My journey with acupuncture

Several years before my acupuncture training began, I explored acupuncture treatment to help with some severe health issues that wouldn’t clear up with conventional care. I was really unwell, in a lot of pain every day, both physically and emotionally, and was determined to resolve what was happening. I started acupuncture treatment with a TCM practitioner who was very kind and patient. My symptoms calmed somewhat, but it was having 5 element acupuncture that I began to experience my body and self in new ways, and began to see lots of shifts physically, mentally and emotionally. This set me off on a path of deep appreciation for the woven relationships between nature, seasons and rhythms, food and nutrition, emotions, symptoms, and the way in which people care for us in our lives.

After these first encounters, I then spent most of my 20’s working in therapeutic, health focused and nature related settings, building up a wide base of experience in working with people and understanding the many things that feed into their health and wellbeing. I explored different healing modalities and practices for my own healing, such as qi gong, yoga, integrative body work, cranial sacral therapy, while deepening connections with plants growing around me and the seasons as they passed by. I had acupuncture with different practitioners, and felt very well prepared for starting the training to be an acupuncturist.

After researching and visiting all of the acupuncture schools within the UK, I trained at the College Of Integrated Chinese Medicine, not only for the integrative training in 5 element acupuncture and TCM, but also for the understanding of the impact of emotions on physical health, the biomedical content, high professional standards and rigorous training of the course. I graduated in 2012 with a science degree in acupuncture, a license to practice, and deep passion for connecting with people..

I began to realise quite quickly however, that my training hadn’t covered how to work with trauma, which many of my first clients were sharing with me, either directly in their stories or though their bodies.

Listening and responding to the experience of my clients, my communities, and own experience

Towards the end of my acupuncture training, and in early years of practice I sought supervision with a senior trauma specialist and body psychotherapist, as I recognised many people I was seeing through my work had significant trauma histories, and I wanted to work in a way that supporter greater safety. I then went on to train in integrated psychosexual therapy for 18 months to deepen this work further, especially around clients wanting support with their emotional, reproductive, sexual and urinary health and wellbeing,. This training significantly shaped my way of working in relation to working in ways that facilitate openness in communication, especially around topics people may find challenging for a whole range of reasons, along with pacing, autonomy, not pathologising people and honouring their experience of themselves.

I’m also part of the alive, rich, ever growing and self realising queer and trans communities, and am committed to responding to all that my peers and community share with me about their experiences, and how their needs can be met more, especially my black, poc, global majority, disabled, and intersex connections. My work and training around trauma and embodiment is something I’ll always be working and training with both professionally and personally, holding liberation, collective care and safety for everyone in my heart and mind. 

I’m also white, born and grown up on the British Isles, with English and Scottish ancestry that I know about and from a working class background. I’m also able bodied and neurodiverse.