Meet Ross J Barr, London’s most popular acupuncturist
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
It’s 9am in Claridge’s spa, a subterranean enclave of zen with bonsai trees and white bouclé-wool sofas. Nils Frahm drifts out of the speaker as I lie on a fluffy peach bed. Ross J Barr sticks a stainless-steel needle an inch below my belly button, and my stomach immediately gurgles. “Hear that? That’s your qi,” he says. “It still makes me laugh how many people think I say ‘cheese’ when I say ‘qi’.”
Barr, 46, is one of London’s most in-demand acupuncturists with a two-month waiting list. Trained in integrated Chinese medicine, he specialises in Five Element acupuncture, a style that aims to rebalance the body’s natural cadence of vital energy – or qi – via the insertion of needles. Barr treats patients for issues including anxiety, exhaustion, depression, fertility, digestive conditions, menopause, grief, addiction, pain and heartbreak (yes, really) in four locations across London. His line of essential oil-infused patches – formulated to aid sleep, migraines and period pains – and supplements is sold in Selfridges and buzzy wellness outpost Violet Grey in LA.
Most of his patients appear to be madly in love with him. Alexa Chung credits him with managing her endometriosis. (“Poor Ross, he must be collecting the tears of the whole of London,” she once told an interviewer.) Harry and Meghan were so enamoured that they invited Barr and his wife, the Bad Sisters actor Eva Birthistle, to their wedding. It helps that, snappily dressed in 1940s-style tailoring and loafers, he is Spielberg-leading-man handsome. He is also infuriatingly discreet. “It’s one of my favourite things to torture my mum by never telling her anything,” he says. “Patient confidentiality – it’s great.”
In a wellness industry that by some estimates is worth more than $6tn, acupuncture is being embraced like never before. In the US, more than one-third of adult pain patients have used non-traditional medical care including acupuncture, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA); the global acupuncture market is expected to surge in value from $44.96bn in 2023 to $199.41bn by 2032, says an Introspective Market Research report.
Many practitioners bridle at the interweaving of medicine and wellness, citing a lack of studies: there is no evidence anatomically or physiologically that qi exists. Yet, while the NHS website states that “the use of acupuncture is not always based on rigorous scientific evidence”, it does recommend it for chronic pain, migraines, prostatitis and hiccups; some doctors suggest it for pregnancy and cancer symptoms. Dr David Coggin-Carr, an obstetrician, subspecialist in maternal-foetal medicine and accredited medical acupuncturist, says: “As a practitioner of integrative medicine... I consider acupuncture a treatment modality, like medicine or surgery, that needs to be individually evaluated for different conditions. That is not to say it should never be used alone, but it shouldn’t be accepted without scrutiny or considering the alternatives.”
Barr came to acupuncture aged 20, when his father died of a brain embolism at 53. Wrung out with grief, he looked up an acupuncturist in the Yellow Pages on the advice of his mother. It helped so much that he decided to quit his job at a family-run import business to study at the College of Integrated Chinese Medicine in Reading. Later, he trained in Japanese seitai, a form of chiropractic and osteopathic treatment. “When I’ve had a treatment, I notice a couple of days later I’ll be singing away to myself,” he says. “Or the thing I was worrying about, I can’t quite find. Or I’m getting shit done. I just feel ‘on it’.”
Barr likens his practice to restoring somebody to “factory settings”. “In its very simple terms, acupuncture invigorates all the organs to do their job more efficiently,” he says. “So, you get a better secretion of fluid, hormone balance, blood flow, egg quality…” The latter means he is regularly profiled in the press as a “fertility guru”. Right now, he is inundated with city-dwelling clients suffering from adrenal exhaustion. “Adrenaline is as addictive as any drug, and it falls under the guise of being hard-working, but what it’s fundamentally doing is prematurely ageing you.”
Barr eschews handshakes for hugs, beginning our sessions with a cup of “pretentiously good” green tea. He swears a lot, which makes me like him immediately. He also talks a lot of common sense. (When I divulge that I have adrenaline issues fuelled by a five-cup-a-day Nescafé Gold Blend habit, he laughs: “That’s filthy.”) Both help to offset any earnestness about a therapy some consider “hocus pocus” – a phrase he employs himself, possibly sensing my suspicion.
He begins by asking what I’d like to change most about how I’ve been feeling; I’m surprised to find my chest tighten. Having moved countries for a new job in the past three months, I’m running on fumes. “Are you addicted to adrenaline?” he asks kindly. “What happens when you’re not on good form?” Later, he observes: “If I were to give you a list of 10 health tips, you would tick them off gladly, but the thing on the list I guarantee you’d leave till the end, which is the most important, is to do f-all when you get the chance.”
Next, he pops two essential-oil-infused “calm patches” on my temples, and takes my pulses – according to traditional Chinese medicine, there are six in each wrist, one for each organ. He inserts needles into my wrists and feet – zappy, but not painful. He likens needles to a “tiny little defibrillator” that will “kickstart the organ into working more efficiently”. I focus on the smell of the Vyrao incense and blink back tears that have unexpectedly sprung. Afterwards, I feel warm and spaced out, like I’ve just been in a sauna.
Barr assigns homework: don’t drink coffee (“probably the energetic equivalent of doing a little bump of cocaine”), do eat breakfast, get to bed early and read more fiction. In the following days, I struggle through caffeine-withdrawal headaches. But soon I feel more clear-headed. My second session is more definitive: as Barr administers needles, I notice an odd draining sensation on both hips, as though cold water is being poured on them. “The gallbladder channel,” he says. “We’re clearing it, something’s been stuck or stagnant for a wee bit.” Forty-five minutes later, I float out, feeling lighter and freer. Later that week, I note that the hormone-related bloating that has plagued me for 10 months has disappeared. I can comfortably slot into my Balenciaga jeans.
I find myself looking forward to my next session – a surprise, given that I find spas insufferably dull. Perhaps that’s down to Barr, whose kindness instils a certainty that the light will eventually turn green. But it’s also true that as a tool for working on mental and spiritual health, I find needles intriguing.
As for maintaining his own peace of mind? Barr jokes that getting out the door before his two kids, Jesse, 11, and Joni, seven, are up keeps him sane (“Just don’t do the school run!”), along with a daily cold-water plunge. “If people spend enough money, they generally buy health these days. But what they can’t really buy is peace,” he muses. “When I see the joy on someone’s face when they’ve slept eight hours for the first time in a couple of years – that’s huge.”
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