Mind Body Medicine

A Note of Gratitude

As we let go of 2023, with its shortcomings, pain, beauty, and resilience, we move forward to this new year. I will always encourage my clients to reflect and explore their year, progress, pain, and gratitude. I too encourage myself to do the same. My gratitude for my work, my clients, their willingness to be open, and my bearing witness to their pain, makes me ponder and reflect on how rare it is to do my job and only my job

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Small Lifestyle Changes Help Us Win BIG

With a fresh new year upon us, maybe it’s time to reevaluate our habits. Many of us have goals for ourselves no matter the time of year but we all tend to have a heightened focus in January. It’s a time of reflection, taking inventory, if you will. This allows us to objectively assess what went well, what didn’t go so well, and how we might use everything we learned to inform our future decisions. Several key things can help us to have a positive and meaningful direction going into the new year.

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Shifting Your Resolutions

As the leaves begin to fall, the air begins to grasp tighter around our skin; we reminisce, reflect on our year, and for most of us, begin to feel regret and shame for not accomplishing those new year resolutions we thought of many months before. The end of the year can be met with stress, anxiety, and depression, and especially now, we may have more fear and uncertainty. We tend to put pressure on ourselves around this time of year, mainly because of what is portrayed in the media, what we consume daily, and the shock that is this year ending and another one upon us. Time seems to pass by faster when the years come to a close, we tend to think back on what we could and should have done, what we may have lost or gained, thus looping us back into the shame of not meeting unrealistic expectations.

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Health and Gratitude

Being the first born child, I was an easy baby with minimal to no health issues. Little did my parents know that their next child would be quite the opposite picture of health. Following a challenging birth, it was a never ending cycle of visits to children's clinics, new specialists, new medications, surgeries, series of hospitalizations, with a couple of near death health emergencies sprinkled on top. It was easy to feel hopeless, sorrowful, and downright angry for everything that this innocent child had to experience. However, we soon realized that what was out of our control was simply out of our control. It would be essential to embrace what we could control - our mindset towards the situation. 

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Gratitude and Chronic Illness

Living with a chronic illness can offer a special set of skills, emotional awareness, and shift in the ways in which we associate with gratitude. When we think about gratitude, what comes to mind is often our external world, rather than what is experienced inward.  With the grief that ensues in living with a chronic condition, our mind, body and soul begin to reconnect itself differently; what might have been no longer serves us now; we begin to adopt new practices of love, appreciation, and care. When it comes to treatment, chronic illness patients often experience a disconnect in what these mean versus what it may have meant prior to their diagnosis. Unfortunately, mainstream medicine offers only a narrow lens in healing, while most of us suffering with anything chronic (mental and physical) require an adaption of treatment and lifestyle embedded in our daily living....

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Understanding Compassion

I came across a writing from renowned Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn titled “Understanding”. In it he described a common position we may take with our friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers with regard to helping in the name of being loving or compassionate. Without understanding a person’s suffering and where they are coming from, we may overstep and transgress by assuming that...

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Setting an Intention: Mental Health Tips

Simplicity is the antidote to complexity. In light of the experience of anxiety, depression and racing thoughts, simplicity helps the mind to gain clarity and settle down.  A mistake that can be made while setting an intention is the assumption that you won’t be met with challenges. As is shown in the tai ji symbol, challenges are unavoidable.The tai ji symbol (yin/yang symbol) shows us the law of nature where there is a balance of opposites. Where there is change, there is stability, where there is day...

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Integrating Chinese Medicine into Cancer Care

Chinese medicine can be an important and incredibly helpful addition to breast cancer treatment. Most people just think acupuncture is what a licensed acupuncturist can offer, but we are also trained in herbal medicine, nutrition, bodywork and Qigong meditation and these are all things that can be incorporated into your treatment plan and care, from prevention, to treatment, and to recovery and moving on with your life A cancer diagnosis is all consuming... Read More

Move More, Age Less

Our bodies need movement to function optimally. Movement stimulates the lymphatic system, helps blood circulation, increases energy, decreases anxiety, improves sleep, and keeps muscles and joints working properly.  Technological advances have made our lives easier, but the downside is a tendency to adopt a sedentary lifestyle. Sitting at a computer all day, binge watching television (we don’t even have to get up to turn the channel) and driving instead of walking are just a few examples...

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