Evan though Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) it is often seen as not embracing of vegan or vegetarian food this I think has a lot to do with the information not being up to date.

Broths traditionally use are bone broths these support core energy digestion and Water energy relating to the kidney and bladder organs and meridians which regulate stress and are very active in the winter.  

But vegetable broth is also great and has advantages like being quicker to make and more versatile.

Adding in seaweed and goji berries or red dates can add in different health benefits.

It’s a form of external therapy said to originate in Asia. Its most know for its use within Chinese’s medicine where forms of the plant mugwort (Artemesia Vulgaris) are burnt to produce heat to warm either acupressure points or area of the body.

Moxibustion uses burning Moxa stick or cone to produce a warm sensation and was regarded as a principal treatment in ancient China. The studies of the earliest known form of Chinese writing, Oracle Bone Script (Jiagu Wen, 甲骨文), indicated that Moxibustion might have been applied in Yin dynasty (1600 BC–1046 BC)

Modern research of the mechanism of Moxibustion mainly relate to the thermal effects, its radiation spectrum being close to that of infrared.

Pregnancy is such a wonderful time blooming with life, excitement and wonder.

Well this is how it is for some women but I think we also know as therapists that often pregnancy isn’t alway like that and can be fraught with stress and worry.

You are supposed to feel excited, over the moon and the epitome of Mother Nature when often you feel exhausted, sick, achy and irritable …. these are just the normal adaptations as the body grows a new life and is plunged into a maelstrom of hormonal and postural changes let alone the transitions to parenthood.

Do you feel uncomfortable with your marketing strategy and think that you should be doing more and doing it differently or that you are not attracting the right clients to you? This can be a real struggle, time consuming and fraught with uncertainty. It can leave you feeling that you are shooting in the dark.

Is your marketing flourishing or failing you?

There are some points that I feel are key to underpinning all aspects of how we market ourselves before we get to putting it into action.

You are your business; understanding your values and your value is at the heart of this. We are our greatest assets and to be authentically ourselves is our key selling point.

This is a more ethereal selling point to get across than say than selling a product but if we embody these things with an inter clarity it becomes a strong foundation to our work and how we are perceived.

I don’t think that many people considering training in therapies do it because they see it attached to a large salary, world domination or a Nobel peace prize but what does draw people to this profession?

Having taught students in several different Colleges and different age ranges, I have found when teaching 16-19 year olds (and sorry as this is a generalisation) they liked working with people but were often unsure what job areas to go into or saw it as a travel opportunity for working abroad.  With the increase in the number of Spa’s there is also a larger corporate industry with job opportunities for younger therapists.

By comparison older students often feel drawn to retrain in complementary therapy wanting a new career  in which they feel that they are helping people. They often have also had personal experience of receiving complementary therapy, which has helped them through a difficult time maybe emotional change, health problems or to support them through their pregnancy. This often means they come into training with a greater sense of direction and with more life experience to bring to their treatments.

Coming into spring yes we are here even though its still rather chilly!

The detox word starts to be bandied about we are often feeling sluggish at this time of year.

There are loads of detox programs and books out there. But what is detoxing?

The premise of these programs is that once completed your body is free of toxins. Our body does acquire toxins the majority of these come from our environment, which contains chemicals such as heavy metals and other substances to varying degrees.  If we have these in our body to anything near high levels we would be feeling very unwell. Just look up the symptoms of lead poisoning but obviously we would rather not have any of these toxins in our body as they could be contributing to health problems.

As another new year starts this is often a time of reflection upon our past year and an opportunity to look forwards towards another. January is also tax return time and for those self employed individuals it is necessary to make sure you have filed your self-assessment return and to pay your tax.  In this blog I will be looking at cash flow planning and discussing the ways of managing both your cash and work flow to help plan for your tax and to improve productivity and efficiency.

Initially it is worth reflecting on the previous years in order to look for any issues or trends which you might be able to learn from. Reviewing your accounts can help to identify those times of year which tend to be very busy and those which are quieter. A key problem with managing quiet times is often that of cash flow as bills and expenses need to be paid all year round and a quiet spell can place pressure on available cash to meet your costs.

Consider what problems your quiet times cause you and on looking back at your past year, could you have done anything to spread the work more evenly? What might the reasons for the being busier or quieter at different times of the year?

Selling Treatments as Presents

Offering treatments as presents to existing or potential new clients is a lovely idea but here area few things you may want think about:-

Consider the type of work that you do and whether it would be appropriate as a gift, for example if you work a lot with emotional issues then you may find people buying gift vouchers is less likely due to the personal nature of the treatment.

Those working with stress, relaxation and pamper treatments should find these gift vouchers to be ideal.

Some ideas when offering gift vouchers are: