Enthusiasm is good. You can transmit it to others, with words, gestures, acts. You eyes shine, your body vibrates. Your passion flows. Your conviction carries. The sentences that you pronounce, as well as the information they convey, have a heavier weight than if you talked or wrote in a monotonous and neutral way. Your patients like it and it helps them to feel better (even if it only increase the placebo effect). Your students will appreciate it, they will be more attentive, grasp more easily, remember more and better.

BUT

You must chose carefully the moments when you let yourself show this state of your mind. Don’t waste it on small matters. Concentrate on important issues which will help to build a meaningful structure. To be enthusiastic all the time is exhausting, for the teacher and for the learner. Moreover, when will the student know what is really important?

To be cautious is good. It prevents you from going too far in your affirmations. The corpus of material in acupuncture (and even more in Chinese medicine) is enormous. The books published in western languages can be counted in hundreds. Some are just copies of copies, they don’t count. Some are too “creative” and their claims exaggerated. Some use the basic nucleus (Ah! An important word) to invent their own theoretical system, but as it is not based on practical experience, their ideas soon disappear. In this sea of books what to do? You live in the 21st century; use the benefits of rational thinking, of down to earth logic. Be pragmatic and think: with what I know of the human body, is there some sense in the claims of this or that book? This theory looks very elegant and appealing, but is it worth applying it to a patient? This author writes beautifully and he presents his ideas with elegance. But in front of a suffering patient, will his ideas lead to efficient gestures?

I will tell you another time the story of brilliant Dr. X.

You will have to navigate between enthusiasm and caution, which is not an easy exercise. I have been practicing it for nearly 40 years, and I still find myself leaning too much towards one side or the other. But it is very stimulating because it obliges to think, to analyse, to weigh, to be reasonable in your daring, and still dare in spite of your cautious misgivings.

When I teach I communicate my enthusiasm and at the same time I instill the seeds of precaution. Those at the other end who receive the flow of what I say or write feel the balance of the happening. The YinYang expressed in the “Middle of the Road”.