Nurturing Spirit Acupuncture Healing ~ Growth ~ Vitality

Recommended Resources

Welcome to my Patient Resources page! I am excited to use this space to help you connect with books, services, and products to help you care for yourself in a way that supports vibrant health and nurtures your spirit.

**I want you do know that I don't take these recommendations lightly, and that I only recommend items that I have personally used and found beneficial or that I have seen my patients use with great results.**

Stay tuned as the list grows - this is just the beginning!

Books

Wood Becomes Water: Chinese Medicine in Everyday Life

When my patients ask me, "Where can I go to read more about the Five Elements?" this book is invariably the one I recommend. It is an excellent resource for discovering your Five Element type and learning more about how to keep your body, mind, and emotions healthy and well-balanced through all the seasons of the year and of your life.

Fire Child, Water Child: How Understanding the Five Types of ADHD Can Help You Improve Your Child's Self-Esteem and Attention

Author Stephen Cowan, MD is both a holistic pediatrician and a medical acupuncturist with a deep understanding of Chinese medicine. This wonderfully compassionate book explains children's different styles of focusing according to the Five Elements, offering non-drug interventions to support attention and learning for each type of child. It is an excellent resource for parents of children diagnosed with ADD or ADHD and for adults with these diagnoses. It is also a fantastic read for all educators and parents, as its scope and recommendations can be useful in supporting healthy learning in all children, whether or not they are diagnosed with attentional challenges. The teachers and parents who have read this book on my recommendation have all loved it!

The Healing Power of the Breath

This wonderful book teaches a simple yet profoundly effective set of breathing techniques that help with many common complaints including stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD, insomnia, asthma, muscle tension, and chronic pain. I personally use the breathing techniques in this book daily as part of my morning meditation and whenever I need to bring calm to my day. This summer I will be training with the authors of this book to receive a certification to teach their full range of stress-relieving protocols. Stay tuned for class dates and times!

Taking Charge of Your Fertility

I wish all women had access to the information in this wonderful book. It is the best source I have found for understanding your cycle and using the right timing for either maximizing or minimizing your chances of conception, whichever is right for you. For my fertility patients, the information they gain from charting their cycles as described this book is extremely helpful to them and their partners in the process of trying to conceive naturally and also provides me with vital information about what imbalances may be at the root of their difficulty conceiving.

Making Babies: A Proven 3-Month Program for Maximum Fertility

Co-written by leading acupuncture fertility specialist Jill Blakeway and reproductive endocrinologist Sami David, this book has proven to be a wonderful resource for my fertility patients. Whether a woman is trying to conceive naturally or using assisted reproductive techniques, this book is full of helpful information. Blakeway and David explain both the Chinese and Western medical perspective on common reproductive conditions, challenges, and procedures and shows how the two medical models can be used together to enhance your odds of conceiving. The book includes a self-test to help each woman determine her individual "type" according to Chinese medicine and then follows up with many practical suggestions for diet, supplements, and self-care strategies uniquely suited to support each different type. This book is definitely written for the layperson - it is very accessible and easy to understand. I recommend this book to any woman seeking to enhance her fertility.

Services

Yin Yang Diet

So often, my patients come in wondering what they should be eating for their particular constitutional type or health condition. The ability to tailor treatments to the needs of the individual is one of acupuncture's great strengths, and the same is true of dietary advice in Chinese medicine. Eating the right foods for your body's needs can be so profoundly healing, but until now there hasn't been much in the way of practical, personalized guidance for patients who want to heal themselves by eating according to the principles of traditional Chinese nutrition.

I am so excited that I can now direct my patients to the Yin Yang Diet website, where Canadian acupuncturist and bona fide foodie Tara Akuna is offering meal plans filled with delicious recipes for dishes composed of healing foods to help you correct your particular imbalances. She has collections of recipes and dietary advice for four of the most common patterns of imbalance: Qi Deficiency, Blood Deficiency, Liver Qi Stagnation, and Yin Deficiency. All of her recipes have gluten-free options and many vegetarian choices. As a busy mom, she has made sure to make her recipes quick and easy to prepare. The ingredients are familiar ones that you can easily find in your local grocery or farmer's market.

If you're interested in these recipes and meal plans, you can ask me at your next visit which pattern of imbalance most applies to you, or you can take the quiz on Tara's website to find out which foods would be most healing and nourishing for you. Bon Appetit!

Products

Ancient Minerals Topical Magnesium

I cannot tell you how much I love these products! As a former massage therapist, I've taken and recommended a lot of epsom salt baths in my time, but I have discovered that Ancient Minerals Magnesium Bath Flakes are much more potent for both muscular and mental relaxation. I feel so deeply relaxed after a soak with the bath flakes, and if my calves are feeling crampy after a workout, applying the magnesium lotion instantly relaxes them. I highly recommend both products, and the lotion is especially great for travel. It's easy to pack and can soothe muscles that stiffen up on long trips.

Why is magnesium so important? Magnesium and calcium work in opposition in our bodies: you need calcium for your muscles to contract and magnesium for your muscles to relax. This is why taking a soak in a bath with magnesium salts is so helpful after an injury or a hard workout. In Chinese medicine, herbs high in magnesium are often used in formulas for calming anxiety and settling the spirit.

*Tip for use: While the package recommends adding a whole bag to a bathtub full of water, I generally find that 1.5 cups is an ideal amount.

Foot Massage Tools

My first foray into healing touch was as a kid, when my mom would ask me to rub her tired feet after a long day. Not all of us have obliging grade-schoolers at home to give us free foot massages, though, and I've found that these self-massage tools are the next best thing. In addition to feeling great and helping to prevent and recover from plantar fascitis, loosening up your tight, achy feet actually benefits your whole body. Foot rolling is especially beneficial for tight lower backs, hamstrings, and calves.

Once you have your foot roller in hand, try this neat party trick:
1) Bend over and try to touch your toes, noticing how far you are able to go.
2) Use your foot roller for a minute or so to massage one foot only.
3) Now bend over and try to touch your toes again.
Amazing right?!

Spoiler alert: What people find is that they are able to bend and stretch noticeably further with the side of the body where they did the foot rolling. Why does this happen? Because the fascia (connective tissue) on the soles of your feet is connected to one continuous sheet of fascia that begins at your eyebrows and runs up over your forehead and down your neck, back, glutes, hamstrings, calves, and feet. So when you keep your feet loose, you increase the flexibility of all those areas!