Season Travel

Fear, Fire Element, Jet lag, Seasons, Transitions, Water Element, , ,

I was recently invited by my publisher Singing Dragon Press to write a blog as part of their marking of World Acupuncture Day on November 15th. As is my usual way of working, I chose to write about the current season. The wrinkle is that the current season in London where Singing Dragon is based is winter, while I am inhabiting summer in the Adelaide Hills.

Therefore it was an interesting exercise to write about winter and the Water Element without feeling its manifestations around me. It required a kind of inner travel to the cold, wet, dark of the northern winter where nature’s energy is shrinking, folding in on itself and withdrawing within. All this while experiencing warmth, brightness and energetic expansion as my sensory experience.

It took a few days of contemplating this polarity before, quite unexpectedly one day, the winter muse led me to the computer and poured out a Watery musing on the nature of fear. I was transported to the bleak winter landscapes of the UK and the resonances of that season.  It was not easy to hold the dual experiences of outer summer and inner winter, but it did work. I wonder if I was tuning into that same discombobulation that occurs when we physically transport ourselves to the opposite hemisphere and season. One of the ways of working with that seasonal upheaval is to hold points of the Element to which you are travelling, pulling yourself forward to your destination in a seasonal rebalance. While I didn’t actually hold Water points on myself when doing the inner season travel, my conscious focus on the qualities of winter and Water had a similar effect.

The blog is now the property of Singing Dragon so I can’t repeat it here, but you can read it at this link, whatever your hemispherical condition.

Finding Wisdom in Water’s Depths

Doorway to Insight

Decision Making, Flexibilty, Headache, Neck pain, Vision, Wind invasion, Wood Element, , , , ,

Gall Bladder 14 ~ Yangbai ~ Yang White

A few weeks ago, in the middle of the night, I walked into a door. I was going to the bathroom and in the fog of sleep, missed my bearings and barrelled headlong into a door jamb. The shock was immense, the pain intense. I was left with a lasting headache, neck stiffness and a cut-bruise above my left eye.

When I surveyed the damage the next morning, I realised that the encounter with the door had left a neat round red dot just below the acupoint Gall Bladder 14. Which left me pondering the significance of this particular point. To start with, it’s spring time here, season of the Wood Element. Then I realised that the time was about midnight which is the time when the high tide of Qi moves through the Gall Bladder channel. And add to that it was lack of vision that caused the accident and vision is the sense of Wood.

Correspondences were piling up.

When a number of the resonances of an Element coincide, it is often an indication that an Element is calling for attention. So what was my Gall Bladder Official calling on me to see? I went to my library to review the significant uses of Gall Bladder 14. One of the sentences that resonated with me was from the Acupuncture Point Compendium:

“Yang Bai: Good for Wood constitution types whose spirit needs encouraging into action or who are in a muddle; they have a plan but are failing to firm it up and move on… The clarity which this point brings is emphasised.” Indeed, clarity is embedded in the point’s name: while one translation of bai is white, another meaning is clear.

It’s true that I’m much better at making plans than carrying them out. Our constitutional Element seems to gift us with a mix of strengths and challenges that relate to that Element. I can come up with all kinds of ideas but I’m slow to make the firm decisions that are needed to put them into action. It seems my unconscious was bringing this lesson home in a very firm way.

Upon reflection, there are a number of things on my to-do list that have been there for a long time. The certificate program for my students, making videos to promote classes, changes to my website. These are all about moving forward with my work in the world. Could it be that I was being whacked over the head so I’d get the message to get my finger out?

Another indication for Gall Bladder 14 is that it clears wind. Not the kind that embarrasses you in public, but wind that is climate of Wood and which can invade the body. When there is wind invasion, the result can be headaches, neck stiffness, and jerking and shaking conditions like Restless Leg Syndrome. In my case I’ve had a lifelong susceptibility to wind invasion, and headaches have never been far away.

But in the four weeks since my whack on the head, I’ve noticed that I’ve been much less troubled by wind, even though it is spring when I’m most susceptible. For five days after the collision I had a stiff neck and headache, as if I’d had a small car accident. But on the sixth day I noticed that the pain and stiffness had gone. In fact my neck has since felt better and more flexible than it has in years. What’s more the whole experience has prompted me to focus more on following through on projects and moving into action.

It seems the bodymind has an intelligence that is below consciousness. It provides information to us in dreams, in intuitions, and if we don’t pay enough attention, it can find a dramatic way to bring the information to us. Bringing awareness to the threads of the fabric of our lives can offer guidance. And the Five Element model offers us a framework that can provide connection and meaning to things that may seem otherwise unrelated.

Location of Gall Bladder 14

 

 

On the forehead, 1 cun above the middle of the eyebrow , directly above the pupil when the eye is looking straight ahead.

 

 

To find more about the resonances of the Elements, I recommend my book
The Way of the Five Seasons