Five Element Acupuncture- A Patient's Perspective

I'm writing this blog because I have often been asked, "Does acupuncture really work?" and I have been thinking about it long and hard.

My answer is, "It depends."

It depends on the style of acupuncture (my husband visited a clinic in Delhi where he was hooked to a machine that gave out a signal.  Based on this, a doctor shoved in some needles.  My husband felt nothing, then or later).

It depends on the practitioner and their ability to read the patient's problems and what is causing them.  ("When you see a child who comes for treatment, it's often the parents who need it," said my friend Nora.)

It depends on the nature of the condition to be treated and whether the patient has tried other systems of medicine or healing.  (A visiting scientist and friend from California recently said that for several days he had been hiccuping continuously.  Nothing helped until he finally turned to acupuncture, and the hiccups stopped soon after.)

Acupuncture did not enter my life in any determined decisive way.  Like most of my decisions, I drifted towards it entirely by chance.  While returning from America, I stopped to meet my mother in law, who was staying in London with her old college friend, Nora.  I spent a few days with them and when I left, Nora gave me a book to read on five element acupuncture as I am interested in traditional forms of healing.

I did not think I would ever need treatment, but many years down the line, when I was feeling burnt out and low, and conventional medicine had no answers, I turned to acupuncture.  Instinctively, I turned to Nora, who had become a close friend.  Since then, I have returned to London several times, sometimes just for a visit and on several occasions, for treatment as well.

Each time, my experience with acupuncture has been the same (though the treatments have varied with each session).  There are some points which trigger a discernible physical reaction- warmth in certain parts, an unblocking of the ears or nose, coughing out mucous or tears that well up in my eyes.

But these occasions are few.

Generally, there is a feeling of relaxation, sometimes fatigue, a desire to sleep or to release one's emotions in some way.  I often go for treatment when I am at the crossroads of important decisions (as I realize later).  They are times when things seem very difficult or when I have just finished a period of struggle and am completely worn out.  I feel I need something more than my yoga practice or a holiday, to renew myself.

I always love the moment when I enter Nora's clinic.  I get a timeless feeling of being part of something old and venerable, and recently, of being in the presence of a master.  Nora is warm ('fire'), spontaneous and brings a wisdom and slant of her own to the practice.  (In fact clinic is the wrong word for this place, for it is filled with paintings, calligraphy, beautiful stones, a cheerful air and a comfortable bed where one can lie down and shrug off one's cares.  My son is very fond of the dragon in the corridor, whom he has named 'Flamie Jamie'.)

Decisions about diagnosis and treatment seem to come from Nora and beyond - as if a whole line of  teachers were standing behind guiding her spirit and her hands.  This might sound fanciful, but it's what I felt on this visit.

For those who wonder how it's done, five element acupuncture is not a gentle, wishy washy process.  The positioning of the needles is very precise.  Often the spot is warmed before by placing a little cone of moxa and heating the area, and repeating this a few times - if you don't tell the practitioner when you feel the warmth, you're likely to get slightly singed!  You don't feel the needles as they go in, but when the point is being needled there is a definite tug, sometimes a feeling of being stung!

Energy shifts and changes can be very strong and the effect is not always felt immediately.  This time I felt like a rusty old engine - coughing, spluttering and eventually coming to life.  Nora detected a block in my ears that I had completely forgotten about (after having visited several doctors, all of whom told me there was nothing wrong).  I awoke the next morning to find smells from the street almost overwhelming as I began to smell clearly after ages.  Needless to say the migraines have also been receding.

After the treatments, there is a general feeling of stillness and contentment that I have experienced time and again. A feeling of being at peace with nature and with oneself.  It's happened too often to be a coincidence.

After a week I returned to India to find I was able to deal with all the physical and emotional demands around without getting flustered.  I began to change my attitude towards things that had got me stressed and anxious earlier (this was partly a result of feeling stronger and partly an aftermath of conversations with Nora about dealing with things that worry me- something no doctor in any conventional clinic would waste their time doing).

The change has also reflected in my creative decisions - writing to begin with.  I have found a tranquil place to write and I now have the energy to write almost everyday, which I didn't have earlier.  My thoughts about what to write and the next project to embark upon have changed tremendously.  Right now I'm standing in the midst of a very happy jumble of paths, feeling my way forward.

For me, five element acupuncture with Nora has cleared many physical and mental blocks at times when conventional medicine or yoga could not.

Working Through One's Element

I write this with some trepidation as I am neither skilled nor trained in five element acupuncture.  I am an amateur observer, however, over the years I have enjoyed and benefited from applying information about the five elements in my life.  Five element acupuncture, one of the traditional Chinese schools of healing, focuses on the nature of the elements (wood, earth, fire, metal, water).  Each of us is driven by one element more than the rest, this may be called our guardian element.  This element endows us with certain characteristic traits, which are expressed in a unique way depending on our internal and external environments.

For some time I have been thinking about professions - and how elements provide us with footholds or steep slopes, as we move along a career path.  This is something we don't often think about while choosing a career, perhaps we think of some aspects of our inclinations and try and imagine what the work will involve and require of us.  But many times, we are driven by an interest in a certain area followed by the economics of it, the time and travel constraints that the profession demands.

And so, when I unexpectedly found myself working as a journalist- doing interviews, I did not think too much of it initially.  It was only later, when I began dissecting the niceties and the technical aspects of the work that I began to think what my strengths and weaknesses were, in terms of my element - water.  Initially, I often felt that the warmth and joy of fire, the ease with which it deals with people, would have been an asset.  Or even, the mellifluous and satisfied verbalizing of earth, or the precision of metal with its ability of hitting the nail on the head in inimitable style.  In moments of doubt, the outward drive of wood might have made life simpler.  Instead, I find the jerkiness and uncertain restlessness of water, creating an environment that is not perhaps optimal for conversation.

We all find certain things easy to tackle and others more of a challenge.  The important thing, I realized, was not to lose sight of the intent and then to stay in one's element in a comfortable, (hopefully) balanced state and trust the element to enable one to find one's own way of doing the job. 

After reading several interviews done by other people, I realized that each style was very distinctive - there were some that were strongly judgemental, some where the interviewer intercepted often with his/her own views, some where the interview sounded like an interrogative battle and others that were easy, free flowing.

I realized then that the strength of water is in its fluidity and that I had no desire to put forth any view.  Another strange ability of water is to almost vanish from the scene when it so chooses.  In a sense, I could create a space for words to flow from the speaker without interrupting.  At the end of several interviews, people said to me, "I don't know how I ended up speaking so much, but I enjoyed it."  And various readers (who were familiar with the speakers) wrote or said that while reading the article, they could easily visualize the person speaking.

And, in my own way, I enjoyed it too.  It required quite a bit of concentration to remember my aim and not let preconceived notions get in the way.  I had to allow myself to function in a way that came naturally to me and to the speaker.  This resulted in a cohesive, distinct piece of work, I think.  I learned a lot as I listened to distinguished Indian scientists talking - and it wasn't just about science.

Five Element Acupuncture

There are now several kinds of acupuncture being practiced and I wanted to provide a small bit of information on an old, traditional Chinese style that has helped me – Five Element Acupuncture.

In accordance with the view of ancient Chinese medicine and philosophy, acupuncture views individuals as being comprised of the physical body, the mind and the spirit (soul). The body is divided into ten organs and two functions and imbalances in the functioning of these bring about diseases. Energy flows through organs along certain lines (meridians) in the body. Acupuncture points located along meridians can alter the energy in these organs and can thus be used to cure illnesses or correct imbalances.

Everything within and around us is composed of five basic elements – fire, earth, metal, water and wood. Each element has its own qualities and energy and affects all of nature (including us) in different ways, at different times and to different extents. Imbalances in these elements lead to imbalances of energy and consequently ill health. There is thus a close link between our energy, the energy of our environment and the vital cosmic energy (Qi). Acupuncture tries to restore the balance of the energy flow in a person through manipulating the energy at specific points within the body using needles.

Some of these ideas might be better illustrated through an excerpt from Nora Franglen’s book, ‘Keepers Of The Soul’:

“… My understanding of the powers of this new world of healing into which I had wandered was gradual, a slow awakening upon what was to me, at first, an alien landscape. I started out from the familiar world of physical medicine, in which I had grown up, the world of my body which was so reassuringly there before me, offering solid proof of my existence. I was to find this same body transformed into a shimmering mass of energy, sheltering what I now see as that deepest, most awesome part of me, my soul, and responding to the slightest pressure upon it of that soul. Ills of the body gradually melded with ills of the spirit, the familiar distinction between them now blurred. The needle, I found, could touch my soul as it so obviously touched my body, stirring that soul back to health, as it could the body.

Exactly what part the soul plays in our body’s functioning is of great concern to acupuncture, in contrast to western medicine, where the nature of this relationship, and its relevance to the health or ill-health of the body, is largely ignored, probably because it raises such disquieting questions. In the West, when the spirit is considered to be out of balance, it is said, almost dismissively, to produce that wide and vague category of illnesses labelled as stress-induced, psychosomatic, or, more succinctly, simply as mental. But, on the whole, that is as far as it goes. The close relationship acupuncture accepts sits uneasily within the tight framework within which Western medicine operates.

Such an approach has come to mean more to me than one which, by limiting the body rigidly to its physical role, concentrates almost entirely upon what can be physically measured and thus disregards anything which lies beyond the scope of its parameters. We can indeed choose to concentrate our attention upon the outside of things, for this is the face which is turned towards us, and thus it is possible to pause at the threshold of the physical, refusing to pass beyond that gate of skin and bone where beckon the deeper and more hidden parts of us. We can remain convinced that the physical contains the key to life’s secrets. And then the body becomes a trap, deceiving us by its very solidity and apparent reality into thinking that it holds the answers to all the questions of human health, and that it is only the inadequacy of our measuring methods, which have so far failed us.

But only the physical can be grasped by physical means. Science must always fall silent before that which is not physical within us, for instruments, measurers only of the measurable, cannot by their very nature grasp the immeasurable. And the realm of our soul, unlike that of our body, is immeasurable, although its effects are not. We can measure the heart beat, but can we measure what makes this same heart love? We can measure our physical being, those parts of us which appear, in life, upon the scan, and lie dissected after death upon the laboratory bench, but we cannot measure that something which transforms them into more than just the sum of their physical parts. And this quality is the spirit of life which makes us, in its presence, a person alive and functioning, and in its absence, a corpse.

This understanding gives to the practice of acupuncture a dimension which extends far beyond the sphere of physical medicine, moving into those areas which the fields of psychotherapy and spiritual counseling call their own. Where acupuncture relates to western medicine is in its concept of the physical energies of the various organs, it relates to modern psychotherapeutic practice in its understanding of the differing emotional characteristics which together make up the human being. Where it differs from both is in the fact that, having a clear concept of the soul within the body, it can use the same treatment to treat both. Indeed, it cannot treat one level without treating the others.

In acupuncture, physical health can never be regarded as distinct from mental or spiritual health. A division between what can be analysed by scientific methods and what, like distresses of the spirit or mental unease, cannot, is alien to it. The deep connections which it recognizes between our physical outer being and our inner being weave themselves tightly into every part of its diagnosis and treatment. It is the intimate relationship between these levels of our being whose delicate balance acupuncture accepts as being a determining factor in our health.

In diagnosing, an acupuncturist therefore makes no distinction between those ailments which appear physical in origin (a bad back, a headache) and those which appear to originate at a deeper level within us (heartache, depression, sadness, confusion), for all levels interconnect to form the one being, and all equally reveal the elements’ state of balance or imbalance. Indeed, the deeper ills, by reason of their depth and importance to us, are of particular concern to us, and demand the greater focus of a practitioner.

This is often an area of acupuncture unfamiliar to many who come for treatment, for acupuncture, being apparently a physical form of treatment, using a physical needle to penetrate the body’s surface, might appear to be capable only of treating the physical. It is not obvious to those with no knowledge of acupuncture how this physical needle placed in the body can relieve a patient’s depression or soothe his emotional distress. The ancient Chinese had no trouble in understanding this for they saw all things, and with them mankind, each as being a tiny manifestation of the Dao, the wholeness of all things, and therefore each person as potentially a complete whole in which body and soul merge together and must be treated together. A needle inserted in the body must affect the soul, just as the soul’s distress must affect the body.

There is of course, something which we can call the health of the body, as distinct from the health of the mind or of the spirit, but the relationship between these different levels of health is always close. They cannot be treated in isolation, by sending our soul, as it were, to church and our body to hospital. The soul accompanies the body on its journey to hospital, as the body accompanies the soul to its place of spiritual repose. It is when we ignore this fact that so much unnecessary suffering is caused to those who are sick…”

Footnote:

The excerpt is taken from "Keepers of the Soul: the Five Guardian Elements of Acupuncture". Published by Sofea Acupuncture, www.sofea.co.uk