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5 Tips for Starting Your Day Mindfully

By Amy | Published August 21, 2016

Do you ever wish you could have a Do-Over for your day – hit stop, rewind, and start over?  Maybe you were critical or grouchy or said something mean to someone or are just overdue for an acupuncture treatment!  What will you do differently tomorrow to set your self straight from the start? By starting your day mindfully, you give yourself an opportunity to set an intention of what you want to fulfill and how you want to behave.

What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?

Here are some suggestions that don’t take more than a few extra minutes to either change up your routine or create one anew.

  1. First, do nothing.  Then, just bring your awareness to your breath.  Is it shallow, slow, warm? Deep, rapid, cool? Next, stretch in bed.  Total time: 1 minute.
  2. Brush  your teeth.  Remove the toxins that have accumulated in your mouth overnight, and drink some water to rehydrate.  Total time: hey, no extra time, you already brush your teeth every morning (I hope)!
  3. Step outside.   If this is not practical, then look out a window at something natural like a tree.  Take a few deep breaths of the fresh air and stretch: some examples of stretches are arms skyward, side bends, side lunges, forward fold to reach toward your toes. Total time: 1-2 minutes.
  4. Horizontal stretch- lay on the floor and either stretch long with your arms overhead or do a twist with legs to one side and arms to the opposite side.
  5. Sit, on your bed, a chair, or a pillow or cushion, and just breathe and relax.  Start with formality by focusing on the breath, and noticing thoughts, labeling them as “thoughts or “thinking”, and coming back to the breath.  Then when you are ready, set your intention for today.  It can be to treat others with respect and compassion, to work toward my highest good, to see beauty in all things, to be open to the wisdom of the universe, etc. Then end formally by returning to an awareness of the breath.  Total time: 5 minutes or more as you have allowance for.

If this seems too time consuming, then just choose 2 or 3, and set aside 5 minutes.  You can use a gentle sounding alarm on your phone if it’s not too far from where you sleep (I do not advocate keeping a phone in the bedroom however).  Or if you have a watch with an alarm feature.  After a while you may get a rhythm of knowing how much time you can spend and then do away with an actual alarm.

 

I’d love to hear about your morning routine and if you implement any of these tips, how they work for you!

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4 tips for choosing the acupuncturist that’s right for you

By Amy | Published July 25, 2016

(Naperville Acupuncture)

 

Whether you are looking for help with IBS, Neck Pain, Depression, Insomnia, Headaches, Diabetes or many other health problems, acupuncture can be a smart choice for efficacy and economics.  Maybe you are like me, and when presented with too many choices, tend to lock up and make no choice at all.  Stuck in indecision but desperately in need of help or resolution.  Maybe you have a strong feeling that acupuncture can really set you right, but when you start looking for who to book an appointment with, you feel unsure?

I totally get that.  It has happened to me.  Let me give you some tips that will hopefully give you the reassurance that you won’t end up with a bad experience

Credentials Count!

  • Make sure that whoever you choose is licensed by your state to practice acupuncture.  Several types of practitioners can legally practice, but each will have different training.  Here’s a run down of the most common:

  • Licensed Acupuncturist: training is a minimum of a 2-year program.  Some acupuncturists undergo additional training for herbs.  You can verify licensure by visiting your state’s professional regulation department website.  For Illinois, it’s http://www.idfpr.com/licenselookup/licenselookup.asp
  • Chiropractor: no training required
  • Medical Doctors, Osteopaths (DO), and Dentists: no training required.

Specialties or Focus narrow the field

  • By looking into the practitioner’s website or calling their office, you can ascertain if they may have more experience related to your main complaint.
  • Like in conventional medicine where you go the the GI doctor, the gynecologist, etc.,  acupuncturists may have more knowledge, experience, or expertise in a certain range of conditions but will be able to successfully treat a much wider range in practice.  For example, my specialties are digestion and menstruation/female health but I treat pain, mental health issues, and other conditions just as well.

Location and Hours

  • Convenience should not be underestimated. You need to be able to keep with your treatment plan.

Rapport

  • When you call to inquire, ask if they offer a complimentary phone or in person consultation to get a feel for the practitioner’s personality and mannerisms.
  • By finding the practitioner that you feel comfortable opening up to, and who you feel has your best interests at heart, you will be best positioned to get the most out of the relationship.  Healing is more than showing up for your treatments.  It’s a partnership in your journey to health!

Listen to your heart

Obviously other factors can influence your choice, but giving these good consideration should help you feel more confident in choosing the right acupuncturist! Don’t hesitate to ask a few questions such as how long they’ve been practicing, what style they practice, or why they do this line of work!  Bottom line is with all the choices we are faced with every day, let this one especially be guided by your heart.

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Who’s up for some acupuncture philosophy?

By Amy | Published May 9, 2016

I hope you all like when I delve into some of the philosophy of Chinese Medicine – there’s so much more integration and interwoven dependency of philosophy and medicine of the East than of the West in my opinion, and the fact it’s based in nature makes it not only relevant and useful but beautiful and mystical too.

The tenets of Chinese Medicine are based on ancients texts that we refer to as the classics. The Divine Pivot is the name of the ancient text dating from the third millennium BCE, that lays the foundation for acupuncture and it’s use and practice. It is one of two parts of the Huang Di Nei Jing or Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine.

Naturally we might ask – what is The Divine Pivot? Well, the idea of a pivot comes up in Chinese Medical theory several times. One might think about a pivot being something between two things – a hinge, a turning point. So what is a hinge in relation to acupuncture? The needle of course! But what is a needle? Nothing more than a filament of metal, or back in those days more likely a thin splinter of bone or evergreen leaf. So really, the pivot is the person directing the needle, giving it purpose and action.

Is an acupuncturist divine? No, but the acupuncturist is a conduit for the divine, which I interpret as the great intelligence of the universe that conducts nature, and is what we as practitioners of this medicine must be aligned with and make use of for the benefit of the patient. How fitting a title then, to really boil the crux of it down into 2 words.

What are your thoughts? Are you curious about how nature and our health are interrelated? Stay tuned for future blogs about the nature of Traditional East Asian Medicine!

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What’s the deal with gluten-free and who should give it a try?

By Amy | Published May 3, 2016

Are you tired of seeing the term gluten-free everywhere these days? Isn’t it just for those with Celiac Disease? Isn’t that a rare condition?

So what’s the deal? Even 10 years ago a person following a gluten free diet could not eat out at most restaurants, and now the awareness of this ubiquitous protein is well, ubiquitous!  Let’s delve into some of the questions surrounding this topic.

What is Celiac Disease?

Celiac Disease (CD) is an autoimmune condition in which a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye, called gluten, creates a response by the immune system and this attacks the villi of the small intestine lining. The villi are the small finger-like projections where nutrient absorption takes place.  Only some people with Celiac actually have GI symptoms.  The only treatment is to avoid foods containing the gluten protein 100% of the time for life.

Who should be tested for Celiac?

To give you a picture of what Celiac Disease can look like, I’ve taken a quote from Dr. Alessio Fassino, the pioneering researcher and expert on this topic, during an interview by Chris Kresser:

“Celiac disease is a clinical chameleon, and the symptoms can really affect any organ or tissue in your body, but also they are very unspecific.  It can go from a stomachache to fatigue to anemia to the tingling of your fingertips and so on and so forth, so you can imagine how many people will have these kinds of symptoms and how many of these people have been told:  You know, there is nothing wrong with you if you have chronic fatigue.  We’ll look into the reason why you have anemia, but we can’t find anything wrong, and you need just to take an iron supplement.  When they start to learn that celiac disease can do that, they ask themselves maybe this is what is the problem.  Some of these people, indeed, turn out to have celiac disease, and therefore are diagnosed and resolve the problem and so on and so forth.  Some people eventually fail to be diagnosed with celiac disease because they don’t fit the criteria, but because they were desperate because nothing else explained their symptoms, they decide, despite the negative results, to try the diet no matter what.  And some of them, sure enough, had their symptoms improved or completely resolved.”

If you talk to people who have been diagnosed with Celiac, then you will find that many of them did not have GI distress and their symptoms ranged all over the board.

 

What is Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity?

So here I want to let you know that it’s a fact that avoiding gluten is not just for CD patients.  Rather, according to Dr. Alessio Fassano, Non Celiac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS) is “a different form of immune reaction that will create a minimal inflammation without damage of the intestine.  And that caused the symptoms intestinally and extraintestinal that these people may eventually experience when ingesting gluten.”

According to some sources, NCGS is about 6 times more common than Celiac Disease.

 

Other Ailments that Benefit from Going Gluten-free

I won’t get into this topic too much but I do want to mention one autoimmune condition for whom the majority of sufferers find relief from going GF – Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis.  Isabella Wentz wrote a book and has a blog and does interviews within the wellness community, and she surveyed over 2,000 Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis patients.  She discovered that about 80% of those surveyed found substantial relief from their symptoms by eliminating gluten from their diets.  She goes further to share that diary and soy are also majorly reactive for these autoimmune hypothyroid patients.

Is Gluten the only Problem with Wheat?

More and more research is coming out about the effects of a common pesticide on our health called glyphosate.  This is the main component of Round-Up which incidentally is sprayed on wheat shortly before harvest.  Scientists are trying to figure out if it’s the glyphosate or the gluten that so many people are reacting to.  Tests have shown this chemical in high levels in almost every one tested.

 

Final Thoughts

Should we all jump on the GF bandwagon? How do you know if you have a problem with wheat or gluten? If I have a patient who’s feeling awful and who eats wheat every single day without a break, I do suggest eliminating gluten for a minimum of 30 days, and then just seeing how they feel.  If there’s no relief, then fine, eat it.  After all, if someone is so reliant on this one food that they cannot stop eating it for a month, then it could likely be causing at least some contribution to their symptom picture.  I know for me it was a matter of drug dependence and independence, Crohn’s Disease and remission. I believe going gluten-free was a huge part of that. Tons of practitioners out there, not just me, have observed this change in our patients who go gluten-free.

I’d love to hear if going gluten-free made a positive difference for you! Please send me a message!

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Poignant lessons from the bible of acupuncture

By Amy | Published May 2, 2016

(Naperville Acupuncture)

 

I love this quote from the first chapter of the classical foundational text of acupuncture titled The Divine Pivot (Ling Shu):

“Whether meeting it or following it, by means of one’s attention, one harmonises it.
Those who understand the way of the dynamic, will not impede it and thus it manifests.”

We – acupuncturists – must focus our attention on “it” – the qi. We must get out of its way but by learning where it wants to go and where it is, we can understand it, and facilitate a state of balance – harmony.

Here’s another profound quote from The Divine Pivot that is loud and clear:

“ The (unskilled practitioner) attends to the form (aka physical). The superior (practitioner) attends to the spirit (aka nonphysical).”

What do you gather from this? To me, it says, an acupuncturist doesn’t just stick a needle in your boo-boo – we are assessing and nuancing the unseen energetics of the body. That’s why people don’t come to me to fix a dislocated shoulder or a torn meniscus. They come to me to assist their body in regaining harmony and balance to enhance their own healing abilities. We all are born with mechanisms within us to continually heal ourselves. Every second of every day our body is rebuilding and repairing. Sometimes we sustain an injury – whether due to physical trauma or inflammatory response to our diet or environment or stress hormone overload – that finally creates an imbalance upon imbalance that makes it hard for the body to find its own homeostatic rhythm again. We often don’t see symptoms until the root cause has been actively damaging us for years.

The cool thing about Traditional East Asian Medicine (TEAM for short) is that we have ways to measure the state of our Qi that don’t rely on how high the pain level is or our own mental perception or even the physical manifestations. We can ask the body in it’s own language – what’s wrong? where do you need me to come in and help? That is why this medicine has endured and why it is so effective. Yet it is the burden of the practitioner to develop the skills to do this best. They don’t call it a practice for nothing! My teachers from each of my courses is a practitioner in practice – they are always practicing. All of the great practitioners and teachers are always students of this medicine. So I thank you for coming with me on this journey to discover acupuncture and it’s wonder and wisdom.

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