TCM isn't trending. It's answering a question people have been asking for a long time

May 2026

A piece came out in the Guardian in March  you can read it here about 'chinamaxxing': the TikTok trend of influencers adopting TCM practices as part of a broader embrace of Chinese lifestyle and culture. Tongue scraping. Gua sha. Herbal teas. Qi Gong routines filmed in aesthetically pleasing locations.

And I get why it's being framed that way. 

But I want to push back on the word trend. Because I think what's actually driving this goes a lot deeper.

I think what's actually happening is simpler, and more uncomfortable: people are feeling let down by the western medical system. Not all of it, not always, not in every situation. But in so many of the everyday ones, the chronic ones, the complex ones, the I-don't-know-why-I-feel-like-this ones the system isn't built to hold them.

Western medicine is extraordinary at acute care. It saves lives. But it tends to treat symptoms in isolation. It looks at the part, not the whole. And increasingly, people are noticing. When did your GP last ask about your sleep, your stress, your relationships, your work, your digestion as part of the same picture?

TCM does that as its starting point.

For me, it started with burnout.I was really unwell, the kind of unwell that's hard to explain and even harder to prove. I went to my GP. They took my bloods. Everything came back fine. The advice? Take a bit of time off work, lower your stress levels. That was it. Appointment over. 

It was only when I went to an acupuncturist that someone finally said: yes, I believe you are burnt out, but I can help you.Those words mattered more than I can say, she could see it when no one else had looked properly. 

It wasn't a quick fix, there is no quick fix with burnout and it took years, and I’m not saying acupuncture replaces medical care but it genuinely supported my recovery in a way nothing else had. It looks at the whole body. It asks questions western medicine doesn't think to ask. It makes you feel seen, not just diagnosed.

As I slowly got better, I found my way to Qi Gong, and that's stayed with me ever since. It's my daily practice. And when something is off with my health, acupuncture is still the first place I turn.

The more I've learned and I mean really gone deep into TCM theory and philosophy the more it just makes sense. Not in a complicated or esoteric way. In an intuitive way. The kind of sense that makes you wonder why it ever felt unfamiliar.

Here's what I think is driving the shift: we are more burned out, more stressed, and more disconnected from our bodies than perhaps any generation before us. Work is relentless. The pace of life doesn't let up. And stress, held in the body long enough, becomes illness and that illness rarely arrives as a tidy, isolated incident that a prescription can solve.

TCM has always understood this. It has never separated the emotional from the physical, the internal from the external, the person from their environment. And slowly, more people are recognising that this approach isn't woo woo, it's wisdom. Ancient wisdom that's been quietly working for thousands of years.

I genuinely believe it will only become more relevant as time goes on.

And then there's Qi Gong specifically.

In the movement and wellness world right now, so much of the conversation is about output. Power yoga. Structured Pilates. Strength training. And all of those things have their place and I do all those too. But there's a gap. Something that tends to get skipped over.

Before you can build external strength, you need internal strength. Before you lift weights, you need to know how to feel your body. Qi Gong offers that.

It's deeply somatic and I mean that in the most fundamental sense, long before 'somatic' became a wellness buzzword. When we practice, we cue to our organs, we follow the rivers of Qi within our body, we move in ways that mirror nature, that mimic animals, that honour cycles. The movement can be strong or soft, structured or free. But at every point, the question is the same: how does this feel in your body?

That's rare. And right now, it's needed.

We live in cycles, with nature, with the seasons, with our own biology and as we age

 Qi Gong has always known that. It doesn't ask you to push through. It asks you to listen.

So I don't think TCM is having a moment. I think people are waking up to something that was always true and that we are whole, complex beings who cannot be treated in parts and are looking for practices that honour that.

An ancient system that has supported billions of people across thousands of years isn't trending. It's arriving, again, exactly when it's needed.