Acupuncture Oxford, 34 Cowley Road, Oxford (2026)

15/11/2023

Coming up this Friday 17th November.

A one day workshop '9 months + 40 days: Preparing for the Fourth Trimester'.

This workshop is an opportunity to prepare thoroughly for the beginning to motherhood and parenthood.

The day will be underpinned by embodied practices (exploring movement, breath, & felt-sense awareness (feeling)) that support our movement towards an increased sense of security and safety.

It is an opportunity to tune in to your inner cues and practice flexing the muscles necessary for both movement and vocalization, so that you can establish your boundaries and identify your wishes with more clarity and confidence for pregnancy, birth and early parenthood.

More info via the linktree.

05/11/2023

The sacred window - confinement - sitting the month - the fourth trimester are just some of the descriptions that emphasise the crucial importance of the time after birth.

When a baby is born, the vital resources that enable that child to survive and thrive are the warmth, nutrients and interdependent bond with its mother / primary caregiver.

In Chinese Medicine the fourth trimester is understood to be a time of vulnerability for a human animal.

It is understood to be a time when a mother is undergoing a hormonal and energetic initiation and at a potential crossroads in their health.

Pregnancy is a time when the body is in an abundance of Qi (energy) and in an abundance of Blood (in pregnancy blood volume can increase by between 30-50%, the body is host to an additional organ and growing a human being - abundance is palpable).

When birth takes place, an imminent shift (physical, mechanical, visceral, chemical and hormonal) takes place. It is this shift that leaves a human system more vulnerable to the invasion of external pathogens.

It is widely understood that preparing for birth is important.

It needs to be far better understood that preparing for postpartum is of potentially even greater importance.

Postpartum is the vital ground where recovery and bonding concurrently take place.

While we are in this intricate, tender and intimate process of recovery - we are also faring the early days of creating the most precious of bonds.

Postpartum is a crucial window. A sacred window.

On Friday 17th November I am running a one day workshop at my home for those who are in their second or third trimester who want to prepare well and in an embodied way for their fourth trimester.

Details via the link in my bio.

25/10/2023

This Saturday you are warmly invited to join me to breathe and move with a focus on the pelvis.

We will walk ourselves around the pelvic anatomy with our hands, hold our bones, and breathe awareness and life into the tissues.

The pelvis is our root, our hinge point, the place where a being decides to curl in and make themselves smaller or open out and make themselves bigger. Is it a hub where we let go and excrete. It is here on the anatomical map that we have a pleasure centre.

It is a place and relationship to give time to.

A question that often guides my hands on work is:

What happens if instead of focusing on pathology we hold the health in the body?

When we make contact - through movement, awareness, breathwork etc with our entire living system and recognize where there is movement, where there is vitality and allow this to become a focal point of our awareness, something unfolds differently.

Illness and imbalance is an integral of human experience. How we orientate to the body in the midst of ‘pathology’ is crucial.

There is always health, there is always vitality inside of us.

Working with bodies in both the depths of illness, and in their dying time, I’ve felt that the body can always show us where its resilience and aliveness lies.

Something remarkable happens when we give the body the opportunity to nurture its aliveness. Not fireworks going off or winning the lottery remarkable, but a firefly in the night sky remarkable, the reflection of the moon on the body of the ocean remarkable, bright golden autumn leaves remarkable.

As human animals, we are wired to orientate towards survival.

Join me to orientate to the aliveness in your body. To explore the life inside the breath, to feel what aliveness feels and tastes like.

Saturday 28th October from 10-1pm, in person in my studio in East Oxford.

Photo credit - Elle Narbrook

26/09/2023

Before we are born, in the days we spend in the waters of the womb, our body forms a knowing of attachment and an understanding of belonging.

Subsequently shaped and tended by the moments, hours, days, and months following birth when our mother, parents, primary care givers attune to our calls for comfort and nourishment.

How we engage with and feel belonging later in life is intricately related to the the early map of belonging that we first got to know, how we first made sense of being seen.

When we bring a baby into the world, we are being guided by this map.

9 months + 40 days is a one day workshop - an opportunity to nurture the voice of your inner cues so that you can establish your boundaries and identify your wishes with more clarity and confidence for pregnancy, birth and early parenthood.

Accessing what we are feeling in our body gives us an understanding of our authentic experience and scope therefore to respond to it.

In Chinese medicine and culture the first month to forty days after birth is significant.

The time is referred to as ‘confinement’ or ‘sitting the month’. The phrase is a clear ear marking of the post partum time and the change in pace required therein. It is understood as a time for recovery, replenishment, building resources and sustenance. It is also a window of opportunity to reset existing patterns in the body.

Come and join me for a day to prepare and plan for this important time.

Friday 6th October 10am until 4pm. This workshop will be held in my studio in East Oxford.

11/09/2023

Oxford NCT Home Birth Group - Monday 11th September from 7pm until 8.30pm.

This is an in person event taking place in East Oxford.

01/02/2023

A morning of pelvic care and breath work - coming up on Saturday 25th Feb.

The pelvic bowl, like a garden, needs tending. Our tissues love to be listened to, they relish time and space for movement, for softness and for rest. When we support good movement through the diaphragm, we are supporting movement in the ligaments that suspend our ovaries and our wombs. Our organs are designed to move both in their own inherent rhythm and in response to diaphragmatic movement.

Join me to breathe, to track and attune to the pelvic tissue and viscera.

The workshop will run in person from 10.30am until 1.30pm on Saturday 25th February.

Maximum 6 people - in the cosy studio in my garden.

09/11/2022

The intelligence within the innate ecosystem in our bodies is vast. We are home to fluid tides, rhythm, electricity, growth, catalytic processes, expansion, respiration, cellular responsiveness, infarction, & to death.

The ecosystem within us is intricately reflective of the ecosystems beyond us.

Our cells hold memory, intelligence and knowing.

We are primed and conditioned to respond and relate to our body by a plethora of sources. Family, school, our healthcare system, media, books etc to name a few.

We are more often than not taught that our body is not an interrelated ecosystem but a system within which there are separate parts. We learn that if part of us becomes injured, unwell or sick that we must identify said injury or sickness and fix it.

We are very rarely invited to look at the landscape within which our pathology arises and consider tending to that as our medicine.

The Breath and the Pelvis is a three hour workshop that looks at coming into relationship with the deeply intelligent, responsive landscape of the body.

To listen in and to feel in order to begin to nurture life, movement, repair, feeling, activity, warmth into the bowl of our bodies.

If you are curious to explore breath work in relation to pelvic care, please join us. There are two spots left for this coming in person workshop on Saturday 12th November (10.30am - 1.30pm) and another workshop coming up on Saturday 4th February.

15/09/2022

What messages are you given about caring for your pelvis / pelvic diaphragm before, during and after birth?
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Tighten up is a common theme.
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The body of the perineum is a fibro-muscular mass that marks the convergence of a number of different muscles and sheets of connective tissue.
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This body of tissue is essential for maintaining the integrity of the pelvic diaphragm – especially in a pelvis after birth.
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'Tightening things up' after birth is a very oversimplified and sometimes an actively UNHELPFUL way of attempting to take care of the base of our body after it has accommodated such a huge change, be it following surgical or vaginal birth.
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Some areas within this web of tissue may need tonifying. Other parts may actually need unwinding.
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Having worked with clients following episiotomies, my direct hands on experience was that LISTENING to and unwinding the tissue was needed first or as a central aspect to pelvic care.
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ALSO - tissue doesn't just present with holding patterns for mechanical reasons. (This is another reductionist narrative we give to the body.)
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If we experience fear, anxiety, stress, threat to life, overwhelm around the experience of birth that we are unable to metabolise then our tissues may be in a holding pattern because of this too.
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Join me on Saturday 24th September, NOT to learn how to tighten up, but firstly, to learn how to feel. To attune.
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The workshop will run from 10am until 1pm. Link in my bio for more info.

14/09/2022

Hello from amidst project rumblings, busy clinic days, post summer joy - chaos - joy and tumbling back into school / work / life routine.

Life is fast moving, especially after two years of pause.

It is easy to lose ground when we speed up. It takes time to re-attune both to the pace and to the range of engagement - be it social / emotional / financial.

I’m returning to this space in the spirit of connection (not in service of wellness influencer-ship and the world of nervous system hacks / awakening / detoxing / rite of passage programmes that we are so bombarded with).

I’m not invested in empowerment BS either.

I’m committed to sharing an understanding of the body that I’ve come to, through my hands on work and work in the wider world.

Here is a space for sharing about my work, understanding and enquiries in relation to landing fully in this fleshy vehicle that is our animal body.

When we live in service to this, we are invested in living with the possibility of enriching life moment to moment, guided by an exquisite, uniquely tuned, inner navigation system rooted within our cells.

19/11/2020

"When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight. The night will give you a horizon further than you can see. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up on all other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. "
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— David Whyte
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📷 - Mathias P.R. Reding

17/11/2020

Earlybird booking is now open for '9 months + 40 days' - A five week online course which begins on Thursday 28th January 2021 and runs for five weeks - facilitated by me & hosted by the Everybody Studio.
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The course is for those in pregnancy to take time to explore an embodied and instinctive post-partum time and map the first forty days after birth.
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This course will be centered around:
- Feeling into the autonomy of the body - what feels good, right and instinctive to you - through body centered practices
- Coming into parenthood as a rite of passage
- The golden hour - the first hour after birth through different lenses
- What happens after pregnancy from a hormonal perspective - using this to guide self care in the PP time
- The Fourth Trimester from a Chinese Medicine point of view
- Food, herbs and other practices that heal
- Touching base with the pelvis and pelvic 'floor' - Engaging with pelvic bowl recovery using the breath, pelvic mapping and somatic pelvic practices
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It is a JUICY five weeks. (In fact, feedback from the last four week course was that four weeks was not enough - so - this time around, we have added an additional week where we will touch in purely on the pelvis and pelvic recovery after birth)
http://www.emilycarson.co.uk/sitting-the-month...
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Earlybird places can be booked until Monday 30th November. If you have loved ones preparing for birth and beyond please do share this work.
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Bookings can be made via the
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Image by Kunj Parekh

Acupuncture Oxford

15/11/2023

05/11/2023

25/10/2023

26/09/2023

11/09/2023

01/02/2023

09/11/2022

15/09/2022

14/09/2022

19/11/2020

17/11/2020

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