Acupuncture Surrey

24/06/2026

**☀️ Staying safe in the heat — what Chinese medicine says about protecting the very young and the very old**

As temperatures climb, most of us adapt — we slow down, drink more water, seek shade. But for older adults and young children, extreme heat is a different story.

**Why these two groups are more vulnerable**

In Chinese medicine, *Yin* is the cooling, moistening side of our physiology — the body's fluid reserves and its ability to regulate heat. Older people naturally have less of it. Young children have plenty of fluid but their systems are immature and lose it fast. In both cases, hot weather depletes what's already in shorter supply.

The *Heart* — the organ most associated with summer — governs not just circulation but the mind and emotional state too. When the body overheats, the Heart comes under pressure. In children this shows up as irritability, restlessness, difficulty sleeping. In older adults: palpitations, anxiety, poor sleep, mental fogginess.

**What to eat and drink**

The goal is to cool gently and replenish fluids — without shocking the digestive system with icy drinks, which Chinese medicine considers damaging to the gut over time.

🍉 **Watermelon** — a classic Summer Heat remedy. The white rind especially is used medicinally to clear heat and promote gentle hydration.

🫘 **Mung bean soup** — widely drunk across East and Southeast Asia in summer for good reason. Cooling, hydrating, easy to digest. A little salt replaces what's lost through sweating.

🫖 **Chrysanthemum tea** — gently clears heat, good for headaches and flushed faces.

🌾 **Barley water** — cooling and easy on the digestion.

🍐 **Pears and cucumber** — both moisten and cool without being harsh on the system.

**Avoid in a heatwave:** spicy food, alcohol, heavy fried food — all add heat. And resist very cold drinks for children; small sips of cool water are much better.

**Lifestyle reminders**

Rest between 11am and 3pm if you can — a short midday nap is genuinely traditional in summer TCM practice.

Avoid sitting directly under air conditioning or fans. The sudden cold hitting the skin can drive what Chinese medicine calls *Wind-Cold* into the channels, leaving you with stiff neck, headache, or that odd end-of-summer cold that seems to come from nowhere.

For older adults especially, be mindful of moving repeatedly between hot outdoor air and very cold air-conditioned spaces — harder on the body than we tend to think.

**When to seek help**

If a child develops a sudden high fever with a red face but isn't sweating, becomes very lethargic, or stops drinking — this needs prompt attention, not just home management. Heat illness can escalate quickly in small children.

16/06/2026

What can you find out from taking the pulse?

This is a summary of how TCM interprets the pulse.

In addition to this, I also use Stems and Branches pulse taking techniques which is akin to having a conversation with your energy system and gives a different and often deeper perspective on patterns and where they might have arisen from.

13/06/2026

The next in my series about internal alchemy - this time focussing on qi.

The next in my series about internal alchemy. A look at what Qi is; of interest to those practicing tai chi, qigong or exploring therapies such as acupuncture or shiatsu.

Qi — The Living Current ⚡

We've looked at jing — your deepest reserve, your foundational essence. Now we move to the next level: qi.

Qi is probably the most well known of the three, and also the most misunderstood. It's often translated simply as energy — but that word doesn't quite capture it. Qi is more like the living current that animates everything. It's what makes the difference between a living body and one that is not. It's in your breath, your movement, your digestion, your immune response, your emotions. It's the dynamic, active principle that keeps everything flowing.

In Chinese medicine, qi has one fundamental requirement: it must move.

When qi flows freely through the body's channels and organs, we feel well. Energised, clear headed, emotionally balanced, physically resilient. When qi stagnates — through stress, tension, poor posture, unprocessed emotion, illness or injury — we start to feel it. Tightness. Irritability. Fatigue. Pain. A general sense that something is stuck.

Most of us are carrying a significant amount of stagnant qi. It's almost impossible not to in the way we live now.

This is where movement practice becomes medicine. Tai chi and qigong work directly with qi — the slow, intentional movements, the conscious breathing, the quality of relaxed attention — all of these help to move what is stuck, open what is closed, and restore the natural flow. This is not metaphor. You can feel it happening.

Acupuncture works with qi too — directly accessing the channel system to clear blockages, regulate flow, and address both the symptoms and the underlying patterns that cause qi to stagnate in the first place.

In the internal alchemy framework, qi is the medium — the level at which most of our day to day practice operates. Jing is the raw resource, but qi is what we're working with moment to moment. Refining qi means learning to move through life with less friction, less leakage, less unnecessary expenditure of energy — and more flow.

There's a reason people who practise tai chi for years tend to seem somehow more present than the average person. Qi, gathered and moving freely, has a quality to it. You start to notice it in yourself. And others notice it in you.

Next week we'll look at the most refined of the three — shen, the spirit. 🌿

Acupuncture Surrey

10/06/2026

I'm running a set of three, 1 hour, online classes over the next few weeks as an introduction to a Chinese energy exercise system called Taijiwuxigong and to teach some basic meditation techniques. These exercises have literally changed my life, addressing both physical and mental health issues.

You are invited to join live on zoom for the recordings on 12, 17 and 24 June or simply to sign up for the videos which will be available for 2 weeks.

The investment is £10 per class or £27 for all three when paid in advance.

If you'd like to sign up please contact me (Nicci) on [email protected]

07/06/2026

Our clinics will be closed from 8 - 28 June while I travel to support a family member. Thanks for your patience during this time.

Clinics reopen as follows:

+ private clinic at the Reigate Wellbeing Centre Church Street - from Tuesday 30 June
+ community clinic in Merstham - from Monday 29 June (spaces limited)

I will be able to respond to emails while away so please do get in touch if you need to at [email protected]

07/06/2026

Jing — Your Deepest Resource 🌱

Last week I introduced the idea of internal alchemy — a framework for understanding and refining the energies that make us who we are. This week I want to look at the first and most foundational of the three: jing.

Jing is often translated as essence. Think of it as your deepest biological and energetic reserve — the stuff you were born with, and the stuff that sustains you at the most fundamental level.

You inherit a certain amount of jing from your parents — this is called pre-heaven jing, and it's essentially your constitutional inheritance. Your baseline vitality. Some people are born with more, some with less. In Chinese medicine this is just an honest observation about human variation, not a judgement.

You can't top up your pre-heaven jing. But you can stop burning through it unnecessarily.

Because jing depletes. And modern life is exceptionally good at depleting it. Chronic stress. Overwork. Poor sleep. Not enough genuine rest and recovery. Burning the candle relentlessly at both ends. In Chinese medicine, the signs of jing depletion show up as premature ageing, exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix, low back weakness, poor recovery, and a general sense of having less to draw on than you once did.

Sound familiar?

The good news is that alongside your inherited jing, you're constantly producing post-heaven jing — refined from the food you eat, the air you breathe, and the quality of your rest and recovery. And there's quite a lot you can do to support this. Your qigong and tai chi practice plays a direct role — slow, rooted, conscious movement helps gather and consolidate jing rather than scatter it. Stillness practice even more so.

Acupuncture can also help here — supporting the systems responsible for producing and distributing post-heaven jing, improving how efficiently your body uses the energy it generates, and essentially helping you make the most of what you have.

In the internal alchemy framework, jing is the raw material — the starting point for the whole refining process. You can't transform what you haven't first gathered and conserved.

So before anything else: notice where you're leaking energy. Move slowly and with full attention. Treat your vitality as the finite and precious resource it actually is.

Jing doesn't shout. It's quiet, deep and slow. And in a world that rewards constant output, learning to honour it might be one of the most radical things you can do. 🌿

04/06/2026

Absolutely thrilled with my jade Buddha gift from one of my Macmillan patients today. Thank you Sue x

01/06/2026

A sneak peek into the Community Clinic set up process.

We've been running the clinic from the Age Concern Centre for 3 and a half years now, offering affordable acupuncture to those in the community who can't always manage private rates.

A massive thank you to Age Concern Merstham Redhill Reigate for renting us this great hall and being supportive and flexible landlords.

31/05/2026

What is Internal Alchemy? 🔥

I've been exploring spagyrics recently — a Western alchemical tradition of working with plant medicines that goes back to Paracelsus and is still very much alive today.

At its heart is a beautiful idea: that within every plant there are three levels of being — soul, spirit and body — and that through a careful process of separation, purification and recombination, the plant's deepest nature can be liberated and offered as medicine.

The moment I came across this I felt an immediate recognition.

Because this is the same conversation that Chinese medicine and Taoist philosophy have been having for thousands of years — just from the inside rather than the outside.
Where spagyrics works with plants to reveal what is most essential, neidan — internal alchemy — works with the human being. The idea is the same: that within us something luminous exists. The work isn't to add anything. It's to clear and refine, so that what's already present can emerge.

In this frameworre made of three fundamental substances — jing (essence, your body's deepest reserves), qi (vital energy, the living current that animates everything you do), and shen (spirit — the quality and clarity of your awareness). These map onto those three alchemical principles with striking elegance.

And just as spagyrics sees the plant as a bridge between earth and cosmos, Taoist philosophy sees the human being as a conduit between Heaven and Earth — able, when clear and open, to embody that connection fully - clearing the path for us to manifest ad share that luminous quality.

The key words there are clear and open.
Most of us aren't running on a clear system. Jing depleted by stress and overwork. Qi stagnant from years of rushing, suppressing, not stopping. Shen scattered by the relentless noise of modern life.

The qigong I teach focuses primarily on clearing — releasing stagnant and pathogenic qi (we call it binqi) from the energy system so the body's true nature can reassert itself. Not forcing. Not adding. Just creating the conditions for what's already true to become available again.

This is internal alchemy in its most practical form. Not esoteric knowledge for advanced practitioners, but an invitation open to anyone willing to slow down and pay attention.

Over the coming weeks I'll be exploring jing, qi and shen in more depth — and some of the principles behind this ancient and surprisingly relevant map of what it means to be human.

I'm not teaching this as a formal neidan system — I'm sharing it as a framework that has genuinely shaped my own practice, and that I hope might open some doors for you too. 🌿

Picture of our fabulous spagyrics lecture today at The Healing Garden.

29/05/2026

🌿 Science is finally catching up with what we've always known

National Geographic published a fascinating piece this month titled "Scientists are finally decoding how acupuncture eases pain" — and it's well worth a read.

The article explores how modern imaging is now showing what happens inside the body when a needle meets tissue. Researchers are uncovering how needle insertion triggers a chain reaction — activating immune cells, releasing pain-modulating chemicals, and altering brain activity — creating a measurable, body-wide response.

High-field fMRI scans are showing changes in brain regions involved in pain processing and emotional regulation. Soft X-ray imaging has captured immune cells drifting toward acupuncture needles. And researchers have reported an 80% overlap between classical meridian pathways and connective tissue networks, with acupoints containing up to 1.4 times more nerve fibres than surrounding tissue. The traditional map is starting to look like "a profound, ancient blueprint of the body's neural and fascial networks," as one researcher puts it.

The article also highlights the world's first double-blind acupuncture trial — where neither patients nor practitioners knew whether real or sham needles were used. True acupuncture provided relief lasting up to 12 weeks, compared to 4 weeks for the placebo. And in one randomised emergency-setting trial, acupuncture relieved acute pain more quickly and effectively than intravenous morphine, with fewer side effects.

With the opioid crisis having claimed over a million lives in the US since 2000, the case for safe, non-addictive pain management has never been more urgent. This is exactly why I trained in classical Chinese medicine. The frameworks are ancient. The science is now beginning to explain them.

🔗 Read the full article:

Your body has a built-in painkiller system. Acupuncture may switch it on.