balance

Ask the practitioner

February 21, 2018 By Julie Silver Leave a Comment

What’s Your Favorite Wintertime Activity?

There’s still time to take advantage of the winter season before the cold, snow and ice is gone for good. Not a fan? Take heart: Spring begins on March 20!

Winter is a time for me to “hunker down” and enjoy the beauty of freshly fallen snow and sit by a fireplace. I find that calming yet lifting for my psyche. I also try to nourish my soul by visiting family and friends in warm climates. I come back to Michigan once again appreciative of the quiet beauty of winter.

Karen Siegel Propis, Acupuncturist

Honestly, I am not a huge fan of winter. However, I realize the importance of each season and the benefit of each in terms of my body and the rhythm of the life force (qi) energy. I stay warm with warming soups and stews, bundle up, get extra light from my full-spectrum lighting lamp and get adequate sleep! This said, I did buy a new pair of snowshoes last season that I have truly enjoyed using!

Julie Silver, Acupuncturist

My favorite wintertime activity generally involves hot chocolate. It starts with a short outdoor activity such as sledding or ice skating or hiking — just enough to get my blood pumping and to enjoy being outdoors in the beauty of winter. Then I like to come inside, light a fire, and drink some hot chocolate with coconut milk, turmeric and cinnamon to keep it as healthy as possible.

Monica Mae Leibson, Acupuncturist

I love to walk outdoors on sunny, relatively warm winter days. With the right amount of warm clothing, I love the smell of winter and the reminder that nature is still alive even though it feels so frozen and dormant. It also helps to keep my “cabin fever” at bay!

Julie Shindler-Cohen, Acupuncturist

Amazing Acupuncture! Good for what ails you!

December 20, 2017 By Julie Silver Leave a Comment

Imagine that someone tells you that there is a type of medicine that can proactively help support your body in healing itself. In addition, this type of medicine can prevent illness from occurring. Imagine being told that you will feel better and build a foundation of health and wellness for your body.

This medicine does not involve taking any chemicals or synthetic pills. There are no gimmicks or false claims. It’s not a quick fix or a “one-size-fits-all” prescription.

Imagine being able to achieve this while relaxing on a warm bed in a quiet room with soothing music and dimmed lights. Imagine coming out of this room feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, knowing you have done something good for yourself!

What if someone told you that there are many different health concerns this medicine can address? That it helps everything from subtle issues like insomnia, fatigue or anxiety to more chronic health concerns like inflammation, autoimmune issues and cancer?

Hey! What is this medicine, anyway?

It’s Traditional Chinese Medicine and its most respected tool: acupuncture.

[Read more…]

Ask the Acupuncturist – Inflammation and Heat

January 24, 2016 By Julie Silver 1 Comment

When we think of inflammation, we often think of localized pain somewhere in the body. An injury, for example, can elicit an acute inflammatory response. In addition, inflammation may be systemic and manifest in various parts of the body. As Jennifer Pillow-White wrote in her blog (Ask the CST) , inflammation is an necessary part of healing. Inflammation can be a good thing!

Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture has its own unique way of viewing inflammation.

TCM is a very literal medicine. We look at symptoms (of a health condition) vs. a label (such as inflammation) to diagnosis and differentiate illness and disease. A patient may come to our office with inflammation and the acupuncturist asks – “what are the symptoms associate with the inflammation?”

[Read more…]

Making friends with our emotions

February 26, 2013 By Julie Silver Leave a Comment

As acupuncturists, we sit with our clients and talk with them about their emotions. Emotions are an important part of the intake process for Traditional Chinese Medicine. Emotions affect our physical health and physical health affects our emotional well-being.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine – most organ systems have an emotion associated with them. When someone is angry or irritable, we think of the Liver and how to work to balance the flow of Liver Qi. Fear is associated with the Kidneys, Grief, the Lungs, Heart – joy, and the emotion associated with the Spleen is worry. Since we so often experience many emotions, one can speculate the effect the emotions have on our health.

I want to make a pitch for making friends with our emotions. So often, we try to push our feelings away. This may be done through drugs and alcohol, food and other addictions, exercise or medications. An informal industry has been developed in order to support us in NOT FEELING. What this ultimately does is add an additional layer to our pain and suffering. We still feel the emotions we don’t want to feel and we self medicate ourselves to get away from the feelings we still feel! Doesn’t make sense! [Read more…]

The Magic of Midlife – Body Balance for women in their prime!

January 13, 2013 By Julie Silver Leave a Comment

As women, we are pressured to keep our figures intact and the world around us supports our desire to be thin and svelte. At the same time, we are watching our bodies change – most of which is beyond our control. Midlife hormonal changes take precedent to our old ways of eating what we want and being able to exercise a few times and “work it off”. Our mind and body are in conflict and there is no sense of balance between the two. In addition, the images we see in the media feed our desire to keep youthful and fight creating a healthy state of balance.

For the past 10 years I have been working in the field of Traditional Chinese Medicine. TCM looks at our body (and our world) from a viewpoint of balance. It is the goal of TCM to support our body in achieving a healthy state of balance. Balance does not mean perfection. We are conditioned to think of the perfect body as the images that we see in the media. In TCM, balance means a harmonious way of feeling, being and thinking. Everybody (and body) has their own natural state of balance and every body’s balance is different. My balance is different than your balance. I remember once, in my early days of acupuncture school, some of the senior students telling me that, after learning about TCM, I would “never look at my body the same way”. And they were right. [Read more…]

Inner Smile Meditation

June 5, 2012 By Julie Shindler-Cohen Leave a Comment

Many patients want to know what else can be done–outside of the treatment room–that will balance their energy. My answer is always the same—meditation! This may sound scary/impossible/weird to some people, but the ancient practice of Qi Gong offers “instructions” on how to meditate. For me, this is easier than traditional meditation for 2 reasons. First, the goal is not to quiet the mind. Instead, the qi gong practice gives instructions on how to cultivate and move your energy, or qi. Second, in regularly performing qi gong exercises, you begin to cultivate and move your own qi. (I tell many people that qi gong is “self- acupuncture”) In general, qi gong allows each person to ask their body what it needs and use one’s own energy to bring the body back into balance. [Read more…]

Book Review: Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life

May 3, 2012 By Julie Shindler-Cohen Leave a Comment

When I first heard about Dr. Claudia Welch’s Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life, Ihappy to read a book that marries the practices of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Ayurveda. The book was an excellent source of knowledge for the newcomer to any form of Eastern medicine, TCM or Ayurveda. Dr. Welch begins by explaining the most important concept of yin and yang, which is the foundational principal of TCM. With this basic knowledge, the rest of the book uses the principals of yin and yang to describe hormonal balance (and imbalances) within the body. She then continues going through specific hormonal problems that affect women throughout their lifetime, such as osteoporosis and heart disease. [Read more…]

Chinese Medicine for Immune Support

December 1, 2011 By Julie Shindler-Cohen Leave a Comment

The use of acupuncture and Chinese medicine is an important key to support the body’s innate immune system. No matter what time of year, it is important to maintain a healthy immune system which provides protection against frequent infections, common cold and more serious illnesses. Traditional Chinese medicine recognizes different organ functions to be responsible for specific functions in the body. The concept of immunity involves 2 major organs: spleen and lung. The energy, or qi, of the lung is responsible for defense against external pathogens. However, the ability of the lung qi to protect the body relies heavily upon the production of qi from the spleen. [Read more…]

Ayurveda and Chinese medical Seminar for Women’s Health

November 2, 2011 By Julie Shindler-Cohen Leave a Comment

Come join Julie Shindler-Cohen at Karma Yoga to learn about Women’s health and Chinese medicine. Julie will discuss general Chinese medical theory and will explore women’s health and prevention in more detail. Attendees will gain a greater understanding of how Chinese medicine treats the body’s natural energetic balance as a means of preventing and treating an array of symptoms that arise throughout a woman’s lifecycle.

DATE: Tuesday November 22

TIME: 2-3:15PM

PLACE: Karma Yoga 3683 W. Maple Road (At Lahser Road)

COST: $20 at the door/$75 for the series

Julie will be offering one course in a series entitled “Soma & Agni”, which offers information about women’s self care and lunar cycles from an Ayurvedic perspective. The course will be each Tuesday in the month of November from 2-3:15 at Karma Yoga. Please look at the Karma’s website for more details about the seminar!

http://www.karma-yoga.net/soma-agni

How to Stay Well: An Emotional Perspective

October 6, 2011 By Julie Shindler-Cohen Leave a Comment

Acupuncture is one of the best forms of preventative medicine available today. The goal of acupuncture is to maintain balance within the energy channels so that disease will not present itself. Maintaining balance ensures that there is not too much (an excess) of energy in one channel and a lack of (deficiency) of energy in another channel. Chinese herbs are also used for this purpose; to clear out any excess, support any deficiency or treat any resulting pathologies. From an emotional perspective, I have found that when people become stressed or emotionally vulnerable, any preexisting deficiency becomes a more serious problem. For example, the person who has a long history of digestive disorders gets severe digestive problems when they experience a loss in their life. Or a person who has a long history of allergies and frequent colds get a long standing cough that will not go away when life becomes stressful. [Read more…]