For example, a Fire person, or what practitioners call a Fire Causative Factor, has the color red or more commonly a lack of red or pallor emanating from the >face; the emotion of too much joy, or more commonly not enough joy emanating from the personality; a body odor known as scorched or kind of burnt; and the sound of too much laughter or more commonly not enough laughter emanating from the voice. For an Earth Causative Factor person, it’s yellow, sympathy, fragrant and singing.  For Metal it’s white, grief, rotten, and weeping. For Water it’s blue, fear, putrid, and groaning and for Wood it’s green, anger or lack of anger, rancid and shouting or lack of shouting.

Now it’s simple enough to define this, but to sort it out in practice takes a great deal of experience. For example, have you ever tried to describe the odor of a banana to someone who has never seen or smelled one?  “Well, it kinda smells like a….uhh….uhh….a banana!”  So to learn the human odors takes a master leading the student like a child by the hand from one treatment room with a patient to the next, day after day, year after year. The same is so with the colors, emotions, and sounds. It is not something that can be taught in the classroom. It has taken me 34 years to become proficient at it, and I’m still learning from my master, Dr. J. Worsley. 

Furthermore, each element has a particular season of the year, time of the day, secretion from the body, and taste in foods.  Have you ever wondered why you sweat so much or so little compared to your friends?  Have you ever wondered why you can’t stand the summer heat, or the winter cold, or the greyness of winter, or why the wind makes you crazy?  Or why you have so much saliva in your mouth or not enough?  Or how your neighbor can eat a whole lemon all by itself? Or why some people talk so much you can’t stand to be around them? Or why some people have to wash their hands over and over before leaving the bathroom? Or why you can’t shed a tear? All these things and more, we call idiosyncrasies, can be explained by the Law of the Five Elements and help the Five Element practitioner diagnose and treat his/her patient.

“So what’s all this got to do with disease and how to get better?”, you ask? “I just want my pain to go away!”, you say. Well, a Five Element acupuncturist, knowing which of the 5 elements is the vulnerable one, diagnosing with all the above variables in mind, can simply treat the acupuncture points on the meridians relating to the afflicted element, and 9 times out of 10, the condition improves.

Now, here’s the point (no pun intended):  Western Medicine diagnoses by naming the pathology, which is the result of many years of imbalance, (eg. arthritis (inflammation of the joint), hypertension (too much tension), pneumonia (lung disease), irritable bowel syndrome (irritable bowel), headache (headache), plantar fasciitis (bottom of foot,

inflammation of the fascia), stroke (blood clot or bleeding in the brain), diabetes (too much sugar in the blood), cancer (abnormal cell growth that goes wild and invades normal tissue, killing the person eventually), auto-immune disease (a person’s immune system starts attacking that same person), and so on.……and then treats with medication to mask the symptom, or (if worst comes to worst) simply cut it out through surgery.

Chinese Medicine, through acupuncture and it’s other methods balances, integrates and tunes the human being so that the immune system strenghtens the healing force, called Ch’i and you heal yourself.  So often I hear, as a patient returns from the last treatment, “I really feel good in my self !” or “I finally feel like I used to, the good ole’ me !” 

The points on the meridians each have a tell-tale name which points to the power and use of that point.

Here is a sampling of the names: Gate of Life, Body Pillar, Walk Between, Palace of Weariness, Receive Tears, Water Rushing Out, Broken Bowl, Not At Ease, Lubrication Food Gate, Leg Three Miles, Hard Bargain, Gate of Hope, Cloud Gate, Bright and Clear, Wind Palace, Assembly of Ancestors, Penetrating Inside, Listening Palace, Eyes Bright, Door of Infants, and so on.  There are about a 1000 points on the body, each with a name, it’s like poetry in motion.

For example, a person who has a Causative Factor imbalance in the Wood Element, who has lost all hope, should have Liver 14, the Gate of Hope, stimulated; a person who has difficultly supporting himself, eg. can barely stand up because of weak legs or torso, or…. can’t support himself in life, should have Body Pillar (Governor Vessel 12) stimulated; a person who is caught between the responsibility to her job and the needs of her husband, with a liver imbalance, should have Walk Between (Liver 2) stimulated; a person who is having problems with digestion and has an imbalance in the Earth Element, Stomach meridian, should have Stomach 24, Lubrication Food Gate, stimulated.

This process is complemented by another important factor: the Spirit points. These buoy up a person’s spirit, which in this day and age is so often clouded, veiled, or downright in the dumps. There are acupuncture points called Soul Door, Spirit Burial Ground, Heavenly Ancestor, Thought Dwelling, Spirit Hall, Heaven Rushing Out, Encircling Glory, Heavenly Window, Heavenly Spring, Spirit Gate, Spirit Path, Spirit Storehouse…and more, each on a particular meridian, each for a particular individual in a particular predicament.

So you see, Five Element Acupuncture is a system of medicine that recognizes the whole human being, body, mind, and spirit as well as life circumstances. It is a modality of healing, an art and a science that really, REALLY, works AND it’s incredibly beautiful, exciting, poetic, even fun as it helps each person on their healing journey.