The loss of one night’s sleep is followed by ten days of inconvenience Chinese Proverb I recently had a very bad nights sleep and the next day I happened to read this article. The combination of these two things made me think I needed to think more seriously about sleep both for myself and for my patients. The place I turned to for advice was the Yang Sheng or Nourishing Life tradition of ancient China. But before looking at what the ancient Chinese had to say about how we might improve our sleep I think its worth looking at how recent research has shown just how important proper sleep really ..read more

“Its not the years in your life that count. Its the life in your years” Dr Edward Stieglitz The Yangsheng or Nourishing Life tradition that developed in ancient China covers a wide range of practices, from diet to exercise to sleep and more, all designed to help people improve and maintain their health. What is perhaps surprising to us in the West is that the foundations of the tradition lie in practices that cultivate the mind and encourage positive emotions. So why does the tradition chose to start there? In the first instance cultivating positive mental states such as friendliness, gratitu ..read more

I think this is a question that many people thinking of trying acupuncture for the first time have somewhere in amongst all the other questions they might have about acupuncture. Like many other acupuncturists I would like to reassure potential patients and assure them that it doesn’t. To that end we might show potential patients our incredibly thin needles, or at least pictures of them in order to make them seem less frightening. We might reply to the question “Does it hurt?” by saying “Not really” or “You might feel a brief sting” and that is most people’s experience of acupuncture. But the ..read more

One of the things that they try and bang into your head when you’re training as an acupuncturist is that you need to treat the cause of the symptoms rather than simply the symptoms themselves. This relationship is characterised as ‘Root and Branch,’ in which the branches are the symptoms and the root the deepest cause underlying them. Of course one can’t simply ignore a patient’s symptoms and treatments are often crafted with the aim of treating both root and branch. But the case study that follows is a great example of how if one can discern and treat the root, a whole range of symptoms will ..read more

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) recently added acupuncture to its list of recommended treatments for patients with chronic primary pain and so I thought I should write something about pain and about how acupuncture might be able to help those suffering with chronic pain. But before I talk about acupuncture I want to look at the nature of pain itself and what NICE means by ‘primary’ pain. When most of us think of pain we think of pain as a response to a stimuli – I hit my finger with a hammer (because I’m cack handed and DIY isn’t my thing) and it hurts. In a situation li ..read more

When I set up Resurgis Acupuncture a central pillar of the business plan I wrote was making acupuncture more accessible within my local community. I had some ideas about how I might achieve that, ideas that, despite my stumbling efforts, I’ve been unable to turn into reality. A failure that left me feeling somewhat despondent toward the end of last year. And then I came across an American organisation, POCA (People's Organization of Community Acupuncture) and a book written by its founder Lisa Rohleder. The book is called ‘Punking: the Praxis of Community Acupuncture’ and reading it I found m ..read more

Last night I started re-reading Soil and Soul by Alistair McIntosh and in the first few pages I came across this passage: 'The very suffering of the world can be what repeatedly calls us back to the imperative of its healing. If we can persist and sit with the reality, not running from it, a music may eventually be heard. The fetters of destructive control loosen. Life's dance resurges.' Of course McIntosh isn't writing about acupuncture, or any other sort of medicine, but reading this brought to mind the practice of acupuncture, of sitting in a room with a patient and looking deeply at the r ..read more

For many years I was an antiquarian book-dealer, which involved driving all over the country buying books that I subsequently shipped all over the world. When I became an acupuncturist part of what I wanted was a practice that was really embedded in my local community and one of my ideas for making that a reality was that I’d only work from clinics within cycling distance of my home. So when the lockdown eased last spring the family and I headed up to Nailsworth, to Edemo Bikes, to have a look at some electric bikes (I’m getting older and thought I could do with some help). I had done some re ..read more

I was recently listening to a talk by the Buddhist teacher James Low, which included an anecdote from his schooldays. Low was born in Scotland, in a time and place in which shipbuilding was still a major industry and so metal-work was taught in schools. On the first day in the metal-work class the teacher is introducing the lathes and explains that if he hits one of the children and they say “Ow!” he’ll stop, but that if they catch themselves in the lathe it won’t stop no matter how much they scream. Low was recounting this in the context of explaining the responsiveness of sentient beings bu ..read more

I'm very pleased to have recently joined the British Acupuncture Association a professional body that holds it members to the highest standards of safe practice and professional conduct while also providing us with a range of benefits. My hope is that membership will benefit my clinic and the patients I see there. In the first instance I'm now able to accept payment from a number of health insurers so if you have health insurance you may well be able to claim for your treatment ..read more