Tailored Lifestyle Advice

I believe that when treating most health conditions we should start with the most gentle, non-invasive approach, and only if that isn’t enough do we add or change to something stronger. (Obviously this doesn’t apply to emergencies and time-critical conditions.) If we’re not already moving well, eating well and sleeping well, making these changes is the first step in this process.

The difficulty in the modern world is that we receive so many mixed messages about what is healthy for us that it can become confusing. Most advice is generic and aimed at everyone, and there is a place for that, but the reality is that different people need different things at different times. One advantage of having acupuncture treatment is going through the holistic diagnostic process. This allows us to tailor the dietary and lifestyle advice according to your current imbalances.

There are various qualities of body, energy and mind that contribute to our overall wellbeing. If any of these qualities is deficient, we do not feel healthy and happy.

We tend to have a natural affinity with some of these qualities more than others, and this can lead us to focus on some areas to the exclusion of others. If we can identify areas where we are weaker, we will usually find training those areas makes more of a difference to our wellbeing than doing more in an area where we have already done a lot of work.

While many of these qualities can be trained individually, there are also practices that can more efficiently affect several at once.

My personal approach draws on the Yangsheng (nourishing life) practices of traditional Chinese medicine, the internal arts (predominantly Qigong, Neigong and Taijiquan), and a little modern research.