Spring Up to the New Season!

Spring is here! 

Wait. It's only February. What do you mean "Spring is here"? 

Welcome to the Asian Medical Calendar. In Asian medicine, the seasons fall according to the "energy" of a season, so typically you're getting the first hint of a season when the season changes (as opposed to the Roman calendar where you're generally at the zenith of a season before we consider it officially here). 

So it's spring now, when the first plants are waking up and pushing out of the ground. And when we humans first start to feel the itch to do stuff, especially outside stuff. One of the best ways to know it's spring is when the home improvement stores are full of people buying gardening supplies.

In other words: now.

In Asian medicine, spring is a time for action. It is associated with the Wood element in the Five Element system, and also includes things pertaining to muscles, tendons, things that happen on a schedule in the body (sleep, hunger, menstrual cycles, and other functions, often strongly associated with the endocrine system). It is considered influential in our ability to take action, to plan, to be creative, and to defend ourselves and feel angry when our boundaries are violated.

Now is the time to act on your hopes dreams and aspirations. If by chance, you missed my video and blog on resolutions, and haven't made quiet time to really reflect on what you want, you can make some time to evaluate your resolutions from January and make sure they are really what YOU want, not something you have been fed by the people and culture around you. Once you're sure of whay you want, this is the season to move towards those goals.

If you would like help with a health issue that's become more complicated in spring, or would like to find more clarity in using the energy of spring as you move through your life and goals, I am happy to help. I offer acupuncture, herbal therapy, as well as health and life coaching. I would be honored to help you on your journey.

Autumn Cleaning

A lovely autumn assortment of trees.

Autumn is here! The cooler days, lovely colors, and pumpkin spice are upon us. 

In Asian medicine, each season has special qualities related to Five Element Theory (learn more about each of them in coming blog posts). Autumn is considered part of the Metal element, and is associated with the Lung and Large Intestine, the color white or gray, the emotions of grief, or nostalgia, and the actions of sorting and discarding what no longer works for you. 

Autumn is therefore a great time to clean. I've always thought of "spring cleaning" as a time to air out the house, and clean parts of the house that don't always get a lot of attention (washing curtains, moving everything out of cabinets and wiping down the shelves, etc.--and no, I don't often do all of those things the way my mother used to several times a year)--basically the very Five Element idea of clearing everything for a fresh start to the new year. But autumn is different. It's a time to sort through what you've accumulated over the past year and let go of what doesn't work for you, just as in your body you take in fresh air in your lungs, and let out waste through your large intestine. 

This kind of cleaning often has emotional overtones. Today I cleaned out some old boxes that had been taking up space for years. I had never gotten around to the before, and now I wanted the space, and realized I would need to let go of some things before I could create what I wanted in my life. When I went through the box, I found old letters, pictures, old journals--plenty of fuel for nostalgia. And the time was right. I was able to throw out or give away some of the things I had not felt ready to discard in previous cleanouts, and plan places to put what remained so it would be on display or otherwise useful to me.

Hanging on to things that don't serve you, whether it's old letters or old ways of doing things, or old ideas that hold you back, can keep you from what you really want. Autumn is the perfect season to sort through things in your life. You may not end up with a perfectly clean space or life--my clean out is ongoing, and today I just release a little and moved around a lot as I continue to declutter. But I felt a lift of spirits just for making the attempt. If you sort through some messy stuff in your life, you may feel your spirits lift, too--but maybe only after a good cry and saying goodbye to things, relationships, jobs, or ideas that are no longer what you need or want. In Slow Paths coaching vernacular, this kind of sorting falls under "Create Space."

I hope you autumn has been going well, and continues to do so. If you would like to explore having more balance in your body and emotional life, I am here to help with whatever combination of acupuncture, clinical herbal therapy, or health and mindfulness coaching can help. Please check out my YouTube Channel for mindfulness videos and other content to help you live a more peaceful and healthy life.

Create Space, Relish Change, Celebrate Authenticity--Three Branches of Slow Paths Philosophy

The motto here at Slow Paths Wellness is "Create Space * Relish Change * Celebrate Authenticity." What does that have to do with acupuncture?

The short answer is, everything. Acupuncture, when administered by someone trained in Asian medicine, is used in accordance with principles designed to bring balance to every system in your body, and extends to physical, mental, and emotional function. 

The longer answer involves much more than acupuncture. Slow Paths Wellness serves patients using all aspects of Asian medicine, as well as principles from interpersonal neurobiology. After nearly two decades of practice, I learned that patients are much better served with encouragement in owning their own healthy life than "doing" something to them. Acupuncture, herbal therapy, and other aspects of Chinese medicine definitely serve people, but in ancient times the best doctor was someone who could treat people with interaction and only needed the more interventionist tools like herbs and acupuncture for emergencies or when a treatment based on relationship did not help a person enough.

Today, we tend to wait until problems become big before we look for help, so it makes sense to do more treatment than would once have been ideal. Slow Paths Wellness is my approach to give treatment within the context of healthy practitioner-patient relationship, which lets you be the one driving the changes in your life. I am here to help you on your path, not create a path for you.

Here's how the three branches of the Slow Path build health and wellness.

• Create Space means to step back from the hustle in your life to make time for you--your goals, your dreams, your health, your relationships. Creating space has several facets, including taking breaks to be mindful of your life and your needs, shifting down to make extra time in your day for planning; preparing, and being there for yourself and others; and committing the time and energy to self-care before emptying your cup for work, family, or even recreation. I can help you make this healing space for yourself with coaching in developing healthy boundaries, realistic goals that take you where you want to go, and plans for self-care that feels ridiculously indulgent, but actually frees you to be your best self and feel great while doing it.

•  Relish Change is a mindset that allows things to happen with a sense of equanimity. Change is happening constantly inside and outside of us. Our body chemistry constantly changes based on temperature, diet, stress levels, sleep (or its lack), how we perceive the events in our lives or the actions of other people, exercise states--basically everything about our environment creates changes in our system. Each of those changes creates its own changes. For many people, especially those who have had a traumatic history, change, especially change that comes with uncomfortable feelings, is something to be avoided.  Even positive things in our lives, like quitting smoking or working towards a more fulfilling job, can create uncomfortable feelings and that might cause a person to avoid making the change. Learning to relish change as a constant of life makes choosing the changes we want much easier.
• Celebrate Authenticity is my phrase that covers a lot of ground. Authenticity is what is real, so celebrating it means being in favor of reality--whether that's generic truth as opposed to falsehood, or the reality that you prefer the color pink to yellow, or that you do better with 8 hours of sleep. Celebrating the things that are real help your mind look for those things. Plenty of brain science confirms that what you choose to focus on creates pathways in the brain that can be healthier (or not). Celebrating your reality, and looking for the parts that build you up and accepting your ability to change many things that you don't want is a great way to have everything in your life improve--health, sleep, relationships, and just your overall sense of wll-being from one minute to the next.

I use a ton of different tools, exercises, herbs, acupuncture, acupressure, and just getting to know you in my practice. Having a life that is focused on a sense of love and well-being for yourself and others makes life a lot more fun, and making time to really know and express your authentic self makes your interactions with others more fulfilling for everyone involved. Please contact me if you'd like to learn more about how you can open your life to Create Space, Relish Change, and Celebrate Authenticity.

Slow Paths Manifesto

What a crazy year 2020 is for everyone on earth! My life is no different. After a lot of thought, I've moved, renamed, and revamped my practice. My office is now at 201 N. Washington Highway, Suite 204, in the SoNa Bank building in Ashland. My new name, as you can see, is Slow Paths Wellness. And the revamping?

For years, I've slowly moved to the idea that life is improved in tiny doses. Tiny, friendly, honest, filled-with-curiosity-and-compassion-towards-self-and-others. These tiny doses danced around in my head and became are becoming the Slow Paths Manifesto. I believe it will be an evolving outlook, but for now, here's the basis for my practice:

1. Be Team YOU You are the only person you can change or grow, and if you don't care for yourself, learn to like yourself, and care for your interests, you can't live the meaning you want for your life.  Having a good sense of and care of self strengthens the Earth Element, which also deals with digestion and energy levels.

2. Feel Your Feelings Over several years, I've spent hundreds of hours on books, podcasts, classes, blogs, videos, and just listening to people I found wise on various aspects of health. As I learned in school for Asian medicine, every illness is effected by your emotional state. And emotional states generally only cause problems when something keeps you from processing your feelings. Learning to feel your feelings rather than work / exercise / eat / otherwise-distract-yourself-from-them is a skill that will bring more vibrancy, resilience, and calm to your life. Not having stuck feelings helps your Wood Element function correctly, which helps mood, deals with pain, proper hormonal function, sleep, and healthy muscles and tendons.

3. Love Your Limits The more I read about living a fulfilling life with a minimum of resentment or disappointment, the more I see the word "boundaries." Boundaries are about more than telling people not to do things that annoy you or doing too much for other people. They are about learning who you are, who you are not, and making it easier to do the things you want to do in life. Boundaries help the Metal Element, which deals with your immune system, ability to grieve and let go of things, and has a big role in organization.

4. Commit to Curiosity Becoming yourself, looking at the situations in your life with an eye to moving towards what you want, and evaluating the information you come across--they will all work more easily if you let yourself be kindly curious. Curiosity can look like wondering if the pain you feel could change with diet, or being willing to go to the doctor for a test. It can be wondering why a person does an annoying behavior, and possibly asking them about it rather than making assumptions. It can be deciding to try something new (like acupuncture!) for a nagging problem. Curiosity takes some of the pressure off of your mind to need to always KNOW and answer. It allows you to see the nuance in life's circumstances, instead of looking at any issue as all or nothing. Often, that can make it easier to pivot when challenges come up. Curiosity nourishes the Fire Element, which also deals with thought, speech, vascular health, and your social interactions.

5. Take Your Time--It's Yours This may become the Slow Paths motto. Life takes time. Change takes time. Growth doesn't happen overnight, although insight can be instantaneous. Making time to have the life you want gets you off the hook of always feeling behind and rushed. Making time nourishes the Water Element, which also deals with genetic activity, being calm, creative thought, and brain and endocrine function.

Over the next few months, I will be talking more about each of these principles, how they relate to Asian medicine, and how incorporating them into your life will help you move towards what you want in life. 

Life in the Time of Coronavirus

This year, I have been working behind the scenes on renewing my practice and and my philosophy of life. I have a slew of blog drafts, hoarded like toilet paper, that I've been working on.

Last week everything changed.

Covid-19, coronavirus--whatever we end up calling this bug in the future, it has been a wake up call for many, and has crystallized many ideas I've tossed around as I try to define my practice and my life. Here's what I've got so far:

• It's not all about me. While I hope I've never looked at life in a self-centered way, we all do at times. But life is about connection, and about what we give. Everyone I've ever read who talked about finding meaning in life sees life as a gift you give to others. 
• It's all about me (and it's all about you). As confusing as it sounds, the only way to be able to give to others is to do the work you need to do on yourself. The inner work I've done for the past 3 years has taught me a lot about what my unique gifts are, and had also reminded me that most people with health issues have a harder time dealing with the feelings and thoughts around the illness than the symptoms themselves. Fatigue is not as hard as feeling useless because you're tired. Pain is not as hard as feeling you're powerless to manage your own body. Self-work on how we think, and allowing ourselves to feel, are critical parts in healthcare. 
• Slow is usually better. Life moves fast. The recent changes in North America associated with Covid-19 (that Asia and Europe have been experiencing for weeks before us) has left many of us feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and like we are behind and can't catch up on simple things like having food and income. Unless you are being chased by a lion, usually the best way to handle overwhelm is to slow down. Allow yourself space to look past the hysteria in yourself, the media, and others, and give your fight-or-flight response a chance to fade so you can look at life rationally and critically. Slower is how my practice runs, and it's how I encourage my patients to approach life, too.
• Authenticity is all. If you aren't who you really are, or looking at what really is, you're lost when you have to deal with a challenge. Denial and hysteria are two sides of the same coin--they are turning away from reality. In our current situation, pretending this virus is not a serious health threat to thousands of people and not taking precautions for the sake of everyone is denial. Forgetting that for most people, this virus means a few weeks being cooped up at home, possibly with bad cold symptoms, is buying into hysteria. All of life has the denial and hysteria paths, and also the path of accepting reality, feeling what you feel about it, and dealing with what's at hand. In my practice, I use mindfulness as a path to authenticity.

As 2020 seems to roar on, each of us has the chance to make our life work our way, even in the face of challenges. Accepting that routines will change, and there will be problems as well as triumphs is part of authentic living. I hope you will find a path to balance, get to know yourself so you can give to others, slow down to enjoy life and face it calmly, and be the wonderful you that you really are.