The Lane Cove rooms are at 2 Austin Street, directly opposite the Lane Cove Library and a few metres from Longueville Road. If you are coming from the village it is a walk of two or three minutes, and the parking behind the library is the easiest option in the middle of the day.
Lane Cove sends a particular mix of problems through the door. There are the desk-and-commute necks and low backs from St Leonards and the city, the shoulders and elbows of a suburb that plays a lot of tennis, and the knees and Achilles tendons that come with living on a hillside — the stairs down to Tambourine Bay and the streets off Burns Bay Road are their own kind of training load. Lane Cove also has a lot of people in their thirties and forties carrying small children, which is its own demand on a back.
A first appointment is mostly questions and movement testing: where the pain is, what makes it worse, what it stops you doing, and how it has behaved over weeks rather than days. From there you should leave knowing what is proposed, roughly how long it is expected to take, and what would mean changing the plan.
Worth bringing: any imaging or specialist letters you already have, a list of medications, and the shoes you actually walk or train in. If the pain is new and severe, follows a significant fall, or comes with numbness, weakness, fever or any change in bladder or bowel control, see a doctor first — that is a medical assessment, not a treatment question.
The nearest alternative if Lane Cove does not suit you is the Freshwater side, about 14 kilometres away across the Spit.
A herbal formula for aches can look like a list of well-known plants. In Chinese medicine, it is prescribed as a whole, for one person, at one time.
Someone in your walking group swears by a herbal formula for their knees, and the ingredients look harmless enough. It can seem simple to buy the same mix. Yet a formula is more than a collection of plants with good reputations, and prescribing involves more than picking ingredients one by one.
In traditional Chinese medicine, the whole prescription is considered together, alongside the way a person presents at that point in time. Ingredients are chosen in relation to one another and to the individual. Looking at the label of someone else's formula does not give you enough information to reconstruct their treatment, let alone decide that it fits you.
That perspective can help you ask sharper questions when you meet Dr Christine Shen, Acupuncturist. What is the purpose of the formula being suggested? How and when will it be reviewed? What would prompt a change? It also helps to remember that a traditional explanation is a framework, not evidence that a formula works for every condition listed beside it. Copying a friend's prescription, however well meant, skips the assessment that should come first. Your digestion, sleep, other medicines and general health may differ from theirs in ways that matter.
If a formula is prescribed, keep the product name, directions and the date for review in one place, with the original packaging. Tell Christine when your GP adjusts a medicine or when you begin anything new for pain or sleep. Should a fresh symptom appear and you are unsure whether the herbs are involved, get advice rather than tinkering with the dose.
If a friend's formula is what sparked your interest, it is fine to mention it during your consultation at the Freshwater clinic. It can open a useful discussion about why your own needs might lead somewhere quite different.
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