Cognitive Therapy

In the half-light of the clinic, there is a moment when silence weighs like an ancient secret. The needle touches the skin, and the body responds before the mind, as if it knows something that thought has yet to grasp. Pain, anguish, insomnia — the invisible knots of existence — are all there, woven into the meridians but also into unspoken words.

And then, a conversation begins. Not just any conversation, the kind that drifts absent-mindedly between time and urgency. But a deep listening, a thread of thought unravelling precisely where the body seeks relief. Acupuncture opens doors the mind has unknowingly closed, and cognitive therapy steps in to organise the chaos, like someone gently sweeping dry leaves from a garden.

Because touching the body is not enough if the mind remains trapped in old labyrinths. Pain is born as much from what happens to us as from what we do with what happens to us. Thoughts weave our emotions, and more often than not, they are what tighten the knot in the chest, keeping pain captive. And what is healing, if not a new way of perceiving? A way of looking within and redrawing the paths along which the mind travels?

The session becomes a suspended moment, a space where body and thought meet, converse, recognise one another. The needle speaks to the nerve, the word speaks to the soul. The body feels, the mind understands. The breath steadies, the eyes brighten, and there is a quiet awe in the realisation: I can think differently, I can feel differently. And when consciousness shifts, something in the body also lets go, like a knot unravelling on its own.

Perhaps this is what I seek. A meeting between the visible and the invisible, between skin and thought, between pain and the possibility of release. Because acupuncture brings relief, but the mind can still imprison. And when the needle and the word come together, there is a fleeting, magical moment in which the patient, perhaps, regains ownership of themselves.