The Five Elephants In The Room
Exploring the mythic-cult membership that surrounds the Worsley Institute
“Jack, I’m thinking that the Worsley school could be a bit culty.”
These are the words my step-father-in-law says to me as we are having lunch in Panella, an Italian community kitchen underneath Trellick Tower in West London. He is training to be an acupuncturist and is following the same Worsley Five Element tradition that I did. The same Worsley tradition that my first practitioner Wendy Mandy followed and talked about on Russell Brand’s podcast ‘Under The Skin’, after having given him a treatment. The same tradition that made me fall in love with the magic of Chinese Medicine.
"What makes you say that?" I ask
"I saw a YouTube video of Worsley, and someone in the comments said he’s made everything up." he says
"Yeah I know what you’re talking about." I say
"Well, I mean is it true?" he says
"I think some of what he’s saying is, and some of it isn’t."
Later on that day I go on YouTube to refresh my memory about the video and the comments that were made about it. It’s a video where J.R Worsley, the gentleman who brought Five Element Acupuncture to the western world, explains the concept of the CF or Causitive Factor, which is catchy terminology for the root cause of disease. It’s the real diagnostic corner-stone of the practice, as the theory goes that if you are able to diagnose someone’s CF correctly, then you will be able to treat all symptoms and syndrome patterns, forever. When articulated in its fullness, it is an intriguing and beautiful argument, if not convenient and entirely magical in its thinking.
I go on the comments and here is what I see:
Kevin has a really full-on perspective here, and I can really feel how hell-bent he is on letting the world have it. If I didn’t know better, I would be really worried as a Five Element practitioner. The force of these strong opinions could really shake a new acupuncture student’s confidence and make them feel stupid for believing in what they are doing. It’s a complicated matter and Kevin could be right in what he’s saying, but if he is then I believe it’s for the wrong reasons.
Let’s look at it a little deeper.
"It’s a cult because the concept of a CF was completely made up by Worsley."
I think it could actually be a cult, but if it was, it wouldn’t be because of this.
The first thing I think about when I read this is, well, what does ‘made up’ actually mean?
The second thing I think about is, and this will depend on our definition of ‘made up’, is whether or not this makes it wrong. If something is ‘made up’, does that make it pointless as a pursuit, or ineffective as a healing practice, and devoid of any actual meaning or relevance in the world?
I don’t think so.
I can think of so many things that are essentially ‘made up’ that give meaning for millions of people: an ayahuasca ceremony, an internal family systems therapy, psychoanalysis, yoga, astrology, mythology - all of these things have been ‘made up’. Science is technically what was once ‘made up’ and is now proven by successfully repeating an outcome by cause and effect, and the scientific rational person just values that more in their perspective than a rain dance. Religion is totally ‘made up’, what it means to be a good person is also completely ‘made up’, the laws that we use to govern our societies are also ‘made up’ (and broken when convenient.)
But this isn’t the point.
What Kevin is really saying is that as there is no mention of the CF in the classical texts of Chinese medicine, that Worsley must have invented it, therefore making it not true.
The point is that if Worsley did invent the notion of the CF, he did so because in so doing in essence he is referencing a concept that is integral to Chinese Medicine: constitution. Constitution represents how an individual responds to life. It is what we have inherited from our parents and ancestors through blood, and from Heaven and the Kosmos through spirit. It influences such things as how robust are we when facing stress, the depth of our wellspring of potential energy, as well as the nature of our destiny (ming-命) and the likely habits that will become obstacles to it being fulfilled.
All of this is represented in Worsley’s notion of the CF.
Despite this however, I have known Five Element practitioners to be adamant that the CF isn’t related to constitution, and when I have pressed them for an answer as to why, they have been unable to say, which is always jarring if not a little irksome.
It is my personal summation that in the face of not knowing, one tends to make a comment that is rather dogmatic and absolutist in favour of whatever personal bias one has. “Worsley said that the CF is the CF and it’s the only thing that matters.” “Constitution is just what [insert name] practices and we don’t practise that kind of acupuncture.” “This is what we were taught and so anything else I’m not sure about.”
So, I guess if anything is culty in the Five Element community it’s this: The tendency to believe that one’s practice is true yet somehow completely separate from the wider tradition it is a part of and also sub-sequentially ignores.
This tendency is of course found in many if not all communities, from the religious community arguing that there is only one true God, to the baking community saying there is only one true way to make a Victoria Sponge. It’s just more prevalent in the Five Element community, because it is taught that one only needs to diagnose and treat the CF in order to administer effective treatment. As this is the essential foundation of diagnoses and practice, there is often little incentive to explore beyond this stage, because if you can correctly determine someone’s CF, then effective treatment is likely to follow.
Furthermore, no matter where we begin our journey on the vast map of something like Chinese Medicine, we’re going to receive rules to help contain the overwhelming content of information required for us to learn in order to get us started. They’re going to feel absolute, until we feel comfortable enough to question them, and for some people that time never comes, which is totally okay.
(For those who are interested in this matter, Judy Worsley, J.R Worsley’s second wife and the current head of the Worsley Institute was asked to clarify her position regarding CF and constitution by Lonny Jarrett in this article. As both are Five Element practitioners with 40+ years of experience and hold different positions on the matter, it makes for a very interesting read.)
“I’m glad now that I left Five Element Constitutional Acupuncture behind and study at an integrated university learning Five Elements from the classics and TCM.”
Ah, so it’s Five Element Constitutional Acupuncture now, is it? ;-)
The integrated university that Kevin is talking about is the College of Integrated Chinese Medicine, better known by its acronym CICM (Kick-em!) It’s a fantastic institution and I can recommend anyone in the U.K who is interested in training to be an acupuncturist to do so here, however, it’s a curious blend of both TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) and Five Element and has a completely different daignoses and practice approach to my own.
The ironic thing in his argument is that Kevin may have just replaced one dogmatic ideology with another, exclaiming that he has left Worsley acupuncture behind and now studies the real thing.
I don’t mean to put words into his mouth, but there is the subtle suggestion implied that what he was once doing was not correct and that now he’s seen the light. However, he omits the truth that this may only be correct in Kevin’s mind and whatever he believes to be true about Chinese Medicine. It’s great if we’ve seen the light, but most of the time the light only really shines on where we want to look.
So if for Kevin, true Chinese Medicine is what was written in the classic texts, then how much of TCM is actually represented by that belief?
TCM was initially developed (‘made up’, lol) in the 19th Century during the migration of Western Medicine into China. Western Medicine was a big deal, and had things that the Chinese had never seen before, and so practitioners of Chinese Medicine (or what would have just been called medicine at the time), sought to integrate these new and wonderful things into their own practise. This was the Chinese-Western Integration School (zhong xi huitong pai.)
However as the increasing political pressure of the Chinese Communist Party sought to keep up with the technologically advanced Western world, it was announced that “the theories of yin and yang, the five elemental phases, the six atmospheric influences, the zang-fu systems, and the acupuncture channels are all illusions that have no basis in reality” and that “old medicine is still conning the people with its charlatan, shamanic, and geomancing ways.” Pretty damning!
Thus, all of of the spiritual tradition and internal dimensions of Chinese Medicine were shamefully discarded in favour of Western values and scientific-rational technology. A new medicine cult was created.
The dogma in TCM is that it predominantly focuses on the thermodynamic condition of the physical body in relationship to health, and similarly to Western medicine, offers acupuncture point prescriptions that relate to the presenting pathology or syndrome pattern. Prescription points are not the philosophical basis of Classical acupuncture despite Kevin’s love of it. TCM doesn’t care much about the inner tradition of Chinese Medicine it left behind, one which emphasised the importance of nourishing a patient’s destiny whilst stressing the need for a practitioner to develop and cultivate themselves as part of that process.
In summary, its toolkit was taken from the principles of Classical Chinese Medicine, however its approach is modern and is in essence a Western Medicine intervention in the form of Chinese Medicine.
Which is totally okay!
It’s just ironic that Kevin thinks that he is practising something that is more classical, or true in its practice when in actuality it could be just as ‘made up’ as Worsley acupuncture, if not more so. This being said, not all TCM practitioners will work strictly in the way they have been taught, and the same can be said for Worsley Five Element acupuncturists, the danger in all cases is to assume that what one is doing is the real acupuncture and lose sight of the beautiful bigger picture → we can always learn more from each other.
You can read more about the development of TCM and its differences to Classical Acupuncture in an article written by the brilliant Doctor of Chinese Medicine, Heiner Frühauf, here.
“None of his concepts can be verified by any Chinese writings…Who knows where his theories come from, but they aren’t Chinese and can’t be compared to or verified by any of the original five element disciplines.”
I mean, this is really not true. I would love to emphasise how wrong this is at another time but for now let me just put forward that in terms of Chinese writing verification:
Worsley’s concept about the sheng and ke cycle of the Five Elements can be dated as far back as the 2nd Century B.C.E. as evidenced by writings by Cou Ye, a member of the Chinese School of Naturalism, Zi Ran, also known as the Yin Yang school. Cou Ye is the person who systematised the Five Element theory that we know of today regarding the creation and control cycle of the Five Elements. People can easily think that the Su Wen, and the Ling Shu, are the only Classical Chinese medicine references, and furthermore, overlook that medicine was largely influenced by the developing concepts found within Chinese Philosophy before those books were written.
Even regarding the CF, or what we may also understand as constitution, Confucius (722 - 479 BCE), who had a hugely significant influence regarding the ideal structure and morality of society, argued for the notion of a ‘Heaven’s Will’ and that there are constitutional aspects to life that cannot really be altered. For this reason there is very little writing after this period regarding the Eight Extraordinary Channels or the Constitutional Vessels, which are the points that may alter the meridians that govern our destiny. Those points and the philosophical reasons for using them or not have been the subject of contention between various schools for thousands of years, it just depends where you look.
Further regarding where Worsley's theories came from, it is prudent to consider that Worsley consolidated a great deal of oral transmissions from what has been documented as his Japanese teachers,
and that further investigation would show that Worsley was influenced by practitioners from Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Korea. As far as I am aware, what is known anthropologically regarding the practice of acupuncture and its transmission to and from these places is still an underdeveloped knowledge.
It’s also widely known that Worsley borrowed concepts from other medicine traditions besides Asia’s. For example, his concept of the “Law of Cure” in Five Element (how a practitioner may track treatment progression), actually comes from Constantine Hering (1800 - 1880), a German American disciple of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy.
Being that Worsley is apparently famous for not discussing his teachers or the circumstances around his training, there is an understandable air of secrecy that easily lends itself to the impression of a cult. Perhaps if there was more context regarding where and from whom Worsley received his training, there would be less of a sense that he is the source of all of the material, and some sort of master creator of an already well established system of medicine, under whom we can form a cult around.
If I were to make a final point about whether or not the Five Element community is a cult it would be this:
We as Western people have received a system of medicine from a part of the world we have called China, (Middle Kingdom > Ch’in/Qin Dynasty > China), the mainstream migration of which happened not even one hundred years ago. Collectively we have barely started to embody what it is.
One tiny part of this system is Five Element Acupuncture, and it is a beautiful expression of medicine that contains a profound internal tradition that is often omitted from world medicine altogether. This can come with the impression that we know or do something that the rest of world does not, and it’s something that would be good as practitioners to keep in check. Especially the Worsley Institute, who may feel that they have authority over a tradition simply on the basis that it shares the name of the man who made it popular in the West, and not because of their own understanding, cultivation or virtue.
People have a right to feel passionate about what it is that they do, and in a society where the concept of the individual is highly valued, powerful personalities may attract others to their beliefs and ways of practice. Worsley came in at a key time and made a big wave, without which we would not have such a clear foundation from which to practice something far greater than what we know it to be.
The power of acupuncture is such that it can appear magical, have a magical effect on people, and make competent practitioners seem like wizards and witches. Practitioners with big hearts, as I am sure Worsley had, have the capacity to open the hearts of others and thus have this image projected onto them even more so.
Truth, has an everlasting and eternal quality, and if I know one thing for sure, it’s that all constructs that are not based on a foundation of truth eventually topple and fade away. When cults emphasise open-mindedness, the capacity to hold differing perspectives as all being useful at the right time, and hold love as the guiding principle for healing, then maybe they have the hope of becoming something more. I guess time will tell what the Five Element community is.