Chronogram's Healthy Living - Fall 2008

AGING WITH ATTITUDE A HOW-TO GUIDE FOR VIGOROUS LATER YEARS

BIRTH BY DESIGN A PROFILE OF NEUGARTEN FAMILY BIRTH CENTER

THE GOOD OF THE GROUP THE BENEFITS OF EXERCISING WITH OTHERS

FALL / WINTER 2008 FREE! www.hvhealthyliving.com

DIRECTORY OF HEALTH PRODUCTS & SERVICES

Introduce yourself to yet another top breast cancer surgeon.

And take comfort knowing the best care is here when you need it.

Introducing Hank Schmidt, MD, PhD Health Quest Medical Practice is proud to announce the addition of Hank Schmidt, MD, PhD, to our already highly regarded staff of breast cancer surgeons. Working under the direction of Angela Keleher, MD, FACS, Dr. Schmidt brings an impressive history of education and experience that includes a PhD in Genetics from the Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics at the Medical College of Georgia, as well as a Surgical Oncology Fellowship at the prestigious University of Chicago.

Please join us in welcoming yet another talented surgeon to our team at The Dyson Center for Cancer Care at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie. Dr. Schmidt joins the rest of our expertly skilled, compassionate clinicians to perform high quality breast cancer surgeries to patients throughout the Mid-Hudson Valley.

To find out more or to schedule an appointment,

call (845) 483-6500 today.

www.health-quest.org healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

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Wine tastings every Saturday starting at noon.

A hand-picked selection of wine and spirits for everyday or once in a lifetime. Superior customer service with wine tastings every Saturday.

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FALL / WINTER 08 – healthy living

Twice as Nice.

Dedicated For the second year in a row, the Neugarten Family Birth Center at Northern Dutchess Hospital has been ranked among the top 10% in the nation for maternity care by HealthGradesŽ. We’re proud to be recognized for the quality care we provide—but in the end, we know that nothing matters more than the satisfaction of expectant parents like you.

t Recipient of the HealthGrades Maternity Care Excellence Award ™ 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 t Five-Star Ranked for Maternity Care: 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 t Ranked Among the Top 10% in the Nation for Maternity Care t Private Birthing Suites t Flexible Birthing Plans t Hydrotherapy & Water Birth t Pre-Natal & Post-Partum Education

Northern Dutchess Hospital and Vassar Brothers Medical Center have proudly received the 2008/2009 HealthGrades Maternity Care Excellence Award™.

For more information, please visit www.health-quest.org.

healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

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My Sciatica is gone.

I was put on Neurontin after epidural steroid injections didn’t work. Then I saw Dr. Ness. He used ART® to release the nerves from my back, hip, hamstring and leg. After 6 weeks and 8 treatments, the pain was gone. It’s been 8 months and I still feel good.

Cathy Bakker - Garrison, NY

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Active Release Techniques® (ART®) • Patented soft tissue treatment system used by Olympic and professional athletes.

• Breaks up and removes deep scar tissue from acute or chronic injuries, or after surgeries that cause pain, weakness or that limit motion.

• OSHA recommended for repetitive strain injuries and nerve entrapments like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

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FALL / WINTER 2008

HEALTH NOTES 12 THE GOOD OF THE GROUP Why exercising with others is enjoying a renaissance in gyms across the region.

14 REST ASSURED Tips on making it through the night without medication from sleep expert Jan Sadler.

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16 PUTTING THE “AHHH” IN SPA Winter is a perfect time to treat yourself to a stress-releasing pampering.

FEATURES 18 THE ENNEAGRAM Kelley Granger investigates the benefits of the Enneagram as a tool for identifying, observing, and managing our personalities and our interactions.

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22 AGING WITH ATTITUDE Amy Paturel offers a how-to guide for not going gently into that good night.

26 BIRTH BY DESIGN Molly Belmont tours the facilities at Neugarten Family Birth Center in Rhinebeck, where expectant mothers and their partners can tailor a birth experience to their needs, not their doctor’s.

FARE WELL 52 PHYSICAL (RE)EDUCATION The Alexander Technique uses self-awareness to help reset how you move.

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DIRECTORY

31

INDEX

42

GLOSSARY

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CREDITS PUBLISHER Jason Stern | EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brian K. Mahoney CREATIVE DIRECTOR David Perry | PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Teal Hutton PRODUCTION DESIGNERS Mary Maguire, Eileen Carpenter | SALES & MARKETING France Menk, Gail Kandel COPY EDITOR Peter Aaron | PROOFREADERS Marleina Booth-Levy, Candy Martin INTERN Christina Kaminski | BUSINESS MANAGER Ruth Samuels COVER PHOTO Amber S. Clark | The pool at the Ulster County YMCA in Kingston.

HEALTHY LIVING is published twice a year | DISTRIBUTION 30,000 ADVERTISING DEADLINE Spring/Summer 2009 Issue MARCH 19, 2009 ADVERTISING INFORMATION (845) 334-8600, sales@chronogram.com DISCLAIMER: Luminary Publishing's HEALTHY LIVING is an advertising service.

We cannot guarantee any of the services and products advertised within these pages.

LUMINARY PUBLISHING, COPYRIGHT 2008. | 314 WALL STREET, KINGSTON, NY 12401 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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By Christina Kaminski

STRENGTH IN STILLNESS, EASE IN POISE If you’ve been feeling tight lately, maybe it’s time you took your downward-facing dog for a walk. “I need yoga,” confesses dedicated yogi and instructor Sondra Loring of the Sadhana Center for Yoga and Meditation in Hudson. She describes the body as a metaphor, observing that “when the body is more flexible, the mind is more flexible. And when joints open, when space opens in the body, it can also open in the mind.” To engage your body in the thousands-of-years-old practice of yoga is to connect yourself to the richness of its history and to the vast spaces within and outside of you. From aching joints to overworked brains, many people avoid yoga for the same reasons that should be inspiring them to try it.

Cautious and, if necessary, assisted movement through yogic asanas can help alleviate ankle, hip, knee, and shoulder problems. Twisting the body and breathing deeply increases the flow of blood through the organs, helping the body to refresh and heal itself. Attending a class can boost confidence and a sense of community by allowing an individual to feel the motivating energy and unique challenge of participation in a group practice. The benefits of balance, stamina, and (especially) patience are self-evident. As Loring advises, “Yoga can offer tools to help people integrate and live well in an especially difficult time.”

FEELING YOUR PAIN Sometimes our means of working around an injury can be worse than the injury itself—especially if we continue, long after the original injury has healed, to compensate unwittingly for it. Common complaints of chronic pain concern headaches, lower-back pain, arthritis pain, the remains of old injuries, or the consequences of years of repetitive gestures. Our idea of pain affects how we treat or manage it. “We tend to think of the body as parts,” explains Ryan Flowers of Hudson Valley Structural Integration, “and when our shoulder hurts, we assume that that’s because our shoulder needs attention.” He discusses the importance of treating beyond the symptom to ensure lasting relief. “In our line of work, we’re looking beyond the body as a bunch of individual parts to see it as the whole system that it actually is. Most approaches tend to focus too heavily on the symptom, and we can get a little lost, in terms of what’s actually going on if we only work on chasing the symptom around.” Structural integration, which was developed by Dr. Ida P. Rolf in the 1940s, takes the whole body into consideration. According to Flowers, the benefits of this holistic view have been overshadowed by our symptomatic prejudices, which have been perpetuated over time through various aspects of our medical system. The treatment aims to create a more efficient and economical use of the muscles, conserve energy, and reduce chronic stress and major changes in the body (surgery, for example), and the therapeutic approach is gradual, gentle, and tempered to the individual.

KEEP THE BLOOD FLOWING According to Dr. Gerald Kufner of Kingston Neurological Associates, less than three percent of all patients who experience a stroke go to the emergency room for treatment in a timely fashion. A stroke is the rapid loss of functioning owing to a disturbance in blood flow to the brain. Because a stroke is less painful and fear-inspiring than, for example, a heart attack, people who experience a stroke are more likely to decide to “wait it out” until the next morning, or until a scheduled doctor’s appointment. Almost no one seeks treatment within the first few hours, which is when the most can be done for it.

“It’s very important not to wait until the morning—call 911, get to the ER,” Kufner advises. “Within the first hour or so after the onset of a stroke, we can use tPA.” (Tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, is a drug that dissolves the blood clot and restores blood flow to the area.)

Even a “minor” stroke should be taken seriously. A transient ischemic attack is a brief weakness, numbness, or speech impairment that, 30 percent of the time, is followed by a—preventable—stroke within 90 days. If you have high blood pressure, don’t wait until you have a stroke to do something about it. More than 700,000 strokes occur in America each year; if high-risk individuals were to take preventative measures, that number could be reduced by more than 20 percent, according to Kufner. Even just taking a daily aspirin, which suppresses the production of platelets in the blood, can reduce stroke risk by 30 percent. healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

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health buzz VIVA LA VEGANS! Milk-mustachioed celebrities have been selling us the dairy industry for years. Andy Glick, a longtime vegan and animal rights activist, argues that dairy products—a staple of the Western diet—are among the most unhealthy things a person can put into his or her body. Glick’s coaching strategy emphasizes what he calls three “pillars” of veganism: health, ethics, and environment.

While each aspect appeals to different people for different reasons, “a real vegan-minded person is going to be armed with all three.”

According to Glick, we get proteins in correct proportion from foods like beans, rice, potatoes, and kale. We do not need meat or dairy proteins, and in some cases (such as casein) they can be harmful to us. As books like The China Study by T. Colin Campbell (2005, Benbella Books) and Diet for a New America by John Robbins (1998, HJ Kramer) argue, a diet high in dairy/meat proteins can cause or worsen heart/kidney disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and other health problems. Living healthy through veganism means more than just taking care of your body—it means taking care of your fellow creatures and the planet, too. Going vegan, even for just a day, saves thousands of gallons of water: For every pound of meat you don’t eat, you save 2,500 to 5,000 gallons of water that would have been consumed by livestock. Going vegan can also save more greenhouse gases than spending that day cruising around in a Prius. (According to the UN, livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide—more than all the planes, trains, and cars on the planet. With more “fake meats” (what Glick calls “crossover foods”) on the shelves than ever, you can easily go cold turkey on animal products without totally reconstructing your palate or favorite recipes. See Glick’s website, www.meatfreezone.org, for more information about the benefits of a vegan lifestyle, and check out www.mhvs.org (Mid-Hudson Vegetarian Society) for potluck dinners, restaurant outings, and other vegan gatherings.

MENDING WITH MEDITATION Cary Bayer has been enjoying the benefits of transcendental meditation for over 20 years, and he offers guidance to others as a part of his methodology as a life coach. Meditation can loosen long-held stresses and provide types of rest and rejuvenation that cannot be gained from sleep or relaxation alone.

Bayer explains that the instinctive and unforced practice of transcendental meditation—rather than the deliberate mind-clearing that many people equate with Buddhist meditation—allows a person to synchronize the different strata of the brain. Allowing this kind of integrated coordination gives the mind an opportunity to behave and function in a way that it can’t when burdened with stress, tension, and fatigue. “The mind wants to move,” Bayer says, “It is the nature of the mind to move.” If we relinquish control, moving with the mind instead of against it, we can gravitate to a truer, more natural way of being. By unfolding the mind/brain’s greater potential through transcendental meditation, the disordered randomness of our thoughts (encouraged by our outward-looking tendencies and the general chaos of our external environment) can be brought together in a specialized and coherent way. Synchrony with (and within) the mind enables clearer comprehension and discrimination, “suggesting a stronger left brain, a stronger right brain, and a stronger integration between the two.” Just as light can be used to cure vision, for example, meditative practice can be used to quell anxiety or insomnia, facilitate smooth functioning of the nervous system, lower systolic blood pressure, combat cardiovascular disease, and lift years from an aging body.

MAKE PEACE WITH YOUR PROSTATE No man is exempt from an enlarging prostate. Dr. Paul Pietrow of Hudson Valley Urology maintains that “benign growth of the prostate is inevitable for every man.” And while this innocuous growth can be responsible for a range of urinary symptoms (i.e., feeling the need to urinate more frequently/urgently, doing so with discomfort), there is generally no cause for concern: These symptoms reflect what Pietrow calls “run-of-the-mill” benign diseases typically associated with the aging prostate—whether men experience these symptoms or not varies highly from one individual to the next. But even a malignancy may not be cause for panic: Autopsies have revealed that the majority of men have prostate cancer by age 90, though it may not have affected their lives in a disruptive way. Because symptoms alone cannot be relied upon to determine who may or may not have a treatable prostate cancer, screening and physical exams are important. Doctors generally recommend screening for prostate cancer, by exam or PSA (prostate-specific antigen) testing, when a man has reached 50 years of age (or 40, if a man is African American or if there is prostate cancer in his family history). The disease is often slow to develop, and some men are more likely to suffer other medical conditions before the cancer threatens the system. With this in mind, prostate cancer treatments are tailored to a man’s health and life expectancy. While there may not be much one can do to prevent prostate cancer, it is important to eat well and take good care. As Dr. Pietrow advises, “All of the things we tell you about keeping your heart healthy also have some utility to keeping your prostate healthy as well.” healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

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HEALTH NOTES

Group cycle class at the Ulster County YMCA in Kingston.

THE GOOD OF THE GROUP

BY AMY LUBINSKY photo by Amber S. Clark

G

roup exercise classes have undergone a renaissance: What we once avoided like a mother-in-law now has us eager to fi nd our sneakers buried in the back of the closet in order to participate with dozens of others in achieving physical fitness. It begs the questions: How did we get here? How did we move from telling ourselves we didn’t have to go to the gym if we ate one less Oreo to lining up for a group fitness class 15 minutes ahead of time with 30 other people?

According to Mike Arteaga, owner of Mike Arteaga’s Health and Fitness Centers in Highland and Poughkeepsie, when group exercise programs began to take a nosedive 10 years ago, the American company Body Training Systems (BTS) worked with a company in Australia—where classes have up to 1,000 people in them—to revamp classes and increase their appeal in the US. “They created a wonderful array of classes with continuity, great music, and great instructors,” Arteaga says. The BTS classes that were created are Group Power, Group Kick, Group Ride, Group Step, Group Centergy, Group

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Groove, and Group Active, many currently available at both Mike Arteaga locations, The Ridge Health and Fitness in Stone Ridge, Breathe Fitness in Kingston, and, starting in December, at 28 West Fitness Center in Woodstock.

Because of BTS’s strong influence, many other fitness facilities began to require that their instructors were certified to teach as well. In turn, aerobics classes that once relied on a teacher to develop choreography and sometimes invent the movements as the class progressed are now a thing of the past, says Anthony Covello, owner of The Ridge.

“Group exercise programs are nationally designed and change every three months,” Covello says. “The programs are developed to make sure they are well liked before they’re launched.” In addition, the majority of the exercise classes are designed with participants seeking to multi-task in mind: Many fitness programs today allow a participant to burn fat while building muscle simultaneously.

But the popularity of group exercise programs can be attributed to more than just

BTS’s involvement. Group exercise provides a structured, supportive, and more social environment that motivates people and makes exercise generally more appealing, says Amy Kapes, a cycling, barbell, and Zumba (Latin dance-based aerobics) instructor at the Ulster County YMCA. “The more working out feels like having fun with friends, the more likely people are to do it.” Covello emphasizes this point by adding, “You’re not on a treadmill and zoning out. You’re using group motivation—you’re feeding off of the other people in the class by watching them.”

Additionally, group exercise classes are very encouraging to those who have difficulty trying to stick to a fitness regimen. “Group exercise has the highest retention rate than any area of the club—for every health club in the country—because people get hooked on it and they begin to schedule it into their week,” Arteaga explains. Also, the fact that your instructor and fellow classmates expect your attendance can act as an additional motivating factor. “Your mind is saying you have to attend because all these other people are going to be there and relying on you to attend,” Covello said.

The variety of group exercise classes being offered seems limitless. Whether you want to try aqua aerobics, boot camp, spinning, yoga, Pilates, kickboxing, or Zumba, an outlet for it exists at your local gym or YMCA facility.

Just remember to try a class several times before ultimately deciding you don’t like it.

“Don’t judge it by the fi rst class because your body has to acclimate. Try it at least six times, and then you can decide if you don’t like it,” Covello says. Remember, everyone started as a beginner, even your instructor.

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JASON CRING

HEALTH NOTES

REST MAKING NIGHT

F

ASSURED

TIPS FOR IT THROUGH THE WITHOUT MEDICATION

or those suffering with insomnia or fitful sleep, sleeping pills may seem like the only solution. But A Good Night’s Sleep (Healing Arts Press, 2008), written by Jan Sadler, provides a plethora of sleep advice, none of it involving the use of medication.

(The book comes with a 65-minute audio CD of guided visualizations and relaxation techniques.)

Sadler has taught classes in drug-free pain management for the last 15 years, and specializes in alternative remedies to bodily problems. In the book, she offers tips grounded in cognitive therapy techniques—ways to modify behavior and thinking in attempt to overcome psychological struggles. This is a fitting approach, seeing how Sadler credits stress as the main predictor of sleep problems.

“The way we live our day is reflected in our sleep—the two are woven together,” says Sadler in an online interview. “If you have very stressful days it would hardly be surprising if you didn’t sleep well at night.”

The author first investigated cognitive behavioral therapy when she was searching for a way to cope with her own sleeplessness that resulted from chronic pain. She developed many of the suggestions in her book after using them herself, which gives the methods a triedand-true quality. But the results of Sadler’s tips have not only been experienced by her alone.

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“Members of Sleep Matters UK tested the program and completed a questionnaire over six weeks and returned detailed comments to me,” says Sadler. “It was universally applauded by those who used it; all of the participants’ sleep improved.” Sadler often receives thank-you letters from readers.

Blending her expertise in pain management with therapeutic research and practice, Sadler has provided readers with a variety of options to take control over what can feel like a debilitating situation. Below are eight main principles taken from A Good Night’s Sleep, sound advice from a sound sleeper:

Breathe. More specifically, breathe deep.

Diaphragmatic breathing is a process through which you manipulate your natural breathing into long, deep breaths. Make sure your abdomen expands when you inhale and contracts when you exhale. Called the “relaxation response,” diaphragmatic breathing has proven to lower heart rate and blood pressure in medical studies. By focusing on your breathing, Sadler says, you are distracting yourself from focusing on anxieties. In turn, reducing anxious thought reduces the amount of stress hormones in your body—the same hormones that give the red light to sleepiness.

Think Pollyanna-style. Sadler provides readers with a variety of positive affi rma-

tions—phrases to repeat in your mind until you believe them. Repetition of a thought will sway your subconscious toward that thought, according to Sadler. She instructs readers to stop negative thoughts in their tracks, throughout the day, and to immediately recite a positive affirmation instead. Sadler suggests this be done at night to relax your brain and cease racing thoughts at bedtime.

Visualize. Sadler dedicates a good portion of her book to visualization exercises, in which the reader should imagine a comforting image, such as eating his or her favorite food or lying on the beach. By placing yourself mentally in these happy situations, Sadler says that your mind and body will react to these soothing images by relaxing, preparing you for a restful mindset.

Keep a sleep diary. By recording the progress of your sleep throughout the course of a few weeks, you can keep track of what methods work best for you. You will also develop a less worrisome attitude toward sleep by seeing written proof of your victories, however big or small, over your sleeplessness.

Don’t push it. If you still have a restless night—as Sadler says, such nights are inevitable for almost anyone—do not force yourself to stay in bed (unless meditation can put you back to sleep). She advises to get up and do a quiet activity until you feel tired. Likewise, do not stay in bed in the morning if you are awake, as this will again make you more likely to associate your bedroom atmosphere with restlessness, rather than rest.

Prioritize. Sadler suggests that prioritizing daily responsibilities will also reduce stress during the day, and can lessen your tendency to pre-organize tasks at night.

Get physical. Sadler reminds readers that regular exercise is another way to lessen the buildup of stress hormones in the body.

Stick to your routine. By going to sleep at the same time every night, and by waking up at the same time every morning, you train your body to develop a steady sleep pattern.

Though Sadler believes there may still be a place for medication, she says that often “it would be preferable not to use medication as it can be addictive.” If you are suffering from sleep deprivation, consider the above techniques. Sadler also encourages readers to try, try again. “As with most things we learn in life, the more often the techniques are practiced, the more effective they will become.”

Follow Sadler’s advice and you, too, can become a sleep expert. If anything, your very fi rst step is in knowing that you have more control over sleep than you ever dreamed. healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

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HEALTH NOTES

PUTTING THE “AHHH” IN SPA

BY AMY LUBINSKY

D

ark winter months are approaching.

The stress-filled holiday season is looming just a month away. The economy is in the most depressing state it has been in decades. And, you probably have a few personal reasons of your own to add to why you’re ready to pull your hair out and permanently relocate to the Bahamas. But fear not: A stress-reducing solution is near!

Chances are that just a short distance away from your home is a spa where you can spend a few hours to put your worries aside while you get pampered with a massage or other treatment.

The stigma that spas are only for rich middle-aged women is fading. “People who do a lot of physical labor need it more than anyone,” explains Lindsay Pugnali, manager of Buttermilk Falls Inn and Spa in Milton.

In fact, many spas cater to men just as much as they cater to women. “The captain of the men’s lacrosse team at Marist College is trying

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to organize the entire team to come in for a deep-tissue massage,” Pugnali says.

Additionally, almost anyone can afford some spa treatment. Marlene Weber, owner of the Marlene Weber day and salon spas in Poughkeepsie and Millbrook, of fers several treatments that cost $25, including an eye-zone treatment, a stress-relieving hair treatment, and a half-hour target massage. But Weber reminds that you don’t need to go to an upscale spa to get top-dollar treatment. “I have a client who went to a spa in Las Vegas and spent $200 on a massage, and she told me that a massage she once had for $40 was better,” Weber says. “Keep in mind when you go to a big spa, you’re paying for all the amenities—the bath robe, the teas, the cushy couches, the music. If you don’t need any of that—if you need just a damn good rub—you can just go to a small spa.”

And since almost everyone can afford a spa treatment, everyone should treat him or herself

to one, says Diane Ryan, who co-owns One Body Spa in Accord with her husband, Michael Ryan. A traditional massage alone can, of course, relieve stress and aid relaxation, but it can also foster faster healing of strained muscles, provide greater joint flexibility and range of motion, promote deeper and easier breathing, improve circulation, reduce blood pressure, improve posture, strengthen the immune and nervous system, rehabilitate injuries, increase cancer-fighting endorphins, and even aid muscle tone. “There’s no body system—including the endocrine and digestive system—that’s not positively served [by massage],” Ryan says. “Think of it as a full-body tune-up.”

But keep in mind that a traditional Swedish massage is a staple you can get anywhere. If you’re looking for something unusual, there’s a comprehensive array of unique treatments available. The Marlene Weber spas offers a parafango body wrap—parafango is a warm mixture of mud and paraffi n—that moisturizes the skin while drawing toxins from fat cells and stimulating fluid elimination. But it doesn’t stop there. Weber’s spas also offer Botox parties, where women can have a group Botox treatment while they sip cocktails and eat hors d’oeuvres. The Mohonk Mountain House Spa offers the Shawangunk Grit Mineral Body Treatment, in which quartz that was excavated from the mountain during the spa’s building is pulverized into a powder and used as an exfoliant. One Body Spa is currently running a special for fall with all treatments revolving around pumpkin, including a pumpkin facial, pumpkin body glow, and pumpkin enzyme peel.

So go ahead, schedule your massage or other spa treatment before you fi nd yourself banging your head against your desk from stress. A spa may not be the Caribbean relocation you’ve been wanting, but it’s the next best thing.

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17

FEATURE

Ceramic Enneagram by Jen Jeglinski

S

elf-awareness is the key to psychological health and spiritual fulfillment—the ability to observe ourselves and recognize the obstacles within our own personalities that are blocking us from our true essence.

The difficulty comes when we’re doing the monitoring and finding it difficult to detect the issues or their source. For the many life coaches, therapists, pastors, and individuals that use the Enneagram, the personality system is a valuable instrument for identifying, observing, and managing the facets of our personalities and our interactions with others.

“For me what’s most important is that it’s a tool that can be used in our own work and own our lives to deepen our contact with our true nature,” says Katy Taylor, the director of special projects for the Stone Ridge-based Enneagram Institute. Taylor has been studying the Enneagram for more than 10 years, and works with field pioneers and institute founders Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson.

According to Riso and Hudson in their book The Wisdom of the Enneagram (Bantam, 1999), the nine-pointed symbol of the Enneagram dates back at least 2,500 years. Its modern use is credited to George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, an esoteric teacher of the late 19th and early

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20th centuries thought to have discovered the symbol somewhere during his travels in Turkey or Afghanistan. He would later translate the nine points and the movement along these points as a paradigm for natural processes.

“Gurdjieff used the symbol to show the movement and transformation of all things, but without any connection to personality types,” Taylor says. “It was Oscar Ichazo who had a flash of understanding and insight of what this symbol was related to. He was the spark that took the psychology of the system and mapped it on the figure.”

Ichazo, the Bolivian founder of the Arica Institute (a school for higher consciousness), applied the nine divine attributes, which stems from sources like Neo-Platonism and the seven deadly sins (plus fear and deceit) of Christianity, to the symbol with brief descriptions of personality types. These ideas were developed further by one of his students, psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo, who brought the ideas to California in 1970. Riso learned of the system not long after his time as a Jesuit seminarian. Since the early 1970s, he has worked on expanding the psychological descriptions by interpreting each of the types through the lens of the modern psychology of Karl Jung, Karen Horney, Erich

THE ENNEAGRAM A Path to Self Discovery

BY KELLEY GRANGER PHOTOS BY DAVID MORRIS CUNNINGHAM

Fromm, and others. The result is a system of nine personalities that are interrelated and able to move and be affected by the traits of other numbers of the symbol.

“The Enneagram shows us nine personality types, I like to think of it as a continuum. On one end, it’s nine personality types, and, on the other end, it can be seen as nine facets of life,” said Taylor. “It’s not like you’re just one or the other, we’re humans with personalities and our truest deepest nature is divine, spiritual. If you understand the psychology of what’s driving you, the motivation of what’s creating your personality, that understanding can also open your awareness and deepen your contact with the divine.”

According to the Enneagram Institute, every person embodies characteristics of each number of the Enneagram but will have only one primary type they identify with. Riso and Hudson refer to the nine types with the following titles: One is the reformer, two the helper, three the achiever, four the individualist, five the investigator, six the loyalist, seven the enthusiast, eight the challenger, and nine the peacemaker. Different authors may label the types in different terms, but the attributes generally stay the same. The institute offers

the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI) test on its website, which allows participants to answer questions about their feelings, behavior, and outlook, to get an idea of which type they are.

“Taking tests can be helpful as a way of eliminating most of the possibilities fairly quickly,” Riso says. “Then, you must read the descriptions carefully and do some observation. The point of the Enneagram is to help us to become better self-observers so that we can be free of old, self-destructive patterns, not just to find some sort of new psychological label for ourselves. You will continue to find bits of yourself in all nine types—but when you find your core type, it should come as a revelation, a relief, an embarrassment, a welcome home, and an invitation to see yourself in an entirely new way.”

Once the basic type is determined, the interplay within the symbol can be assessed.

Each type is affected by a dominant “wing,” or one of the numbers at each of its sides. A type four (individualist) with a three (achiever) wing merges the four’s creativity and desire for self-improvement with the three’s inherent ambition and goal-setting, while a four with a five (observer) wing combines four’s creativity with healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

19

Inside the Enneagram Institute in Stone Ridge

five’s perceptiveness and originality. Depending on our development, our type is influenced by other numbers in the lines of the Enneagram symbol, which serves as directions of integration or disintegration. As an example, a type one (reformer) under stress may disintegrate to four, taking on moody and irrational traits associated with that number. When we make a choice to pursue personal growth, we move in the direction of integration. In that case, a one would take on the spontaneity and joyfulness of the type seven (enthusiast) it’s connected to.

While it’s believed that we are born with a primary number, the Enneagram also has instinctual variants within numbers that some believe are more based on the way we were raised. These self-preservation, social, and sexual instincts also influence aspects of our personalities within our type.

One of Riso’s most significant contributions to the study of the Enneagram is his defining the levels of development within a type. Each person in each type is influenced by a number of factors in their lives that can render them at different levels of development. Riso uses the example of Martin Luther King and Saddam Hussein—both were type eight but at very different levels of the number. To move through the levels of unhealthy and average to attain a healthy status, Riso says you have to have awareness and be able to go against the habits of your personality type.

“The levels are a measure of our fixation— and the measure of how asleep we are to ourselves and to reality,” he says. “A person who is low in the levels is so asleep to themselves, so alienated from the truth of who they are, that they cannot see themselves. They need the help of some external force. Enneagram knowledge

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alone is not enough. They need therapy or a spiritual teacher, a guide to greater awareness and objectivity. You need somebody to act as an external mirror and guide you to a new understanding of reality.”

Correctly determining your type and its other influences is the first step on a path that can lead to personal growth, relationship improvement, and better parenting. Taylor says that when she and her partner began utilizing the Enneagram, it removed a strain from their relationship. “[My partner] and I used it as a way to understand why we were so different in a relationship,” she said. “It was like, ‘Okay this isn’t just you not meeting my needs or me not being there for you, this is about our expectations, they’re different. What we’re trying to get out of the world is different. How we’re trying to be in the world is different. No wonder it’s hard for us to understand each other.’ It really helped us in that basic way of accepting each other more.”

The Enneagram can also be useful for parents and children. Elizabeth Wagele, author of The Enneagram of Parenting: The 9 Types of Children and How to Raise Them Successfully (HarperOne, 1997), says that parents are often frustrated by children they don’t understand, and the Enneagram can provide a bridge to insight. “[The Enneagram] stretches the possibility in people’s minds of the differences between people,” she says. “Naturally, we think people are like us, and until we learn the Enneagram we don’t realize how different we really are from each other. It’s unbelievably helpful for parenting more than any other reason.”

As an example, Wagele used a type-three achiever parent with a type-four child, which

she calls “the romantic.” Type threes are driven by a desire to be accomplished and successful, while fours are sensitive, artistic, and interested in inner experiences.

“A three only sees the child wanting to get ahead and run for school office and be extroverted,” Wagele says. “A four child might want to be an artist, maybe a pianist, and wants to spend all her time playing the piano and doesn’t see any good in running for school office or making a million friends. The three parent doesn’t understand her child at all and is so frustrated because she would love to drive the child to this class after school, or this competition, or this game, and the poor child wouldn’t want to do any of those things.

She just wants to write in her journal. And the three has never written in a journal in her life.

Three parents usually expect their children to be three children. If they haven’t had four children or parents in their life before, they may think, ‘This is the strangest person I’ve seen in my life.’”

Wagele says that reading the book and just having an awareness of your child’s makeup can make all the difference in the world in the way you view and approach your relationship.

On an individual basis, the Enneagram can help you on a path to self-discovery by facilitating recognition and elimination of negative patterns and habits that trouble your life and relationships. According to the Enneagram Institute, there are seven steps to the process.

The first step is seeking truth and becoming an observer. “It’s habits and patterns that are driving us. If we observe, we can choose if we want to do those behaviors,” Taylor says.

After you’ve observed, practice “not doing” by not acting on impulse—but if you catch yourself carrying out your pattern, don’t be too harsh on yourself. “What we encourage is to observe with non-judgment,” Taylor says. If we can observe it with non-judgment, there’s a chance for compassion to arrive. If I go, ‘Oh jeez, Katy, there you go again,’ it doesn’t allow growth to happen.”

Remember to be open, and to seek out those who will support your efforts, whether it’s a family, a friend, or a teacher. The Enneagram Institute offers workshops and retreats at the Stone Ridge location as well as at other properties nationally and internationally. Throughout the process, acknowledge and learn from everything that arises. Cultivate a sense of love for yourself, and look into starting a practice activity such as yoga, meditation, or prayer to devote time to regularly each day.

“Identifying one’s type correctly is only the starting point of a lifelong journey of self-discovery, and the Enneagram can be a hugely powerful tool for assisting people on that journey—the journey from illusion and sleep to awakening and transformation,” says Riso.

(845) 687-9878 ; www.enneagraminstitute.com. healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

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A

t 83 years young, Madeleine Gough is in superb health. She lives by herself, carries a full schedule, and mentally, she’s at the top of her game. How is she able to maintain this lifestyle at her advanced age? No one ever told her she couldn’t. “I was always taught that I could do anything I wanted,” says Gough. “So, I did.”

In between managing all of the John Hancock offices west of the Mississippi, practicing voice, and earning a doctorate in metaphysics, Gough found time to get married, develop long-term friendships, and volunteer for causes that are important to her. At age 58, when most people consider retirement, Gough changed careers and became a hypnotherapist. Since then she has maintained a full-time practice seeing clients in her home office five days a week.

Gough’s combination of pursuits, interests, and activities would tire out the average 30-year-old, but they’re evidence that a large part of aging (and the limitations that come with it) is in our heads. Indeed, most of the biological decay we call aging is the body’s natural response to the convenience-driven, fast-food lifestyle of the 21st century.

“Seventy percent of aging is voluntary,” says Chris Crowley, co-author of Younger Next Year (2005, Workman Publishing). “Some things you’re stuck with—your basic maximum heart rate goes down a little each year, your skin and hair get drier, your libido goes down—but 70 percent of aging you can manage by how you live your life.” Things like how much you exercise, what you eat, how you stimulate your brain and how involved you are with other people,

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are the fundamental signals that run every cell in your body and brain. In fact, experts claim your “real age” is how old you are biologically based on how well you’ve maintained your body—not your age according to the calendar (see sidebar).

EAT FOR LIFE Think of your body like an engine, a machine.

The higher-octane fuel you put into it, the better it’s going to run. So consider what your internal machinery might look like two hours after you eat a double-double with fries and a chocolate milkshake: painfully slow blood flow, hardened arteries, sludge-like movement. It’s not pretty!

Instead of dieting, which most people fail at anyway, just quit eating the obvious culprits and start loading up on fruits and vegetables.

Sure, it’s easier said than done, but it is possible. “People who have four cups of fruits and vegetables a day can demonstrably lower their blood pressure and reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease,” says Ralph Felder, M.D., Ph.D., author of the Bonus Years Diet (2007, Putnam).

Felder’s book focuses on seven foods (red wine, dark chocolate, fruits, vegetables, garlic, fish, and nuts) that work both individually and synergistically to reduce the risk of heart disease.

Eat these foods regularly, he claims, and you can add an average of six years to your life.

“The dark chocolate and fruits and vegetables lower your blood pressure. Garlic and nuts lower LDL cholesterol. Fish helps protect against cardiac arrhythmias, blood clotting, and inflammation,” says Felder. “Together

FEATURE

AGING WITH ATTITUDE

A HOW-TO GUIDE

By Amy Paturel

these foods help protect the endothelium (the Teflon-like coating around your blood vessels) and reduce the risk of heart disease.”

And while eating heart-healthy foods won’t make you look like Paris Hilton, it will reverse the aging process internally. “With enough money, you can always look good on the outside,” says Felder. “Reversing the aging process internally is much more difficult.”

GET MOVING Research shows that most women gain one to two pounds every year after 30. Unfortunately, that’s not the only figure change that sets in as we age. Muscles get flabby (remember Aunt Edna’s wings?), balance and coordination get shaky, and jeans become increasingly snug.

The good news: you can stave off—and even reverse—some of these changes if you work out and build resistance.

“If you exercise hard six days a week, plus a few other things, you can be functionally the same person at 50 almost until you die,” claims Crowley. “Hard exercise sends different messages to your body—messages that override the default to decay.”

Think of muscle like a ham steak with intramuscular marbling. The more you reduce that marbling, the better blood can circulate throughout your body and to your organs, where it’s needed most. What’s more, when your heart rate jumps to 60 percent, your blood chemistry changes, becoming anti-inflammatory instead of inflammatory, which helps prevent everything from heart disease and stroke to cancer and diabetes.

Just don’t forget to strength train. “Every year after 40, we lose an average of 0.3 to 0.5 percent of our bone mass,” says Crowley. Using your muscles to lift weights, perform squats, or do sit-ups stresses the bones in a controlled manner, preventing demineralization. And when your belly and back muscles are strong, you’re more likely to maintain your balance on an uneven sidewalk, to say nothing of the effects on your posture (and propensity to shrink as you get older).

MIND GAMES Perhaps the best way to walk tall into your senior years is to fill yourself with positive energy and emotions. In fact, a growing body of research shows that putting a positive spin on any situation floods the body with feel-good chemicals that actually boost your immune system. Of course, negative energy has an equal and opposite effect, wreaking havoc on your health and taking years off your life.

“Nothing ages a person faster than a negative attitude,” says Donna Fremon-Powell, a certified guided imagery therapist in La Habra, California. “Anger, jealousy, hate, resentment, all of these emotions, produce a chemical that’s very similar to arsenic. Simply put, your negative emotions are poisonous.”

Fremon-Powell isn’t suggesting you ignore difficulties and walk through life with your head in the clouds. Rather, pay attention to where you direct your energy. Instead of focusing on traffic, your growing debt and your never-ending to-do list, take a deep breath and when you exhale release the stress or upset healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

23

TOP FOR

10 HIT LIST ANTI-AGING

Want to ski the double blacks and climb the Rockies when you’re 75? Do these 10 things and your odds of garnering a long, healthy life increase exponentially.

1. Eat Whole Foods Chemicals, preservatives, artificial ingredients. Who needs them?

Ditch boxed, packaged and convenience foods in favor of whole foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish.

2. Apply What You Learned in High School Physics A body in motion stays in motion. Keep yours moving if you want to extend your life.

3. Do Some Heavy Lifting Strength training not only keeps you from hunching over as you get older, but it also helps prevent osteoporosis.

4. Touch and Be Touched Research shows that babies who aren’t touched don’t thrive.

Adults suffer from the same effect. No significant other? Book a massage.

7. Live in the Moment Experts claim that focusing on the here and now, and taking life one day at a time, helps you stay present, grounded, and calm.

5. Default to Yes Longevity experts agree that maintaining social networks is critical as we age. The more activities, groups, and classes you’re involved with, the better (and longer) your life!

8. Take a Mental Retreat Spending just a few moments imagining a peaceful scene floods your body with feel-good chemicals that reduce stress, boost immunity and promote healing.

6. Help Others Volunteering for causes that are important to you—or even just allowing a friend to bend your ear—can give you a mental boost and promote feelings of gratitude.

9. Breathe Monitoring and focusing on the breath is a healing mechanism that has been used for centuries. Take a deep breath in, sip in as much air as you can, and slowly sigh it out.

by blowing it out. Then imagine yourself in a beautiful, soothing place or with someone you love. A routine part of Fremon-Powell’s guided imagery practice involves having clients imagine themselves in a calming place that brings them joy and pleasure.

“One of the easiest ways to create feelings of peace, gratitude, and wellness is by using your imagination,” claims Fremon-Powell. “Stress promotes aging and cell death, so it’s important for people to know how to calm themselves.

Spending even two minutes a day imagining yourself walking in a beautiful meadow or standing under a warm waterfall enhances the body’s natural healing abilities.” And when you imagine your favorite place, you can paint the scene any way you like.

LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX With dwindling hormones, given a choice

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between sex and vacuuming, for most seniors, the carpet wins. But if you can effectively sidestep your vacuum, sex can boost your immune system, reduce stress, and keep you trim and healthy to boot. And studies show that for men, ejaculating more than five times a week can reduce the risk of prostate cancer.

“Your sexuality is part of your general health—if you don’t use it, you will lose it,” claims sex educator and internationally bestselling author Lou Paget. As the author of the best-selling book How to be a Great Lover (1999, Broadway), Paget helps people of all ages use their sexuality for optimal health. Her argument: We take care of our health with food, vitamins, even unnecessary medications, but touch is a huge part of what it means to be human. Our tissues need to be stimulated to promote blood flow and lubrication.

Your body changes as you age—hormone

levels dip, lubrication dries up and sensation falls flat. And more often than not, outside influences (like medication or a stagnant marriage) also interfere with our sex drives. “Part of great sex, and great aging, is being willing to experiment, try new things and continue learning about yourself and those around you,� says Paget. “There are many things people can do in a partnership—whether it’s with toys or just new ways of being together.�

Think of your sexuality as an appetite— much like your appetite for food. “There’s comfort food and there’s comfort sex,� says Paget. “But you don’t want to always feed your body the same thing.� Your taste buds in your mouth dictate what will take care of that appetite and the nerve endings in your skin and body will tell you how to take care of your sexual appetite. Sometimes—especially as you get older—you’re just not hungry, and that’s okay, too.

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SOCIAL HOUR Far more important than an active sex life is building and maintaining social networks. “We’re hard-wired to be connected,� says Crowley. “Every advanced structure in our brain depends on interaction with other people.� And yet society is making it increasingly easy to live in isolation—a sure-fire way to age fast. Crowley’s solution: Default to yes. When someone invites you to do something or asks for help, say yes.

That’s one strategy Gough has down pat.

Even at her seemingly advanced age, Gough is constantly out in the world, making new friends, trying new things and re-discovering herself. So whether she’s being asked to manage offices all over the country, sing on stage in front of a packed theater, or help someone overcome their self-esteem issues, Gough’s response is usually yes. “This world is a school and every person you encounter offers an opportunity to learn a new lesson,� she claims. “If you look at life on Earth that way, aging brings enlightenment—and the wrinkles just make you look more astute.�

WHAT’S YOUR REAL AGE? The secret to a long, healthy, age-defying life: Live right! According to Michael Rozien, MD and Mehmet Oz, MD, founders of Real Age, your “real age� is determined by your lifestyle—not your birthday. The two longevity experts developed a system that applies statistical methods to more than 125 different health factors. Using these health factors, they came up with a series of questions (things like how much your weight fluctuates, how much you exercise and whether you smoke). Answer the questions honestly, and not only will you know your real age, but you’ll also have a good idea how to bring it down a few notches.

Visit www.realage.com for details.

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25

FEATURE

BIRTH BY DESIGN

Neugarten Family Birth Center

BY MOLLY BELMONT PHOTOS BY HILLARY HARVEY

W

omen who are giving birth are accustomed to losing control when they check in to the hospital. These patients are forced to stop all food and drink, and by and large, confined to a bed. Once labor has begun, they can find themselves being shuttled from sterile room to sterile room, nurse to nurse, and procedure to procedure in order to conform to the hospital’s rigid set of guidelines for labor.

At Neugarten Family Birth Center, the staff believes giving birth should be different. They have been delivering mothers from this terrifying, alienating experience for over 20 years, offering patients all the advantages of being next door to Northern Dutchess Hospital, and all the comforts of home. Actually, patients say, when you take into account the lobster dinner, the massage, and the around-the-clock care you receive there, the center might be better than home.

“It’s like a hotel in some ways,” says Kate Kortbus. She had both her children at the center, and jokes that the experience was so pleasant, she can’t wait to get back: “It almost makes you want to have another child quickly.”

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Opened in 1985, Neugarten was the first hospital-based birthing center in New York State. Over the last 23 years birth-giving procedures have changed a lot, but the center has stayed true to its mission of offering safe, comfortable, family-centered care.

The center staff includes skilled physicians, midwives, and a full nursing staff. Neugarten is also attended by mid-level practitioners from Health Quest’s neonatology unit, who assist physicians with high-risk deliveries, and who perform newborn exams and consultations.

Each year about 770 babies are born at the center. About 29 percent of these babies are delivered via Caesarian section, which is consistent with the national average, according to Gina D’Angelo-Mullen, director of public relations for Northern Dutchess Hospital.

About 75 percent of the birth center patients choose to use some type of pain medicine during their stay. Hospital stays vary from two days for vaginal deliveries to three days for Csection. HealthGrades, an independent health care assessment, awarded the center five stars, and ranked it among the top 10 percent of the country’s hospitals.

ABOVE: Staff at the front desk at of the Neugarten Family Birth Center in Rhinebeck: (behind desk) Anna Goyette, RNC and Marsha Shapiro, RN; (in front of desk) Fiona Cottrell, OB Tech, and Maureen Teranova, MD; (rear) Amy Mincher, RN, Kim Santerre, RNC, and Dona Osterhoudt, RN. OPPOSITE: Mary Nettles, Lactation Consultant, visits Pauline and Geoff Saavedra, with newborn Olivia.

PERSONALIZED CARE With nine rooms and a couple of multi-purpose rooms, the center is intimate; it has room for only 11 patients, so the staff is able to provide friendly, personalized attention to all.

Patients who deliver babies here describe the camaraderie of the staff—some of whom have worked together at the center for more than 20 years—and how good it feels for this group of knowledgeable women to bring their collective attention to bear on your laboring figure.

For their own part, the staff describes the amazing power of its patients. Staff members say they want more women to reconnect with their own resilience, and to celebrate their strength. Too often, they point out, this power is taken away from women in traditional hospital settings by micromanaged, by-the-numbers deliveries. “Just because you can have a painfree delivery, it doesn’t always mean that that’s a good thing,” says Anna Goyette, an RN at the center. Some theories say that there is a purpose to pain, Goyette says, and that this first painful experience bonds the mother to the child in a way that nothing else can. “I just feel like it’s

something that’s being taken away from women, and they don’t even know it.”

At the Neugarten Family Birth Center, that power is being put back in the hands of women.

According to the center’s philosophy, patients get to call the shots, customizing their experience as much as their medical circumstances will allow.

Here, patient comfort comes first, and that’s clear as soon as you walk into the cheery, yellow, one-story building with gingerbread trim and a porch full of rocking chairs—more like grandma’s house than a hospital. Inside, there’s a large waiting area that looks like a living room, fully furnished with couches, chairs, a TV, even children’s toys. The patient rooms are quiet and pleasant, and each has its own TV and private bathroom. Hardwood floors and trim make the rooms feel more homey, and the rooms have small closets and a fold-out chair for the spouse to sleep on. The rooms also have little amenities like hair dryers and DVD players, and patients can bring items from home to make themselves feel even more secure. The center also boasts a birthing tub, where patients can ease the pains healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

27

LEFT: Pam Rhodes, Director of Women’s Services and Nursing, on the porch of the Birth Center.

RIGHT: Marsha Shapiro, RN, and Anna Goyette, RNC, prepare the tub for a patient.

of labor and delivery. When all the work is done, mothers can enjoy a relaxing massage and a celebratory lobster dinner.

PUTTING THE PATIENT FIRST The staff knows comfort isn’t just about aesthetics and amenities, it’s about attitude. The birth center physicians and nurses allow women a degree of freedom and input not permitted in most hospitals, and in the long run, this makes for smoother deliveries. In most hospitals, there’s no food or drink once you check in, but here patients are allowed to eat and drink as much as they need to, so they can keep up their strength. In a traditional setting, fetal monitors are de rigeur, but at Neugarten they are used sparingly, which frees the mom to walk around, maybe even to catch some cleansing breaths on the center’s front porch. And unlike a traditional setting, the whole family is welcome here to cheer the mother on, and partners are expected to stay over.

Unlike most hospitals, where laboring mothers are greeted at the door with an epidural, birth center patients get to decide if they want to take pain meds, and when and how much, and this plan remains flexible throughout the birth. That’s important to patients, especially first-timers.

“If it’s your first baby, you can read all you want, watch all the videos you want, talk to all the people you want, but you don’t know really what it’s going to be like until you’re in the middle of it,” says Kim Santerre, an RN at the center. “And you can have a whole list of what you would like and what you would not like, but we really encourage people to just take

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FALL / WINTER 08 – healthy living

it as it comes.”

“Some of them—well, most of them—aren’t really sure what to expect,” says D’Angelo-Mullen. She knows. After all, it was only a couple years ago that she was giving birth, right here at the center. D’Angelo-Mullen says she wanted to know what the pain was like first-hand before making a decision about meds. “You want to have that ability to experience the pain, to see if you want to move to the next level. I didn’t want to jump to pain meds right away.” While she ended up taking the medicine, she stresses that having this initial control went a long way toward making her feel more comfortable with the process.

The patient’s input is really taken into account each step of the way. “Our physicians and our nurses are very patient-oriented,” says Pamela Rhodes, Neugarten’s director. “There’s really kind of a collaborative approach between the patient and the caregiver, and I think that’s kind of an unusual entity.”

This collaboration is crucial in birth, Rhodes says, because if a team is not careful, it can lose sight of the patient. “You know, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of, ‘Okay, you’re here to have your baby. We have a mission to accomplish by the end of the day,’” Rhodes says. “And you know, it’s not our birth.”

The birth experience belongs to the patient and her family. “It is their birth,” says D’Angelo-Mullen. “We are there to ensure it is a safe one.”

“As long as we know that the mom and the baby are healthy, from all our assessments, there’s nothing that’s really forcing the issue,” Rhode says.

This flexible approach helps alleviate the fear that surrounds the birthing process. “That frightening sort of feeling of ‘What’s happening?’ is not something that happens here,�

Rhodes says. Here patients are surrounded by their loved ones and staff, and everyone is telling them everything is going to be fine. “A lot of that screaming is out of fear, and if you have people around you who are telling you, ‘You’re going to be all right. This is good. The baby is coming,’ [then] all of those things keep everything under control.�

It also helps that moms can settle in and have their labor, delivery, and recovery all in the same room. There is a nursery, but nurses say it’s usually empty because couples want their babies in the room with them.

This is an important bonding time for families, and parenting right off the bat eases the transition home. “They’re only here for 48 hours, so it’s not like they have a huge length of time, and the goal is to have them go home as a working unit,� says Pam Makenzie, an RN at the center. “They’ve got to be able to feel like they can do it when they get home.�

The care doesn’t stop at the hospital doors.

In addition to a full complement of prenatal programming (the center hosts birthing classes, childcare classes, sibling classes, infant CPR, and exercise classes), the center staff also offers great postpartum programming geared at educating new parents and building a support system for them. In this day and age, when families live so far apart, the center recognizes that these new relationships can provide an important anchor for new families.

In most instances, these new mothers aren’t going home to large extended families, says Santerre. By and large, they’ll be on their own with this new baby, and these social networks can provide vital support for new parents, she says.

The staff tries to offer as many opportunities as possible for moms to meet, including a weekly playgroup and mom-and-baby exercise classes.

The center also offers lactation education for nursing mothers, and a breastfeeding support group. And these efforts have paid off—the center is ranked number one in the region for breastfeeding, with about 82 percent of center mothers choosing to nurse, D’Angelo-Mullen says.

The center stays in the picture in other ways as well. The nurses stress that they are on call for these new moms, offering continued reassurance and guidance long after the delivery is over. “We do say to them when they leave, ‘We’re here 24/7,’� Rhodes says. “If you don’t want to wake your mom up in the middle of the night and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, what do I do?’ The staff is here. They’re working. They’ll be more than happy to help.�

We’re Here To Serve You Part of the team Lee Rasmason Administrator

Lee has been with The Hudson Valley Senior Residence for 34 years and as Administrator he oversees day to day operations of the facility and the various departments that provide service to the residents.

Prior to coming to the residence Lee was a nursing home administrator in California and served as a unit manager at Cabrini Health Care Center /Hospital in New York City. Lee earned his M.S. in Public Administration from Russell Sage College. Active in Community Life Lee serves as Vice-President of Kingston Kiwanis and is a member of the Empire State Association of Assisted Living Facilities.

“we care about you ‌ as well as care for you.â€? • Spacious Private Rooms • Private Baths • Full Housekeeping • Delicious Meals • Activities and Entertainment • Transportation to Appointments and much much more ...

Call us for more information

NEUGARTEN FAMILY BIRTHING CENTER 6511 SPRINGBROOK AVENUE, RHINEBECK (845) 871-3355; WWW.HEALTH-QUEST.ORG

healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

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All Paths Lead To...

Martial Arts

Aerobics African Dance &

Massage

Drums

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Ballet

Kung-Fu

Boxing-Conditioing

Tai Chi

Dance Classes

Tango

Qi-Gung

Yoga

20 Mountain View Ave, Woodstock, NY 845-679-0901 check out schedule

mtnviewstudio.com

Now You Can Feel Like a Kid Again Want the gracefulness that you thought only athletes and dancers had at our age? After just one lesson, Alexander Technique can get you moving through life with greater ease.

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845-399-2098

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s )NTEGRATING 4ALK "ODY #ENTERED 4HERAPY s %XCEPTIONAL -ARRIAGE MENTORING COUPLE TO COUPLE s +ABBALISTIC (EALING IN PERSON LONG DISTANCE )RENE (UMBACH ,#37 0#

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Directory HEALTHY LIVING

ACTIVE RELEASE TECHNIQUE Dr. David Ness (845) 255-1200 www.drness.com mail@drness.com Active Release Techniques (ART®) is a patented soft tissue treatment system that heals injured muscles, tendons, fascia (covers muscle), ligaments, and nerves. It is used to treat acute or chronic injuries, sports injuries, repetitive strain injuries and nerve entrapments like carpal tunnel syndrome, and sciatica. ART® is also used before and after surgery to reduce scar tissue formation and build up. ART® works to break up and remove scar tissue deep within and around injured muscles, tendons, ligaments, and nerves. The injured muscle, joint, ligament, and nerves are moved through a range of motion while a contact is held over the injured structure. This breaks up the scar tissue and heals the tissue faster than traditional treatments. ART® doctors are trained in over 500 hands on protocols and must undergo rigorous written and practical examination to become certified. In order to maintain their certification in ART® doctors attend yearly continuing education and re-certification by ART®.

See also CHIROPRACTIC and display ad on page 4.

ACUPUNCTURE Carrie Andress Kingston (845) 338-5575 See display ad on page 7.

years of clinical experience. Main Office, Apothecary in Kingston; Home Office, Gardens in Accord.

See display ad on page 7.

High Ridge Traditional Healing Arts See HOLISTIC HEALTH & MEDICINE display ad on page 51.

Mid-Hudson Acupuncture—William Weinstein, L.Ac. New Paltz and Manhattan (Chelsea) (845) 255-2070; (212) 695-3565 www.mhacu.com Announcing Mei Zen Cosmetic Acupuncture at Mid-Hudson Acupuncture. Present yourself the way you wish to be. Feel great inside! Look great outside!® Personalized, unhurried treatment tailored to your specific needs. Also: Relief from headache, migraine, arthritis, carpal tunnel, TMJ/ TMD, repetitive strain, rotator cuff injury, and stressrelated syndromes stemming from the modern lifestyle. Support through chronic illness, including relief from the adverse effects of cancer care.

NHAI, Oxford, Elderplan. MC/V/D. New Paltz: 218 Main Street. Manhattan: 119 West 23rd Street.

See display ad on page 7.

Hoon Park, MD 1772 South Road, Wappingers Falls (845) 298-6060 See display ad on page 7.

Stone Flower Mountain Health 1310 Route 28, Box 300, West Hurley (845) 679-4872 See display ad on page 17.

Earthbound Herbs and Acupuncture (845) 339-5653 www.earthboundapothecary.com Creating health in partnership with nature. Effective, informative healthcare based in the profound traditions of Chinese medicine. Both private and community acupuncture ($15-$35 sliding scale) is available to ensure affordability to all. Apothecary specializes in local, organic Asian and native herbs available in bulk, tincture, tea mixtures and much more. Workshops, apprenticeships, garden tours.

Founded by Hillary Thing, MS, LAc., with over 10

ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE Judith Muir, M.Am.S.A.T. (845) 677-5871 www.judithmuir.com See gldisplay ad on page 30.

AROMATHERAPY Joan Apter See MASSAGE and display ad on page 8. healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

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DIRECTORY

ASSISTED LIVING Hudson Valley Senior Residence

EAVE ALL LL LEAVE HE PETS ETS HOME OME THE ~Full house/pet/plant sitting service~ Serving Ulster County with dependable and thorough in home care for pet’s health and happiness, and a cats-only resort with individual rooms.

Thank you Hudson Valley for entrusting ALL your pets, homes and gardens to us for 37 yrs.

“The Pioneer in Professional Pet Care” www.pussyfootlodge.com t (845) 687-0330

Hudson River Performing Arts Center SUMMER CAMPS Register Now

Ballet to Broadway .VTJDBM ćFBUFS t "DUJOH +B[[ t )JQ )PQ t .PEFSO 5BQ t #BMMFU *OUFOTJWFT

80 Washington Avenue, Kingston (845) 331-0630 www.hvsrkingston.org See display ad on page 29.

Royalty Caregivers 87 East Market Street, Suite 103, Red Hook (845) 758-2293 www.royaltycaregivers.com The professionals affiliated with Royalty Care Givers & Consultants provide extended family care with dignity and a touch of love. We are a select group of care givers, by invitation only, reaching out to seniors and their families to provide not only highly qualified professionals to help out, but much welcomed piece of mind. Our hand-selection process ensures the highest standard of care. At the same time, our lifelong community ties and unique business structure allow us to “reach out” to our neighbors, providing upscale quality that is affordable.

See display ad on page 5.

ASTROLOGY 39 Elm Street, Suite 205, Fishkill, NY (845) 896-1888 hudsonriverperformingarts.com

Katy Walsh, Ph.D. Licensed Psychologist Relational Psychotherapy with a mindful bent

Adolescents & Adults

Spirit Root Services (845) 897-3280 Spirit Root Services: The Astrological Wheel and You. Natal Chart Consultations, Chart Relocations—Astrocartography, Transits and Progressions, Composite Charts—couples, parents, and children. Regular classes for all levels.

See display ad on page 10.

BODY & SKIN CARE Medical Aesthetics of the Hudson Valley 166 Albany Avenue, Kingston (845) 339-LASER (5273) www.medicalaestheticshv.com See display ad on page13.

6384 Mill Street ∙ Suite 2 ∙ Rhinebeck ∙ NY

845-430-4809 katywalshphd@gmail.com

Sarah Samuels L.M.T. Licensed Massage Therapist Specializing in Deep Tissue, Trigger Point, Swedish, Medical Massage Gift Certificates Available

Mention this ad and receive $15 off your first massage

(845) 430-2266 20 Charles Colman Blvd., Pawling, NY 68 West Cedar St., Poughkeepsie, NY

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FALL / WINTER 08 – healthy living

CAMPS Hudson River Performing Arts Center 29 Elm Street, Suite 205, Fishkill (845) 896-1888 www.hudsonriverperformingarts.com hudsonriverperformingarts@yahoo.com Hudson River Performing Arts Center’s summer camps Ballet to Broadway fosters confidence, communication skills and love of the arts that will be invaluable throughout the campers lives. Summer ’08 offers 5 one-week sessions of Camp Ballet to Broadway ’08. Camp Ballet to Broadway ’08 sessions will follow specific musical themes with daily instruction in acting, voice and dance. Campers will learn and rehearse dialogue through scene study and character development, as well as musical production numbers. Each camp session will culminate in a presentation for friends and family.

See display ad on page 32.

DIRECTORY

CANCER WELLNESS RESOURCES Roots & Wings PO Box 1081, New Paltz (845) 255-2278 www.aftershockfromcancer.com puja@rootsnwings.com Puja A. J. Thomson’s practical comprehensive book, After Shock: From Cancer Diagnosis to Healing—A step-by-step guide to help you navigate your way, troubleshoots, informs, empowers and inspires. $19.95. Also get-aways, ceremonies, workshops, presentations and outdoor labyrinth.

See display ad on page 25.

Third Opinion, Barbara Sarah, LCSW PO Box 1756, Kingston (845) 532-3336 www.thirdopinion.net barbara@thirdopinion.net 16-year cancer survivor; Founder—Oncology Support at Benedictine Hospital; Personal Cancer Coach/Consultant. Information and support for living fully as a cancer survivor.

See display ad on page 25.

CHIROPRACTIC Robert Lesnow, DC Accord (845) 399-1547 A master clinician, teacher, and healer, 30+ years in practice. Integrative Chiropractic Bodywork—a combined diagnostic evaluation and treatment using applied kinesiology, mobilization techniques, activator methods, Jin Shin Jyutsu, cranial-sacral work, and yoga therapy. Over many years, Dr. Bob has developed extraordinary sensitivity in his hands, often capable of offering the gift of healing.

See display ad on page 8.

Jennifer Houston CNM Certified Nurse Midwife, NYS License

serving informed clients who desire

Safe Supportive Experienced Home Birth Care Excellent medical backup

covering Ulster, Dutchess, Columbia, Greene, & Albany Counties

516-678-3154 womanway@gmail.com www.MidwifeJennaHouston.com

Metta Chiropractic Dr. Paul M. Hutchins, Jennifer Laun LMT 7 East Market Street, Red Hook (845) 758-5507 Dr. Hutchins is a graduate of Cornell University and Palmer College of Chiropractic. He specializes in Applied Kinesiology, Sacro-occipital Technique, Neuro-emotional Technique and a broad spectrum of other integrative therapies. Come and experience the healing that can happen when you allow your body’s own wisdom to express itself.

See display ad on page 13.

Dr. David Ness (845) 255-1200 www.drness.com mail@drness.com

CENTER FOR SELF-DISCOVERY THROUGH YOGA

Donna Nisha Cohen

Director, Nationally Certified Yoga Instructor Classes Daily “Yoga for Bones” series Spiritual Counseling

70 Duck Pond Road Stone Ridge, NY 12484 845.687.4836 www.yogaonduckpond.com

Dr. David Ness is a Certified Active Release Techniques (ART®) Provider and Certified Chiropractic Sports Practitioner specializing in helping athletes and active people quickly relieve their pain and heal their injuries. In addition to providing traditional chiropractic care, Dr. Ness utilizes ART® to remove scar tissue and adhesions in order to restore mobility, flexibility, and strength faster than standard treatments will allow. If you have an injury that has not responded to treatment, call Dr. Ness for an appointment today.

See also ACTIVE RELEASE TECHNIQUES and display ad on page 4. healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

33

DIRECTORY

CLEANING SERVICES— NONTOXIC Bless Your Hearth—Truly Natural Cleaning Services Dawn Deevy (845) 706-8447 We use homemade cleaning formulas and the safest products available. We are detail oriented, extremely thorough and take great pride in our high standards. We leave your home sparkling. With years of experience & excellent references, this is a service you can trust.

COLON HEALTH CARE / COLONICS Center For Life Force Studies Pat Schroeter, Certified Colon Hydrotherapist 301 Hurley Avenue, Kingston (845) 339-2820 See display ad on page 7.

Colon Hydrotherapy Connie Schneider, Certified Colon Therapist New Paltz (845) 256-1516 See display ad on page 21.

COMPOUNDING PHARMACIES Dermasave Labs, Inc. Glenn Arpino, RPh 3 Charles Street, Suite 4, Pleasant Valley 1 (800) 277-7099 dermasavelabs@aol.com

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FALL / WINTER 08 – healthy living

We are a compounding only pharmacy specializing in skin care products and Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy for women. The art of compounding offers the patient and physician flexibility in the choice of drug, dosage, form, strength, and excipient. We also customize formulations for animals.

See display ad on page 8.

COSMETIC & PLASTIC SURGERY Medical Aesthetics of the Hudson Valley See BODY & SKIN CARE and display ad on page 13.

DANCE Mountain View Studio Mountain View Avenue, Woodstock (845) 679-0901 www.mtnviewstudio.com Mountain View Studio is located in the heart of Woodstock, New York, within the beautiful mountains of New York’s Hudson Valley. We are dedicated to providing a healthy and inspiring atmosphere for those who wish to teach, dance, play music, heal, learn martial arts, yoga and all that enhances each individual life within the community.

Dance instructor Celeste Graves.

See FITNESS & CENTERS AND PERSONAL TRAINERS and display ad on page 30.

DIRECTORY

DENTISTRY & ORTHODONTICS The Center For Advanced Dentistry Bruce D. Kurek, DDS, FAGD 494 Route 299, Highland (845) 691-5600 www.thecenterforadvanceddentistry.com Setting the standards for excellence in dentistry 25 years, the Center for Advanced Dentistry attracts clients from throughout the Northeast and abroad.

Their client-centered approach to providing comprehensive dental services for adults and children includes old-school care combined with the latest technologies. The office is conveniently located 1.5 miles east of NYS Thruway, exit 18.

See display ad on inside front cover.

Holistic Orthodontics

Imagine!

Enlightened health care from a practitioner of natural medicine...

Dr. Rhoney Stanley, DDS, MPH, LicAcup, RD 107 Fish Creek Road, Saugerties (845) 246-2729 Nothing left to do but smile!

See display ad on page 8.

Transcend Dental Dr. Bruce Milner 269 Route 375, West Hurley (845) 679-4000 www.transcenddental.net Transcend your fear of pain and price.

See display ad on page 15.

EDUCATION & CAREER TRAINING Frost Valley YMCA

Donn Wiedershine, M.D., C.Ad. General Practitioner, Psychiatrist, Addictionologist

MORE THAN 90 MODALITIES

2000 Frost Valley Road, Claryville

Naturopathy

(845) 985-2291, ext. 205

Homeopathy

www.frostvalley.org cdorn@frostvalley.org See display ad on page 34.

Institute for Integrative Nutrition (877) 730-5444; (212) 730-5433 www.integrativenutrition.com admissions@integrativenutrition.com Study at the largest nutrition school featuring live weekend classes in New York City with the world’s leaders in health and wellness.

See display ad on inside back cover.

Railroad Street Youth Project PO Box 698, Great Barrington, MA (413) 528-2475 www.rsyp.org Railroad Street Youth Project is a youth empowerment and skills development organization serving young people ages 14-25 in South Berkshire county, Massachusetts. Our Culinary Arts program, with Pearl’s Restaurant and the Red Lion Inn, has been nationally recognized.

Energy Treatments Ayurveda Nutritional Therapy Detoxification IV Nutrients EFT SGAF Sound Therapy Holistic Medicine

Call

845-679-2407 62 Ricks Road Woodstock, NY 12498 For more details, visit our website www.woodstocknaturalmedicine.com

See display ad on page 30. healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

35

DIRECTORY

ENERGY HEALING Jennifer Berretta, LCSW Psychotherapy/Energy Healing See PSYCHOTHERAPY.

ENVIRONMENTAL LoveEffron Oil 154 Garden Street, Poughkeepsie (845) 471-6800 www.loveeffron.com Effron Oil Company and Love Oil Company merged in 1987 to become LoveEffron, Dutchess and Ulster’s premier home heating oil provider.

Delivery, 24/7 service, heat and A/C equipment installation and removal, oil tank replacement.

LoveEffron has the largest oil storage terminal in the Region. We welcome your business.

FENG SHUI Healing by Design Reverend Betsy Stang 17 Jonet Lane, Bearsville (845) 679-6347 bebird@aol.com Workshops and consultations.

See display ad on page 10.

HERBS Earthbound Herbs and Acupuncture See ACUPUNCTURE and display ad on page 7.

Pleasant Stone Farm Helping people get healthy — Naturally 130 Dolson Avenue, Middletown (845) 343-4040 www.pleasantstonefarm.net See also NATURAL FOODS and display ad on page 10.

HOLISTIC HEALTH & MEDICINE John M. Carroll, Healer Kingston (845) 338-8420 www.johnmcarrollhealer.com John Carroll is an intuitive healer, teacher, and spiritual counselor who integrates mental imagery with the God-given gift of his hands. John has helped individuals suffering from acute and chronic disorders including back problems and cancer.

Remote healings and telephone sessions. Call for consultation.

See display ad on page 21.

FITNESS CENTERS & PERSONAL TRAINERS Celeste Graves Fitness Celeste Graves, MA Creative Fitness and Healing Arts 144 West Bridge Street, Saugerties (845) 810-2742 cghmoves@hvc.rr.com Celeste is a dancer, instructor, dance therapist, longtime yoga practitioner and instructor, fitness and health enthusiast and innovator. Her Creative Fitness and Healing Arts programs draw from these life long fields of interest, knowledge, and exploration. They are infused with an accessible Spiritual connection which is strong, immediate, and healing.

See display ad on page 15.

FOOD & MEAL PREPARATION / DELIVERY Lagusta’s Luscious Vegetarian Home Meal Delivery Service See NATURAL FOODS.

GIFTS

36

deepnourishment Carol Hornig, MS, CNS. 356 Stone Road, West Hurley (845) 340-1702 www.deepnourishment.com feedsoul@mac.com For over 25 years, Carol Hornig has had a holistic health practice. She is a NYS Certified Nutritionist, Certified Hakomi practitioner, Kabbalistic Healer, and has advanced training in the Internal Family Systems Method. Known for her direct, down to earth and supportive style, Carol helps you reconnect with your Self. When you do this you can appreciate the beautiful perfection in your human “imperfection.” Learn to cherish who you really are so you can nourish yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually from the inside out. Classes in Kabbalistic Healing: A Framework for Living a Healed Life are offered. Dedicated to the end of suffering for all beings. Effective phone sessions available.

See display ad on page 8.

Ron Figueroa, MA, CHT (845) 399-2098

Adams Fairacre Farms

www.centerforwholelifehealing.com

See SUPERMARKETS and display ad on page 2.

See display ad on page 30.

HAIR REMOVAL

High Ridge Traditional Healing Arts

Medical Aesthetics of the Hudson Valley

87 East Market Street, Suite 102, Red Hook

See BODY & SKIN CARE and display ad on page 13.

www.highridgeacupuncture.com

FALL / WINTER 08 – healthy living

(845) 758-2424 See display ad on page 51.

DIRECTORY

The Shop at Full Circle Your Source for Holistic Family Health, Pregnancy & Breastfeeding 1241 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains (914) 421-1500 www.fullcirclefamilycare.com theshop@fullcirclefamilycare.com Our Pregnancy and Breastfeeding Resource Center, founded and directed by registered nurse and certified midwife Lisa Gussack, offers lactation consultants, classes and support groups for new moms. Visit our shop for custom fittings of nursing bras and baby carriers as well as breastfeeding and newborn supplies, breast pumps for sale or rent, and an excellent selection of books.

See display ad on page 13.

Donn Wiedershine, M.D., C.Ad.

INTUITIVE ANALYSTS & REMOTE VIEWERS Marisa Anderson Clairvoyant (845) 566-4134 www.marisaanderson.com Specializing in Individual Concerns, Law Enforcement, Personal Healing & Health Issues, Corporate Analysis, Animal Concerns, and Science/Technology Data. Guest speaker on many radio programs, featured in noted publications nationally, and in books, and on The Discovery Channel. Available for private sessions (in person or by phone) and corporate contracts. (845) 566-4134. For bio visit www.marisaanderson.com and for health issues visit www.new4u.mypharmanex.com.

62 Ricks Road, Woodstock (845) 679-2407 www.woodstocknaturalmedicine.com

JIN SHIN JYUTSU

A practitioner of natural medicine, Dr. Wiedershine and his staff offer patients more than 90 modalities including: Naturopathy, Homeopathy, Energy Medicine, Ayurveda, Nutritional Therapy, Detoxification, IV Nutrients, EFT, SGAF Sound Therapy.

See display ad on page 35.

See CHIROPRACTIC. See also jin shin jyutsu in Glossary and display ad on page 8.

HOSPITALS Benedictine Hospital 105 Mary’s Avenue, Kingston (845) 338-2500 www.benedictine.org See display ad on page 49.

Kingston Hospital 396 Broadway, Kingston (845) 334-2866 www.kingstonhospital.org See display ad on page 49.

Northern Dutchess Hospital 6511 Springbrook Avenue, Rhinebeck (845) 876-3001 www.health-quest.org See display ad on page 3.

Vassar Brothers Medical Center 45 Reade Place, Poughkeepsie (845) 454-8500 www.health-quest.org/home_vb.cfm?id=11 See display ad on page 1.

HYPNOTHERAPY Integrated Health Care for Women Kristen Jemiolo, MD See PHYSICIANS and display ad on page 51.

INTEGRATED KABBALISTIC HEALING Irene Humbach, LCSW Body of Wisdom Counseling & Healing Services See PSYCHOTHERAPY. See also integrated kabbalistic healing in Glossary and display ad on page 30.

Robert Lesnow, DC

MASSAGE Joan Apter Apter Aromatherapy (845) 679-0512 www.apteraromatherapy.com japter@ulster.net See display ad on page 8.

Bodhi Holistic Spa, Store & Salon 323 Warren Street, Hudson (518) 828-2233 www.bodhistudio.com See display ad on page 10.

Bodymind Massage Therapy Helen Gutfreund, LMT, NCTMB 7 Prospect Street, New Paltz (845) 255-3228 www.bodymindmassagetherapy.com helenwilla@bodymindmassagetherapy.com Our staff of New York State Licensed Massage Therapists offer unique sessions tapered to fit your individual needs with the overall theme being your health and wellbeing. Techniques include: Swedish, Deep Tissue, The Trager® Approach, Reiki, Hot Stone, Craniosacral, Trigger Point, Myofascial, Medical, Pre-Natal. Gift certificates are available online.

See THE TRAGER® APPROACH in Glossary.

See also display ad on page 30.

Massage and Movement Therapy Dawn Reilly Truex, LMT, NCTMB, MA (845) 561-0478 www.massageandmovementtherapy.com You can feel better. All techniques for one rate: Aromatherapy, CranioSacral, Medical, Pre and Post Natal, Reflexology, Reiki, Shiatsu, Sports, Stone, Swedish, Thai, Trigger Point, and IonCleanse. Gift Certificates available by phone. Hours by appointment only at The Tanning Hut, New Windsor and The Jazz Salon, Middletown. healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

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DIRECTORY

Partners in Massage

Lagusta’s Luscious

4415 Albany Post Road, Hyde Park (845) 229-9133 www.partnersinmassage.com

Vegetarian Home Meal Delivery Service (845) 255-8VEG (8834) www.lagustasluscious.com chef@lagustasluscious.com

We offer a wide variety of healing, relaxing and holistic therapies including: Deep tissue, Swedish, Aromatherapy and Hot stone massage, Reflexology, Reiki treatments and training, Cranio-Sacral therapy, Shiatsu, Facials, Ondamed therapy, and Ionic Foot Baths. Gift certificates and bulk discounts are available. Located near the historic Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, NY we offer a warm and welcoming environment.

Sarah Samuels, LMT

Lagusta’s Luscious brings heartbreakingly delicious, sophisticated vegetarian food that “meatand-potatoes people” love too to the Hudson Valley and NYC. We are as passionate about our politics – locally grown organic produce, environmentally sustainable business practices – as we are about our food, and it tastes just as good as any you’ll find at the finest restaurants. End weeknight meal boredom forever. Serving New York City and the Hudson Valley Region.

(845) 430-2266 Graduate of the Swedish Institute of Massage Therapy. Licensed and practicing since 2001. Specializing in Deep Tissue, Trigger Point, Swedish, and Medical massage. Also available for corporate and event chair massage. Gift certificates available. Offices in Poughkeepsie and Pawling. Massage by appointment.

See display ad on page 32.

Mother Earth’s Storehouse See SUPERMARKETS and display ad on page 4.

Nature’s Pavilion 618 Ulster Avenue, Kingston (845) 340-4561 See display ad on page 34.

Organic Nectars

MEDICAL IMAGING River Radiology 45 Pine Grove Avenue, Kingston 11 Mary’s Avenue, Kingston (845) 340-4500 www.riverradiology.com Open 6 days a week AND some evenings. Digital Mammography, High Field and Open MRI, PET/ CT, Bone Densitometry, CT, Echocardiography, Ultrasound, Digital X-Ray. See display ad on BACK COVER.

(845) 246-0506 www.organicnectars.com info@organicnectars.com Organic Nectars is an award-winning raw, organic artisan food company based in NY’s Hudson Valley. All products are delicious and free of dairy, soy, refined sugar, gluten, GMOs. Raw Agave Gelato. Raw Agave Granita. Chocagave Raw Cacao.

Agave Syrup. Gojiberries. Raw Cacao Nibs. Much more. Available at fine food shops throughout the region and online.

Pleasant Stone Farm

MENTAL HEALTH Dutchess Mental Hygiene 24-Hour HELPLINE 230 North Road, Poughkeepsie (900) 485-9700 www.dutchessny.gov Mental Hygiene encompasses prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation services for persons who have an emotional disturbance, mental illness, developmental disability, and/or are chemically dependent.

See display ad on page 25.

If you went down a dusty road off a blue highway, you would expect to find a place like Pleasant Stone Farm, a natural health store boasting a bountiful herbal apothecary, organic pantry, and dietary supplements, but it is just 4 lights off exit 3W I-84, in Middletown. Get paninis, wraps, smoothies, fresh juices, soups and more in our organic cafe.

See also HERBS and display ad on page 10.

MIDWIFERY

NUTRITION

Jennifer Houston

Vicki Koenig, MS, RD, CDN

(518) 678-3154 www.midwifejennahouston.com womanway@gmail.com See display ad on page 33.

New Paltz / Kingston (845) 255-2398 www.nutrition-wise.com

NATURAL FOODS Adams Fairacre Farms See SUPERMARKETS and display ad on page 2.

Beacon Natural Market See SUPERMARKETS and display ad on page 5.

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Helping people get healthy — Naturally 130 Dolson Avenue, Middletown (845) 343-4040 www.pleasantstonefarm.net

FALL / WINTER 08 – healthy living

Creating Wellness for individuals and businesses.

Nutrition counseling: combining traditional and integrative solutions to enhance well-being. Providing support for Wellness, Diabetes, Cardiovascular conditions, Weight management, and Pediatric Nutrition. Corporate Wellness fairs, assessments, classes and programs for businesses wanting to improve employee productivity.

See display ad on page 17.

DIRECTORY

Robert Lesnow, DC See CHIROPRACTIC and display ad on page 8.

PET CARE Pussyfoot Lodge

Village Wine & Spirits

(845) 687-0330

45 Front Street, Millbrook (845) 677-3311 www.villagewinemillbrook.com

www.pussyfootlodge.com

Village Wine & Spirits is a destination for wine lovers from Manhattan to Hudson. Special orders, food pairings, custom gift wrapping, shipping, and free local delivery are only a question, phone call, or e-mail away. We’re open every day. Wine tastings every Saturday from Noon to 7pm.

See display ad on page 2.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Zagat Survey

See display ad on page 10.

4 Columbus Circle, New York (212) 404-6471 www.zagat.com/votehudson

PHYSICIANS

Vote in Zagat’s Westchester and Hudson Valley Restaurants survey from November 7, 2008 through January 4, 2009 and you’ll earn a FREE guide when it’s published. Thanks to thousands of witty surveyors across the globe, Zagat Survey has become a respected source for honest, amusing reviews.

See display ad on page 50.

ORGANIC CAFÉS Karma Road Vegetarian Café 11 Main Street, New Paltz (845) 255-1099 www.karmaroad.net Quaint, compassionate, and bustling Organic cafédeli with vegetarian/vegan fare for everyone! Open 7 days, 8am-8pm. Best SMOOTHIE in the Hudson Valley in 2007. Stews, curries, wraps, sandwiches, soups, juice bar, wheat free, and gluten free desserts. Service with a smile and love in every dish.

See display ad on page 7.

Pleasant Stone Farm Helping people get healthy — Naturally See HERBS, NATURAL FOODS, and display ad on page 10.

OSTEOPATHY Stone Ridge Healing Arts Joseph Tieri, DO, & Ari Rosen, DO 3457 Main Street, Stone Ridge; 138 East Market Street, Rhinebeck (845) 687-7589 www.stoneridgehealingarts.com Drs. Tieri and Rosen are New York State Licensed Osteopathy physicians specializing in Cranial Osteopathy. As specialists in Osteopathic manipulation, we are dedicated to the traditional philosophy and hands-on treatment of our predecessors. We have studied with Robert Fulford, DO; Viola Freyman, DO; James Jealous, DO, and Bonnie Gintis, DO; and completed a two-year residency in Osteopathic Manipulation. We treat newborns, children, and adults. By Appointment. Offices in Rhinebeck and Stone Ridge.

See display ad on page 32.

Corporate Image Studio 1 Jacobs Lane, New Paltz (845) 255-5255 www.mgphotoman.com mgphotoman@aol.com

Integrated Health Care for Women Kristen Jemiolo, MD Poughkeepsie (845) 485-7168 Dr. Jemiolo is board certified in Family Practice and certified by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. She has 25 years experience in patient care. She offers group sessions in meditation as well as individual treatment of stress-related illness.

Sessions are designed to teach self-help tools based on mindfulness based stress reduction, guided imagery, Twelve Steps, Reiki and Qigong.

Her individual practice combines traditional medical practice with clinical hypnotherapy and Reiki.

A goal of this integrated approach is to decrease dependency on medication.

See display ad on page 51.

PSYCHOTHERAPY Jennifer Berretta, LCSW Psychotherapy/Energy Healing Hyde Park / Beekman (845) 242-5038 Offering a combined approach of talk therapy and/or energy healing to unblock current issues such as, anxiety, depression, stress, grief and relationship, that are holding you back from living a healthier, happier life. NYS licensed clinical social worker. Integrated Energy Therapy and Reiki Certified.

Judith Blackstone, PhD Woodstock / NYC (845) 679-7005 (914) 388-4714 www.realizationcenter.com Offering traditional psychotherapy and EMDR for healing from trauma and changing limiting beliefs, Breathwork for relieving stress and breathing difficulties, and Realization Process, body-centered meditation for deepening contact with oneself and others. For individuals and couples. NY State licensed. Twenty-five years experience. healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

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DIRECTORY

Irene Humbach, LCSW Body of Wisdom Counseling & Healing Services (845) 485-5933 Integrating traditional and alternative therapy/ healing approaches, including Body-Centered Psychotherapy, Exceptional Marriage Mentoring and Kabbalistic Healing, I offer tools for self healing, and spiritual connection to assist individuals and couples to move through blocks to their softer heart energy. Six session Integrated Kabbalistic Healing Classes. Eight session group for women interested in psycho-spiritual growth. Offices in Poughkeepsie and New Paltz.

See display ad on page 30.

Katy Walsh, Ph.D. Rhinebeck (845) 430-4809 katywalshphd@gmail.com Licensed Psychologist. Individual, family, and group psychotherapy for adolescents and adults. Expertise in relational psychotherapy that incorporates mindfulness techniques. Post-doctoral training in addiction treatment and gender-based approaches.

See display ad on page 32.

K. Melissa Waterman, LCSW-R 35 Main Street, #333, Poughkeepsie (845) 464-8910 therapist.psychologytoday.com/52566 See display ad on page 13.

RESTAURANTS TheCommunityGuide.net On-Line Published by First Connections, Inc. (845) 679-0569 www.thecommunityguide.net info@firstcx.com Your First Connection to the Businesses, Services & Resources in Your Community. An extensive On-Line resource guide, with information on dining, real estate classifieds, enrichment activities, schools & day care, kids’ birthday parties, businesses & services, annual events, township details, community support services, plus much more.

Also, Email Community Newsletters. Serving Ulster County and surrounding communities.

ROSEN METHOD BODYWORK Julie Zweig, M.A. Certified Rosen Method Bodywork Practitioner, and NYS Licensed Mental Health Counselor New Paltz (845) 255-3566 www.rosenmethod.org; www.youtube.com/ watch?v=OrwvSF2Bp_k julieezweig@gmail.com Rosen Method is distinguished by its gentle, direct touch. Using listening hands, the practitioner focuses on chronic muscle tension. As relaxation occurs and the breath deepens, unconscious feelings, attitudes, and memories may emerge.

The practitioner responds with touch and words that allow the client to begin to recognize what has been held down by unconscious muscle tension.

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As this process unfolds, habitual tension and old patterns may be released, freeing the client to experience more aliveness, new choices in life, and a greater sense of well-being. Julie also offers verbal body-centered psychotherapy (based upon the principles of Rosen Method Bodywork but without touch, just talking), as she is also trained through the doctoral level in Counseling Psychology.

SPAS River Rock Health Spa 62 Ricks Road, Woodstock (845) 679-7800 www.riverrock.biz bmr@ureach.com Your day retreat for rebalancing and rejuvenation.

Guests rave: ‘I want to live here!’ AR, New Paltz. ‘One of the best spas in the world. I’ve been to many.’

SN, Portland. Guests are nurtured and pampered by large staff and luxurious state-of-the-art spa. Massage, facials, body scrubs/wraps, waxing, and more.

See display ad on page 8.

SPIRITUAL COUNSELING & GUIDANCE Yoga on Duck Pond See YOGA and display ad on page 33.

IONE Healing Psyche, Spirit and Body (845) 339-5776 www.ministryofmaat.org; www.ionedreams.us iodreams@deeplistening.org IONE is an author, inter-faith minister, and spiritual counselor who offers healing services to individuals and oversees international programs for women and men. She is director of the Ministry of Maåt, Inc., dedicated to nurturing world harmony. Ione specializes in creative process, dream phenomena and women’s issues. A Helix Graduate and a certified Qi Healer, she is author of Nile Night; Remembered Texts from the Deep, Pride of Family: Four Generations of American Women of Color; Listening in Dreams & This is a Dream! A Handbook for Deep Dreamers; Services in Kingston and New York City.

STRUCTURAL INTEGRATION Hudson Valley Structural Integration 26 East Market Street, Rhinebeck (845) 876-4654 www.anatomytrains.com Ryan Flowers & Krisha Showalter are NY State Licensed Massage Therapists with additional professional training and Certification in Structural Integration and Visceral Osteopathic Manipulation.

We offer advanced manual therapy specializing in chronic pain conditions, structural/postural alignment, movement re-education and rehabilitation.

We are committed to providing a high level of skill in manual therapy, utilizing intelligent principles to guide the use of techniques, detailed visual and manual assessments and soft tissue manipulation that is communicative and receptive to the individual and their body’s systems. Free Consultations.

See display ad on page 50.

DIRECTORY

SUPERMARKETS Adams Fairacre Farms www.adamsfarms.com Open 7 days. Three Convenient Locations: Rt. 9W, Kingston, 336-6300; Rt. 44, Poughkeepsie, 454-4330; Rt. 300, Newburgh, 569-0303.

See display ad on page 2.

Beacon Natural Market Lighting the Way for a Healthier World 348 Main Street, Beacon (845) 838-1288 Open Monday-Saturday, 9am-7pm; Sunday 10am5pm.

See display ad on page 5.

Hannaford Supermarket & Pharmacy 2636 Route 32, New Windsor (845) 562-5169 For other locations: www.hannaford.com

Mother Earth’s Storehouse 300 Kings Mall Court, Kingston; 249 Main Street, Saugerties; 1955 South Road, Poughkeepsie (845) 336-5541; (845) 246-9614; (845) 296-1069 www.motherearthstorehouse.com See display ad on page 4.

Sunflower Natural Food Market 75 Mill Hill Road, Woodstock (845) 679-5361 natural@hvc.rr.com See display ad on page 5.

THERMOGRAPHY Susan Willson Certified Nurse Midwife; Certified Clinical Thermographer Stone Ridge (845) 687-4807 matrixconsulting@verizon.net zzSee also WOMEN’S HEALTH and display ad on page 29.

Vegan Lifestyles Andrew Glick, Certified Holistic Counselor (845) 679-7979 www.meatfreezone.org andy@meatfreezone.org The single most important step an individual can take to help save the planet’s precious resources, improve and protect one’s health, and to stop the senseless slaughter of over 50 billion animals a year...is to Go Vegan. You will be helping the planet, your own health, and the lives of countless animals all at the same time. If the idea is daunting and seems undoable to you, then let your personal Vegan Lifestyle Coach take you through steps easily and with the proper support, guidance and encouragement. (845) 679-7979. andy@meatfreezone.org. www.meatfreezone.org.

See also HOLISTIC HEALTH & MEDICINE and display ad on page 10.

WOMEN’S HEALTH The Shop at Full Circle Your Source for Holistic Family Health, Pregnancy & Breastfeeding See HOLISTIC HEALTH & MEDICINE and display ad on page 13.

Susan Willson Certified Nurse Midwife, Certified Clinical thermographer Stone Ridge (845) 687-4807 matrixconsulting@verizon.net I offer extended visits, helping women to achieve the deeper hormone balance necessary to regain vibrant health at any age. I work with bioidentical hormones, diet, and lifestyle adjustments to correct imbalances at their source. Symptoms of perimenopause, menopause, and adrenal fatigue can be alleviated, as well as other common women’s health problems.

See also THERMOGRAPHY and display ad on page 29.

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES Joan Apter See MASSAGE and display ad on page 8.

YOGA TRAGER APPROACH

Yoga on Duck Pond

Bodymind Massage Therapy

(845) 687-4836 www.yogaonduckpond.com

Helen Gutfreund, LMT, NCTMB See MASSAGE. See also the trager® approach in Glossary and display ad on page 30.

VEGETARIAN / VEGAN LIFESTYLES Karma Road Vegetarian Café See ORGANIC CAFES and display ad on page 7.

Lagusta’s Luscious Vegetarian Home Meal Delivery Service See NATURAL FOODS.

A new approach to yoga based on the premise that we develop habitual patterns of movement that can effectively be changed by bringing unconscious movement into conscious awareness. Only then can we explore new combinations of ways to move. Learn how to experience yoga poses comfortably and beneficially, from the inside out, without strain or struggle. When we slow down, we can sense and feel more clearly and comfortably how we move. Experience a style of yoga that is dynamic, rejuvenating, empowering and transformational. Donna Nisha Cohen, RYT, with over 25 years experience. Classes daily. Privates available.

See display ad on page 32. healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

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DIRECTORY

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ACTIVE RELEASE TECHNIQUE

31

INTEGRATIVE KABBALISTIC HEALING

37

ACUPUNCTURE

31

INTUITIVE ANALYSTS & REMOTE VIEWERS

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ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE

31

JIN SHIN JYUTSU

37

AROMATHERAPY

31

MASSAGE

37

ASSISTED LIVING

32

MEDICAL IMAGING

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ASTROLOGY

32

MENTAL HEALTH

38

BODY & SKIN CARE

32

MIDWIFERY

38

CAMPS

32

NATURAL FOODS

38

CANCER WELLNESS RESOURCES

33

NUTRITION

38

CHIROPRACTIC

33

ORGANIC CAFÉ

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CLEANING SERVICES, NON-TOXIC

34

OSTEOPATHY

39

COLON HEALTH CARE / COLONICS

34

PET CARE

39

COMPOUNDING PHARMACIES

34

PHOTOGRAPHY

39

COSMETIC & PLASTIC SURGERY

34

PHYSICIANS

39

DANCE

34

PSYCHOTHERAPY

39

DENTISTRY

35

RESTAURANTS

40

EDUCATION AND CAREER TRAINING

35

ROSEN METHOD BODYWORK

40

ENERGY HEALING

36

SPAS

40

ENVIRONMENTAL

36

SPIRITUAL COUNSELING & GUIDANCE

40

FENG SHUI

36

STRUCTURAL INTEGRATION

40

FITNESS CENTERS & PERSONAL TRAINERS

36

SUPERMARKETS

41

FOOD & MEAL PREPARATION / DELIVERY

36

THERMOGRAPHY

41

GIFTS

36

TRAGER APPROACH

41

HAIR REMOVAL

36

VEGETARIAN / VEGAN LIFESTYLES

41

HERBS

36

WOMEN’S HEALTH

41

HOLISTIC HEALTH & MEDICINE

36

WORKSHOPS & CLASSES

41

HOSPITALS

37

YOGA

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HYPNOTHERAPY

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FALL / WINTER 08 – healthy living

Glossary HEALTHY LIVING

ACUPUNCTURE

ASTROLOGY

Acupuncture has been practiced for 6,000 years in China and neighboring countries. It consists of the use of very fine needles and other devices to stimulate and balance the flow of energy— known as chi or qi—through channels or meridians in the body. Disease occurs because of imbalances in the meridian system. Acupuncture is based on ancient Chinese ideas about the rhythm and harmony of the universe as a whole—the Tao—and the relationship of human beings to that universe. Health is viewed as a dynamic interaction between each individual’s inner environment and the exterior world.

Astrology uses a birth chart to map the positions of the planets relative to the location and moment of birth. The interpretation of the chart incorporates the angular relationships between the planets and the signs of the zodiac, the area of the chart in which they fall, and other symbolic indicators to examine the different experiences and psychology of the individual. A trained astrologer then analyzes the pertinent information, exploring how the various aspects of the client’s personality may be integrated, and finding ways to draw the greatest fulfillment from the energies symbolized in the chart.

ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE The Alexander Technique is concerned with the mechanics of coordination and balance and our control over them. These things begin to deteriorate in most of us quite early in childhood, and the process continues as the stresses of modern life take their toll. Excessive effort and tension become insidiously ingrained in our habits of movement, thought, and feeling.

Through an increase in muscular tensions we may notice this deterioration in the neck, back, legs, and wrists. The Alexander Technique aims to help you take a fresh look at the way you think and move, in everyday activities as well as specific skills.

AROMATHERAPY Aromatherapy employs highly concentrated essential oils extracted from herbs and flowers that contain hormones, vitamins, antibiotics, and antiseptics. Applied to the skin—often in massage—or through inhalation, the oil or combination of oils can be used for medicinal, meditative, restorative, or relaxation purposes.

AYURVEDA The Sanskrit word meaning “science of life,” Ayurveda is Yoga’s sister science, dating back to the ancient Vedic civilization, the oldest tradition of knowledge in human history. Ayurveda is not a “modality” but a comprehensive body of knowledge based upon the observation of living beings and their environment, appreciation of the balance between the individual and the cosmos, and how to maintain balance and develop the consciousness that underlies and integrates all aspects of life, leading to self-realization—the goal it shares with Yoga. Ayurveda does this through its insight into the various body/mind constitutions, called Prakriti, which is the innate balance of three primary principles, or energies, called Doshas. Health is defined as the maintenance of balance among the Doshas according to one’s unique constitution. Its methodologies include, but are not limited to: nutrition, herbalism, aromatherapy, Yoga Asana, meditation, and body work. healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

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GLOSSARY

BODYTALK

COLON HEALTH CARE

Since most illnesses have a number of contributing factors, from hormones to stress, physical trauma, environmental toxins, and nutrition, it’s often difficult to know where to begin the healing process. Fortunately, every person has an Innate Wisdom within them that knows exactly what they need to heal on all levels. BodyTalk is a simple, effective method of communicating with that Innate Wisdom to discover the level each person needs to heal first. Once the priority for healing has been discovered, a gentle tapping is used to reharmonize the neglected area. It is astonishing how quickly the body/mind can heal once we allow it to communicate better within itself, and with us. All we have to do is ask.

Colon hydrotherapy is a safe and effective irrigation to remove toxic waste from the large intestine without the use of drugs. Filtered water and regulated temperatures soften and loosen waste resulting in evacuation through natural peristalsis. Colonics can be helpful for such problems as constipation, psoriasis, acne, allergies, and headaches, and can improve overall health. Therapists may use abdominal massage during this process and advise the client regarding nutrition, fluids, and exercise to enhance the colonic procedure and general health of the colon. Today’s sophisticated technology promotes both safety and sanitation of the popular practice with the use of FDA- certified equipment, disposable rectal nozzles, and certified therapists.

CHIROPRACTIC HEALING Chiropractic care employs gentle and forceful manipulation and movement techniques to correct spinal-nerve interferences. It removes blockages to the flow of Life Energy from the brain down the spinal cord, through the nervous system, and out to every cell. Chiropractors assist in maintaining the body’s natural alignment so that it functions at peak performance. They have been successful in treating headaches, back problems, and other traumas.

COACHING Coaching is a relationship in which the client and the coach are active collaborators for the purpose of meeting the client’s needs. The coach holds the client as naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. The agenda comes from the client, and the coaching relationship addresses the client’s whole life. Through a process of action and learning, the client makes desirable changes in one or more parts of his or her life, to create a life that is fulfilling and balanced. On a practical level, the coaching process addresses setting and achieving goals. On a spiritual level, coaching leads to a purposeful life where actions flow from innermost values. The ultimate goal is supporting the client to reach her or his full potential.

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CRANIOSACRAL THERAPY The craniosacral system surrounds the brain and the spinal cord. The practitioner utilizes the subtle rhythm of spinal fluid motion as it is transmitted along fascial planes throughout the body. Craniosacral therapy is a system of evaluation and light touch that views the individual as an integrated totality. Conditions that frequently respond well to this therapeutic modality include: acute musculoskeletal injuries, chronic pain conditions associated with accidents, and stress-exacerbated dysfunctions of the autonomic nervous system.

DOULA A doula is a woman experienced in childbirth who provides continuous physical, emotional, and informational support to the mother before, during, and just after childbirth.

Trained doulas understand the physiology of birth and the emotional needs of a woman in labor. Doulas believe that pregnancy and birth are normal, natural, and healthy processes. This includes preparation for birth, helping the laboring woman with encouragement, comfort measures, relaxation techniques, and an objective viewpoint, as well as support after childbirth, such as help with breastfeeding.

GLOSSARY

FACIAL REJUVENATION Facial Rejuvenation is a combination of massage and energy work. It assists nerve, muscle, and energy reconnection through the use of select contact points, and employs specific massage strokes and massage patterns to relax the muscles and increase circulation and energy flow to the face, neck, shoulders, and head. This combined result allows a realignment of the facial muscles into a more stress-free, relaxed, and youthful pattern. The treatment includes herbal compressing, cleansing, and natural masks, and may also utilize aromatherapy, with individually chosen aromatic essential oils helping to move the body into a state of balance.

ings from Kabbalah, Buddhism, Christian mysticism, psychology, and science. IKH is for anyone, regardless of their background, because it is about the shared human condition—at once perfect and imperfect, accepting and rejecting, fragmented and whole. IKH awakens us to our true nature, which does not free us from our problems but gathers them to our heart, and teaches us how to become a healing presence where no part of us or of creation is orphaned.

HYPNOTHERAPY

Feng Shui (pronounced “fung shway”) is the terrestrial equivalent of astrology, and is the ancient mystical art of Chinese geomancy, studying the dynamic relationship between humans and the surrounding environment. It attempts to show how everybody can match their personal characteristics to their surroundings, whether at home or at work, thus ensuring greater environmental harmony and leading to enhanced inner peace.

Hypnotherapy is a technique using hypnosis that reaches into the subconscious mind for solutions to problems with which the conscious mind has been unable to deal. The altered state occurring under hypnosis is akin to a state of deep meditation, where the recuperative abilities of the psyche are allowed to flow more freely. Hypnosis is a waking state; the hypnotized person remains in full control of his or her behavior, and usually is able to recall the whole experience. Hypnotherapy has been used to treat addictions, relieve stress, and help individuals develop a more positive attitude in general. Many people have learned to hypnotize themselves as a regular adjunct to their daily life.

HOMEOPATHY

IMAGO THERAPY

Homeopathy is derived from the Greek word homoios, meaning like or similar. This natural system of medicine was developed over 200 years ago by Samuel Hahneman, a German physician. It bases its practice on treating like with like. This homeopathic principle is based on treating an illness with a substance that produces, in a healthy person, similar symptoms to those experienced by the sick person, employing minute doses of natural remedies that are created from herbal, mineral, and animal substances.

Homeopathy views symptoms as the body’s natural reaction in fighting the illness and, unlike conventional medicine, seeks to stimulate them rather than suppress them. Homeopathy is widely practiced throughout Europe.

Imago relationship therapy recognizes that the inherent nature of human beings is what Carl G. Jung described as a “push toward wholeness.” Throughout our development as human beings, that wholeness is fragmented through experiences in relationship with our caretakers and results in significant impact on the choice of a marriage or relationship partner (the imago).

Since unmet needs from childhood are brought into adult intimate partnerships for resolution, childhood frustrations are inevitably reactivated and experienced. These relational conflicts are an unconscious attempt by partners to finish childhood, reestablish contact without losing their identity, and to recover a sense of wholeness.

FENG SHUI

IRIDOLOGY INTEGRATED KABBALISTIC HEALING Based on the work of Jason Shulman, Integrated Kabbalistic Healing is rooted in teach-

Iridology is the analysis of the iris of the eye, the colored portion that reveals the basic constitutional health of an individual. Iridology can indicate genetic and functional weaknesses, healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

45

GLOSSARY

tissue and organ condition, areas of nutritional depletion and need, areas of inflammation and toxicity, and the general body constitution.

This information is gathered by “reading” the fiber and markings of the iris, which manifests symptoms specific to all the organs of the body before they would be discernible through lab analysis or bloodwork.

JIN SHIN JYUTSU Jin Shin Jyutsu (Physio-Philosophy) is an ancient art of harmonizing the life energy in the body.

Jin Shin Jyutsu employs 26 “safety energy locks” along energy pathways that feed life into our bodies. When one or more of the paths become blocked, the resulting stagnation can disrupt the local area and eventually disharmonize the complete path of energy flow. Holding these energy locks in combination can bring balance to mind, body, and spirit. Jin Shin Jyutsu is a gentle art practiced by placing the fingertips (over clothing) on designated safety energy locks, to harmonize and restore the energy flow.

NATUROPATHY Naturopathy is a compilation of a wide variety of natural therapeutics and healing techniques.

This natural method of healing is based on the premise that the body contains the innate wisdom and power to heal itself, providing that we enhance rather than hinder that process, and in addition, that treating the whole person is more desirable than simply alleviating the symptoms of disease. The naturopathic physician utilizes such therapies as non-invasive allergy testing, herbology, acupressure, acupuncture, and iridology.

OSTEOPATHY Osteopathy is a scientifically based philosophy of health care that embraces the concept of the interrelatedness of structure (anatomy) and function (physiology). Dysfunction of the musculoskeletal system contributes to imbalances and insufficiencies of the circulation and nervous system, rendering the body vulnerable to disease. Osteopathic manual treatment of the musculoskeletal system allows normal function to resume. Doctors of osteopathy are fully licensed physicians who use the principles of osteopathy along with traditional medical models to promote the health of their patients.

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PILATES Pronounced “Puh-lah-tees,” this “intelligent” exercise was developed by German nurse and fitness guru Joseph Pilates after World War I to assist bedridden patients in recovering muscle strength.

The system employs specialized machines to teach the body self-awareness and strengthen muscles without straining them, in a complete and balanced way. Pilates has proven beneficial for the rehabilitation of injuries and is favored by dancers and athletes for muscle toning.

POLARITY THERAPY One of the first Western therapy systems to utilize energy and understand that it is the bottom line of healing, Polarity was developed by Randolph Stone, osteopath, chiropractor, and naturopath. It uses physical touch and pressure to balance energy in the body, conceiving of energy as flowing outward from a central core in the body, which is a reservoir of wholeness and health. Understanding the relationships between this energetic source within the body and the various flows of energy underlying physiological function, Polarity helps the body restore itself to health based on its own resources. Polarity makes use of these therapeutic sessions, as well as diet, self-awareness, and energy-based exercises.

QIGONG Qigong means “energy practice.” These ancient Chinese exercises generally consist of one or a few simple movements done repetitively, focusing mind and breath through the body in specific ways. There are innumerable forms of Qigong— for general health and well-being, for healing specific organs or illnesses, and for cultivating special capacities, from memory and extrasensory perceptions to the highest spiritual development.

REFLEXOLOGY Reflexology is a natural healing art based on the principle that there are reflex points on the feet, outer ears, and hands that are actually “reflections” of body parts. Their location and relationships follow a logical anatomical pattern that closely resembles that of the body itself. This ancient healing technique involves a steady pressure on the reflex points, which correspond to areas throughout the body.

GLOSSARY

Reflexology accelerates the body’s natural healing abilities and directly acts upon particular organs, glands, and body parts through gentle stimulation upon the points or reflexes.

down, and different muscular, neurological, glandular, and organ systems function in a more balanced fashion. The practice of Tai Chi Chuan is harmony and understanding of the ways of the world.

ROLFING See Structural Integration.

REIKI In Reiki, a practitioner’s hands are very gently placed on the fully-clothed body of a person in a variety of established places on the head, chest, abdomen, and back. This scientific method of activating and balancing the life-force energy (also known as prana, qi, or chi) was brought to the West in 1937 by Saici Takata. Light hand placement is used on the body in order to align the chakras and channel energy to organs and glands. Reiki can be used as a form of health maintenance and disease prevention, applied as a self-help technique, or used on others.

STRUCTURAL INTEGRATION Structural Integration is a unique, whole systems approach to connective-tissue manipulation and movement education created by the late biochemist and physiologist Dr. Ida P. Rolf. The work is defined by the intelligent process and guiding principles of rebalancing the human body in relation to itself and gravity.

It blends science (anatomy) with art (hands-on manipulation), allowing the practitioner to skillfully unwind the postural compensations and distortions that so often lead to chronic pain and physiological dysfunction.

THERMOGRAPHY Breast thermography is a painless, non-invasive clinical test that gives women the opportunity to increase their chances of detecting breast disease at an early stage. With this test, there is no contact with the body and no exposure to radiation. A breast tumor has often been growing 8 to 10 years before it is dense enough to show up on a mammogram. Thermography picks up physiological changes that are present in early stages of tumor growth, thereby giving women the opportunity to intervene years earlier to reverse changes and regain breast health.

THE TRAGER® APPROACH Utilizing gentle movements, The Trager® Approach helps release deep-seated physical and mental patterns and facilitates deep relaxation, increased physical mobility, and mental clarity.

These patterns may have developed in response to accidents, illnesses, or any kind of physical or emotional trauma, including stress. During the table work session, the client is moved by the practitioner in ways they naturally move and with a quality of touch such that the recipient experiences the feeling of moving effortlessly and freely on their own. This feeling is maintained and reinforced by Mentastics®, simple, self-induced movement that the client can do on their own, during their daily activities.

TAI CHI CHUAN The forms of Tai Chi Chuan are a traditional Chinese approach to exercise, meditation, and personal growth. Practiced both for health and self-defense, its graceful, flowing movements are beautiful, healthful, and powerful. Its practice promotes an inner calm and a tranquil attitude, enhancing self-awareness. Tai Chi springs from emptiness and is born of nature.

It is the source of motion and tranquility and the mother of Yin and Yang. The body weight or center of gravity of the practitioner sinks into the abdomen and trunk of the body, thus allowing more relaxed and deep breathing.

With the mind quieted, the heartbeat slows

YOGA Yoga is an ancient Indian practice that is a scientific system designed to bring the practitioner improved health, happiness, and sense of Self.

In Yoga, the body and mind are linked to create a state of internal peacefulness and integration.

At the practical level, and included in the contemporary definitions of Yoga, are the actual physiological/mental techniques themselves.

These techniques concentrate on posture and alignment, as well as creating a higher consciousness. Yoga utilizes stretching postures, breathing, and meditation techniques to calm the mind and the emotional state, and tone the body. healthy living – FALL / WINTER 08

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Mountain Laurel Waldorf School Parent-Child/Nursery/Kindergarten, Grades 1 - 8

Every Child Needs a Real Gifted & Talented Program In a truly balanced education program, each child finds many ways for his or her gifts and talents to shine. Even a child who zooms through "reading, writing, and arithmetic" needs a school that provides real challenges for growth in other dimensions. At Mountain Laurel Waldorf School, all students have the opportunity to do their best - not only in academic basics, but also to find their balance in a rich program of games, drama, speech, foreign languages, painting, clay modeling, orchestral and choral music, creative writing, knitting, woodwork...and much more. Waldorf Education, whole education for the head, heart and hands, includes more than 900 schools around the globe.

For more information, or to visit classrooms to see this unique approach to educational excellence, please give us a call.

OPEN HOUSE November 15, 2008 January 31, 2009, April 4, 2009 10 a.m. - noon 16 South Chestnut Street, New Paltz, NY 12561 R.S.V.P. 845-255-0033 www.mountainlaurel.org 48

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Advanced Manual Therapy with Progressive

& Lasting Results

Providing intelligent, sensitive & educative care through Structural Integration, the work of Dr. Ida Rolf.

Solution-oriented approach to: Benefits include: Chronic Pain • Neck/Back Pain Increased flexibility & range of motion Scoliosis • Nerve Entrapment • Whiplash More energy, less fatigue Pelvic Dysfunction Improved posture & structure Post traumatic stress & more Psychological growth

“I am very impressed with structural integration & have referred a lot of patients‌ including scoliosis patients. Structural integration is a wonderful method that can rehabilitate & reverse injuries.â€?

- Dr. Irene Grant

Certified & Licensed Practitioners

Ryan Flowers, LMT – Structural Integration / Visceral Manipulation Krisha Showalter, LMT – Structural Integration / Therapeutic Massage

Hudson Valley Structural Integration 26 E. Market St. • Rhinebeck, NY • 845.876.4654

www.hudsonvalleysi.com • www.theiasi.org

Integrated Health Care for Women Healing mind, body, and spirit combining traditional medical practice, clinical hypnotherapy, 12-step work, and Reiki energy healing. stress-related illness IZQFSUFOTJPO r BTUINB r IFBEBDIF r HBTUSPJOUFTUJOBM EJTUVSCBODF DISPOJD GBUJHVF r Ä— CSPNZBMHJB DISPOJD QBJO

anxiety/depression QBOJD r QIPCJB r JOTPNOJB

eating disorder, weight loss, and smoking cessation

Kristen Jemiolo, MD American Board of Family Medicine, Diplomate "NFSJDBO 4PDJFUZ PG $MJOJDBM )ZQOPTJT $FSUJÄ— DBUJPO 1PVHILFFQTJF

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High Ridge Traditional Healing Arts 針灸 中藥 推拿 氣功 食療 five healing paths

Since 1992, specializing in the treatment of pain

Carolyn Rabiner, L. Ac. Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine

87 East Market St. Suite 102 Red Hook, NY 845-758-2424 www.highridgeacupuncture.com

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FARE WELL

PHYSICAL (RE)EDUCATION

BY CHRISTINA KAMINSKI

A

ll of us suffer from a general inclination to misuse our bodies—with knees hyperextended, stomachs forward, and necks bent, we stand like paragons of ergonomic misjudgment. Just giving your posture some attention can inspire you to improve it. Among the first to study the relationship between thought and stance was the Shakespearean actor Matthias Alexander (1869-1955). Because he often lost his voice during long performance runs, Alexander used mirrors to observe himself. Lo and behold, he determined that he was pulling his head slightly backwards and down when speaking. Observation and self-correction allowed Alexander to economize his movements and eliminate bad habits. He coined the term “psychophysical unity” to describe this connection and formulated a set of principles that we now call the Alexander Technique.

Alexander Technique uses self-perception as a means of paring away the excess tension we habitually inflict upon ourselves. The goal of the technique is to re-educate along the lines of what we already know: We’ve spent our lives unlearning the relaxed posture, natural poise, freedom of movement, and easy breathing that we had when we were babies.

Judith Muir, who is a founding member of the North American Society for Teachers of

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the Alexander Technique and professor of theater at Bard College, points out that we sometimes create more tension by trying to relax than we would by simply being aware of our bodies. Regarding her own experiences with the technique, Muir says, “It has empowered me to change the way I move. Alexander Technique makes us look at our habits, or patterns of movement and thinking—most of us have lots of them and we are not conscious of them. When we become aware of those habits, we get an ‘Aha!’ moment, whether it’s slumping over the steering wheel or slouching at the computer, and we can choose to do something different.” Although the practice is most commonly recommended for actors, musicians, athletes, and convalescents, just about everyone can benefit from the kinds of adjustment Alexander encourages. Working with an Alexander coach is an excellent way to benefit from another pair of eyes (selfobservation can be difficult when trying to view the curvature of your own spine); and guidance and coaching can guarantee a successful and beneficial session.

As we endure another season of, alternately, repose and holiday stresses, practicing Alexander Technique can show us how to really spend more time inside—and get a lot more out of it.