Go east

Bjork sounds just a little bit annoyed, "Alternative?" she says, "I find it amusing that these treatments are called alternative because they've been around for many thousands of years while Western medicine is relatively recent. On a global scale, Chinese medicine is used by millions more people than Western medicine. So really it's Western medicine you should be calling alternative.

"I come from a culture where natural cures like taking herbs and drinking tea are considered very common-sense things. But in England using them seems to make you some sort of hippie-freak."

Last year, Bjork was booked to perform a one-off concert for television. In the morning, her throat was sore and inflamed, it looked as though the concert might have to be called off. An acupuncturist she sees in London, Stefan Chmelik, gave her a special formula of powder to put on her throat. "Within an hour the inflammation had gone and I was fine," she says.

Bjork believes that the positive effects of Chinese medicine are not limited to helping her throat. After recording her second solo album, Post, just more than two years ago, she immediately set out on a world tour.

"In December 1995 I looked back and realised I hadn't taken a real break for three years. I started to suffer from stress, total physical exhaustion and my voice started to fail. I was so surprised in a way, because I had always been so active and had so much energy.

"When I was in my late teens in Iceland I held down three jobs: working in a fish factory, a Coca-Cola bottling plant and a record shop all at the same time. Even when I went on holiday, I couldn't just sit still in a chair, I was always fidgety with energy, I always had to do something. In my free time I would go out into the countryside - where no one could hear me - and sing at the top of my voice.

"So it was horrendous, to suddenly have so little energy and a throat so hoarse I could hardly talk, let alone sing. I went to an acupuncturist who told me that my kidney energy was finished."

In Chinese medicine the kidney is the body's main battery, so this was far from a simple problem. After a course of acupuncture, other Chinese medicine and rest she recovered. "The experience of being so run-down has made me super-careful. I now see a practitioner at least once a week, and when I'm really busy or feeling run-down I'll go every day," she says.

Practitioners of Chinese medicine look for weaknesses and excesses that could cause problems if they are not dealt with. At the heart of all Chinese medicine are two ideas: first that you deal with the whole person rather than just the symptom, and second that you can treat the illness before it happens.

Bjork was brought up in an environment where what we call alternative was a normal part of day-to-day medicine. Her mother, Hilda Hauksdottir, is a homeopathic practitioner and stopped Bjork taking antibiotics, because, she said, they prevent the disease in the short-term, but they create a long-term weakness as they stop a healthy immune system being built up in the body.

Now Bjork treats her son in the same way. "Sindri has had homeopathic remedies and Chinese medicine for the normal childhood illnesses and in the summer for hay-fever. It works, so we use it."

There are thousands of acupuncture points all over the body, but none of them are nerves, so it doesn't hurt when a needle is pushed into you, but does prick, like pins and needles. "Acupuncture works by directing the flow of electro-magnetic energy in your body," explains Bjork. "Sometimes the electricity gets slow and the acupuncturist's needles spank its bottom a little bit, and say, `go on then don't be lazy'.

"The needles themselves are a little like a guitar strings, they are solid and about a quarter of a millimetre thick. They are made from stainless steel or silver, or possibly for special occasions gold, but that really doesn't matter."

Bjork has acupuncture to strengthen her lungs. The most common place for lungs is on the area of skin between your thumb and the finger you point with, though what is right for her might not be right for other people.

Sometimes herbs are burnt on the top of the needles to send down a warm energy into the body. Bjork has common mugwort burnt on needles in her legs, which again, she believes is good for strengthening her lungs.

"Whenever I tour, Stefan gives me a supply of tea, pills and drops to take. Flying is always a problem because the air-conditioning creates bad air: air which is continually recycled and stale. It can cause a cold - which is a very common problem for singers.

"I travel so much I have loads of different acupuncturists in different countries, and the treatment can vary from country to country. I'm not saying all alternative medicine works. I don't believe in all this aura b******s. It's like music, it might be jazz or it might be opera, but you can't say that all jazz is good or all opera is good, it just depends on the way it's done. I try stuff and if it works I stick with it, Chinese medicine works for me."