Why is everyone including gua sha in their self-care beauty ritual? We speak to Katie Brindle, a Chinese medicine practitioner and founder of Hayo’u.
It’s an interesting journey that Katie Brindle took to start Hayo’u, a brand dedicated to Chinese medicine self-care tools and rituals.
In 1992, Brindle was training to be an opera singer when a car accident left her unable to sing. After a year of dealing with pain, she realised that Western medicine was unable to heal her completely, so she moved on to the world of alternative therapy and eventually discovered Chinese medicine.
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“It was a combination of qigong, gua sha and just the knowledge of how to balance my body. I was amazed by how, with the right kind of help and correct information, my body was able to heal itself. This was the turning point for me. I decided to leave my job and start a degree in Five Element acupuncture,” said Brindle, who also authored a book on the art of Chinese self-healing.
She attended The London College of Traditional Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (LCTA) and College of Integrated Chinese Medicine (CICM) and later joined the British Acupuncture Council (BAcC) when she set up a clinic.
Brindle saw that when patients incorporated the self-care treatments prescribed adeptly (including the use of gua sha), their outcome was exponentially better than those who came in once a week to have acupuncture; and she quickly saw the importance of self-care tools.
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