I’d like to extend this practice further with a Sunday Seasonal Seed Circle—a gathering aimed at supporting potential Circle facilitators in identifying seasonal correspondences, emotions, virtues, and the relationships between our bodies and the natural world. These circles will offer a spiritual and communal space for navigating our personal and collective healing through the lens of Traditional Chinese Medicine’s Five Phases, ecological cycles, and deep reflection.
Read MoreThis polycrisis of the world, as Sophy Banks calls it, seems to be amplifying the sense of vulnerability and uncertainty I’m feeling. I want to relax into the calm of life and metabolize the grief from this most recent loss. Yet, when I relax in and try to be with my feelings, a door opens into deeper and deeper layers of grief for what is happening in the world. It’s as if I am expecting to open a metaphorical door to step onto a porch where I can watch the waves and sunset for a couple of hours, but when I pull the door back, a tidal wave threatens to knock me down and wash away my entire house.
Read MoreImagine a healthcare system where small clinics offering acupuncture, massage, and other somatic therapies also function as community health hubs. These centers could screen for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and other risk factors during routine visits, catching potential health issues early and reducing the need for more costly interventions down the line.
Read More“Sky and Earth are the inn for all things; time is the traveler passing through a hundred generations. Life floats by like a dream—how much joy can it hold?” - Huainanzi Chapter 7
Read MoreAcupuncturists across Oregon are facing significant challenges due to reductions in insurance reimbursement rates. This post provides a draft letter that individual acupuncturists can use and modify to contact our legislators to ask for improved parity laws.
Read MoreThe reduction in reimbursements puts small healthcare providers like me in a difficult position. To continue offering the same level of care, I may need to see more patients, shorten appointment times, or stop accepting insurance altogether. None of these options are good for patient care. Ultimately, this decision by Regence undermines the quality of care you deserve and have come to expect.
Read MoreAt the Yurt Clinic, we’ve been getting more cancellations due to COVID-19 and so I wanted to address where we’re at with COVID-19 in our local area and what we can do to prevent the spread and manage the illness when we know we’ve got it.
Read MoreHibiscus calyx makes an amazingly full-bodied, sour red tea that can be drunk as a cool summer refresher or from a steaming mug in the winter. This article addresses the specific benefits that hibiscus flower can provide for women as we move into and through the transitional years and enjoy the third trimester of life.
Read MoreI left Nepal ten days sooner than I meant to. With a shocked heart and a belly tied down with dimenhydrinate, I sat in the front seat of a grey sumo. Eleven of our bodies jolted up and down, left and right, as our coachman navigated the switchbacks leading northeast to Kathmandu. Below my sunglasses, I saw the driver looking at my hand squeezing the door handle. He had just unified our right tires with the edge of a cliff after passing a truck carrying two buffalo. Momentum alone can be a savior.
Read MoreThe Lunar New Year holiday is tracked with the Moon cycle in respect to our place in orbit around the sun. It occurs on the second new moon after the Winter Solstice. We will be celebrating the holiday on Sunday, January 22.
Starting January 1, 2022, health insurance plans in Oregon are required to cover acupuncture, making this valuable treatment more accessible to those of us who live here.
Read MoreWinter will reach its midpoint on December 22nd this 2019 year (the Winter Solstice) and it will end on February 4, 2020 when Spring begins. Just like every other season, Winter is a wave form. If you imagine yourself sitting on an Earthly surfboard, looking far out at the horizon, today you will see something changing.
Read MoreNettles! Some folks think of them as a nuisance weed, something to avoid when you're out walking in the woods. They do pack a potent sting, but I prefer to think of nettles as early harbingers of spring and as a nourishing food and powerful medicine. This is the time of year when nettles are showing up in the woods and meadows, when people harvest their tender green leaves, before the plants flower and go to seed. Eating seasonally and locally has many health benefits, and nettles are one of the most nutritious ways to do so! It may seem hard to believe that something that can cause us so much pain can be so good for us, but nettles are a contradiction that way.
Read MoreIn this life, I've heard it said that the only constant is change. Everyday, we grow older, the Earth spins, the stars shift, our children mature, our parents die, the world becomes something we don't recognize from before. If I pray hard enough, if I am willing to spill the blood of another, if I make the most precious deal with something all-knowing, can I stop the changing nature? Can I prevent the Earth from shifting and bringing another quake? Can I stop myself from dying?
Read MoreThree of our farmers this morning are suffering from the beginning stages of liver disease with shortness of breath and a number of organ problems that seem to be traced back to pesticide use. This is a tricky area, since it's hard to prove. An article in Environmental Health Perspectives talks about an analysis on farmers in developing countries who are suffering chronic pesticide poisoning with symptoms that include headache, dizziness, depression, limb weakness, poor balance, difficulty concentrating, and vision difficulties.
Read MoreI do not have a temple in my village where I go to pray in this way. The gods where I live are not so pronounced as this. I do not know a family in my home village who would sacrifice a chicken and sprinkle its blood onto an altar, though I do know of a family who kills their own chickens for food. Is there anything in my life, in my village, where we have these sensorial tributes to the spirit that we have together determined to be ruled by? Isn’t this what the god represents? A collaborative tribute to a shared spirit of protection and, in this case, the dissolution of ignorance?
Read MoreThe other morning at breakfast, Mahesh told me about the time that he visited the cave of the Rinpoche. He said that on the left and right sides of the cave you could see the footprints of the Enlightened One, where he had gone mad fighting against his own demons. This morning, in an attempt at more self-love and acceptance, I put some metaphorical footprints on the walls of my room.
Read MoreIn the sixteen years since I met Gianina (who now owns the Sixth Course where she delves into small-batch confectionery that will make you drool on your keyboard), I have remembered her words thousands of times. She is one of the bright stars along my path in this world that have helped to teach me what true healing really is. Of course it's what we eat and how we exercise and all of that. But more so, we need to want to eat well and exercise because we believe that we are truly worth it, that we are valued by our community and that we are absolutely loved. It really is one of the most important things that we touch each other with our words, that we reach out with love and that we hear that same love when it's given back to us. Our hearts blossom with this and the rest of us follows.
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