Treatments & What to Expect

If you have had acupuncture in a traditional clinic, you have probably smelled it before you saw it. That sweet, herbal, slightly smoky scent in the corridor is moxibustion, and for many practitioners it matters as much as the needles do. The name covers a family of techniques that all warm the body with smouldering…

The flame is the part that worries people. Watching a practitioner wave a lit wick inside a glass cup, then place that cup on someone’s back, looks alarming the first time. In fire cupping, though, the flame never touches you. It exists only to heat the air inside the cup for a second, and the…

Most people meet cupping as a set of round marks on an athlete’s shoulders. Wet cupping hijama is a different procedure again, and the difference matters before you book. Hijama is simply the Arabic name for wet cupping, and the two words describe the same treatment. It combines suction with a few deliberate, very shallow…

You may have seen them on social media: tiny gold dots stuck to the outer ear, worn for days at a time. Ear seeds are the gentle, needle-free end of auricular acupuncture, and they have become popular well beyond the clinics that traditionally used them. This guide covers what they actually are, what the evidence…

Acupuncture is the part of Chinese medicine everyone has heard of. Chinese herbal medicine is the larger half of the tradition and the part people know least about, which is a shame, because the questions it raises are the important ones: what is actually in it, is it regulated, does it interact with medication, and…