Wednesday, February 6, 2013

A Scientific Approach to Suffering

..from ancient India, today,

"Let’s traverse through the universe of the personality and understand some psychic laws, until we are able to transit to the world of spirit in order to understand how all this works in the realm of the heart. The first insight is that suffering acts like an autonomous complex or entity that takes over our psyche, as if we were being possessed. At some point in our human experience, the program of suffering was installed and we’ve been unconsciously repeating this program ever since.



Suffering announces itself through discomfort, sadness, and irritation. But in truth that only happens because at some moment we typed in the code that unlocked the door to suffering. All these symptoms of suffering are signs that our minds are identified with the past, holding us prisoner.



Suffering is only kept alive because at some level we take pleasure in it. This connection between negative repetitions and the vital current, which is pleasure, opens the doors to suffering and generates all the destruction in the world. This is the fuel that maintains pacts of vengeance and the vicious cycle of sadomasochism, which makes us repeat situations that hurt ourselves and others."

 Prem Baba

Snatam Kaur Workshop // Incredible India Part I // Ocean of Dreams

Monday, February 4, 2013

Digestive Disorders Workshop, Tomorrow!

Pathways to Wellness is a great organization. I worked for them when I was just starting out; they offer low -cost treatments at a convenient downtown location. I'm sure tomorrow's 6:30 pm workshop on digestive disorders, will be very good. Give them a call/click here for more info.

Pathways to Wellness

Tell your "nervous tummy" type friends!

Daria Casinelli, Lic. Ac.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Cancer in a Bottle: Toxic Household Cleaners


It's one of the ironies of our age that products that aim to clean our environment and bodies are actually poisoning both.  If you're just beginning to think about changing to less toxic household cleansers, here's a link to a short and informative article listing ten of the most dangerous products from brands like: Simple Green (!), Glade, Tide, Pine Sol, Febreze and Clorox.

Toxic Household Cleaners

Most of these products (and hundreds not listed) are in the arsenal of the "Bomb'em Back to the Stone Age" method of housekeeping which considered the strong odor of disinfectants the sign of a clean, healthy household. Today we know that odors are the keys that unlock the endocrine system. So, unless you really want your estrogen set constantly to "go, go, go" you might try a gentler, simpler approach to cleaning. Noted foodie Michael Pollan suggests never eating anything with more than five ingredients. A similar approach to cleaning is best; do what you can with simple basics---here's another great link---

Non Toxic Solutions

and save the Agent Orange for special occasions.

For more information on specific consumer products of all kinds, check out the many searchable databases at:

Environmental Working Group

peace and love,

DC

PS: This is my favorite quirky, green cleaner:

Dryer Balls!


Friday, January 18, 2013

Answering the Unanswerable

When a patient comes to me with a very serious problem, one that causes him or her to ask questions about God and fate, rather than try to answer the unanswerable, I reply with a tool or three.

First I recommend meditation. Secondly, I refer them to Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book, “Full Catastrophe Living.” Jon Kabat-Zinn was able to document and describe the positive effects of meditation on the body in such a way that the western medical establishment took it and ran with it. Now the kind of mind-body programs that he pioneered are offered at most major hospitals---they are the third tool.

For those of you who may be curious about meditation, but not ready to read what is admittedly a weighty volume or join a program, below is a link to an interview with Kabat-Zinn that gives an idea of what it’s all about. The interview includes him reading a wonderful poem by Derek Walcott, see below.

http://www.onbeing.org/program/opening-our-lives/138

Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.



 "Love after Love" from COLLECTED POEMS 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott. Copyright © 1986 by Derek Walcott. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.