There are, however, several problems with definitively identifying Hsu Mifoo as Worsley’s Chinese teacher. In an interview with Malcolm Stemp in 1994, I elicited the only corraboration of there being a Master Hsu, whom Stemp claimed Worsley met one evening in Taiwan during their 1966 trip to the Orient. Stemp was not present at the actual meeting due to illness, but claimed that Worsley returned from the meeting in an exuberant state of mind saying “I’ve finally seen how it all fits together.” Now Hsu Mifoo lived in Hong Kong rather than Taiwan, and subsequent research turned up a Report in the May, 1967 issue of The Acupuncturist (Vol. 1, No. 1) by Worsley that two Chinese teachers had been elected to the faculty of the British College of Acupuncture, of which he was Chairman of the Board of Governors. The first was Dr. Lok Yee-Kung and the second was Dr. Hsiu Yan-Chai. Additionally, in the October, 1966 issue of The Acupuncture Association Newsletter, Worsley mentioned having had talks with Drs. Wu Wei-p‘ing, Lok Yee-kung and Siu during his 1966 China trip. Thus, it would appear that Worsley’s Chinese teacher was more likely to have been Hsiu Yan-chai. Now it turns out that there was a prominent teacher of acupuncture named Hsiu Yang-chai in Taiwan, who unfortunately died in 1993(376) (Fig.206) and this same Hsiu Yang-chai was actually present at the dinner for Worsley and Stemp in Taiwan in 1966 (Fig.207)! Eric Tao described his methods as very classical and involving the concepts of energy transfer and regulation, although not specifically Five Element in orientation. Hsiu had two main Chinese disciples, one of whom now lives in Denver, Dr. Frank Sun. Surprisingly, Dr. Sun was sure that Dr. Hsiu did not travel to any acupuncture conferences in Europe in the 1960’s or 1970’s, that he did not emphasize Five Element Theory very much, although he used it, and that he had no English students. (377) Thus we are left with yet another dilemma–Dr. Hsiu Yang-chai did live in Taiwan, where Worsley initially met him in 1966 (the time and place Stemp related Worsley meeting his Master Hsiu), but didn’t travel to Europe. Dr. Hsu Mifoo didn’t live in Taiwan, but did travel to Germany (where Worsley says he studied with his Master Hsiue) where he was a member of their Acupuncture Association, and also used exactly the same teaching guides as Worsley! In addition, he was closely connected with the group of Japanese acupuncturists and with Dr. Schmidt, whose teachings somehow became incorporated into LA. The only explanation I can think of, is that Worsley knew both Hsiu Yang-chai and Hsu Mifoo and conflated them in references to his “Master Hsiue.” It would appear that both teachers had a profound influence on Worsley.(378)
FIGURE 199: MANAKA, SCHMIDT, YANAGIYA & HSU
(front row, left to right). Hsu is the only Chinese practitioner to be commonly seen with the Japanese leaders of MT, which explains one route for the reintroduction of a Five Element emphasis into the Chinese teachings which were subsequently transmitted to the West.
Figure 200: (above) HSU AND YANAGIYA IN 1952.
Although Hsu began sudying in Japan in 1950, from 1952 onwards he both studied and taught at Tokushoku College in Tokyo, the institution associated with Yanagiya which later granted Schmidt an honorary professorship (Figure 159).
Figure 201: HSU DEMONSTRATING HIS TECHNIQUE IN JAPAN.
Yanagiya is observing, seated on the far right.
Figure 202: SCHMIDT VISITING HSU,
outside the latter’s residence in Hong Kong.
Figure 203: HSU PALPATING THE PULSE.
He is feeling the pulses on the patient’s right wrist with his own right hand, whereas in LA as in MT the opposite hand is always used, with the palpating fingers arching over the patient’s wrist from the dorsal side. Hsu’s examination is not a casual one, as evidenced by the concentration of Hsu, Yanagiya (above Hsu’s hands), Honma (above Hsu’s neck) and Inoue (behind Hsu’s back). The venue was the Japanese, German and Chinese International Acupuncture Conference in Tokyo in 1953, where instruction in techniques from these three countries were mutually exchanged.
Figure 204: DINNER PARTY IN TOKYO, 1953.
Left to right: Mrs. Manaka, Manaka Yoshio, Akabane, Tobe, Schmidt, Shimizu, Hsu and Yanagiya. See also Figures 156 and 199 for other examples of Manaka’s close relationship to Hsu, Schmidt and Yanagiya.
Figure 205: MANAKA YOSHIO
continuing the tradition of training the blind as therapists. He is seen here instructing two blind English massage therapists.
Figure 206: WU WEI-P’ING AND HSIU YANG-CHAI.
(left to right). Hsiu was on the faculty of the Acupuncture Research Institute of Taipei established by Tsui Chieh (see Figure 179) in 1950, which hosted visits by numerous foreign acupuncturists and physicians.
The final piece of the puzzle is the identity of Worsley’s Japanese teacher, Ono. Thankfully, his identity appears to be unambiguous. According to Shudo Denmei (see Fig.143), the author of the first detailed book in English to describe the development of the Five Element tradition in Japan started by Yanagiya, there was only one Ono who was at all prominent in Japanese acupuncture, Ono Bunkei (Fig.208), and in fact, Bunkei Ono, the Western way of writing his name, is listed as a Patron of Worsley’s College of Chinese Acupuncture (UK) in the undated second edition of The Case for Acupuncture, an out of print pamphlet listing J.R. Worsley and M.H. Stemp as co-authors. Shudo knows Ono Bunkei very well because they were neighbors, more or less, both living in Ohita prefecture. He told me the following story about Ono:(379) Originally Ono was a railroad engineer (the same profession I believe as Worsley’s father), but was injured in an accident and lost a leg. He then attended one of the acupuncture schools for the blind, and began a second career. At some later time, an incident occurred in which one of his patients died, although I didn’t get the details of what happened. Ono was deeply affected by it, and became almost pathologically cautious in his practice–to the point of not even inserting needles through the skin–only pressing the needles on the Points, and he discovered that for him, this worked just as well as actually inserting the needles. The non-inserted needle technique is taught by several schools in Japan, especially by Fukushima (see Fig.144), whom I’ve quoted previously. It was only after this episode that Ono first met and began to study with Yanagiya, and to develop his own style of Five Element MT. A similar description of Ono Bunkei’s technique was related to me by Miki Shima,(380) an eclectic teacher and practitioner of Japanese styles of of acupuncture who was himself treated by Ono in 1983. He recalled that Ono used only one or two needles (“perhaps one silver and one gold”) on a succession of Points which he stimulated so delicately that it felt more like tickling than needling. This “treatment” was preceeded by a lengthy (more than one hour) period of questioning and examination and was in turn followed by advice concerning different aspects of personal behavior and how it related to one’s psychological state. (Interestingly, Worsley’s son John remembers as a child receiving similar kinds of advice from someone resembling Ono when the latter visited their home, probably in the 1960’s.)(381) Shima described Ono’s approach as more focussed on the Spirit than the physical body, and claimed that advice about psychological problems was an integral part of Ono’s style of “acupuncture.” Certainly one could envision an influence on Worsley both in terms of very delicate needle techniques, and in regard to the emphasis on the Mind and Spirit as more crucial issues than the Body in most cases. Shudo confirmed that Ono had travelled to a number of European acupuncture conferences, thus corroborating Worsley’s version of how they met. Ono was one of Yanagiya’s earliest colleagues, working with him to develop MT since 1939. He is seen in Figure 209 with Honma and Schmidt, thus further confirming the hypothesized lineage of MT teachers whose work influenced Worsley. I have tried to communicate with Ono in Japan, but he is 89 years old now, and in such poor health that his family says he cannot provide any useful information. He does leave behind him, however, an association, Tohokai, which he founded, and several publications in Japanese which may ultimately reveal more about this obscure teacher who seems to have had such a significant impact on Worsley and LA.
Figure 207: HSIU YA
NG-CHAI
(second from left) at the Taiwan dinner for Worsley and Stemp in 1966. The inidividual on the far right is Chang Kwai-fu, President of the Acupuncture Association of Taichung, Taiwan. By comparing this photograph with that in Figure 97 from the same series, Hsu can be identified as the individual standing on the far right edge observing “the bow.”
Figure 208: ONO BUNKEI, founder of Tohokai, an acupuncture association devoted to Ono’s style of Five Element MT.
I’ve made a summary chart which includes all of the lineages I’ve described (Fig.210). As one can see, it’s almost impossibly complex, which gives the proper feeling for how much cross-influence there has been among the different traditions. I’ve also drawn a simplified chart to indicate the major influences on the development of LA (Fig.211). I trust that this reconstruction meets the requirements of those who have called for an identification of the traditional sources of the LA syllabus. For a systematic presentation of the sources for the material taught in LA which I’ve identified in this text, see the Appendix. The main point I hope to make with this reconstruction and these flow charts is how much interaction there has been between all the teachers of the different styles of twentieth century acupuncture.
One area that I haven’t discussed, and which I’d like to touch on as a post-script, is the personal charisma of the teacher or healer. Ted Kaptchuk mentioned to me, after watching Worsley at work, that he thought Worsley was the greatest shamanistic healer he had ever seen.(382) I think this is an aspect of our profession that needs to be brought out into the open, and Worsley has constantly stressed that developing the deepest possible rapport with patients, and then allowing yourself to become an instrument for forces beyond your own personal power, is what we should all be striving for. That’s a good definition, as far as I’m concerned, of a shaman. The reader may remember that the shaman or wu was originally the bottom part of the character for doctor or healer, yi, the upper part containing a quivvered (non-aggressive) arrow and a right hand moving like a bird’s wing which image the acupuncture practitioner. (383) (It is interesting to note both Worsley’s nickname, “the Feather,” and the image of Bian Que as a bird) (Fig.212). It is easy to see the shamanistic roots in Worsley’s inclusion of Possession, i.e., the Seven Dragons for Seven Devils protocol, in LA. I was struck in this regard even more by his description of a Husband-Wife imbalance in a patient on whom he was consulting in the treatment for multiple sclerosis.(384) He described how hard the struggle to set things right seemed to be, and noted that the key to its ultimate resolution might have been the patient’s prior treatment by more symptomatic approaches (by none other than Wu Wei-p’ing, and rather successfully at that, although unfortunately only lasting a matter of months) which might tragically have alerted the “wife” to impending attempts to reverse her usurpation, and allowed her to become even more firmly entrenched. This personification of all aspects of the struggle between the forces of health and those of illness, seen also in the doctrine of the Officials, is a shamanistic approach, which LA integrates successfully with the more “scientific” approaches such as the doctrine of the Five Elements which is based on the notion of systematic correspondence and resonance (gan ying), a distinction emphasized by Unschuld. I like to think that the underlying theme behind these two viewpoints is the idea of macrocosm and microcosm reflecting each other, or as it is spelled out in TOM, the doctrine of Heaven, Earth and Man–the Three Powers. These concepts are common to both shamanism and systematic correspondence, and flow almost immediately from the concept of the Dao itself, however they incorporate a certain “religious” orientation, which I would like to emphasize. I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention that Worsley has very strong religious convictions which have undoubtedly influenced the style of acupuncture he teaches. I won’t dwell on this subject, but I believe it relates to the question of what role the healer sees himself as playing.
Figure 209: ONO’S LINKAGE TO SCHMIDT
is confirmed by this photograph showing (left to right) an unidentified individual, Suzuki, Schmidt, Kimura, Honma and Ono, taken in 1953.
Figure 210: ACUPUNCTURE LINEAGES.
This chart, while summarizing information in the text, is a tentative reconstruction an is not meant as a definitive version. At the very least it contains errors of omission wich the autor hopes the publication of this work will encourage others to begin to dipell. It has purposely been left in its original rough form in order to more accurately reflect the spirit of the author’s process in tracing these lineage.
Figure 211: INFLUENCES ON WORSLEY.
The solid lines represent the more significant influences as explained in the thext. In the abscence of a thoroughly documented autobiographical account by Worsley himself, they must be viewed as uncorroborated hypotheses.
Worsley is known to have had a particular interest in the esoteric Christian teachings, including those of the Essene sect.(385) In this context I should mention W.R. Morse (Fig.213), a Protestant missionary in China (Chengdu, Sichuan) who wrote at least three books touching on Chinese medicine in the period from 1928 to 1934. He is of interest because in addition to focussing on the moral force of Christianity in healing, he specifically mentions the terms “body, mind and spirit,” “causative factor of disease,” and the “Officials,” all of which are “technical terms” used in LA. The latter term Morse attributes to Zhang Yuan-su(386) (c. 1186) whom he claims used it in the theory of the four components of herbal prescriptions: Emperor (base), Prime Minister (adjuvant), Chancellor (corrective) and Ambassador (vehicle). Morse also describes Five Element theory, and it would not be surprising if Worsley had seen one or more of his books. My first exposure to Morse’s work was in fact in Oxford, where his Three Crosses in the Purple Mists was waiting to be discovered on a friend’s bookshelf.
Another book from roughly the same era, Edward Hume’s The Chinese Way in Medicine, provides an additional hypothetical basis for the origin of the three special circumstances in LA that take precedence over Five Element treatment: Husband-Wife imbalances, Demonic Possession and Aggressive Energy. In one paragraph, Hume presents a schema that might be describing these very situations:(387)
Figure 212: THE BIRD-MAN OF SHANDONG.
These Han dynasty stone reliefs have been interpreted as depicting Bian Que, whose legendary career was described in Chapter Four. They show him taking patients’ pulses and performing acupuncture in the guise of a human-headed bird. The power to transform oneself into an animal is frequently encountered in shamanistic traditions.
“The physician now has all the diagnostic material in hand, and proceeds to ask himself three questions: (1) Is this illness due to a loss of balance between the Yin and the Yang, those primal forces that represent the opposing elements in the universe? (2) Are there evil spirits present whose hostility has resulted in disease? (3) Are there organic disturbances due to heat or cold, to dry conditions or damp, or to other influences in the environment that are known to be capable of producing disease?”
Figure 213: W.R. MORSE
(standing, fourth from the left) a Protestant missionary in China whose publications on Chinese medicine reflected a sensibility and terminology that appeared later in LA.
While this quotation is hardly more than suggestive, it would certainly be of interest to know more about Worsley’s reading habits, both religious and secular.
Before leaving the subject of religion, I want to mention Dr. Edward Bach(388) (Fig.214) (1886-1936) who developed the system of flower remedies that bear his name, and which were included in my coursework at Leamington. Bach, who like Worsley grew up in Warwickshire, reached his professional acme just as Worsley was entering his teens, and conceivably they could have met. Also like Worsley, Bach was a deeply religious Christian, though in a very personal way, and many of his insights reappear in Worsley’s teachings. Bach emphasized the role of emotion in health above all other factors, and totally disregarded the nature of the presenting symptoms in choosing
a remedy. He believed that “healing knowledge was to be gained, not through man’s intellect, but through his ability to see and accept the natural simple truths of life.“(389) By intensive self-development, he became able to see and to hear things of which he had not been conscious hitherto. He considered himself only as the instrument through which remedies came.
Figure 214: EDWARD BACH (1886-1936),
English physician who developed a therapeutic system of remedies derived from flowers, whose application was based solely on the patient’s emotional tendencies, and not at all on the patient’s named illness, nor even on its symptoms! In this asymptomatic approach it most closely resembles both LA and the cited teachings of Ohsawa.
In the Footsteps of the Yellow Emperor Page 19