Peter Kington - Brisbane acupuncturist, fertility & pregnancy support

24/03/2023

A STATEMENT FROM Peter Kington - Brisbane acupuncturist, fertility & pregnancy support

I am writing today to advise current and former clients that I am stepping down from clinical practice. My last day will be Thursday 6 April, 2023.

The purpose of this announcement is to provide referral pathways to you to ensure your ongoing care needs are met.

Key information you need to know:

**I am not selling my practice so your personal information will remain with me.
**Your clinical notes will be stored (paper notes, pre 2017) or archived (digital) for the required time.
**At the bottom of this announcement I will provide a list of trusted colleagues whom I am confident can take care of your needs. If you would like to discuss this further we can do so between now and when I close up on 6 April.
**If you are currently, or recently, receiving treatment from me and would like a summary prepared for your next practitioner, I can do this and ask you request that, in writing via email ([email protected]), before Friday 31 March, 2023. Please allow a minimum five business days for this to be prepared. There is no fee for this service.

Why am I closing my practice?
The short answer is after twenty five years of self-employment (twenty in Chinese medicine) I am tired. Self employment is much harder now than it was when I began and the pandemic years have taken their toll on my physical and mental wellbeing.

In addition to this, an opportunity has presented itself for me to continue helping the community in a paid role working for a Queensland Senator. It’s a perfect role for me that allows me to immerse myself in my community and continue to help people live better lives - just in a different way.

Thank you
I have no idea how many individuals I have worked with since I started practising in 2003 as a massage therapist and 2005, as acupuncturist - but it has been in the thousands.

Thank you for the privilege of helping you; thank you for the conversations and thank you for the trust you placed in me to help you.

Some of you reading this are amongst my earliest clients and we have known each other a long time - I feel like we’ve grown older together navigating the ups and downs of life.

I wish you all great abundance in life and immense happiness with everything that lies ahead.

I am currently not accepting new clients and only working with those people who have forward appointments. If you are one of those people and would like to cancel your future appointment please text on 0416 579 096 as I have disabled online bookings and you will not be able to make that change yourself.

If your next appointment is beyond my finish date we will need to bring your appointment forward or cancel it as my end date is final.

Hopefully, I’ll see you over the next couple of weeks.

Peter Kington

Trusted colleagues
Brisbane North
Fertility and Pregnancy
Kirsty Eng Fertility (Herston)
John Taylor - Ginseng Acupuncture & Natural Therapies (Stafford) + general care

General care
Margi Macdonald, AcuBalance Acupuncture Clinic Brisbane (West Chermside)
Nea Ovens, Nurture Studio - within Move Osteopathy (New Farm) + fertility and pregnancy care
Mark Bayley-Chinese Medicine (New Farm) + fertility care

Brisbane South
Fertility and Pregnancy
Jodi Baldry, Moxa Natural Therapies Centre (West End) + general care
Danielle Rush, Yin Wellness Brisbane (Woolloongabba)
Arna Taylor, Greenstone Acupuncture (Mount Gravatt East)

General care
Zlatko ‘Mark’ Markanovik (Stones Corner): 0416 168 595

Brisbane East
Fertility and Pregnancy
Aime Tomlinson, Sakura Acupuncture Clinic Brisbane (Carina)

General Care
Debra Porter, Total Body Wellness (Carina)

Brisbane West
Fertility, Pregnancy and General Care
Stephen Janz, Kenmore Centre For Health (Kenmore)

17/01/2023

23 January 2023, marks the start of my 19th year of practice. That just amazes me as I sit back and reflect on how it felt as a beginning practitioner all those years ago.

There have been countless names and faces, gazillions of health conditions encountered and some sadness and elation for us all, as clients have navigated the ups and downs of life.

But there’s always been one constant…. A January call-to-action to trim down, shed some Christmas kilos and start the new year with a different mindset.

My first tip is to chuck the idea of a ‘diet’ out the window - it can have a negative mindset which shackles itself to us and holds us back.

My second tip is the view your new way of eating as a lifestyle, rather than a routine. Be flexible, be kind to yourself and be realitic.

My third tip is to throw the scales away and track your progress either through how your clothes are feeling on you or by taking measurements - and only check in once/week. Daily checkins are pointless and can undermine the work you’ve done.

Finally, not everyone loves cooking, but if you do, think creatively how you can (re)create (favourite) meals so they are lower in calories/kilojoules but higher in ‘good energy’. Portion size is also important.

Trimming down can be such an effective solution to so many things going wrong in our bodies - lower limb pain will always benefit from shedding a few extra kilos and ovulatory function can be improved with a healthier body weight. Then there is cardiovascular function and even something like reflux can benefit from some weight loss.

Feel free to chat with me about this when next week see each other or DM me or put a question in the comments below.

Here’s a pic of a delicious breakfast I prepared last week… curried eggs on toast with avocado. It’s a great way to start the day!

16/01/2023

Now we are in our fourth year of dealing with COVID 🦠😷(first cases being late 2019), hands up 🙋‍♂️🙋‍♂️🙋‍♂️if you’re sick to death of hearing about it?

I know I am, but….

…the reality is it’s all around us and it remains a clever, nimble, adaptive and evasive virus which has killed and wounded many, many more people than a seasonal influenza outbreak ever has.

But, that said, we’re all doing our best to co-exist with it and I, as far as my practice goes, have done my best to support and adopt all the public health measures required of me.

The single risk point in my clinic is that you can’t socially distance during an acupuncture session, BUT, there are some sensible and easy measures we can all adopt to reduce the risk of transmission to each other.

These measures include:
1. Staying home if you know you have COVID (and converting to a TeleHealth consult for herbs);
2. If you’re unsure, contact Peter ahead of your appointment;
3. Always wear a mask to your appointment (as we can’t socially distance during acupuncture); and
4. Feel safe that I have bought a hospital grade HEPA air filter for the treatment room which, when used in conjunction with masks, significantly reduces transmission risk.

Towards the end of last year the state government removed the ‘health directives’ which had governed how we’d lived since early 2020. As a result of that, I had to create my own policy for triaging a client’s state of health and then assessing risk, in terms of transmission of a viral infection like COVID.

I published this document on my website. Here is a link, take a look and if you’ve got any questions, DM me or comment below.

https://www.peterkington.com.au/covid-safe-update-october-2022/

14/09/2022

A couple of days ago, I shared an article about ‘surge capacity’.

Surge capacity is a concept which explains ‘commitment overload’ - the idea that we (over) commit ourselves and then have nothing left to give.

I just read this article about the intrusion that private chat groups can have in our lives. The article presents this idea that, during COVID when we were isolated from each other, we modified our traditional communication strategies by being included in chat groups with family, friends, colleagues in apps like WhatsApp or Messenger.

Naturally, now we are much less isolated, many of these groups have died off, but also many continue and the question is: are they necessary or are they distracting? Another question is: do notifications from these apps excessively disrupt and disturb us?

For mine, I have notifications turned off most apps and I choose when I go and engage.

Circling back to the previous article from two days ago, this is another example of ‘surge capacity’ and the demands on our time. This is a really great, worthwhile read and I’m interested to hear in the comments what your thoughts are.

Oh and if you like this, please like, comment and share to your friends and colleagues.

Group chats were a lifeline during lockdown – but for many, the constant messages have become an oppressive distraction. Leaving, however, is not so simple

12/09/2022

OK… confession time.

I know it’s been a while between updates - largely because, well, my attention sometimes gets spread wide and thin.

I’m sure, like most of you, some days I wish there was at least two of me - one to do life admin and the other to do the rest.

Anyway, with that little mea culpa in mind, I wanted to share this really interesting read about, of all things, spreading yourself too thin. The concept to explain this is your ‘surge capacity’.

During the early days of the pandemic many of us had more time on our hands - we were at home, not commuting, not socialising and so we got ourselves involved in new, time-occupying activities. Mine was to set up a charity - which is a whole other story.

But in doing that we were fulfilling a gap that had suddenly emerged in our lives and rather than just going with the flow, we did things and got involved in things. And that was great, but now that many of our day-to-day tasks have returned to a semblance of normal, we’re finding ourselves at capacity juggling these new things, with our usual things…

… and that’s your surge capacity. This article is all about how to replenish your surge capacity.

Happy reading. Feel free to like, comment and share (and a call out to my colleague Sarah George Acupuncture & Natural Health for sharing this with me).

The coronavirus pandemic – and the response that has been required by leaders in all sectors – is truly one of the most pressing challenges we have faced in our time. Many of us are experiencing serious ‘carers’ load’ and ‘vicarious trauma’ as a result of the challenges presented at wo...