What Makes You Feel POWERFUL?

We love this time of year. The look on the faces of friends, family, and children when they open that perfect gift. We love the anticipation of what's to come: the parties, the food, the dressing up, and seeing faces we don't get to see all year long.

It's so good for the soul.

So, let's enjoy! Get your shopping done as early as possible and enjoy the rest of the season. Choose your gifts, and be happy with what you've chosen. Be generous and authentic, and don't worry about one more thing.

This is the time of year to be happy, to give thanks, to re-assess, and plan for the next trip around the sun. What do you need to feel centered, clear, and strong next year?

Chinese Medicine 101: Ancient Insight for Modern Minds

This Chinese character for body contains in it the character for human or person. It also carriers the meaning of something personal, intimate, individual, and particular.

Chinese Medicine recognizes your physical body as a representation of the cosmos, a microcosm of the macrocosm, if you will.

As you hustle and bustle through the holiday season, take some time to give loving care and attention to your precious body. It is the one true til-death-do-us-part relationship we have in this life.

If you haven't been relating to your physical self in this way, perhaps it's time. Consider a detox for the New Year to reset your body and your mind. It's one of the best things you can do for yourself.

And To All A Good Night!

Visions of sugarplums can't dance in your head if you're not sleeping through the night. If you're waking to urinate or cannot fall back asleep, your body and/or mind is still too busy and revved up from the day before to enter the REM sleep that helps your body to repair itself at night.

Just in time for the holidays, we have CBD gift boxes. Santa's elves have put together the perfect array of Present Naturals CBD treats for you and your family. Gift boxes can be mixed and matched to include:

• 1oz, 500mg CBD oil

• 3 bags of CBD tea (4 varieties, including one infused with Kratom)

• CBD infused honey

• CBD cookies (to leave on the mantle for Santa)

• CBD granola bar

• CBD bath soak

Gift boxes start at $50 and make excellent stocking stuffers.

Give the gift of heath this holiday season.

Meditation

This is the perfect time of year to meditate, to contemplate the year past and set intentions for the year to come. Pause amid the bustle of the season to give your loving attention to yourself. It can only help.

Desiderata

GO PLACIDLY amid the noise and the taste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let us not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in the sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many years are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its shares, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

By Man Ehrmann © 1927

In Spirit,

Dr. Mel

Mel Baker-Thompson is a New York State licensed Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine with over 3,000 hours of clinical and didactic training in Eastern and Western medical modalities. She has developed the Whole Life Integration Method to take natural functional medicine to the next level - incorporating the role of the mind in the optimization of authentic health. Over the last 20 years she has treated physicians, therapists, Rockettes, even an Olympic-qualifying athlete. From infants to grandparents, she has crafted an approach to health cultivation that combines the wisdom, skill, and acumen of Chinese Medicine with nutrition therapy, manual therapy, essential oils, and insight meditation to remove health disruptors in the body and mind.