One of the therapies we are able to offer at The Pickering Cancer Drop-In Centre is acupuncture and Ed Nicholls Lic.Ac. MBAcC is the volunteer therapist who kindly provides this service to our visitors. He has been volunteering here for two years and travels down from his base in London every Monday.
Ed originally comes from Kent and found out about Pickering as his Mother, Jane, is another of our therapists, offering reflexology to our visitors. “I really enjoy heading out of London every Monday to Kent,” says Ed. “It’s always a pleasure to come to Pickering – it’s such a warm and welcoming environment.”
Ed started his career in the wine trade in London, a job he said increasingly ‘got on top’ of him. In the end, he stepped away from his stressful role and embarked on a journey to discover Chinese medicine and eastern philosophy. This saw him head to China and spend time learning from teachers in the mountains of Shandong. Since then, he’s ‘spent years studying how to apply classical knowledge in a way that feels relevant, grounded, and effective in today’s world’.
“Over time, I’ve learned how to apply what I know to oncology patients and I have witnessed how acupuncture can take the sting out of side-affects they might be experiencing, as well as the stress they are feeling,” says Ed. “During my sessions, I help visitors to not just relax but to achieve deeper levels of release. I work to broaden their internal perception of what is possible from a relaxation perspective, which can certainly help when navigating through the psychosomatic difficulties involved with cancer treatment and survivorship.”
While some visitors are initially nervous of acupuncture, thinking they might end up like a ‘pin cushion’, Ed says he uses very few needles than traditionally might be expected, sometimes only one.
Each treatment is personalised. Often, a visitor will come with particular pain or stress in one area and Ed says it’s not unusual to unblock and achieve relief ‘within moments’, with more substantial results being achieved throughout a course of treatments.
“It’s a little like the game Kerplunk,” he says. “You need to pull the right straw – that most weight-bearing pillar – to achieve release.”
Ed has been seeing some visitors for two years now and says he likes to see new visitors to ‘invest’ in treatment and be open to signing up to six initial treatments to ‘effectively introduce acupuncture into their lives’.
Ed adds: “Western science is now beginning to confirm what classical texts have said for centuries: the body has an extraordinary capacity to heal itself when given the right kind of support. Acupuncture sits at the meeting point of structure and sensation, evidence and experience. It offers the best of both worlds—not because it compromises, but because it listens.”