what is going to happen. 

In working through this preparatory checklist now, I had to think about how much to include in it, and how to condense the essential components of five element treatment into a simple format.  The list below is my first attempt at doing this.   

1. First of all, you must show that you are really interested in your patient, and are curious to learn as much about their lives as they wish to share with you.  Often the time with us is the first time anybody has shown them any real interest in their life, apart from perhaps their physical symptoms.  You have to develop a good memory for all the things they tell you, noting particularly those things which send up little warning signals in your mind.  We were told to call them “red flags”, meaning that here is something significant which we need to explore in greater detail with our patient later on.
2. .We must help our patients understand that five element acupuncture treats the whole person, body, mind and spirit, and that, unlike Western medicine, we are not interested only in their physical symptoms, but in their emotional well-being as well.  This is often a surprise to them, and usually a very welcome surprise.
3. We must not be judgemental or bring our own agenda into the treatment room.  We do, however, bring our own life experiences with us so that we can offer our patients help based upon what we ourselves have learnt.  Even if we have a patient who we find difficult to deal with because they have such a different approach to life or different values from us, we must be careful not to show that we find their opinions difficult or find them in any way unpleasant as human beings.  We have no right to impress our own values and prejudices on our patients.
4. We must remain in control of treatment at all times, which means that we don’t allow a patient to direct whatever he/she wants from treatment.  It is up to us to decide what treatment the patient needs and which element to treat, and we should not involve them in discussing our clinical decisions.  The frequency and spacing of treatments is also a clinical matter, and we are the only ones competent to decide on this.  If they are not happy with this, we are quite in our right to suggest that they go to another practitioner.
5. One of the lessons we all have to learn is to not to allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by events in our patients’ lives, but to develop sufficient emotional strength in ourselves to cope appropriately with whatever problems our patients present us with.
6. If you feel that there is something not right with your relationship to your patient, then do what we are often too nervous to do, which is learn to talk things through with your patient.  Always start by saying, “I feel that….(for example) you are not happy with your treatment..”  Often this will resolve problems because you may be surprised that your patient is quite happy with what is going on and it is your uncertainty which is making you doubt that your treatment is helping.
7. Don’t discuss a patient’s treatment with them outside the treatment room. If the patient has a problem they want to discuss with you, tell them that you will discuss this at the next treatment, and make an appointment for them to come.  Don’t discuss their treatment on email or social media.  All discussion needs to be kept private in the practice room.  If the patient wants to go on talking at the end of treatment and your next patient is waiting, you have to tell them that you will discuss this further at their next treatment.  Always keep to your treatment schedule, because some patients love to go on talking!
8. I don’t think it is helpful for patients to be having different kinds of therapy at the same time, for example herbs and acupuncture, because you never know which of the therapies is helping or whether the patient is not responding to your treatment because of the effect of the other therapy.  If a patient wants to try out all sorts of different therapies, I always tell them that it would be better if I don’t treat them.
9. There is always a problem with how to deal with a patient taking medicines prescribed by Western-based medical practitioners and five element acupuncture.  Some drugs are life-saving and must never be discontinued.  Others can gradually be reduced if the acupuncture treatment is helping the patient’s condition, but this must always be done with the consent of the patient’s prescribing practitioner.  We must not interfere with Western medical treatment, even if we feel that it is not helping our acupuncture treatment.  We always hope, though, that our patients will persuade their doctors to reduce the drug doses when the drugs are no longer necessary.
10. I believe that we are given our guardian element at the moment of our conception, and that it stays the same throughout our life, shaping that life in a special way according to the qualities of the element that has been handed to us as our elemental destiny.  I do not believe that it changes, although different elements may colour the dominant element at different stages of our life, depending on the life experiences we are subjected to.  For example the Metal element may appear to overshadow our guardian element for a while if we suffer some great bereavement, or Fire if we are very happy in our relationship.  But below this superficial colouring of another element there always remains the presence of our dominant element.

41. Is a state of balance ever achievable or even desirable?

It was whilst I was thinking about how the different elements manifest their states of balance or imbalance that I realised that it would be useful to look at this from a much wider perspective, rather than from the point of view of each element.  I think we need to ask ourselves whether any of us can ever be said to live our lives in a state of anything more than temporary balance.  The pressures upon us exerted by those close to us, our families and friends, as well as the many thousands of others amongst whom we live in our communities, let alone the many millions more around this small globe of ours, all these pressures make it unlikely that any of us can avoid our elements being subject to all kinds of stresses which must lead them at intervals to struggle to maintain whatever balance they may have achieved.  Or at least to weaken their ability to withstand pressures upon their balance.

Before I look more closely at this, I need to define for myself what I regard as a balanced human being, and how far that is something achievable at more than rare times.  I must also ask myself how far we should regard this as something desirable.  Is there, as I think there may be, a positive side to the constant struggle of the elements to maintain their balance?  Is this, perhaps, something which offers human beings the potential for leading stimulating, creative lives?  In my Keepers of the Soul I wrote that we are, as I put it, “necessarily incomplete”.  I say this because each element is only able to hold its dominating role for one-fifth of the complete cycle.  We can see this in nature where each season only holds sway for a short time before having to hand over to the next season, Wood in spring having to hand over to Fire in summer, and so on.  This finds its echo within us, as each element passes on its function to the next, as they work together to bring us life. This means that since each element represents only one stage in the complete cycle, each has to accept that it is as I put necessarily incomplete.  And therefore each in a different way always remains at heart dissatisfied because the tasks it sets itself are never done.  If I think of my own element, Fire, everything I do is in some way connected with Fire’s need to enter into relationships with everybody it meets, and its deep need is to ensure that these relationships are good ones, bringing the happiness and joy its Heart strives for in all whom it encounters.  But then it must hand over its duties to its child element, Earth, as the cycle rolls on from summer to late summer.  And Earth, not pre-occupied as Fire is with the need to enter into relationships with everybody, has instead been given its own quite different task, that of producing the fruit of the two preceding elements, Wood and Fire.

The actions for which each element is responsible can therefore be seen as finding their completion not within the element itself but in the succeeding element, Wood in the Fire element, Fire in the Earth element and so on.  Each element concentrates with almost fanatical dedication upon achieving that one aspect of the complete cycle which it is its task to perform.  Fire can only do what Fire is there to do, just as summer can only be summer, and Water can only do what Water is there to do, as winter is always winter.  There is something almost tragic in each element’s recognition that it will not by itself be able to complete the tasks it sets itself, but has to hand them over incomplete to the elements which succeed it.  Wood will forever seek to carry out all the activities it is there to initiate, but will never complete all the activities it wants to before the cycle moves on and it has to hand over to Fire.  And so on, from element to element.

I like to think of the play of the element within us as what I call representing our elemental DNA, and like our body’s physical DNA this gives us a unique imprint which distinguishes us from anybody else.  The elements’ interactions within us are unique to us so that no Earth element manifests itself the same in any two people.  This is all the truer of those more complex inter-elemental relationships which we call those of the elements within our guardian element.  If a person’s Wood element is diagnosed as also having much of the quality of the Earth element within it, colouring its dominant green with a little yellow, and even deeper within it has a pink tinge which the Fire element adds to the Earth within it, this combination of elemental colours stamps us with a unique mark, as unique as any DNA sequence discovered by modern science.

And I also like to think that there may be a purpose to this, some reason why human beings have been endowed with this unique potential, offering each of us the possibility of being ourselves and like no other. None of us can truly know why human beings have been chosen amongst all the sentient beings on this planet to have been given individual destinies associated with one of the five elements.  No other species has to cope with the difficult task of shaping its own destiny as we have.  All others seem to be satisfied with living a herd-like existence, one among many, being almost clones of each other.  Each of us, on the other hand, has been given what seems to be an individual fate, related to the challenges the interactions of the elements within us offer us.  This seems to be for some deep purpose, related to our ability each to think our own thoughts and do our own thing, and therefore closely linked to the demands of our guardian element.   

 It would appear that we sit at the pinnacle of advanced life, our brains by far the most complex of any other living creature’s, with unparalleled ability to shape our environment both physically and spiritually through our artistic and intellectual achievements.  No other creature has managed not only to stand on its two feet and reach up to the heavens above, but to devise the means to escape the pull of gravity to penetrate far out into the secrets of deepest space.  And no other living creature, as far as we know, even wants to do this.  This curiosity of ours pushes us inexorably to try to decipher the secrets of the universe.  And somehow I feel that the great diversity which the characteristics of the different elements endows each of us with must play its part in all this.

I have written in The Keepers of the Soul of my own understanding of why this should be so.  Others may obviously have quite different views on this. I wrote: “I like to think that the impetus within us to evolve towards ever higher levels of diversification became so overriding at some point in our evolution that we were no longer able to contain within each of us the totality of characteristics which make up humankind.  Our very complexity appears to have placed so great a burden upon our individual capacity to absorb the awesome range of powers the human being has developed that we might be said to have burst the bounds of what each of us can encompass within ourselves of the human condition, becoming dispersed into so many fragments of the whole.”

If this is in some respects true, then the unique destiny conferred upon each of us through the imprint of our elemental DNA places not only a burden upon us, but is potentially a gift which we can make use of if we choose to do so.  But it leads us often to live precarious lives, subject to the unique demands placed upon us by the interactions of the elements within us and their interaction, in turn, with the elements of all those we encounter.  It is little wonder that human life is experienced as being so complex that it often threatens our ability to maintain our balance.

 

22. What do the different elements get angry about?

I always like looking at the ways the elements express their different emotions, and  that has made me think about how each expresses its anger.

 

When we express emotions other than the one our particular element imprints us with, these other emotions will always be coloured a little by the specific emotion which has our guardian element’s stamp upon it.  If I take the example of Metal, then Metal’s expression of anger will always be tinged with Metal’s own emotional needs, one of which is it demand for others to respect it.  What makes Metal most angry, therefore, are likely to be those things which impact negatively upon its sense of self-respect, or, by extension, upon the self-respect of others around it.  I have seen Metal people becoming extremely angry, and to me quite frighteningly so, when somebody has ridiculed them openly in front of other people.

 

Earth can show its anger when it feels that somebody is not paying enough attention to what it wants to say, or interrupts it in mid-sentence.  Its need is not so much a craving for sympathy, but a craving for understanding in its widest sense.  It wants to be given the space and time to express exactly how it feels, and becomes irritated if it is not allowed to do this.  This is something that I, as a rather over-hasty Fire person, have sometimes been guilty of doing, at my Earth patients’ cost.  

 

I have found Water’s expression of anger to be more hidden, but like Metal’s it can be quite frightening to witness.  It can appear out of the blue (what a Water-like phrase!), like a tornado erupting suddenly out of a clear sky.  Water needs to be constantly on the move, and its sudden expression of anger can be its response to feeling that something is blocking its path.  Behind this outburst of anger lies all the power which Water exerts on all it does.

There is then the Wood element’s own expression of anger.  This is an element most at ease within a given structure and with order in its life.  It is when structure and order are under threat that its dominant emotion of anger will show its stress.   It is easy for us to see an exaggerated example of this in the shouting and fighting to be observed in drunken people on the streets at night.  There is, however, the flipside to this, which is often forgotten, and which often leads us to misdiagnose the Wood element.  This is the suppressed expression of this emotion which we call lack of anger.  Here the voice can speak in an exaggerated whisper instead of a shout, and there may be a marked inability to express anger where anger would be a balanced reaction to some external event. 

Lastly, how do I think Fire tends to express its anger?  I should know, because I am, after all, Fire, but there is always the complication with Fire that, unlike any other element, it has two sides to it, which I have called Inner and Outer Fire.  I have always felt that in some ways this double-sided element could really be described as harbouring two elements, making a total of six in all.  I remember saying this to JR Worsley one day, and was rather delighted when he nodded.  Of course the two sides share Fire’s sensory signatures of colour, sound and smell, but their emotional approach to life is very different.  I can really only speak at first-hand for Inner Fire, although having observed Outer Fire for many years I have learnt to understand some of its qualities as I have those of the other elements.

I know what makes me angry, and that is any injustice meted out to other people, not so much injustice of which I am the object.  I like to fight my battles more on behalf of others than on behalf of myself, and feel deeply, and thus become very angry, when others are wronged.  In my experience Outer Fire’s anger is more directed at feeling that they have been the victim of some injustice.  Both sides of Fire, though, will not harbour grudges for long for they tend to feel that difficulties in any of their relationships with others may somehow be their fault.  Their anger is therefore likely to simmer down quite quickly, once they acknowledge their own role in whatever initially angered them. 

These are my thoughts on the different expressions of anger which each of the five elements may show.