The practitioner is a key figure, the person whose participation enables the patient to see him- or herself and his or her situation in a new and hopefully positive light. This comes about through the process of their close collaboration. What the practitioner does and says makes a difference to the patient. Whatever the contract, for example, “Just treat the pain in my hip,” the contact between the practitioner and the patient, the healer and the healed, automatically enters a special realm in which the healer has a special meaning in the life of the person coming for healing. I repeat what I said in the Preface, that people who work with energy have a special obligation to consider all of the implications that enter into the transfers of energy between the specific role of the therapist and the role of the patient.

The fact that the person has come to the practitioner, for whatever reason, is a statement of a desire to “recover.” Most people come for relief of pain (physical or mental), for the practitioner to remove symptoms or illnesses that are interfering with their lives without their having to change.

This book is about achieving a relationship in which context a person may feel safe enough to consider and share a pain that is more significant to their complaint than their hip pain. We know that Retained Emotional Pathogens are diverted from vital organs to joints and muscles and are experienced as pain, the relief from which is the original reason for seeking help. It is through this feeling of safety that we help the person to be able to “choose” to deal with the retained emotion.

Initially, the practitioner’s attitudes and demeanor may serve as a model, not for imitation, but by way of example, for we all know that people, especially young people, learn largely by example. How we live our lives with the patient, how we engage with them in this process we call the therapeutic relationship, what “model of reality” we present—these will determine the kind of influence we exert. As we interact and communicate, we offer alternatives (of both attitudes and behavior) to people whose way of life is troubling to them. To the extent that we are emancipated from fanatical and rigid life models, we can offer to others the opportunity to live more freely, not to create robots in our own image, but to open doors to growth and to lend a hand as people pass through them.

In demonstrating the attitudes and behavior of a yet incomplete, imperfect, growing individual willing to take risks for the patient, the practitioner may become a “culture medium” for the patient, creating the conditions that encourage his or her growth, liberated from the fear of failure. The practitioner is a model of the process, not of the end result. He or she is not omniscient, however. Quite the contrary; what the practitioner knows is very limited.

It may be at some point that the practitioner even needs specific help, which they can accept, from their patient. There can be real growth for both of practitioner and patient in such a situation. What comes to mind is the day I began to come down with the flu. A relatively new client with a great deal of talent and very low self-esteem offered a useful remedy, which I accepted as payment for the session. Both of us were helped.

Because acupuncturists are an essential ingredient of this work, they need to know themselves. They must inquire into their values and how they shift under stress. They need to ask, “Do I respect individual expression more than conformity, rehabilitation more than punishment, the survival of another person more than the enforcement of my own moral standards?”

In asking such questions of themselves, acupuncturists submit to the same process of “self-learning” as the patient; the acupuncturist’s investment in self-learning is the critical example he or she sets for those he or she works with. Indeed, the acupuncturist’s willingness to be a part of that process together with the patient is essential. It will enable the practitioner to grow as their relationship with the patient grows. And, as they engage in the same process, their mutual effort profiting both of them, the distinction between them will progressively diminish. That is a definition of a good therapeutic relationship.

The processing of information is, of course, highly subjective. The sum total of our life experience is the filter through which all that is received determines our response. That passage may be crystal clear if our life experience has been relatively straightforward. If it has been inauthentic, disrespectful, and uncaring, the passage may be distorted by expectations of the worst. “Good” and “bad” may come our way. Seeing only good is a form of denial. Seeing only bad leads to “shoot first and ask questions afterward.”

It is important that the practitioner does not allow the therapeutic relationship to be a struggle for power. With a patient whose maladaptive patterns of relating are either direct or subtle power struggles, the issue is inevitable.

Power issues involving the ego are inescapable dilemmas for all human beings, except perhaps the saints, and acupuncturists are simply human. Except for a few obvious ones, the forms power issues take are endless and too extensive for discussion in this book.

To whatever extent the practitioner needs to succeed, he or she will fail. Here I distinguish between “need” and “want.” The patient will sense that “need,” and read it as a challenge to engage and defeat, or to escape from. And the engagement can be deceiving until the patient who seems in endless adulation of the practitioner suddenly rejects them. In either case, this becomes a highly destructive struggle that no one can win, perhaps especially destructive to the patient, already unsure of their position in relation to others.

We must enter the relationship without a need to win, even if winning means the success of the therapy. We must be willing to admit our ignorance and our mistake, and we must be willing to concede our vulnerability. For we, too, are human; we, too, have problems and fears. We must not play a game of superiority. We must allow our worth to speak for itself. In any contest of worth, we will be worthless to our patient. In a demonstration of concern, however, we have an obligation to lead. We include the patient among our concerns. Our hope is that in time the concern will become mutual, and that eventually the patient will take the initiative in building his or her own relationship with a third person.

However, if you are the sort of person who does “need” to win, if you sincerely feel yourself superior to the patient, if your temptation is to control, dominate, and manipulate others, then, until the problem is reasonably resolved, you should stay out of the therapeutic relationship. And if you are not aware of this about yourself, consistent struggle with or rejection by patients should alert you to considering this as a possible ingredient in your personality.

An issue related to the need to win is the difficulty of accepting “failure” in the therapeutic relationship situation. At times, it will become obvious that our work is no longer helpful. It is best to face up to that situation, to acknowledge that (for example) the relationship has become stagnant, that it has become destructive (as many dependent relationships do), that it may be temporarily or permanently deadlocked. The best course, then, if no way is found to break the impasse, is separation. Can we accept this without imagining that we have failed? Can we remember, at such times, that the central issue is not our success or failure but the patient’s healthy survival? (And it may be that our own survival requires a break; we cannot afford to lose sight of that, either.)

Example