Acupuncture and the 12 Steps
I want to share a little bit of my story, how I came to be a Five Element acupuncturist, and how my 12 step program supports my practice.
When the social isolation measures were announced to manage Covid 19, I made the decision to stay in London. I enjoyed our beautiful city in extraordinary peace and quiet and I discovered Regents Park.
As we went into ‘lock down’ it was still Winter, but then day by day spring sprung: the blossom, the birdsong, and new green shoots on the trees, mating ducks and geese…and their progeny. The air became sweeter and the days longer and there was a sense of urgency and excitement, a freshness and vibrancy.
In the Five element tradition Spring is associated with the Wood element. Our Wood gives us the vision and purpose to manage our lives successfully. In balance Wood gives us the the strength and flexibility to cope with challenges but also gives us hope and optimism for life. That palpable power of nature put coronavirus in context, and reminded me that ‘this too shall pass’.
It was in observing the flow of the seasons and the creative cycle of nature that 5000 years ago the ancient Chinese developed the system of internal medicine known today as Five Element Acupuncture.
They noted every spring that our world is reborn. Spring gives way to the flowering and maturation of summer, then the ripening and harvest of late summer. This abundance is balanced by autumn decay. As the leaves fall and rot they restore the minerals back into the earth. And then Winter exposes the bare bones, the essence of things; seeds germinate and the cycle begins again.
They also noted that the rhythm of this cycle manifests as a dynamic force within us: the macrocosm and the microcosm...as without so within! So in winter we should hunker down and rest up, in preparation for spring when we sow new seeds.
I had had Five Element acupuncture myself for 30+ years. I was first treated when I was 27. I had what we called then yuppie flu – persistent tonsillitis and permanent exhaustion. Six months of treating the symptoms with antibiotics did nothing but after one acupuncture treatment I felt well again, and my acupuncturist supported me through divorce, death, redundancy, all the stuff life throws at you.
I spent most of my adult life working in brand management and TV – and a lot of it in the kids’ space. I loved it, but I was a becoming a digital dinosaur, and I had lost my curiosity to stay current. It was a journey that had started 10 years previously, when I began to realise that despite all that I had, I was not happy in my life, but it was working the12 steps that finally propelled me into action.
It was an act of faith to give up my career in television and retrain as an acupuncturist. It was probably magical thinking but I did think that God was on my side when I found out that the training started the week after my contract in Abu Dhabi finished. However, if I thought that with one bound I was free and would live happy ever after, I was wrong. It has been three years of hard work, work and more work.
I have always had a fairly ‘catholic’ with a small ‘C’ attitude to religion and spirituality. Having lived and worked in India, China, and the Middle East, and been exposed to multiple religious and spiritual beliefs I discovered that it made sense to look for the similarities not the differences.
Five Element Acupuncture is a spiritual practice, based on the philosophical principles of the Dao… the way, the path of enlightenment, the connection to source...oneness…non-duality…pure love...
Long before Einstein wrote: We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music”, the ancient Chinese understood that we are spiritual beings having a human experience… that we stand between heaven and earth.
Long before Michael Singer, the ancient Chinese also understood that everything is energy. In flow we can experience heaven on earth. We are all one with the universe and each other. Problems arise when we get stuck and can’t flow.
Long before Gabor Mate, the ancient Chinese understood that to be in good health, we have to have balance and harmony in our body, mind and spirit.
Lack of relative balance at any level leads to the manifestation of dis-ease long before actual symptoms develop.
FEA is a preventative system. As practitioners we seek to diagnose the elemental imbalance within a person before it manifests as chronic disease. A patient might show superficial symptoms: physical, mental or spiritual which may be an early warning but not underlying cause, and because everything is interconnected, like any ecosystem, if one department fails every part suffers.
In western medicine we treat the symptoms, but we are often missing the point. Just as for most of us ‘our drinking was but a symptom’ and we had to go deeper, often back to childhood trauma, to find the real malady and become really happy joyous and free. In the Five Element system we are looking for the element that is the root cause of the imbalance – The Causative Factor!
Nature is our teacher and gives us a diagnosis when we rely on our senses:
· what I see (there is a colour that manifests from the energetic vibration),
· what I hear (the sound - beyond the story),
· what I smell (distress has an odour),
· what I feel (not with my hands but my experience of the person in the room – the emotion, energy in motion).
Like 12 Steps practicing FEA is simple but not easy – especially for our western, rational minds! This is a heart based system. The heart is the supreme controller. The brain was deemed to be like bone marrow – squidgy stuff in a bony case.
Working the 12 steps and the principles has helped by giving me a spiritual programme, that has enabled me to better know myself and encouraged me to be of service to others.
In Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu writes:
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power”.
So if ‘Knowing others is intelligence’ when I first came to Step 4 where we look at our own behaviour I considered myself very intelligent because I had a list of resentments as long as my arm, and knew exactly what was wrong with everyone else, and who to blame. In working the steps I came to know myself better and have begun the process of mastering my defects.
Step 7 teaches us humility. As an acupuncturist I am an ‘Instruments of Nature’. That means I, me, my ego has to get out of the room. Just as we have to learn to be humble. And when I give a treatment and the patient comes back with great feedback I have to remember that nature that does the healing – not me. That would be playing God!
In Step 8 we practice brotherly love. Our willingness to make amends comes from the love that we have for a fellow. We have to love our patients, as a parent would love a child, without judgment, without expectation, wanting for them what they want for themselves (not what we want for them or what we think they need!).
Discipline is the principle of Step 9: when we make amends we have to focus on cleaning our side of the street, not allowing thoughts of the damage that might have been done to us or the mitigating circumstances that justified our behaviour. Equally in Acupuncture we have to be disciplined to stop the mind jumping in on the story, creating intellectual personifications… we are not psychotherapists… we have to to see the person in front of us, as a unique manifestation of the mystery of creation.
Learning this system, requires the same perseverance we apply to Step 10. Never mind the 10,000hour rule, it is life long learning – to know, without knowing – and where I need my higher power. Step 11 helps me to be awake and present to the person in the room, to get rapport and to focus on what my senses tell me. Just like the 12th Step, Acupuncture has to be a way of life and in practicing its principles we learn to be of service to the patient and to the divine.
And slowly, one day at a time the pieces of the puzzle are coming together and I am finally beginning to step into my new life, even in the Covid 19 hiatus. (I haven’t yet learnt to needle remotely although I am sure modern physics would make that possible). I am feeling that for the first time in my life my personal values and my professional life are integrated, the insides match the outsides and perhaps because old habits die hard… I say I am in the process of becoming a fully joined up and coherent brand!
