mind body planet

The other day I was i our local coffee shop and I was browsing the books shelves. I typically only buy the old relics on the older shelves, but this time I thought I would hop on over to the newer book section and see if there was anything worth looking at. I saw of course all of the political books and takes on the lives of the candidates that make me want to vomit from political overexposure. I also found plenty of great looking graphic novels that I would never put down until I had sucked out all of the life from those pages. Then I came upon a book that peaked my interest and made me think of all of you readers out there. The huge text books weighed a ton and cost relatively little and I’d like to talk about it right now.

The book is titled Alternative Medicine: the definitive guide by Anderson and Trivieri. This book is basically the ultimate guide to anyone who wants to know all of the methods in which they could seek help for any particular medical condition.  It is set up i a really great style where it is listed first by the different types of conditions that you could hope to heal or remedy with an alternative or complimentary treatment. Conditions as simple as a skin rash all the way to things like cancer which may people choose to treat i ways other than chemotherapy since it is so hard on the body.  After the listings of the conditions it goes on to list in depth each of the different kinds of treatment methodologies that the books has to offer. It is ot meat to be ay kind of a medical text, but for those who really want to know anything about an alternative healing mode. For me I personally found all of the sections on Yoga, Herbal healing, and Chiropractics to be very close to how I myself would explain these methods within the context of a discussion of healing. The way it is presented is a bit dry at times, but they make sure to include plenty of cool diagrams ad pictures to really paint a picture of all the different styles of learning that may be ended to entice people to read and remain interested in such a large book.

IF you are out there wondering what certain modes are about and if there are other ways out there to aid in healing with some condition that you have, pick this one up because it will really help you find what you are looking for.

Something’s Fishy

Hey all. I am still here up in Ithaca New York and I’m still loving every minute of this trip. This morning we got up and we did some harvesting of squash and zucchini. Then after breakfast we cleared some brush and did a little bit of weeding in the garden. After lunch we went for another hike, this time on a different trail. We came eventually to another waterfall and lagoon type of thing and we swam for a good long time. After a while I started to get hungry and my friend Jamie got out some fresh veggies that she had cut up before we left. We munched on those for a while until we had finished them all. I knew I was still hungry so I suggested that we walk back to the house and make some kind of a meal. On the hike back I was hurting. My head hurt and my legs were cramping and my back started to ache. I tried drinking lots of water and that type of thing but it didn’t help and so I just suffered on until we got home. When we got back to the house I sat down and tried to think of what I may have done that might have just drained me of all of my energy and left me in this sorry state of affairs. Then I remembered my diet. I have been a vegetarian before, for about two years, but now I don’t eat that way. Since I started staying at the house I have been eating their diet which is almost totally vegetarian. I had stopped my lifestyle as a vegetarian for this exact reason and I think that this is why I had this little episode today.

When I take a step back I can really see that my diet now is not just an omnivorous diet, but a diet centered around the vitamins and minerals in those foods. One of the foods that saved my life I think after I stopped being a vegetarian was fish. The first food I ate to break my habit was salmon and then I began taking fish oil supplements. Now I see that there is a huge value in these supplements that I was always missing out on when I was a vegetarian. Fish oils contain lots of omega-3 fatty acids which are great for the brain. The fish oil is also good for cholesterol, heart health, and blood pressure. I know that I after I began to take them I was feeling one hundred percent better and a lot of my aches and pains went away fairly quickly.  The fish oil companies did go through a little hype which may have given them a bad wrap, competing with promotional mugs on the counters at health food stores, claiming to be cure-alls. But the fact is that it is a valid and healthy supplement that was marketed badly for a short time.

Tonight I went to the store and bought myself a little salmon steak and cooked that up. I am already felling a lot better. I hope that anyone who needs this in their lives will hear the call.

Cooperative Market

So today since I am down to just one or two more days here at the community house, I am going to talk a little bit about Ithaca and what sorts of ways this little college town is making same amazing strides in the fight against ecological degradation. The people of this little community from the college to the surrounding areas, are all quite obviously devoted to creating and maintaining something quite special in their town. With the farmer’s market I talked about yesterday I saw what I can imagine to be the goal of any market and any community around the world. We are all trying to make this world a better place and make it so that the beauty around us is protected. It seems that the people of Ithaca, surrounded by their famous gorges and waterfalls, are constantly reminded about the power and beauty of nature. Thus this sense of natural awareness demands of them a certain level of respect and responsibility to take care of what is around them.

One such idea is all over the area of Ithaca , and that is the cooperative community or business. A cooperative organization, or co-Op, is basically an organization that is maintained and owned by those who work within the established place. One great example of this is the grocery store that I went in to today. This store was owned by ever single person that worked there. That means that all forty or fifty people that you could see stocking shelves or cutting meat, was an owner of this business. That means money coming in to the store goes right back in to the community and not to a company headquarters or something like that. It also means that they are much more responsive to the needs and desires of their customers. Inside this store there were bulk herbs and spices, and bulk grains all along the walls. Most of the coffees , and many of the products, were fair-trade and Organic. Then there were a huge number of locally produced goods. Anything from yogurt to toilet paper made by local people could be bought and sold there. This freedom to choose what goes on is something that you do not find with a large company who sells all over the country or the world.

Another aspect of the same idea is something here called the eco-village. The eco-village is a place outside of town which is owned and operated by it’s inhabitants. They are also a zero waste community and they do much to help with eco-actions around the community at large.

My time is up for the day folks and so I will leave you with lingering visions of this utopia I have painted for you up here in Ithaca.

Chiropractics

In the fall of my first year here at school I was introduced to a class that opened my eyes in a lot of ways to many healing practices that I had never heard about. Though my parents were fairly liberal and interested in those things that may be considered fringe, they were never wealthy enough for us to be a part of those things. Living out in the middle of nowhere didn’t help either. Anyway, this class was probably one of the best classes I will ever take in terms of exploration of a topic that I’d love to learn about and not necessarily study in depth. The class was a very general survey of alternative, complementary, and preemptive healing methods. At the time I was pretty blown away by most of the information that I was being flooded with because it was all very new to me and some of it, like shamanism, I didn’t know still existed other than in Carlos Castaneda novels. After the class ended I knew that I would like to try some of these new methods and still I was bound by my limited budget as a student. This summer though I finally gave in and realized that it would do me a lot of good in my life to go ahead and try something. My big question was which one I should choose. I finally decided that I would try Chiropractics because it seemed to me to be the most effective of all of these modalities at really solving a much bigger problem.

My experience with Chiropractics, though still very limited, has been nothing but positive as of yet. The whole series of appointments began with an initial examination that is very similar to a general examination that you might get in a doctor’s office. The guy who I picked out was amazing and he really made me feel like he cared. The entire examination lasted about two hours during which we did a full physical, x-rays, and a questionnaire sort of interview. He then gave me a brief overview of what he wanted to do the next time and told me he’d call me in a day or so. When I went back for the next appointment he had my x-rays up on the projector and showed me the problem areas of my spine. He told me that a car accident I had had a few years ago my be the cause for the problems I have been having with my arches in my feet lately. He said that all of our health problems essentially boil down to an imbalance and areas of trauma in the spine. He did an adjustment on my spine that first day and gave me some evaluations of the strength of different areas of my spine. That was last week and now I am really excited for my appointment tomorrow.

I have been looking in to chiropractics more and more now that I am a subject and I feel better about it every time I read on. The work that Chiropractors do on the spine has been used by various cultures for a very long time and many of their theories are being proven by science long after they known that they are truth. It’s really a very beautiful set of theories of health and human development based around the proper functioning and shape of the spine in order to balance the whole of the body system. Based on my current level of care and improvement I would not suggest that this level of satisfaction will change any time soon. I will have to recommend this to every one of you if you have the money to shell out since many insurance policies do not cover this amazing form of medicine.