Yin + Yang
Release first. Then build.
Massage helps.
Strength training helps.
But when the relief lasts three days, that's not a you problem.
That's a gap problem. Here's what fills it.
You've been doing the right things.
The appointments, the referrals, the exercises, even the rest you're starting to take seriously.
Massage helps. Chiro helps. Acupuncture helps. Cupping helps. The relief lasts for hours, sometimes days, but then the tension is back and the question is this just how it is now? lingers in the back of your mind.
And then you workout. Do the fysio exercises (sometimes). You go to the gym. You take the walk. Because you know movement matters. Because some part of you believes you can still feel strong again. Or at least live with a little less pain.
And then the sciatica returns. Or nothing changes. Or the pain comes back somewhere new. A little worse.
The problem isn't the massage or the workout. It's not the acupuncture or the fysio. It's that your nervous system releases on the table and then walks straight back into the same patterns. The same compensations. The same body that never got the chance to learn what to do with the space it was just given. The same brain that knows how to send signals to brace.
Your brain needs rewiring. Your nervous system needs release.
But what you don't need are another twelve appointments to book.
The Window
After bodywork, whether it's acupuncture, cupping, or tui na, there's a window.
When the nervous system has released but hasn't yet reverted back to its old patterns. Where the bracing hasn't returned yet. Where the body is open in a way it almost never is during a regular training session.
In that window, movement lands differently. More freedom and mobility with less compensation. Your body's been given permission to soften.
Most people never get to use that window, because the acupuncture appointment is Tuesday and the gym is later or Fysio's on Thursday. By then, the nervous system has braced again, and you're training with a body doing the same thing it's always done. Those paths and modalities aren't ineffective. But the frustration of why am I not getting anywhere? is real.
Yin + Yang puts the release and the rebuilding in the same session -- the same window. Before the body resumes its normal programming. It's not restoration or strength, acupuncture or training.
Both. In the right order. For the first time.
6-Weeks of Intention
Session 1: The Full Picture
Before we treat anything, we look at everything. This session is a complete Chinese medicine and movement assessment combined with an introductory acupuncture or cupping treatment. I want to know not just where there's pain or a past injury, but your whole story. What you've carried. What you've tried. What's helped. What hasn't. That conversation is the foundation everything else is built on.
Sessions 2 - 6: The Arc
Each session begins with bodywork. Acupuncture, cupping, gua sha, tui na -- whichever your body needs that day. Not a random protocol. A conversation with your nervous system. A gentle release of what you've been carrying. Attention to tension, pain, injuries, stress. And real time to let go.
Then, in the window that follows, we train. Strength. Loading your muscles. Building bone density. Loosening joints. Creating new (healthier) movement patterns that your body will actually hold on to. And mobility. Movement that asks something real of you, because your body has just been given the conditions to receive it.
By Session 6...
You'll have a movement library and a program specifically suited for your body. You'll understand your patterns in a way that makes them less likely to repeat. Muscle awareness. Movement awareness. Self-awareness. You may take your movement program and confidently continue solo or build on through continued care.
Who is this for?
Women who have tried everything and are exhausted from doing all the right things.
Women who keep getting injured every time they try to get back to activity and sport.
Women who are entering or in the thick of perimenopause, watching their strength and mobility quietly shift and knowing it matters for the life they want at seventy.
Women who take care of everyone, and everything. Determined. Maybe a little perfectionistic. They know their health needs to be a greater priority, but they don't know where to start without facing burn out or injury. They know they need to slow down as much as they need to build bone density and strength.
Women whose pain hasn't responded to treatment. Who know they need to move but whose body hasn't felt safe enough or steady enough to try.
You don't have to choose between healing and getting strong.
We do both together.
Why this was born
I'm an acupuncturist who's spent 22 years personal training and teaching yoga. I understand the nervous system and I understand movement. And for years, in my own body, I treated the pieces as separate tasks. Acupuncture when the pain was too loud. Training when I felt healthy enough. The gap between them filled with the same patterns, the same bracing, the same rollercoaster of exhaustion, burn out, and pain flare ups.
There was a moment: I had just given birth to my third baby. Three painful pregnancies in 5-years. One especially traumatic birth. My sacrum moved during the toughest part of labor. I felt it. And no one took the pain that followed for the next 15-months seriously. I knew corrective exercises. I knew acupuncture points that helped. But I was so sleep deprived, stressed, and anxious... and I was afraid of adding the pain my entire pelvis had endured for too many years. So I was cautious. But frustrated. It felt like no one could help me.
I had good days, even weeks, when the acupuncture seemed to help. A lot. Strength work helped, sometimes, but I could never predict what intensity or which exercises would help and what would result in more pain. Ultimately, I had this nagging feeling that I wasn't doing "enough". I'd take two steps forward, four steps back and wonder what was wrong with me. Why wasn't I more motivated to take care of myself?
Except that I was. I overthought all of it. What was missing was the window. And a person who finally listened.
I started doing both in the same session. Bodywork first: release. Then movement in the window. Heavy lifting. The kind of stuff I wouldn't have thought I was capable of without my trainer's informed encouragement. And something shifted that hadn't shifted in years.
I built Yin & Yang partially because it's what I needed. And then, I sat across from patient after patient. Women whose pain had been minimized, women in perimenopause, women who had tried everything and were exhausted by trying everything. I realized I wasn't the only one who had been taught to treat the pieces separately all while wondering why the gap wouldn't close.
This is for the woman who is ready to finally close the gap.
Yin + Yang
6-week program
Acupuncture + Personal Training
90-minute sessions | €150/session
Questions before you start?
Let's talk.
Reach out directly: info@rainacupuncture.nl and we’ll find a time to talk.
