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This month in lifestyles we feature Sarah a practising acupuncturist.

I've done a lot of travelling in Europe and Asia throughout my adult life and it was whilst I was teaching in China that I became interested in acupuncture. It is common for people there to have acupuncture treatment, not only if they're ill but also to prevent the onset of diseases. It was after returning from China and witnessing how successful it had been that I reached the decision to become an acupuncturist myself. I was lucky to discover that the town where I lived had a famous and well-reputed college of traditional acupuncture.

Alternative medicine is particularly important for me because I firmly believe that it works on the level of body, mind and spirit.

1)

Of course this medicine is very powerful and can consequently have powerful side effects. Alternative medicine like acupuncture on the other hand is aimed at treating the person as a whole. When a person's ill, there's something in their life which is putting their energy levels out of balance. What alternative therapies try to do is help to gradually push that energy back into balance. The result is that any disease present might naturally disappear as it cannot survive when energies are balanced.

The treatments consist largely of balancing the energy between the different meridians of a person's body.

2)

Treatment aims to free blocks of energy in these meridians which may be causing ill health and which may have been there for many years.

It would be an odd state of affairs if a practising alternative therapist had not had treatment themselves and this is certainly not the case for myself.

3)

I've never suffered particularly from physical problems but treatment for my mental and spiritual wellbeing has been very successful.

I've treated a wide range of people for various conditions, for example people suffering from stress and anxiety and helped them to cope with stressful situations in their lives.

4)

There's another woman who suffers from arthritis of the hip and at the moment I'm treating an old lady who has several health problems, one of them being Parkinson's Disease. All these people have found that acupuncture has made them feel more balanced in themselves and they have certainly benefited from the treatment.

To date I currently own the Licentiate in Acupuncture. This course lasted three years and I had to go to the college about one weekend in three.

5)

I had a large amount of homework to do and practical work, which I did two or three evenings a week. This entailed locating points on different people. As you can imagine, this isn't straightforward as people are different sizes and have different shaped bodies.

In the future I hope to set up an alternative health clinic which will involve myself as an acupuncturist but perhaps other people as well.

6)

I'd like to set this up somewhere in a rural setting, where people could enjoy coming not only for the treatment but where they would be able to sit and enjoy the scenery, go for walks and basically feel free from the stresses of life.

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B2 First (FCE First Certificate in English) Reading and Use of English Part 6: Gapped Text Practice Test

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I’ve done a lot of travelling in Europe and Asia throughout my adult life and it was whilst I was teaching in China that I became interested in acupuncture. It is common for people there to have acupuncture treatment, not only if they’re ill but also to prevent the onset of diseases. It was after returning from China and witnessing how successful it had been that I reached the decision to become an acupuncturist myself. I was lucky to discover that the town where I lived had a famous and well-reputed college of traditional acupuncture.

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Good preparation leads to success in ballet dancing

A former classical ballet dancer explains what ballet training actually involves

What we ballet dancers do is instinctive, but instinct learnt through a decade of training. A dancer's life is hard to understand, and easy to misinterpret. Many a poet and novelist has tried to do so, but even they have chosen to interpret all the hard work and physical discipline as obsessive. And so the idea persists that dancers spend every waking hour in pain, bodies at breaking point, their smiles a pretence.

As a former dancer in the Royal Ballet Company here in Britain, I would beg to question this.

1)

With expert teaching and daily practice, its various demands are easily within the capacity of the healthy human body. Contrary to popular belief, there is no need to break bones or tear muscles to achieve ballet positions. It is simply a question of sufficient conditioning of the muscular system.

Over the course of my dancing life I worked my way through at least 10,000 ballet classes. I took my first at a school of dance at the age of seven and my last 36 years later at the Royal Opera House in London. In the years between, ballet class was the first thing I did every day. It starts at an early age, this daily ritual, because it has to.

2)

But for a ballet dancer in particular, this lengthy period has to come before the effects of adolescence set in, while maximum flexibility can still be achieved.

Those first classes I took were remarkably similar to the last. In fact, taking into account the occasional new idea, ballet classes have changed little since 1820, when the details of ballet technique were first written down, and are easily recognised in any country. Starting with the left hand on the barre, the routine unrolls over some 75 minutes.

3)

Even the leading dancers have to do it.

These classes serve two distinct purposes: they are the way we warm our bodies and the mechanism by which we improve basic technique. In class after class, we prove the old saying that 'practice makes perfect'.

4)

And it is also this daily repetition which enables us to strengthen the muscles required in jumping, spinning or lifting our legs to angles impossible to the average person.

The human body is designed to adapt to the demands we make of it, provided we make them carefully and over time.

5)

In the same way, all those years of classes add up to a fit-for-purpose dancing machine. This level of physical fluency doesn't hurt; it feels good.

6)

But they should not be misled: there is a difference between hard work and hardship. Dancers have an everyday familiarity with the first. Hardship it isn't.
(Source: FCE Handbook. Reproduced with permission from Cambridge English)

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Cambridge B2 First (FCE First Certificate in English) Reading and Use of English Part 6: Gapped Text Practice Test

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A former classical ballet dancer explains what ballet training actually involves What we ballet dancers do is instinctive, but instinct learnt through a decade of training. A dancer's life is hard to understand, and easy to misinterpret. Many a poet and novelist has tried to do so, but even they have chosen to interpret all the hard work and physical discipline as obsessive.

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B2 First (FCE) – Exam 1 – Reading and Use of English - Page 6 of 7 - Test-English

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Master the Cambridge First Exam with our comprehensive practice test and detailed answer feedback for the Reading and Use of English section.

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Cambridge First (FCE) Reading & Use of English part 6. Free Practice test

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Read an article about the making of an unusual television commercial. Six sentences have been removed from the article.