Posts Tagged ‘Featured’

Garden Garlic

Mark your calendars for the phenomenal ‘Festival that Stinks,’ a fabulous celebration for the whole family. Looking for inspiration and practical skills to survive and thrive in tough economic times? At the North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival you can:

Support and enjoy the bounty of over 100 amazing artists, farmers and organizations; strengthen communities by purchasing locally grown and crafted. Gain skills for interdependence: learn to grow garlic, press cider, mill lumber, make paper, coil clay, grind grain, do tai chi, go solar. Nourish yourself through chef demos, fantastic food and the wondrous wood fired bread oven. Transform trash into compost (last year only three bags of garbage for 12,000 people)! Celebrate with friends old and new: enjoy rockin’ music and incredible entertainment on two solar powered stages, wonderful workshops and garlic games galore. There’s something for everyone you love, so bring your friends and the entire family.

On October 3 and 4, follow your nose to beautiful, historic Forster’s Farm, 60 Chestnut Hill Road, Orange, MA. Visit www.garlicandarts.org for directions, pet policy, and past years highlights. Inflation buster admission at $5.00 per day for adults, weekend pass $8.00, kids 12 and under free. Bike, hike, parachute or ride the Magic Bus–the free biodiesel shuttle from nearby parking lots. Wheelchair accessible parking and restroom facility provided. The 2009 schedule of vendors, music, entertainment and games, chef demos, renewable energy and healing arts workshops, and all you need to know to have a scent-sational time will be updated by July. Multiply the fun: enjoy CISA’s Eat the View and the Conway Festival of the Hills on this same glorious October weekend.

KALAVATI

Shelburne Falls Yoga
Tuesday evening 5:30-7, vinyasa/hatha; Saturday morning 9:30-11 vinyasa/hatha
Here is a page for directions from the web site.
Greenfield @ Green River Yoga
Thursday 4-5:00. Gentle Hatha Flow.
Shelburne Falls Yoga: Both classes Tuesday night & Saturday morning class are a vinyasa/ hatha blend, some flowing sun salutations and then (bit longer holding and exploration of poses,) again with modifications given as needed. My classes ends with a nurturing guided deep relaxation that students love.
Greenfield @ Green River Yoga: Thursday afternoon is more gentle than either of above, with some vinyasa but just at a slower pace. Modifications are given as needed.
Private Yoga/1 on 1 yoga classes at my office in Shelburne Falls is available. It’s suitable for those who may:

• recovering from illness
• very overweight
• long time students who desire to move their practice to the next level-we can explore more advanced variations, develop sequence to address particular tight or restricted areas.
• want to learn mantras, or pranayama in greater depth
• learn specific techniques to relieve anxiety and stress: including guided relaxation techniques, breathing practices, and meditation

Free 20 min. phone consult by appt. to see if this is right for your needs. Sessions are usually 45 min. to 1 hour long. Two sessions minimum, as a big part of the first session together is accessing your needs and goals. Perhaps 1/3 of time is spent doing. The second session would be teaching and doing the practice created for you. Many people choose to have ongoing individual sessions to supplement what they do at home or in group classes and to really learn and understand the practices. This was how yoga was historically taught in India-the student would go to the teachers home.

I will have a feature page on Kalavati soon on the main site of New England Abundance yoga section.

Meanwhile check her two sites: embark-lovethelifeyoulive.com & yogapioneer.com

College life is a mixture of academic and social experiences. Knowing tips on how to balance these experiences will formulate your college life for better or worse. Hopefully for the better.

Social Experiences:

• Smile: Statistics prove people who smile attract attention and are more popular. And who doesn’t need a little popularity in their lives?
• Join a Study Group: This is a no brainer, you will meet new people andget some studying done!
• Rush a Fraternity/Sorority: If this is your cup of tea, go for it.
• Got Roommate? Get Alternative Study Space: See if you can work out a schedule, so each of you have the whole room to yourselves 1 to 2 nights each week. Post the schedule and find your alternative study space [SeeFind an Alternative Study Space below]. Plus, you get your dorm room to yourself some nights as well.
• Join Groups: Free food is just the beginning. You will find all sorts of interesting groups exploring different topics. Shop around!

Academic Experiences:

• All Semesters Count: Do not be lead to think you can blow-off your first semester or any semester, for that matter. Your grade point average GPA is calculated on ALL your courses taken within your entire college career. Oh, and prospective employers do ask for college transcripts.
• Schedule Your Time and Stick to Your Schedule: You are responsible for your study, work and deadlines. Once you have all your syllabi, chart your due dates on whatever calendar you will use: paper, PDA, your computer, which ever way you will remember. Then, check your calendar daily and plan accordingly. Don’t be tempted to party the weekend before a big paper is due. Stick to your schedule.
• Find an Alternative Study Space:It might be the library, an alcove in your dorm, the union, the local coffee shop, or maybe all of these! Where ever your auxiliary study spaces are, use them when ever you need to get away from your dorm room or just want a change of pace. [Tip: Your alternative study space should have an electrical outlet and you should travel with an power strip complete with surge protector].

Stealing these tips will help you have a great college experience. Check out the eBook for more college life tips. And visit often.

We are offering free acupuncture for ‘New Patients’ for the week of August 10-15.
Help us to celebrate of our one year anniversary! Our goal is to treat 100 patients per week.
Please check out our website for more information about our clinic.
http://www.thepeoplesacupunctureclinic.com

For More information read article below.

By Ellen Edwards
Kaiya Larson pressed a small, thin needle against the patient’s skin.

A licensed acupuncture practitioner, Larson focused intently as she felt for the right spot – not here, not there … then ping, she pushed the needle in and turned it a little to the right, as though she were turning up the volume on her car radio.

The 31-year-old patient, hoping that acupuncture would increase her energy level and relieve her occasional stomach problems, said she felt a brief “grab.” Then nothing. She lay on the exam table for 20 minutes more while that needle, and four others, remained in place.

Larson, demonstrating the procedure at the Tai Sophia Institute outside suburban Columbia, Md., had already taken the patient’s pulses; in Chinese medicine, there are six of them, which measure not heartbeats but energy flow, and are taken at two levels of pressure on both wrists. Besides having a discussion about the patient’s general health, she had also examined the woman’s tongue, finding diagnostic clues in its color and texture.

Physicians taking notice

The process bore little resemblance to a visit to a conventional American doctor. But it’s becoming familiar to an increasing number of Americans. A study published in December by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a part of the National Institutes of Health, found that 3.1 million adults and 150,000 children used acupuncture in 2007, seeking relief from ailments including headache or back pain, insomnia and attention-deficit disorders. That was about 1 million more adults than in 2002, when the last NCCAM survey was done.

“In the consciousness of the American public, acupuncture has become white bread,” said Joseph Helms, a physician who trains medical doctors in acupuncture techniques.

The people who go regularly for treatment swear by it.

The American Medical Association takes no position specifically on acupuncture; the AMA groups it with other alternative treatments, saying “well-designed, stringently controlled research” is needed to evaluate its efficacy.

In 2007, NCCAM spent about $9.1 million on acupuncture research. While more is planned, Brent Bauer, an internist at the Mayo Clinic and director of its complementary and alternative medicine program, said the research is in its “toddlerhood.”

More research sought

“Some of the most interesting research on acupuncture is how it might impact brain functioning,” said Richard Nahin, acting director for research at NCCAM. Magnetic resonance imaging observations during acupuncture have shown specific areas of the brain that respond to the treatment, he said. The field of pain relief is getting the most attention in these studies, but they hold promise in many areas.

Bauer also said he has seen remarkable results in pain management, adding, “I don’t fully understand how it works.”

In 2004, researchers at the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland tested the effects of acupuncture on 570 people over 50 with osteoarthritis in the knee, splitting patients into three groups that got different treatments. Those who received true true acupuncture recorded an improvement of 40 percent; the other two groups showed improvement of just 22 to 31 percent.

Other preliminary research shows promise when acupuncture is used as part of treatment for infertility, obesity, post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression and pain relief. But many of those studies were small, and more work needs to be done for them to be validated.

However, an analysis of 13 studies of pain treatment with acupuncture, published online this month by the journal BMJ, concluded there was little evidence of difference in the effect of real, sham and no acupuncture.

Bauer said that patients are increasingly asking about incorporating acupuncture into their care and that doctors, especially younger ones, are more willing to give it a chance. “I would call it evolutionary,” he said of physicians’ attitudes. “Twenty years ago there was more antagonism and much more hard-core skepticism. Now there is a lot more of an open attitude.”

Brian Berman, director of the University of Maryland center, came to acupuncture after feeling that something was missing in his practice of family medicine.

“I was well trained with acute problems such as an asthma attack, trauma, heart attack,” he said. “But when it came to chronic pain, I didn’t have all the answers. Eventually that led me to taking the acupuncture course in 1983, then further training in the U.K., and I incorporated it my practice.”

Scientific support lacking

When he first suggested it to his patients, he said, they were skeptical. They were looking for a “magic pill” that would cure them: “Sometimes we had tried the pill and they still had their problems, and I would ask, `Would you consider acupuncture?’ ” Often, it worked.

Gastroenterologist Linda Lee, director of Johns Hopkins’s new Integrative Medicine and Digestive Center, said it’s hard to find scientific support for acupuncture, but she sees anecdotal evidence.

“We have this double standard,” she said of the medical profession. “We are completely comfortable using pharmacological therapies that have not been subjected to clinical trials for the purposes we use them, but we are super suspicious of alternative therapies that haven’t been tested with randomized placebo trials. From a research point of view, I understand the criticism. But we physicians are in the healing business, and we have to go beyond the pharmacological solutions to understand the whole person,” she said. “Acupuncturists start with the whole person.”

At the Hopkins center, acupuncture is used in conjunction with more-conventional medical treatment, said Lee.

“I have been very impressed by how much the acupuncturists pay attention to everything else going on in the body,” said Lee, who is not trained in acupuncture. “I’m a specialist. I’ve been trained to (home) in on one system.”

Unexpected, rapid relief

Elise Feingold, 51, a human geneticist from suburban Silver Spring, Md., began trying acupuncture seven years ago for chronic back and knee pain. She says she reaped unexpected benefits: dramatic and rapid relief from hot flashes that had been waking her seven or eight times a night, as well as relief from 11 months of coccyx (tailbone) pain that her doctors had been unable to help.

“You see benefits over a period of time,” said Feingold. “You’re not always going to have that home run like (with) the hot flashes.”

She said she has also found relief for less tangible and perhaps more emotionally based issues such as sleeplessness and stress, some of which she attributes to the time the practitioner spends talking with her. “There’s a therapy aspect to this, too,” said, Feingold, who gets acupuncture about once a month for general health maintenance.

“I decided to leave my science brain aside,” she said. “I felt it had helped other people, and it might help me. I don’t know how it works, but it’s got 4,000 years of Chinese medicine behind it.”

Reiki Table

I went to the opening of Share the Sweater’s new space for healing and meditation. What a great place to chill. If you are ever in Easthampton or work, live nearby go check it out. Here is what Susan Downing, founder and director of Share the Sweater had to say:

I’ve opened the Share the Sweater Center for Healing and Meditation as a refuge, a place where you can come for healing sessions, to use the meditation and reflection room, or to just sit in a calm, soothing space and have a cup of tea, read a book, be quiet… This is something unique in our area – a quiet, calm space for you to just sit and relax, or meditate without distractions of music or people talking or food being served around you.

Center is open 30 hours a week for you to visit and use the space. During the group meditation times each day I will open and close the meditation session and offer simple meditation instructions for anyone who would like them. Think of the other hours as drop-in times when you can come to sit, reflect or meditate on your own, or to spend extra quiet time before or after a healing session. There may or may not be others on site during these hours, and you are welcome to make yourself at home!

Really, do think of us as your refuge – you can drop in for a few minutes or a few hours during your day, whenever you need a little calm in the storm of your life.

To find out more visit Share The Sweater or New England Abundance