Once again New York will be hosting Amma Ji, “the Hugging Saint” during her U.S. Summer Tour.  She will be at the Manhattan Center in New York City on  July 7th, 8th and 9th.  All programs will be  free of charge.

Her outreach takes two principal forms:

1. Her darshan programs (Where she reaches people individually)
2. Her charities (Designed to improve peoples’ lives on a broader scale)

Dont miss your chance to experience “the Mother of Compassion” as the media dubbed her.

LOVE IS RECESSION PROOF, INVEST IN IT!

About Jill: Jill Blakeway is the Clinic Director of the Yinova Center in New York City. A licensed and board certified acupuncturist and clinical herbalist, she specializes in the care of women and children. A gifted acupuncturist and herbalist, Jill’s skill is in taking a system of medicine that is 3,500 years old and focusing this wisdom on the problems of modern women living in New York City. Women come to her for help with a range of conditions from PMS to menopause and New York Moms appreciate her safe, natural solutions for a wide variety of childhood ailments from constipation to bed wetting. In 2005, the New York Times named Jill as one of the top acupuncturists of the year, referring to her as a “fertility goddess,” as Jill is known for her work enhancing the fertility of women who are having trouble conceiving…

“When women consult me about getting pregnant my first task is to reconnect them with their reproductive cycle” says Jill, “I teach them how to recognize their most fertile period and give diet and lifestyle advice. From there I begin to help them improve their general health, balancing hormones, building the uterine lining, eliminating premenstrual symptoms and regulating the menses. Often this is all that is needed for conception to occur. If assisted reproduction techniques are needed, however, research has shown that acupuncture can increase the efficacy of IVF by up to 50%.”

Jill divides her time between New York City and Upstate New York where she lives with her husband Noah, daughter Emma and their dog Louie.

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LM: As a gifted herbalist and acupuncturist, how did you get interested in Acupuncture and Asian Medicine initially?

JB: Years ago, I struggled with a chronic medical condition, swallowing antibiotics for six months with no improvement. My doctor said he was out of options, and finally sent me to a Chinese medicine doctor. Just a couple weeks of acupuncture and Chinese herbs sorted out the problem. My whole world turned upside down! This was a completely different paradigm than I’d ever been exposed to. That it worked at all was, frankly, a bit hard for me to believe, even though I’d experienced it myself in such a profound way. But I was drawn to understanding it better. I started reading everything I could get my hands on, and asked a lot of questions. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know, and ultimately I went back to graduate school for a M.S. Degree in Traditional Oriental Medicine.

LM: What type of acupuncture training/education did you receive prior to obtaining your license?

JB: I complete a four-year M.S. In Traditional Oriental Medicine at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in San Diego, California.

LM: Was there a defining moment or experience that showed you your path, or did it come about gradually?

JB: While in school I went to a lecture by a doctor who changed my life again. She was trained in China in both conventional gynecology and in acupuncture and herbology, and so she talked about what Chinese Medicine could do that Western medicine couldn’t. But she also covered what Western medicine could do that Chinese medicine couldn’t. This vision of collaborative medicine excited and inspired me, and I’ve strived for that complementarity in the way I’ve worked ever since.

I have worked in several hospitals including San Diego Hospice, Sound Shore Medical Center in New Rochelle, NY and Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY, where I founded the inpatient acupuncture program. This experience gave me insight into how to integrate Chinese medicine into a Western medical system and how to communicate with doctors in a way that helped them to understand Chinese medicine better.

My patients appreciate that I regularly consult with their doctors about their case. I want to keep the doctors apprised of what I’m doing, and I want to fully understand their plans. I want to be sure our efforts will work together well. There are herbs I won’t give, for example, if I know a woman is taking drugs that function in a similar way. Most doctors are very receptive to working with me, and I believe that’s because my hospital training means that I speak their language. So I don’t call up and say “I’m treating So-and-So for kidney yang deficiency with blood deficiency.” I translate for them just as I translate for my patients, talking about hormone imbalance, and how herbs and acupuncture can level the hormones out.

Doctors’ biggest complaint about alternative medicine is [Read more →]

In the nonstop, hectic world we live in, meditation can often simplify our lives and help us be more in the flow. But it’s not always that easy to get started. When you begin to meditate, don’t give up, with time and practice, you will experience a real sense of peace and joy.

There is many ways people meditate, but we’ve gone ahead and listed our Top 10 Tips here:

1. Breathing: Slow down and become conscious of your breathing. Focus on carefully regulating your breathing, as this greatly benefits your meditation. I’ve heard many yoga masters say that when we meditate, our breath should be so gentle that if someone placed a feather by our mouth it would barely move.
2. Stop Your Mind and all its Thoughts: Easier said than done, I know. But this is truly the essence of meditation. If we can learn to stop our mind from pursuing endless thoughts, as Sri Chinmoy says, then we will be able to enter into real meditation.
3. Mantra: Using a mantra can be of great help in quieteing the noise of the mind. A mantra is simply a sacred word or phrase repeated many times. By repeating a mantra we calm the mind and also make it single focused. After chanting a mantra, meditation will be easie
4. Meditation Shrine: Create a sacred space for meditation. It can be a small corner of a room we use only for meditation. Over time we will find this space builds up a meditative consciousness helpful to our meditation.
5. Regularity: Like many other activities, the more we practice meditation, the better we will become. If we meditate sincerely everyday, then we will find that our capacity to meditate increases. The key is consistency!
6. Spiritual Heart: As we calm the mind, we should try to feel our whole sense of awareness is leaving the mind and entering the heart. If we are able to meditate in the heart this way, we will identify with the expansive and divine qualities the spiritual heart embodies.
7. Concentration: In order to meditate, we need to master the art of concentration — focusing on only one thing at a time.
8. Inspiration: Meditation should be viewed as a lifelong process of self–discovery. It is important to try and maintain our enthusiasm and inspiration for meditation.
9. Keep the Faith: Stay with it, making progress is not always immediately obvious.
10. Intensity. Meditation doesn’t just mean sitting down quietly for a few minutes. If we have real eagerness to experience the inner rewards of meditation, we will be rewarded with Peace of Mind.

GIVE IT A GO

…Open your eyes after, you feel more relaxed and centered.

1) Whatever your dosha, awaken early and start the day by meditating. (Sit in bed or on a couch for a moment and be grateful for the day to come).

2) Next, to help get things moving along and flush your gastrointestinal tract and kidneys, drink a fresh glass of water. (For the best results, the water will have been resting in a copper pot overnight.)

3) Splash your face a few times with cold water, then wash your eyes with cool water and gently massage them. Blink your eyes 7 times and then give them a bit of an early morning work-out. Rotate them in both directions, side to side, up and down, even diagonally if you can manage it. (This will have you alert and buzzing in [Read more →]

I have soap on the mind. I love all health and beauty products but soap has always been my #1 most-purchased beauty product. I have favorite soaps but lately I’ve been rethinking my big box store soap purchases. I’m not entirely sure what goes in to making mass produced soap but I am realizing that organic soap seems to be made with love, passion and bicycles…what?!

Justsoap.com’s soap line

In my eternal quest for the perfect soap, I turned to the internet because I wanted to see if my old standards would come up or if I’d discover new soap companies by typing in “ECO SOAP”. Wouldn’t you know that the first link that comes up is for www.justsoap.com and their company makes soap with a bicycle! A guy literally sits on a bike and churns the ingredients to make “Lemongrass Ginger”, “Lavender Rosemary” and “Sage Fir” soap! Haute couture soaps made by a Huffy. Well, actually – the bike looks pretty complex but you have to really appreciate someone who creates delectable soaps while conducting his own spin class. The soap is $2.95 per bar, a bargain at any price… [Read more →]

What most people refer to as “yoga” is actually Hatha Yoga. Hatha Yoga is a system of yoga introduced by Yogi Swatmarama, a yogic sage in the 15th century in India. This particular system of yoga is the most popular one. It is from Hatha Yoga that several other forms of Yoga originated including: Power Yoga, Bikram Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga, and Kundalini Yoga.

The word “hatha” comes from the Sanskrit terms “ha” meaning “sun” and “tha” meaning “moon”. Thus, Hatha Yoga is known as the branch of Yoga that unites pairs of opposites referring to the positive (sun) and negative (moon) currents in the system. It concentrates on the third (Asana) and fourth (Pranayama) steps in the Eight Limbs of Yoga. [Read more →]

If there is a perfect food, I’d have to guess it would be the golden banana. Providing an instant energy boost, bananas contain fiber, plus three natural sugars, sucrose, fructose and glucose.

The true origin of Bananas, world’s most popular fruit, is found in the region of Malaysia. Bananas traveled from there to India where they are mentioned in the Buddhist Pali writings dating back to the 6th century BCE. In his campaign in India in 327 BCE, Alexander the Great relished his first taste of the banana, an unusual fruit he saw growing on tall trees. He is even credited with bringing the banana from India to the Western world. According to Chinese historian Yang Fu, China was tending plantations of bananas in 200 CE. These bananas grew only in the southern region of China and were considered exotic, rare fruits that never became popular with the Chinese masses until the 20th century.

Eventually, [Read more →]

Swimming is such a splendid form of exercise and so perfectly adapted to summer that the increase in swimming pools in all communities is to be welcomed.

But Chlorine used to disinfect swimming pools is a health hazard and may trigger asthma in children. Among adults it has been linked with other health problems including bladder and rectal cancer and may increase the risk for coronary heart disease. [Read more →]

One Year Countdown to Beijing Olympic Games

The Chinese capital of Beijing is adopting eco-friendly technologies in transportation, power supply, water and waste management to ensure a “green” Olympic Games, according to the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.

Beijing plans to use 100 hybrid-electric vehicles as public buses at all venues and several hundred electric vehicles will serve in the logistics departments of the Olympic Village and all stadiums while electric bicycles will be provided in the main Olympic area, according to the press release.

But the project doesn’t stop there; [Read more →]

The ayurvedic approach is rising in popularity because it is comprehensive and gentle. Rather than looking for instant cures through prescripition pharmaceuticals, Ayurveda seeks to correct the source of the problem. For those who can commit themselves to the process, Ayurveda offers effective, cumulative health benefits. Believe me, I’m just as skeptical as the next guy, but after suffering with severe ulcers for the past few years and finding no relief from over the counter options, I decided to give Ayurveda a try. All I can say is, “Why did I wait so long?” [Read more →]