Now Here or Nowhere… You Decide

As a longtime student of A Course in Miracles, my consciousness bubbles with little platitudes from years worth of lessons. One of my favorite lessons is, “Now is the only time there is.”  Today I am reminded that if I am ever going to be happy, the time is now… the place is here. Gee, that was a simple choice. I will simply choose to be happy here and now…. OK, I admit that it’s easier said than done!

Simple decisions are not always easy to manifest. There is an old saying in Chinese medicine: “Qi follows thought.”   In western terms, the saying is:  ”Thoughts become things.”  To manifest happiness, it begins with your decision to be happy right now. And then keep being happy in moment after moment. If you lose your happy thoughts… well, there’s a new now being born every second.

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Calming Cravings with Acupuncture

While I was in acupuncture school, I received training to help people calm cravings. I used this protocol to help people to stop smoking, to lose weight, and generally to feel more relaxed. I simply believe in ear acupuncture for calming cravings because I have seen it work.

I am creating an acupuncture stop smoking support group that will provide low-cost ear acupuncture in a group setting to help with nicotine cravings. The premise is simple: Turn off the fight or flight mode and nourish the adrenal glands so that the person feels filled from within. Also, there are points that help to harness the willpower, so that a person will have the inner strength to follow through on their commitment to stop smoking (or stop the twinkies, or booze, or caffeine, or whatever it is that they crave.)

Today, I experienced a skeptic. She doesn’t understand how auricular needling could possibly work to calm cravings. She basically dared me to prove to her that this type of service is valid. I have my own anecdotal evidence from my experience in the clinic, but that wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted hard evidence…. proven research. And so I did what any self-respecting acupuncture physician would do…. I googled it. And I found a multitude of evidence that ear needling is effective in stopping cravings of all types. I am posting a few of these links below:

http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/The%20Treatment%20of%20Obesity%20By%20Acupuncture.pdf

http://www.easternhealingcenter.com/En/acupuncture_weightloss.htm

http://www.acufinder.com/Acupuncture+News/Study+Shows+Acupuncture+Effective+for+Weight+Loss

The bottom line: I can talk all day about how well acupuncture works to calm cravings…  I can  ”blah blah blah” ad nauseum about technical details like cortisol levels, seritonin, and adrenal exhaustion. But you won’t know if acupuncture works for you unless you try it out. And these groups are designed to be a very cheap way to find out if acupuncture could work for you.

If you’re interested in calming your cravings for cigarettes, coffee, or cupcakes, give me a call at 386-676-0307.  Our group sessions will be held Wednesday nights at 6:00 at my Daytona Beach office. The group fee  ($20)  is less than one third of what a personal acupuncture session would be, and it’s a great way to try acupuncture out. I invite you to come on over and check it out!

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Between Heaven & Earth

There is an ancient Taoist saying. “All man’s problems arise because he is caught between the heaven and the earth.” This is a deep philosophical quotation. It means that in order to heal, a person needs to embrace his or her unique spiritual gifts and bring them into physical expression. In other words, healing is achieved by fully embodying your spirit.

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The body electric….

Hi…. I’m Dr Elizabeth Stephenson. I am an acupuncture physician in Daytona Beach, Florida.

It is my belief that our bodies are designed to heal themselves. Most of the time the body does this  job perfectly. For example, if you cut yourself, you can just put a bandage on the wound and it will heal. You have a team of inner resources that flows with your blood to areas of the body that need attention. Red blood cells carry oxygen to nourish our tissues at the cellular level. White blood cells and platelets are always ready to respond to assaults from the environment. Other members of the team include the neurotransmitters, endorphins and hormones that keep your body healthy, balanced and vibrant. This all goes on behind the scenes, with little thought or attention from the consciousness that is in ownership of the body.

As a practitioner of Chinese Medicine, I have found that the further people live from the natural life, the more likely the body will be unhealthy.  Florescent lighting, processed foods, sedentary lifestyles, and the stresses of our modern society all take their toll on our nervous systems. Sometimes our energy circuits get blocked, causing our organs to have difficulty in communicating with each other. This is when the body needs acupuncture, herbs or massage to restore health. An acupuncture physician is a lot like an electrician. We insert tiny sterile needles into precise points to encourage the body’s healing resources to enter the targeted area. This opens up new pathways for the healing energy of the body to travel… a new way for your body to actually heal itself.

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