Stress is related to 99% of all illness. How we handle stress can greatly impact our health and well being. Some stress in life is a good thing- it can spur us on to be more resourcefulness and creative, it keeps us engaged and interested. Sometimes there is not much we can do to reduce the amount of stress in our life. We have to work with the thing we can control- how we respond to that stress.

We develop patterns of response over the course of our life. Vulnerable areas and systems in our body eventually feel the effects of stress. It may be our immune system or our muscular skeletal system, many people develop digestive troubles, others feel anxiety with a racing heart. These patterns can become deeper and more intractable.

Western medicine treats the symptoms that we experience and that can be very important.

Alternative and traditional medicine is more likely to work on the cause of our symptoms- how we are coping with stress- and it can disrupt the patterns that have developed and encourage us to respond in new ways with different results. It works on the mind and body and doesn’t differentiate.

It offers help for people who are having trouble digesting food and at the same time works on the tendency to worry, which is mental indigestion, the inability to break things down into absorbable parts or actionable items and to just keep going round and round. The same treatment helps mental or physical indigestion, and helps a person bring change into their life by cultivating the capacity to address what is wrong on a deeper level.

Impacting a person’s energetic system, with tiny needles in acupuncture, or a limpia, a ritual cleansing, or a temezcal, a ritual sweatlodge in Oaxacan Traditional Medicine can awaken a person’s own ability to heal. It is like saying- “hey, try something else, find a new way of looking at things that brings more joy, less pain and constriction, more of a sense of possibility.”

To feel better, mentally, physically, and emotionally, we have to do things differently. We can’t keep doing things the same way and expect a different result. Sometimes it requires breaking out of our comfort zone and trying something new to break out of an old pattern.

Just taking a break, traveling to a new area, being with a group of supportive people, and tapping into a sense of magic and spirit can be a great encouragement to learn new ways of coping with stress and new ways of being that bring more health, happiness, and freedom. Join me for a transformational journey!