Maggie Bavington
Acupuncture, Shiatsu &
Chinese Herbal Remedies in
East London

Health, Vitality and Balance

Traditional acupuncture works to help maintain your body's equilibrium. Very fine needles are inserted into specific points on the body to regulate the flow of vital energy (known as Qi in Chinese). Qi can become disturbed, depleted or blocked, leading to pain and illness. Traditional acupuncture aims to restore balance and promote physical and emotional harmony.

Can acupuncture help me?

Please ring me if you have a particular problem that you would like to discuss, such as back pain, migraine, infertility, insomnia or any other condition. As explained below, traditional acupuncture takes into consideration the whole of you, not just the illness or condition, and aims to restore health, harmony and vitality, by addressing the imbalances that underlie your symptoms.

Contact Maggie Bavington

You are very welcome to ring me with any questions 07802 954 490 or email me

How does it work?

In the West, we are used to identifying ourselves by the name of our condition, eg IBS, anxiety, sinusitis. Traditional acupuncture does not treat illness by applying a standardised treatment protocol to a condition or illness. The famous Chinese description of methodology states

Yi bing tong zhi
Tong bing yi zhi

Different disease, same treatment
Same disease, different treatment

This means that two people with the same illness will receive two different treatments if their patterns are different. Conversely, two people with different diseases will receive the same treatment if their patterns are the same. Pattern discrimination is the fundamental basis of traditional acupuncture. This means that treatment is based not just on symptoms, but on the individual's constitution, the relationship between the individual's qi and the illness, and any unusual responses to illness that are particular to the individual. If we only consider the condition, without considering the person who has the condition, this is like failing to see the forest for the trees.

This is also why traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture practitioners who have a lot of experience with a particular condition, such as infertility, cancer, sports injuries, do not call themselves specialists, as the word specialist implies a focus on one area to the exclusion of others. Although I have postgraduate training in my particular area of interest which is infertility, the fundamental approach is the same; to look at the whole person and identify patterns of imbalance.