Emotional Health

Anniversaries: Honoring The Good, The Bad and The Horrid

I have this new rule for blogging. If I hear of something more than 4 or 5 times from my patients in a two-week period I write about it. Call me silly, but this whole sharing a universe thing makes me think we are subject to the same twists and turns of fate. So today …

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Stillness: The Power of Doing Nothing With Intention

In Chinese Medicine we use the phrase “nourishing the yin,” to describe rebuilding and supporting the production of body fluids. Western Medicine might see “yin deficiency” as hormonal depletion or adrenal exhaustion. But we think of it as a liquid deficiency, everything has dried up. We are born with an adequate amount of yin and …

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Journey To Healing (Guest Post): Recovering From A Brain Tumor With Acupuncture

This is a guest post by a patient, Nikki Thelan. Please read her story of recovery and return to a full healthy, active life after an amazing year of hardship. I am so priviledged that Nikki came into my life last winter because sharing in this journey has been truly inspirational. She is one powerful, …

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Releasing Summer, Accepting October

Yesterday I finally accepted October. It always takes me a long time, some years longer than others. I hold on childishly to the idea that the sun will again deeply warm the earth and the trees will grow heavy with green again. At some point every year something inside me shifts and I stop wanting …

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Unfulfilled Desires: Why They Just Won’t Go Away

The amazing feature of Chinese Medicine that continues to astound me is the focus on the spiritual. There is no “soul” or “spirit” in Western medicine. There is no association with specific emotions and specific ailments. But in Chinese Medicine an upstirring of a certain emotion is diagnostic of a pattern and warrants inquiry into …

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Hitting the Ground Running: Why Speedy Recoveries Are Overrated

This has been the summer of weddings. Three weeks ago we were in Colorado, then we were in London and soon we will be driving south for a beach wedding in mid September. It has been an exceptional amount of travel in a teeny amount of time and I am an easily overwhelmed traveler. With …

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Approval: Another One Of Those Deep Inner Needs

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.  -unknown* Sunday night this week after getting into bed I started up a very old, very familiar fight with my husband. All of you in …

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Saving The Garden From The Weeds

In the last two weeks I took about ten days off of gardening. The result was a garden full of 3-5 inch weeds so thick I can barely make out the plants. We are not really meticulous gardeners, or meticulous anything to be quite honest. So this forest of weeds is not unfamiliar. But the …

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15 Ways to Have More Fun This Summer

Eat Local And Eat In Abundance: Get a CSA or go to your local farmer’s market and see what is new every week. Get excited for something later in the summer and then enjoy it when it finally arrives. When something finally is harvested eat it until you are blue in the face while everything is …

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Overcome 5 Roadblocks To A Gratitude Practice

For a long time I’ve resisted the concept of gratitude. It is a buzz word in the mindfulness world and lots of people are doing gratitude meditations, radical acceptance workshops and all sorts of practices that encourage one to take notice of the blessings in their lives. For the last few years I’ve known that my …

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