Most of us have those pesky few pounds that just won’t release their grip on us. We might try the latest diet or exercise trend but that weight just won’t come off. Or maybe you have more than just a little weight to lose. Rather than jump on the latest fad diet that sounds too good to be true, have you thought about trying acupuncture to lose weight? It just might be the ticket to not only losing those extra pounds but also to getting your overall health back on track. continue reading
Anyone who has suffered from sciatic nerve pain can tell you it can be a very debilitating condition. It is typically caused by an impingement of the sciatic nerve in the lower back but the pain is actually felt radiating down the leg and in the buttock. There are several potential causes of sciatic pain including:
Acupuncture is one of the most gentle and effective treatment options. Traditional medicine may prescribe medication to deal with the pain caused by sciatica but acupuncture is a drug-free option that treats the issue and not just the symptom. continue reading
Come find us at the Prana Prenatal & Newborn Expo, Table 11
https://www.pranaprenatalyoga.com/expo.html
Even though tickets are complimentary, you must register in advance. There will be no onsite registration to limit touchpoints. To keep crowds manageable, registration will be in timed blocks.
When you’re expecting or newly postpartum, it can be overwhelming figuring out what you need to prepare for your new life as a family. As is the case with a lot of families, you probably just moved from the city or out-of-state and have no idea where to begin. There are so many services out there ready to help you out and many of them are right in your backyard! No need to trek to some huge convention center and get lost in the mix. Our expo is for the local business so you get that personal connection. The vast majority of our vendors are small business owners and moms themselves so you’ll be supporting local entrepreneurs and getting advice from those that have been there! If you’re not local to Westchester, many of our vendors travel to neighboring counties or offer their services virtually so you’ll still benefit from meeting them and learning about how they can help during this precious time.
I’ve lost track of the number of times I have sat down to write something. I am not sure what I wanted to say that wasn’t already said by someone else in my field. I guess I wanted to give some comfort, some advice, some prophetic words of wisdom that would somehow make this time a little easier, let you know that I am thinking of you, uplift someones mood, help someone who might be struggling with either grief, fear, stress, anxiety- all of which can be helped so much with Chinese medicinal herbal formulas. Instead, I found myself not being able to find the words. I found myself struggling and maybe even feeling like a fraud writing words that I haven’t always been able to follow myself. continue reading
Just imagine a time, not too long ago . . . in a rural land where refrigerators didn’t exist and people bought just the right amount of food for the day. Now, I know it is hard to envision a world without Costco, or mega refrigerators, iced water with every meal, late night ice-cream, and smoothies. The thing is, it is not natural for us to ingest such cold drinks and food on a regular basis.
Why, you ask? Well, I am sure that everyone has seen and would recognize the legendary yin yang symbol. Besides for it being an awesome symbol, it is also one of the basic principles of Chinese Medicine. Yin can be seen as the bodies cooling agent, mainly being the fluid substances in our bodies such as water and blood. Yang is considered to be the warming properties of the body, or your metabolism and qi; which many refer to as one’s vital source.
We all know that it takes a great deal of energy to digest food and make it into the proper form in order to provide nutrients to our organs and to maintain proper health. That energy is yang energy. We need a proper balance of yin and yang in order for our digestive system to properly break down the food we eat, transform it into proper nutrients and then transport it throughout the body in the most efficient way. If we ingest foods that are difficult to digest, are too cold in nature, making them overly yin in quality, we disrupt the balance between yin and yang resulting in a slower metabolism.
According to Chinese medicine, the organs responsible for digestion are the spleen and stomach. It is important to remember that when looking at this ancient organ system, the organs do not have the exact role as they do in western medicine. This is because Chinese medicine has a large philosophical component to it and each organ holds emotion, carries out a duty, has a yin/yang partner, and is associated to one of the 5 elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. In this case, the spleen is associated with worry or over thinking, transforms the food and then transports it throughout the body, has the yang counterpart- the stomach which is responsible for grinding down the food initially, and both the spleen and the stomach make up the earth element. Now of course this is a very simplified description of how our digestive system works considering that are numerous texts that just speak about this topic, and there are other crucial factors involved. To stay on topic, I will just add that one of the more important factors in order to complete the mission of digesting is the yang (our metabolism) to break down the food. This yang is like our bodies boiler system and comes from both the spleen and the kidneys.
Ok, so now we know that we need a good balance of yin and yang, and that for proper digestion the yang factor is critical, does it make sense that if we ingest foods that are really cold, especially in the winter we are creating an imbalance in our bodies that causes our digestion to slow down?
So, if for this New Year, one of your resolutions is a juice cleanse and you live in New York during winter storm season, it can really damage your digestion. Fruits and veggies, especially raw, are very yin in nature and can damage the body’s yin yang balance, especially in the winter- being it is the absolute most yin time of the year. It won’t happen right away, even though if you are sensitive you might end up running to the bathroom, but over time it can cause a great deal of damage that your Acupuncturist will have to work very hard to fix. I suggest doing a soup cleanse consisting of cabbage and ginger, which can be just as effective. If you insist on doing a juice cleanse, please supplement it with tons of ginger to warm up the cold nature of the cold and raw fruits and veggies, drink ginger tea throughout the day, and don’t do it for too long. Waiting for the spring to do a juice cleanse might be the better option
