My approach
Even if people have had acupuncture before, they usually find that my approach is quite different.
Classical Chinese Medicine
This is because for many years I’ve been focusing on the ancient roots of Chinese Medicine. A science that was born of internal cultivation, breathing, mindfulness, meditation and deep awareness.
The body is a vessel for the Spirit. It’s fully alive and participating in our journey. Ancient masters mapped the way that the Spirit weaves through the body to unfold the Self, and how Self walks through the World.
How the body helps us with challenges
The body has its own unique wisdom.
When we have challenges and hardships in life, the body will protect the Spirit within, by putting up temporary blockages.
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These blockages are the body’s kindness.
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Blockages are like barricades, to stop something harmful coming in towards us, from the outside. Then ideally we get to safety or we find nourishment or support soon after, and then we can release those temporary blockages.
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Unfortunately, for most people, this ideal doesn’t happen.
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Therefore, most of us are walking through life holding many blockages from past challenges. These blockages show up as
- physical issues like pain or illness, as well as
- mental and emotional suffering and even
- spiritual disillusionment.
The hidden cost of the body’s protection
The blockages are made using energy and fluids – our vital life resources.
The blockages are alive, they’re created from your own resources – the blockages are you.
Your blockages need your system’s resources to keep recreating them. This is the hidden cost – this particular parcel of life energy can’t flow through you to express your true path today – it’s stuck.
Because the blockages are made from your own energy and resources, because they’re actually alive, they have to be maintained all the time – even when you’re sleeping. They have to be maintained with your own life energy.
This is why chronic issues also come with signs of depletion, fatigue, dryness, confusion or exhaustion.
Getting into right relationship
This is one of the core understandings of my approach, and one that can feel so unfamiliar after a lifetime of going to the doctor to:
- find out “what’s wrong with me”
- receive information that you don’t understand and is therefore maybe scary
- be told that your body, or body-part, is malfunctioning (and then having scary images in your mind about that)
- expect treatment that aims to suppress the body’s signals (signs and symptoms)
- expect treatment that cuts out the part that’s expressing distress (even if there’s a chain of events that led to that expression, and the chain is ignored)
- hand over power to processes that “measure” your distress in numbers, such as blood tests, which prevents access to the narrative about why you’re suffering and how you can meaningfully engage in your own recovery
To be clear, I am very supportive of the correct place of modern technical medicine in our health care landscape. There are situations in which it absolutely shines. However, health is a vast and complex human experience. And the philosophy, methodology and application of modern medicine is not well-suited to a significant area of this terrain. This is where complementary medicine is ideally placed. I marvel at how lucky we are, to live in a time and a place where we have access to such a large range of knowledge and support.
And.
When accessing complementary medicine, if you’re like most people, you’re looking for an approach that embraces your whole human experience:
- your thoughts and feelings
- your doubts and hopes
- your felt sense of your body
- your intuition
- and perhaps most of all – you want a form of medicine that can embrace the fact that you’re a conscious, sentient being in a physical body… that you’re a someone, not a something
In my approach, I see body symptoms as messengers. They’re often expressions of past challenges that you’ve found hard to put into words.
Temporary blockages helped you get through a challenge, and for whatever reason, you weren’t in a position to release that blockage when you got to a better place.
The blockages were made from kindness, by your body, with a deep respect for your Spirit and your life. The blockages are made of your life resources.
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The blockages are you.
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This is the core of my approach.
So often, people experience their pain or illness as “other”. Something foreign. Something dangerous, unwanted, or out of control.
Although you might want to “get rid of this pain quickly” (understandably), by definition this would mean trying to cut off a part of your own self. Not only that, but getting rid of the outcome of a process, without shifting the movement that led to the problem, leaves you vulnerable to repeat the experience.
The more nourishing approach is to bring support to the body, to give it signals of safety and nourishment, then a little nudge to let go, and then to trust it to release.
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Your body is a deeply complex natural system made from ancient knowledge.
Releasing blockages is part of its knowing.
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Our role is to listen, to understand the request, and to bring the right support at the right time.
Once the body understands that it’s resourced, then it can untangle that blockage and allow old fluids and energy to release outwards, and allow vital resources to flow within.
How to find the blockages
Classical Chinese Medicine is a vast and very detailed map of where these blockages are stored, and which resources the body-mind-spirit is asking for, so that it can release them.
It’s a practice of restoring the body by serving the natural intelligence that knows how to organise itself.
It’s a lot like regenerative farming – understanding why the weeds are there, what this is saying about the soil, correcting the water flow, bringing nutrients, restoring flow and having the whole terrain working together as a complex and thriving natural system.
Body of Wisdom is a method I’ve developed that helps people in our culture to process and release these blockages.
Western people combine their experience of their bodies, words and feelings in a different way from Chinese culture.
My approach combines ideas and tools from several sources. They align into one clear movement, which involves recognising the innate perfection of each person and engaging this natural perfection as the energy of healing. In action, this means
- listening respectfully to the requests of the body-mind-spirit
- allowing these requests to contain meaning, but without the need to “make them make sense” or tell stories about them
- where the body-mind-spirit transforms blockages within the listening process itself, allowing the transformation without needing to “do something” more
- where the body-mind-spirit doesn’t transform a blockage right away, listening to cues about what it needs, and creating Chinese medicine treatments to meet those requests
The Body of Wisdom process is intimately connected with the Chinese Medicine – the herbs, acupuncture and diet therapy and so on.
Chinese Medicine has methods to discover information such as pulse diagnosis, tongue diagnosis or feeling the acupuncture channels. Body of Wisdom is another way of listening to the body that allows you to relax. You don’t need to seek outside yourself, you don’t need to have all the answers or to remember all the details about your problem. This is a process that allows the body to speak, and it feels respectful and spacious.
So what does my approach look like, when addressing health issues?
- It’s about respecting symptoms – they’re not annoyances to be silenced – but masterful pointers to the body’s incredible wisdom
- We listen to the body’s language, I learn your unique dialect, and I help you to learn it too
- Then I respond to the body’s requests with
- physical treatments like acupuncture, gua sha, cupping, massage, heat therapy, stretching
- Chinese herbal medicine as appropriate
- dietary therapy to create healthy resources and reduce stickiness that can make blockages hard to release
- lifestyle medicine so the the body is aided to release at the right time and place, and to connect with the power of natural cycles to receive support
- guidance on home care to continue the healing process between appointments
- listening to the body symptoms, helping you translate where you’ve been stuck and learning what your Spirit is seeking to express and experience
- Then finally, the process is sealed with the essential step of nourishing the body to help it recover from the chronic strain and struggle, and to become more resilient for meeting future challenges.
Throughout the process, it’s about connecting body, mind and heart in a meaningful dance of relationship. This supports the healing process right now, while empowering the whole body-mind-spirit system to request your support in the future without needing to create such strong signals of distress. I can teach you how to do this, so that it becomes an ordinary (extraordinary!) life skill.
The result is increased physical wellbeing, a sense of freedom, and a deeper appreciation for your life.
Ready to start your Healing Journey?
To get started, complete the form on my Contact Page and I’ll be in touch with the next step. I can’t wait to support you in your next chapter of health!
