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Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water
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Jessica Breton, L.Ac
February 18, 2013
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Jessica Breton, L Ac
Last week I had a treatment from Jessica Breton at my hospital/spa. She does acupuncture at the Supportive Care for Healing at U of A Cancer Center. I recently overcame my fear of needles to try acupuncture and am now a huge fan. It has had a very salubrious effect on me. I expect when one is very ill it might be super curative. Jessica is like the other practitioners I have met at the hospital, extremely competent. She has additional skills that she uses in her private practice that are not employed at the hospital. As my treatment progressed I already felt good, but when she commenced to to cranial sacral work while I wore my needles I just loved it. It was noticeable to me that this was only my third acupuncture treatment and I was relaxed and looking forward to the boost of euphoria that I now associate with it. I had a big fear of needles that had existed since early childhood. I still do not want anyone to give me a shot or take my blood, but these needles are really super friendly.
Jessica has a low key style that made me feel very relaxed. In fact, at one point I asked if the needles were still in because I had no sensation of them. The resulting effects were not subtle. I noticed a freeing and balanced feeling that I am starting to know comes from acupuncture. In her private practice she does cupping and moxa as well as Tui Na. These modalities are similar in that they diagnose by reading pulses and your tongue. They address the balance of chi in the meridians. Tui Na works on the ligaments to restore balance and order. Each can be powerful alone, but combined they make an effective treatment more beneficial for the body.
To reach Jessica for an appointment at Zylla Acupuncture in Tucson you can call 520-221-6559 or reach her at zhenpoints@gmail.com. She is punctual, polite and professional.
Do You Believe God Loves You?
February 16, 2013
Julia Sweeney of SNL fame performed the opening of her show “Letting Go of God” for this TED talk. She is witty and insightful as she talks about her childhood exposure to religion. We all had different parental models. My parents were not religious but they belonged to a church they rarely attended. They got the big idea that I needed to go to this Presbyterian church when I was about 11. They made no bones about the purpose of my Sunday school enrollment. It was punishment. I am not sure what the infraction was, but I was to atone by being a Sunday school student. It fully sucked. I successfully physically fought off my mother in the ladie’s room the first time she tried to leave me at Sunday school, but eventually I had to go for a couple of years. I even was baptized and confirmed at the same time, since in infancy I was not baptized. My overall impression is that it was a drag, but I do know some of the songs still today. I asked my father why I had to go and they did not. I always remember his answer. He said, “I believe in God, but not like that.” Why they thought I should be indoctrinated like that is still odd to me.
The Gossip Archetype
February 15, 2013
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If you have attended an elementary school you have been involved in gossip. Private information spreading is power for the gossip. It can have two distinct patterns running at the same time. Damaging or false information may be spread as well as flattering or promotional stories. This is a member of the creative family and can be considered to be artful and expressive. Dr. Phil and his ilk fit into this category. Networking can be a positive form of gossip designed to help others. To make the best of your own gossip within notice the news you spread and why you do it. To a certain extent we all make our own PR as well as our own self image. We spotlight or eliminate part of the story for effect, even if we are unconscious of it, and even in our memories.
How can the gossip teach us to respect the feelings of others? If you observe your own communication carefully you can spot trends. The shadow gossip my bring you news of all kinds, but it is not your job to share it. I know plenty of people who do not watch cable TV but are still influenced to believe what they are told, read, or hear. Due diligence is your friend when it comes to discernment and discretion. Know what you mean to say and why.
Punctuality, Politness, Professionalism
February 15, 2013
The the P’s have served me well as a guide since I first saw them on a sign in a panyard in Port of Spain, Trinidad. I hung out at the Neal and Massey Trinidad All Stars yard in the early 1980’s. I took my video camera and shot the practice sessions. I adored the look as well as the sound of the steel drum. The panman was just leaving the shadows of Trini society in the 1980’s. The Despers, The All Stars, and some other very old steel bands were representing very hard neighborhoods in Port of Spain. The idea that you could build an instrument out of an oil barrel and make a professional orchestra of people who did not read music was not yet considered to be a fine art by everyone.
I had some of the best times of my life at that yard. I remember Dane Gulston for his artistry and also his super friendly attitude. He was very young, but was already indoctrinated with the discipline of the All Stars. Dedication and cooperation are the ingredients needed to win in Panorama and in life. Today Pantrinbago oversees educational programs and the nation is proud of their indigenous instrument. Brooklyn has a large contingent of the best musicians for at least part of the year. In the above solo Dane ably demonstrates the benefits of practicing the three P’s.
Know too Much to Argue or to Judge
February 14, 2013
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The limits to your love are set by you. Finding fault is the opposite of finding love.
Do Not Mess with Cupid
February 13, 2013
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Apollo and Daphne
The myth of Daphne is an illustration of fate and revenge of the gods. She was part of cruel power play between two archers, Apollo and Eros. The proud Apollo bullied Eros who shot two arrows, one tipped in gold and the other in lead to find revenge. Eros, the son of Aphrodite enchanted his arrows to cause total lust and desire in the golden arrow victim, and total hatred in the recipient of the lead tipped arrow. Apollo was hit with the golden arrow, and the object of his desire, Daphne, was struck by the lead one. The struggle between lust and chastity is ended when Daphne turns into a laurel tree. She begged her father to transform her body forever in order to escape Apollo’s desire for her.
Eros is the god of sexual desire. He marries Psyche, a goddess/human representing the human soul. They have one daughter Hedone. Hedone is the quest for pleasure with only good consequences. The English word hedonism is derived from this word, but has a meaning far from the original. Eros is also known in Rome as Cupid. We know this god as a logo for Valentine’s Day, a time when we honor a Christian martyr by consuming mass quantities of cheap chocolate. Neither Valentine nor Cupid will be impressed nor honored with a mindless mandatory purchase of tacky gifts. That is neither pleasurable nor sexy. Eros, Apollo, Daphne, and Aphrodite are archetypes that exist in the human pantheon of possibility. Which one will you play on Valentine’s Day?
Genealogy is Like Crochet
February 12, 2013
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tatted doilie
My grandmother did tatting, a lace work done with a tiny plastic shuttle which produced doilies. I have a large variegated doilie that she made but it is in the closet. In my house it would be a big dust collector. When I was young I did crochet, embroidery and some knitting. I taught myself to sew at boarding school when I was 14. When I was 17 I learned to weave on a loom. I like the art and enjoyment of crafting things for my own fashion purposes. My mother was an advanced self styler creating matching hats, shoes and belts to go with her dresses. All of these activities are so satisfying until…..you make a mistake. Then you find there is only one way out of your predicament..rip it out and start again. The entire time you are ripping it out you must take care not to damage the materials, which requires that you not enter rip out rage too deeply. This was agony to me, so I became a potter. If you blow your creation before firing you simply quickly turn it back into mud. If my pots were ugly and I did not want them to live I put them in a bush in the desert and shot them with a 22 pistol. There was no ripping and remorse. A different kind of patience is required to make pots. You just accept that a certain percentage will fail and that is fine.
Last week I opened a message on Ancestry.com from a common descendant of Swain Smith. I am always happy to hear from my fam on Ancestry because they bring extra data and sometimes have documents and pictures to share. This cousin pointed out to me that I had an obvious error in my tree. Swain’s father married twice, and I had listed his mother as the second wife. Since he had been born before the second marriage my mistake was easy to spot. I have revised my tree, and now have no clue about the pedigree of Swain’s real mother. I can only rip out the branches of the tree that I built on a specious assumption and start again. I am so totally back in crochet world. I have to go back to the place where I skipped the loop of my 4th great-grandmother, Sarah Archer, born in New Jersey in 1787. She is my new mystery woman.
Sarah Archer (1787 – 1866)
is my 4th great grandmother
Husband of Sarah
Son of Henry and Sarah
Son of Swain
Daughter of Jerimiah
Son of Minnie M
Son of Ernest Abner
I am the daughter of Richard Arden
@Pontifex Punts
February 12, 2013
— 1 Comment
To tweet as the holy father of the Catholics was a much dirtier job than Benedict could ever have imagined. His twitter stream is full of everything that life contains, much of it funny and irreverent. Since he longhand wrote his tweets (in Latin?) and was assisted in the typing of 140 characters, we can only assume he did not read all his tweeps remarks to him. He kept a certain distance from his own stream, since this was the first papal twitter stream and had to be approached with caution. Ironically he is the oldest pontiff elected in 300 years, so his decision to enter social media was a little off beat. The Vatican social media experts will now need to make some decisions.
Does the handle stay with the office or will Benedict be tweeting as @Pontifex in his retirement? Will he start to type his own and read those of his tweeps? Is he finished with twitter? Will the tweeps be more kind to him now that he has end of life issues in public? Will the new Pope have a fan page and G+ account for hanging out? Will the Vatican social media presence develop customer service that wows Catholics back to church? Will prayers be launched to protect the church and the Pope from trolls? These and many other questions will face the new Pope. #Paxvobiscum.
One Step at a Time, Self Image
February 11, 2013
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Typically people want more of everything. Your ability to estimate is very closely related to your ability to execute. Risk has many faces. In the quest to be fit and healthy the biggest risk is burn out. I can say that with assurance because I have observed people in the earnest pursuit of better health for decades. Over this time the offers to remove symptoms have become overwhelming. Drugs, frozen prepaid meal plans, personal coaching, and one of the oldest, but still happening trends, the weight loss shake, are everywhere to assist the starving, overweight population.
In an effort to bypass the moment all systems are switched into deprivation mode. Suffering and tofu must follow as punishment for wild times at the Dairy Queen on the weekend. The disconnect between self image and soul is now almost complete. Confession and penance are the rituals that surround food and eating now. Joy, creativity and community are not in the food pyramid for many people because diet is presented as obsession, and denial of pleasure. The ancestors had to grow, gather, kill, render, store, dry, milk, and otherwise do something very basic in order to eat. They did not concern themselves with the calories contained in the food as much as they did with starvation. They were all constantly involved with the original exercise known as work. They did not drive to a gym or change outfits to do it. They picked up the tools of their various trades and worked physically. If they had a treadmill it was to run something, not to be run by it.
Aphrodite, Cupid’s Mother
February 10, 2013
— 17 Comments
Aphrodite
The Greek goddess Aphrodite was born from the sea near Cyprus. Some claim she had parents (Zeus and Dione), others say she sprouted up in the vicinity of the severed genitals of the Titan sky god Uranus. She walked ashore where she encountered the seasons who were beautiful, but had nothing to compare with the loveliness of Aphrodite. She was taken to meet Zeus at Mt Olympus who recognized her striking beauty and the power she wielded with it. He insisted that she marry immediately, and arranged a marriage to his son Hephaestus, blacksmith of the gods. He made her jewelry and even a fabulous girdle that made her even more desirable. She was pure attraction and her husband was busy making all the weapons for the gods, so she had several affairs with gods and mortals.
The Olympian gods took power from the Titan gods. Kronos, the son of Gaia and Uranus (Titans) removed his father’s genitals at his mother’s request and threw them into the sea. The ambiguity about the birth circumstances ( Did she spring up on the scallop shell as an (un?)intended consequence of the disposal of Uranus’ genitals ?) cloud her relationship to the gods of Mt. Olympus. Her full-time job is love, desire, and the attraction that draws people together. This naturally lead her to attract Ares, the god of war, to her bed. She had many children, but none with Hephaestus. Her most well-known child is Eros, also known as Cupid. He too has parentage issues, but some say he is the son of Ares. It reminds me of all those WWII movies in which they are at war, so they fall in love.
Get your red dress out for Valentine’s Day , but give a nod to the mother of all desire. Consider wearing some very sexy sea foam green panties as your foundation.
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