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Welcome to Blue Mountains Acupuncture

Your local acupuncture and natural medicine clinic! Our clinic room is located in the heart of Glenbrook village, at the Glenbrook Wholistic Health Centre, 12b Ross St, Glenbrook.

Samantha Pledge and Dane Couter are both AHPRA registered acupuncturists and Chinese herbal medicine practitioners. Samantha is also a degree qualified naturopath, and draws from an extensive natural medicine toolbox for a treatment approach tailored to you. She works closely with couples who are trying to conceive, pregnancy and labour support, digestive concerns, musculoskeletal pain as well as the broad swathe of issues resulting from stress. She also treats children and teenagers.

Dane is an experienced acupuncturist who is currently involved in researching the use of acupuncture for managing stress in students. Dane is currently taking an extended break from clinical practice. Learn more about our practitioners.

Treatment sessions are typically based within the framework of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), a system of healing formed by an amalgamation of many centuries of knowledge from China and other regions in Asia.

TCM is most well known for acupuncture, but it is a holistic system of natural medicine involving several other physical therapies including massage, cupping and gua sha, as well as ingestive therapies like herbal medicine, food based medicine and nutrition. Our diagnosis and treatment considers the body as a whole entity, examining symptoms across many systems in order to form a diagnosis. Because of this, each treatment is unique and specific to the individual presentation. Learn more about acupuncture and TCM.

The clinic is open Monday to Friday, by appointment.

Call, text or email Samantha to make an appointment.

Samantha Pledge 0415 924 654

[email protected]

Book Online With Samantha Pledge

Dane Couter is not currently taking new patients.

Rebates are available from most private health funds. HICAPS and EFTPOS are available. Get in touch! We’d love to chat about how we can work together to achieve your health goals.

Make an Appointment

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Learn more about acupuncture and TCM

Acupuncture and herbal medicine have been used in the treatment of disease for thousands of years. Though acupuncture is specific to the Asian continent, herbs have been (and continue to be) used as medicine universally. These two modalities form the foundation of the primary health care system known as Traditional Chinese medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine- or TCM for short- is an amalgamation of centuries of knowledge and practice, forming a flexible and holistic system for the treatment of disease. As a holistic system, TCM treats the entire body as an integrated organism. All signs and symptoms, including mental-emotional complaints, lifestyle factors and past history are examined as a whole, then brought together to form a diagnosis and individual treatment plan.

In Australia, TCM practitioners undergo rigorous training at the degree level, and are regulated by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), in partnership with the Chinese Medicine Board of Australia (CMBA).

Meet Our Practitioners

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Acupuncture for Period Pain
May 14th, 2019
Periods, monthlies, on the rag, girl flu, that time of the month, red tide, moon time, a visit from Auntie Flo... So many different names for one thing that most every woman will experience at some point during her lifetime. That’s right, menstruation! I’ve never heard anyone say it’s their favourite time of the month,[...]
What does acupuncture do?
November 8th, 2018
WHAT DOES ACUPUNCTURE DO? At some stage of treatment, usually during the first one or two sessions, people tend to get interested. They start asking a bunch of questions, usually something along the lines of “What does acupuncture do?”, or “How does acupuncture work?”. What they are asking about is what we call acup[...]
Acupuncture Gone Wrong: Adverse Effects
October 19th, 2018
ACUPUNCTURE GONE WRONG: ADVERSE EFFECTS People can get a bit freaked out by the thought of acupuncture. I get it. It’s needles, right? From back when we were kids getting vaccinated right through to giving blood as an adult, nobody likes it. Even though it’s totally different, those feelings remain for a lot of peop[...]
Cosmetic Acupuncture
September 21st, 2018
COSMETIC ACUPUNCTURE Something I am asked about fairly often – particularly more recently – is cosmetic acupuncture. This is an umbrella term for the use of acupuncture to treat things like scarring, acne, or anything to do with the physical appearance. Recently the term is particularly used for cosmetic acupuncture[...]
Acupuncture for Depression
August 8th, 2018
Acupuncture for Depression NOTE: Before we get to talking about acupuncture for depression, there’s a few serious bits. Firstly, if you are experiencing any thoughts of self-harm or suicide call Lifeline on 131114. I also want to be clear that ceasing anti-depressant medication is a big step and you should first dis[...]
Acupuncture for IVF
August 8th, 2018
Acupuncture for IVF The drive to reproduce is one of the strongest. Unfortunately, its not always a simple thing to achieve. Infertility or difficulty conceiving can be heart breaking for people attempting to have children. For some people the cause of infertility is best treated through assisted reproduct[...]
Acupuncture for Headache
September 25th, 2017
Headache is one of the most common medical complaints. There's a few different types of headaches, and a whole bunch of common and not-so common causes. I'd be prepared to bet that everybody reading this has experienced one themselves, so if there's a tight band of iron being slowly tightened around your temp[...]
Acupuncture for Plantar Fasciitis
August 8th, 2017
I'm a pretty keen trail-runner. It's one of my favourite ways to unwind. I also live in the Blue Mountains, where it's a pretty popular thing to do, so there's plenty of like-minded people. I mean, who wouldn't want to run oodles of kilometres on rough terrain where there's no such thing as flat ground, just [...]