latest from the blog
What Does Beautiful Mean to You?
A couple of weeks ago I was a speaker at The International Congress of Esthetics and Spa at the Philadelphia Convention Center. I took some time to walk around the convention floor and I could not believe the number of ways to spend your money to look younger, better and brighter. I was lost among the rows of vendors selling machines, treatments, cosmetics, serums, creams all guaranteed to make me look beautiful. I sort of felt like I already looked good, guess not? After maybe the third person stopped me to tell me how I could look great I asked myself, what did beautiful mean to me?
I did feel good about how I looked. I also felt good about the information I presented and who I am professionally. I feel good about who I am as a friend, wife and mother but I can not say I feel beautiful.
I notice that the spring season brings a marketing blitz of diet programs, Botox, tanning sprays, hair products, Cool Sculpting which is freezing the fat cells so they fall off or something like that, teeth whitening, clothing catalogs with bathing suits modeled by 16 year olds… its endless. I find it hard to feel beautiful looking at all of that yet I suspect that even if I lost 10 lbs., bought a tummy flattening and butt lifting bathing suit, Botox my forehead and whitened my teeth I would still not feel beautiful.
I believe that like everything else in life being beautiful is something that must come from the inside. There are so many critical parts of me that work very hard to help me be what the world expects. I truly appreciate them and I am inviting them to take a summer vacation. There is a picture of me when I was about 3 or 4 years old standing on our front porch wearing dungarees, the 1950’s version of jeans, my winter coat and plastic, play high heels. I remember those high heels, I loved them and I felt when I had them on. That is what beautiful means to me.
Perhaps an interesting approach to looking great is finding a time in our life when we felt beautiful. Maybe it was when we were wearing a special party dress or suit, going to a prom, a wedding day. As you think of that time connect to where you feel that in your body, what it feels like. Connect to that part of yourself where being beautiful if a given and wear that as you go about your day. Beauty like truth is not something we can find or create because we can not get something we already have. So Beautiful, what does it mean to you?
Wearing Masks
There are many feelings around the wearing of masks due to the Corona Pandemic. Although this has become a very politicized and emotionally charged subject there...
This video blog discusses how to take a holistic approach to the Corona virus. Your health and wellness was entirely your responsibility before the Corona virus, and still is! Learn how to complement the recommendations of the CBC with the principles of Classical Chinese Med...
Healing Sounds Practice
This video shows a practice of all of the Healings Sounds. The sounds can be done individually or combined as a practice. We have explored with each sound how trying to avoid specific feelings, a mov...
The Earth Element
The Earth Element is yin/yang in its most equal and balanced state. The Earth is the foundation on which we establish value-ness of our world, and thus gives the concrete sense ...
The Wood Element
The wood element is rising Yang which is the opposite of the metal element. It is the spring time and the energetic tendency is creation. The aspect of personality is called the ...
The Healing Sound for Fear and the Kidneys
Kidney and bladder are the organs associated with the water element. Winter is the season of water and the manifes...
The Healing Sound for shock and disassociation
Heart and Small intestine, Pericardium and Triple Warmer are the organs associated with the fire element. For the purpose of the healing sounds, he...
Lung and Large Intestine are the organs that are associated with the Metal Element. The manifest aspect of nature for the Metal element is space or vacuity so it is easy to understand the association of these organs whose function is taking in and eliminating. In Classical C...
The Associations of the Fire Element
Many people have asked me to post more associations of the Taoist five elements. Presently we are in the summer season which is the Fire element. In the Taoist 5 element model the fire e...
Chi Kung Movement Routine
This is the last video in this series. It shows all of the movement combined in a simple movement routine that can be done on a daily basis. It is a wonderful way to be present to what we are feeli...
Working with Neck Tension
As we move through life we occasionally encounter obstacles that prevent us from doing what we want to do. Energy rises to the eyes, throat and hands in response so we can remove or move around the...
Working with the Solar Plexus
A knotting sensation in the gut area is often associated with worry. In Chinese medicine this stuck energy can affect the spleen which is responsible for extracting energy from the fo...
Flight or Fight
When we encounter an object or situation that is frightening to us the energy descends very quickly to the legs and feet. This feeling is often described as flight or fight. The energy has descended so...
Being Present in the Body
The next pair of movements we are going to explore are for the heart and pericardium. In Chinese medicine the heart houses our Shen. We do not have an exact translation in English for the word Shen...
Working with Sadness
Feelings are an experience of the movement of energy in the body in response to an object, situation or person. An emotion is the label our minds give to that experience of moving energy, or feeling. It...
Working with Chi
Everything is energy and in Chinese medicine we hear of energy, or chi referred to as Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang does not imply an inherent and unchanging state. Rather it is a label used for energy in a specific st...
Wow, summer is here! It feels like yesterday I was writing about winter skin care and now it’s time to think of the sun. It is interesting to me that in many warm weather cultures the more sun the more clothing people wear for protectio...
Happy spring! Those of us in Philadelphia are welcoming spring with yet another snow storm. None the less, it is still spring and I am completely ready. Winter certainly takes a toll on our skin and many clients are asking me about holistic ways to repair and ...
Happy spring! Those of us in the Philadelphia are welcoming spring with yet another snow storm. None the less, it is still spring and I am completely ready. Winter certainly takes a toll on our skin and many clients are asking me about holistic ways to repair ...
Happy spring! Those of us in the Philadelphia are welcoming spring with yet another snow storm. None the less, it is still spring and I am completely ready. Winter certainly takes a toll on our skin and many clients are asking me about holistic ways to repair and renew their ski...
Hello, I have been home all week with a case of Bronchitis and I want to share a great herbal remedy used in Tibetan medicine. Dr Phuntsog Wangmo, a wonderful Tibetan physician trained at the Tibetan Medical College in Lhasa, Tibet shared this with me some years ago. It is a gre...
My intention with starting this blog is to share my experiences as a holistic practitioner, educator and as a 61 year old woman. We live in a culture that sets up so many exclusions based on race, gender, size, religion and age. That’s...