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.
When you already live with an ache, the idea of needles can feel like one more thing to brace against. This is what people commonly notice, and when to say so.
When your shoulders or knees already hurt most days, the last thing you want is a treatment that feels like another jab. Many people expect acupuncture to feel like an injection, and that expectation alone can make them tense before anything has started.
There is no single acupuncture feeling. Some people notice a quick prick on insertion, then a sense of heaviness, a spreading tingle or a dull ache around the point. Others say they barely feel anything. Both experiences are common, and neither tells you whether a session is going well. What helps is describing what you actually notice in plain words, rather than staying quiet because you assume discomfort is part of the deal.
Some sensations should be mentioned immediately. If a feeling is sharp, burning, upsetting or getting stronger, tell Dr Christine Shen, Acupuncturist, at once. For people with long-standing pain, there can be a habit of pushing through; in this setting, that habit is not useful. Your comfort and your willingness to continue are part of every decision during the session, and a needle can be adjusted or removed.
It is easier to judge a plan when the goal is concrete. Rather than aiming for a vague sense of feeling better, pick something specific: reaching a high shelf, getting through a commute with less stiffness or understanding why a joint flares after gardening. Some people also find the most useful outcome is learning when a GP or other practitioner should assess the problem further. Ask Christine how the acupuncture will be reviewed and what would lead her to change course.
Nervous first-timers are common at the Lane Cove clinic, where Christine sees people for acupuncture. If needles make you anxious, say so when you arrive; a slower introduction, with time for questions about each step, is a perfectly reasonable request and lets you settle before anything begins.
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