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.

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. 

What Herb Do You Use For. . .?

Photo Credit: Teresa Y Green

"I want to get some herbs for my headaches. What do you suggest?" When I am in the health food store buying groceries, I hear customers aiming these kinds of questions at the staff. The staff usually does not answer them, because they are not legally allowed to diagnose or treat health conditions.

I don't answer such questions, either, even though I have an acupuncture license and herbal treatment falls within my scope of practice. I am an herbalist who uses Chinese herbs, and we don't prescribe herbs that way. Here's a short primer on using Chinese herbs.

1. Chinese herbs are prescribed by syndrome, not symptom. We see the body as a complex grouping of activities, and see illness as a hiccup in the organization of those activities. We have names for the system breakdowns that cause problems. Sometimes a body runs too hot, or too cold, or doesn't handle food or humidity or stress well. Sometimes energy gets stuck in one place, or because of overwork or poor sleep there is not enough energy. We use herbs, as well as acupuncture, meditation techniques, and other tools, to restore balance in the system. For headaches, some are caused by fatigue, some by frustration and stress. Still others are caused by becoming overheated, or because of old trauma or hormone shifts. Each of these causes might need completely different herbal treatment. To give someone the wrong herbs could aggravate the system breakdown and make the headaches worse instead of better.

Chinese herbs are primarily used in formulas. When patients ask me for herbs, they usually expect me to give them one name, like a TV talk show doctor might. Feverfew for headaches! St John's wort for depression! Black cohash for hot flashes! But Chinese herbalism has developed over thousands of years. Herbalists have learned that using just one herb for a person is not the most effective way to treat the whole person. I have treated many people who have not had good results with the one herb treatment. The one herb they chose may not have addressed their syndrome properly, or it may have aggravated another condition, or it may simply have not been strong enough on its own. 

In a Chinese herbal formula, some herbs are for the underlying syndrome causing the symptoms that are uncomfortable. Some ingredients help with digesting the overall formula. Others are added to minimize the chance of any side effects. Still others are used to strengthen general health to prevent the problem from happening again once it is resolved.When I look at a bottle of herbs from a health food store or a multi-level company that sells herbs, even if they are in a formula, almost all the herbs are for the same symptom. There is rarely an attempt to make the formula address the whole body (except when the company uses a Chinese medicine formula--but even then, they market it as being used for a symptom, not the underlying cause). We consider putting every herb that treats a given symptom into one formula as overkill in most cases. 

Chinese herbs are ideally custom prescribed for the individual. Sometimes companies sell a "one size fits all" formula because the people creating the formulas are not trained herbalists; often it is because they are mass marketing a formula to the general public, and know the average person with a headache doesn't know what causes it. Chinese medicine has fallen into this trap, too. Go into most Asian markets, and you'll find formulas for fertility, for PMS, or for headache. These formulas may be frequently used formulas developed over hundreds or years or more, and may work for the majority of the people who try them.  But they are still not aimed at the the exact syndrome affecting the individual buying them. The ideal way to purchase Chinese herbs is from an herbalist trained in Chinese medicine. We will talk with you about all your health problems, and make you a formula that will begin the process of re-balancing all of your systems. 

If you only treat the one symptom that is bothering you the most, it is like taking someone spinning 5 plates and only keeping one balanced. While even a master herbalist cannot always treat every problem at once, we can usually trace a common cause for most of the problems and treat that first. As that system failure is fixed, more than one symptom will begin to improve. If you have headaches, you may find that not only do they get better, but your sleep improves too. Or your digestion is better. Or you catch fewer colds. Treating the underlying cause of health problems has the effect of improving how you feel overall. 

Holistic medicine in general takes the long view. We don't treat you just so you feel better next week, but have side effects from treatment that will cause you problems in a few years. We look to your future, and correct as many of the system faults as possible, so that your health continues to improve over the long term. Not every problem can be cured, but with good health practices and herbs that balance your body rather than simply try to mask a symptom, we can help you to feel better overll.

Autumn: Grieving, Sorting, Letting Go

Autumn is my favorite season. I love the color in the leaves, the chill in the air, and the natural instinct to burrow in and nest. But I always find myself going broody and a little melancholy just as the summer heat gets that tiny tinge of coolness. For years, I chalked it up to the memories of school starting, year after year, in my childhood--the end of the freedom of summer, and for me the anxiety and discomfort of being an introvert thrown into a more social climate. 

While those memories may be a part of my "autumn blues," I now know there is a much more powerful reason I have these feelings, and why so many share them. In Chinese medicine, each season is associated with an element, which also relates to different parts of physical and emotional health. Autumn deals with the Metal Element, which is represented in the body by the Lung and Large Intestine systems. These systems deal with your immune system and breathing. But they also have an emotional component. They deal with the process of grief, of knowing what to keep and let go, and have a place in affecting how we organize our lives and set our boundaries.

Just as the leaves shed their leaves and begin to hunker down for the winter, drawing their nutrients inward, so we humans feel an urge to turn inward as the weather cools. Autumn is commonly a time for introspection and review. We look over our year, our relationships, and our homes, deciding what works well, and what does not, and letting go of those things that no longer serve us. We pack away our summer clothes, pull out the comforting shield of our sweaters and blankets, and review our yearly plans. And many of us, for reasons we cannot quite understand, feel the need to pull out old hurts, old problems, or old memories, figuratively running our fingers over our life scars.

This behavior is perfectly natural, and can be beneficial. When we suffer a loss--whether it's a loved one, an injury, a financial setback, or just a vision of ourselves we fail to live up to--we need time to process the change in our circumstances. We grieve a death, or a breakup, or a new reality after illness, and move one. But as a year or two or ten goes by, sometimes we find there are still issues to process. We reach the age of a parent when they died, we find a new romance, or find our health deteriorates further--or, sometimes more frighteningly, improves, bringing new opportunities but also new responsibility. We have grown and changed, and now we need to revisit that old hurt. Is there something new to learn from our old experience? Is there some new way to let go of a limiting belief or behavior? If we do not revisit our story, we may never know.

Of course, everyone has a friend who is stuck in time. They pick a moment of their life, either for its joy or pain, and refuse to leave it. They dress too young, or continue to make teenage choices into adulthood, because growing up threatens the safety they feel in their perceived youth. Or they keep a room or wall or life revolving around a loved one who has left, or died, unable to accept a new opportunity because they cannot let go of the past. For these people, the natural need to grieve and release has gotten bogged down. Sometimes they obsess on the grieving process; other times they avoid it, distracting themselves with work or vacations or play. If they let their mind go blank they risk the pain of memories welling up, so they choose distraction after distraction to avoid discomfort. For either approach, getting help to grieve properly is important. A mature friend or counselor can help stuck grievers go through the process of sorting memories or circumstances and deciding how life has changed around them, and also how to make changes so they can move on to the next stage of life.

Autumn is still my favorite season, even tinged with grief as it can sometimes be. The other side of grief is nostalgia--a happy memory of earlier times that can be a firm foundation from which to launch an amazing life.

Be Who You Are: Moving Past Trauma

Photo Credit: Teresa Y Green

Like many people, I've had traumas in my life. The specific type of trauma is not important for this post, and I lived through them, worked through the pain, and came out the other side a strong woman. But it left scars, and one of the scars was not knowing who I was--knowing my personality instead of my shields.

I sometimes think I'm a walking feeling. It's not that I cannot think logically, I just feel first, then think about it. I have fought this part of my personality for most of my life. Feeling is dangerous in a traumatic situation. It leaves you vulnerable to pain, both yours and that of the people around you. Feelings make it hard to rationally analyze a physically or emotionally dangerous situation and get yourself to safety. Feelings make you react, when you need to be in charge of your actions.

But feelings also inform all the good things in life. The joy of love, of friendship, or something beautiful--you cannot analyze the way it feels to have a loved one take your hand and get the most out of it. At least I cannot. Even hard feelings, like anger and sadness, have a good place. Anger fuels action, and directed properly, it leads to appropriate self-defense. Sadness allows you to sift through events and relationships, and know what to keep and what to release.

The degree to which I neglected my feeling side in my youth came to me recently when I read a poem. When I was younger, I had a hard time with poetry, especially the best poetry, which layers visceral images to create a feeling. I loved complete sentences. I liked Emerson over Whitman. I disliked songs with lyrics that didn't make a coherent story. When I got married, my husband introduced me to poetry with feeling--disjointed phrases that teased my subconscious, that spoke in whirling scenes instead of paragraphs, that I felt in my body instead of dissecting in my mind. 

It took a few years, but gradually I integrated the two. Embracing my feeling side along with my thinking side has made me a more whole person. I do not have to second-guess my reactions as often, because I am not approaching life while hiding half of myself. 

Part of acknowledging your whole self is learning to be honest. When you live through trauma, especially as a child, or for a long time, you learn to hide the scary parts of life from yourself and others. You learn to be ashamed of your circumstances. So you lie--if not in word, then in deed. You pretend things that bother you really don't; you let people believe you are in control of life when you aren't, and you deny vulnerability at every turn.

The energy you spend lying keeps you from seeing the truth. Most things that bother or irritate you are not the big deals you make them in your mind--and the ones that are completely unacceptable are usually easy to solve once you get past the initial terror of upsetting someone. When you spend a lifetime pretending to be in control, you never see that no one is completely in control of life--by its nature, life is uncontrollable. We all learn on the job, so to speak--some people are just able to walk an unknown path with confidence, others have to learn confidence by tiptoeing into new things. And it is only in our vulnerability that we really grow and live. Acknowledging you have something to lose makes life precious--pretending you are impervious to harm locks you away from everything that gives life wonder and awe and fun.

In Chinese medicine, we talk about "pathogens" that sometimes get caught inside of the body and can't escape. Illnesses like malaria, strep throat, and shingles are sometimes described as "an evil" that gets into your body, and then your body clamps down to protect itself, and the evil cannot get out. So you may recover, but the symptoms recur, over and over. You may never fully expel the pathogen, but you can learn to build your system, deal with physical and emotional things that stress you, and get appropriate help from the outside in the forms of herbs and acupuncture, you can greatly improve. The same is true for recovery from trauma. Few people completely lose every effect of a traumatic event. But if you reach out to professionals and others who have walked the same path, learn to use proper self-care, and address the things weighing you down in life, you can get better. 

Chinese Medicine and Your Emotions

Photo by Teresa Y Green

Emotional or mental problems affect many people.  Even mild symptoms can lower your enjoyment of life, and severe symptoms can be debilitating. 

Acupuncture together with other components of Chinese Medicine can help.

Diagnosis and Treatment: Different From "Western" Medicine

Many patients are surprised to find that Chinese medicine’s diagnostic process is very different from what they find at their doctor’s office.  Two people with the same “western” diagnosis, such as clinical depression, may have completely different Chinese medicine diagnoses.

To make the right diagnosis for you, your acupuncturist will ask questions during the interview that may seem to have nothing to do with your emotions.  Questions about digestion, your reaction to stress, and your sleep give information that will help her to give you the correct treatment.

While many people think of acupuncture for treatment, a complete treatment usually uses acupuncture, herbal, and dietary treatments.   Using all of the resources of Chinese medicine brings quicker and longer lasting results.

Some Possible Diagnoses

There are many different diagnoses related to emotions.  Here are a few different diagnoses, with the primary symptoms associated with each:

• Qi Stagnation:  Crying or depression, especially with restlessness,  becoming easily frustrated, irritability, wandering pain, alternating diarrhea and constipation, irregular menses, and any symptom that is worse with stress.
• Blood stagnation:  Severe emotional distress, usually rage, accompanied by severe, stabbing pain in a fixed location.  Also menstrual problems, purple color on the nails or tongue, and symptoms that improve with exercise.
• Phlegm misting the mind:  Irrational thoughts, extreme paranoia, hallucination, can be accompanied by either mania and rage or terror, or apathy and withdrawal.
• Liver Yang Rising/Liver Fire: Anger or rage accompanied with red face, irritability, dizziness, and headache, worse with stress.
• Dampness / Phlegm Stagnation: Depression marked by apathy; difficulty concentrating; foggy, unclear, or irrational thinking; dizziness; feeling achy and sore, often with tender points; a heavy feeling in the limbs; fatigue; chest congestion or diarrhea.
• Heart Fire: Rage, red face, red tongue, insomnia, restlessness, mania.
• Qi deficiency: Depression or anxiety worse when tired, lack of interest in life, soft voice, gas and bloating, low energy.
• Blood Deficiency: Apathy, anxiety, paranoia, insomnia, dream-disturbed sleep, difficulty thinking or concentrating, poor vision, low energy, dizziness,  dull pain, worse when fatigued, muscle spasms, numbness and tingling, pale skin, dry skin, nails, or hair;, scanty menses or missing periods.
• Heart or Gallbladder deficiency:  Difficulty making decisions, apathy, anxiety, insomnia, shortness of breath.
• Yin Deficiency:  Irritability or anxiety, worse in the afternoon and evening, accompanied by night sweats, hot flashes, any symptom worse in the afternoon or evening.
• Yang Deficiency: Extremely low energy, listlessness, apathy; difficulty staying warm; edema, frequent urination and diarrhea; dull pain improved by warmth, especially in the back, knee, or foot, worse when tired; urinary or sexual dysfunction.

Quick Tips to Balance Emotions

Here are some ideas to improve your emotional equilibrium today: 

• Make a moderate exercise program and stick with it.  Consider tai chi, qi gong, yoga, or other gentle qi exercises with fluid movements or gentle stretching.
• Work on experiencing your emotions as they occur.  Set aside time each day to review your feelings and write about them, share them with a friend, or take action to make your life better.
• Keep a food diary, and note if you experience emotional episodes after eating certain foods.  Some people find specific foods that trigger depression, anxiety, or apathy.
• Take steps to lower your stress level.  Any health problem worsens with high stress levels.

Of course, if you are experiencing symptoms that severely interfere with your day-to-day life, please seek professional psychiatric help.  Once your condition is stabilized, you can discuss adding Chinese medicine to your treatment strategy with your doctor or therapist.

The Emergency Attitude Adjustment

I have been tearful. A few projects have not been going as planned, and so today, frustrated one time too many by an annoying bump in the road, I cried--runny nose, crinkled up face, whiny voice, smeared makeup--the whole package of female-dom that has had it.

There was a time when I spent much of my life in this state. The feeling that life had shortchanged me in some way dominated my thoughts. A pretty day or happy surprise might buoy me up for a day, or a week, but my overriding thought was that I needed to have, do, or be more than I was.

Years of life, of therapy, of reading, of praying, and of emulating those who seemed to have more keys to happiness  has helped me see there is no virtue in constant criticism--of myself or others. I try to consciously fill my mind with uplifting thoughts, words, and images to minimize the influence of old thought patterns bent on tearing me down.

Yet sometimes, I'm snot-nosed in the bathroom, crying that it just isn't fair.

So I have developed The Emergency Attitude Adjustment. As soon as I realize I have let hopelessness, discouragement, or doubt overtake me, I turn to these steps to return to the road to positivity. Since we all have moments like these, I offer these points to pull yourself out of a well of unhappiness or self-pity:

Life's About Flow

Photo by Teresa Y Green

Flow. Some people call it the Zone, finding your groove, or moving forward. That wonderful, timeless feeling when you are in the middle of something and it's going well. In Chinese medicine, we call it the free movement of Qi.

When you are in a state of Flow, you are content. You are not worried about tomorrow, you're excited about today. You are in the moment, enjoying the immediacy of life because you are doing what you were meant to do.

There is plenty to read about reaching a state of flow, but the masters of flow are the creators of Chinese medicine. With qigong, acupuncture, herbal medicine and lifestyle tips, Chinese medicine has specialized in cultivating the feel of flow for thousands of years.

To have better FLOW, here are a few simple tips:

• Move around. You don't have to run marathons or have six-pack abs to get the benefits of exercise. Movement facilitates qi movement, whether it's dancing to the radio or taking a long walk. Qi movement helps stress, lessens pain, and balances your entire body. Take the stairs, park a little farther away, and wiggle in the car while you sing to your favorite song.
• Don't squash emotions. In Chinese medicine, emotional upheaval is one of the causes of most illnesses. Having strong emotions you don't process in some way will wreck your hormones, hurt your immune system, and rob you of sleep--which can contribute to anything from heart disease to obesity. If you find yourself often feeling sad, angry, or numb, you probably have something going on emotionally. Talk to a minister or therapist, write about it in a journal, or call your least crazy friend. Dealing with emotions as they come up will make your life calmer, and give you room to better enjoy the pleasant emotions of happiness, anticipation, and love.
• Go outside. Nature is a. . .well. . .naturally healing place. Hearing birds sing, feeling the breeze on your face, and the ground under your feet reminds you that the world around you goes on whether your boss is mad at you or not. Looking at the stars can remind you that most of your problems are small. And looking at clouds connects you to your childhood sense of wonder.

Flow is my thing, and is a continual lifestyle challenge and goal. I can help you find more flow in your life. By looking at the whole picture--a holistic view--we can put the pieces of family, work, health, fun, home and hearth and everything in between together. If you feel like your life is out of balance or if you feel stuck, I can help. When you need other expertise, I have talented friends and colleagues for you to work with and learn from. If you have changes you'd like to make, give me a call or drop an email. I am eager to help.