As we move into winter our days are getting shorter. Sunlight, the basic source of the energy for life on this planet, decreases more and more daily. We feel this loss of life right down to our bones (as our vitamin D production decreases and melatonin hormone increases.) Everywhere life is finishing its cycle and closing down. Winter is coming on – a time for endings in preparation for new beginnings in the spring…a time for quiet reflections in order to appreciate all we have learned and gained over the last year.
We begin the holidays with gratitude – a harvest feast to celebrate the fruition of our labors through the year. Our early American puritan settlers called this Thanksgiving – a nice term, but they were practicing a ritual that had been around since humankind first settled down and started growing crops. There is value in touching the true depth and breadth of the feelings this time of year instead of rushing around thinking you are engaging in simply regional or religious holidays. It is actually the other way around – the regional and religious holidays exist to help us focus on the feelings that naturally come up this time of year.
Gratitude, appreciation, community, letting go of the old and taking the leap of faith into the new – these are the feelings of this season as the light of the sun reaches its lowest and least. With the solar solstice the cycle begins anew. Did we learn the lessons of the last year? Did you? How would you know? You know by the feelings of this season. Are you grateful for your experiences of the last year? (Not “did you like the experiences”, but have you gained a better appreciation of yourself and life as a result of the experiences?) Do you appreciate (an increase in value) life more? Has that appreciation brought you closer to life, to others?
Sometimes our appreciation is discovering things we don’t like and don’t want to create again in the coming year. This is called wisdom. Other times it is appreciating things we have discovered that worked for us that we want to keep doing in the coming year. This is also wisdom. Celebrate your appreciations, your wisdom. Share your celebration with your family and friends. Your personal community is your greatest source of support. They are the bedrock that gives you the strength to leap forward into your next season of creation.
Happy Holidays.
Good Journey,
David
David
A New Offering:
I am a generalist. I love looking at the big picture and seeing how everything fits together. I love learning all the time because it expands my appreciation of the big picture of life.
This relationship to life has its strong points and its weak points. As a doctor this means I keep on top of the latest developments in lots of areas. I spend an hour or two or three every day researching and learning new things. This provides me a large number of options when approaching your concerns when you come to see me as a patient.
The weakness in this stance is that I learn far more than I can hold onto day to day. I have to have specific triggers in the moment to bring relevant memories up to where I can use them.
What this means to you is that I likely have information that could benefit any number of health concerns you may have, but the time we have available during an office visit does not allow us to explore all your concerns. This newsletter is largely an attempt to address and communicate solutions to general concerns most of you have.
I got an idea last night about how I could start to communicate solutions to specific health concerns in a way that is more easily useable for you. Over the years I have come across dozens and dozens of amazing remedies for specific health issues that can be addressed through specific nutrients and supplements that you can self assess and pick up on your own. This newsletter has been focusing more on lifestyle changes rather than specific remedies, so I have decided to start a new series of articles on specific symptoms and remedies.
There is a little more trial-and – error in the realm of self diagnosis based on symptoms and conditions, so if I know of any simple tests to help you pinpoint your needs in this process I will pass them along. The most powerful tool in diagnosis however has always been your history of symptoms. 100 years of advances in medical testing technology, and still to this date the most useful diagnostic tool is simply the question “What’s been happening, what have you been feeling?”
Some remedies are simple single nutrients, but most of the time remedies are combinations of herbal, vitamin, and homeopathic products that produce the best results. Many are available to the general public through the Internet or local health food stores such as Elliotts. Many others are available only to doctors. For those I will create a way for you to let me know that you would like me to order them for you.
This is an excellent opportunity for proactive self-care. I hear every day how the traditional medical community is basically ignoring many of your complaints. They seem to be embracing the new national mindset that we just have to expect more dysfunction – feel more aches and pains, as we grow older. Not encouraging, but their real job is to save our lives when things get so serious we are about to die. Modern medicine is not about creating health, but about compensating for disease. Real health comes from a lifestyle of effective action – something that can not come from outside yourself. Health can only come from what you do to take care of yourself. That includes making sure you get the nutrients and nutriceuticals your body needs to build your health.