April Newsletter Topics:

ASLTV thanks you! | April’s Amazing Specials | Upcoming Events | April Chinese Medicine Tips for Self-Healing | Simple Monthly Home Practice | New classes | Schedule Changes | Workshops | Practitioner Spotlight | Words of Wisdom this month

Upcoming Events

New Adult Classes

New Kids Classes

ASLTV thanks you!

Shakti’s Elements very own Zi Malonga and Rob Hoffman traveled to Sri Lanka last month to continue with the relief efforts of ASLTV (Aide to Sri Lankan Tsunami Victims). We wanted to thank all for their generosity and inform you of how your money was spent. We are thrilled to report the village of Navalladi is thriving. This time last year, water, food, and employment were unavailable. Thanks to your contributions they are now a self-sustaining community who has reclaimed their place in the fishing industry (For more info on our other projects, please visit our site www.dartone.org).

ASLTV has begun a new project of sponsoring the education of children in an orphanage in Kegalle, Sri Lanka. If you would like to be more involved with this project, please contact us at (310) 576-2008.

April’s Amazing Specials

BRAND NEW BIOFEEDBACK MACHINE: THE L.I.F.E. SYSTEM

Get biofeedback on each and every cell. According to research, stress accounts for at least 90% of all illnesses. Stressors in the body can be manifested through common ailments like digestive disorders, hormonal imbalances and obesity. The L.I.F.E. System has the power to read your body through sophisticated computerized biofeedback mechanisms and empower you to get back into balance. It contains many different therapy possibilities including light, colour and sound therapy, sports injury, cell com tri vector bicom mora type therapy and more…

Special Offer: 50% off consultation and treatment ($400 value for $200). Each session minimum of 1hr 45 mins.

THE ACUPUNCTURE ADVANTAGE

Receive 50% off of any introductory session with Julie Festa, L.Ac.
First time clients only

April Self-Healing Tips
----Let Your Liver Know How Much You Luv’er

written by: Julie Festa, L.Ac.

Chinese Nutritional

The ancient Chinese taoist sages were rumored to have eaten a small handful of Gou Qi Zi every day to ensure longevity and good health. Now in April 2006 these gems of good health have made a come back into our modern culture of well-being and prevention. Goji berries play an especially delicious role in an empowering and nourishing diet at this time of year, for Spring is the time to love, cleanse, and nourish your liver. One of the most important roles of a healthy liver is to fight off and protect against stress and nervous tension. Eating a small amount of Goji berries regularly is an excellent way to help you do just that. Tibetan Goji berries in particular are grown with care and without pesticides, so go ahead and step into your local health food store, walk on over to Dragon Herbs, or jump online to himalania.com and reach through the millennia for your handful right now.

Goji berries contain all 8 essential amino acids, and they have 18 amino acids total. They also contain up to 21 trace minerals and boast vitamins B1, B2, B6, and vitamin E as well as 500 times the amount of the anti-oxidant vitamin C than oranges have per ounce. This makes Goji berries one of the most profound sources of vitamin C on earth. It has also been shown that Goji berries contain many important polysaccharides that help boost immune system response. From a Chinese medical perspective, these berries can help strengthen eyesight and brighten the eyes; they help alleviate sore legs and back, clarify blurry vision, and treat dizziness.
Suggestions for use: Goji berries can be added to smoothies and cereal (hot or cold); you can add them to recipes for cookies and muffins, use them in trail mix, or boil them for tea. Try sneaking them into stir-fry and other savory dishes or use them as a substitute for raisins. Of course, you can always just eat a small handful anytime for a snack or treat.

Acupressure & Wellness

An amazing way to invite Spring’s energy into the body and support your liver is to take brisk walks early in the morning. This activates the muscles and sinews, and awakes and refreshes the Qi. It is said that viewing the bright green color of fresh young plants nourishes the soul. In Chinese medical theory, the Liver is the organ that houses the soul and opens to the eyes. When our souls are being fed, we need less in the material world to feel well-being and fulfillment. That means we need to take in less food, and we are less overcome in general by excessive desires. In this culture that continually drives us to do and be more, Spring’s gentle antidote might be as simple as rising early and walking somewhere green with the first light of day.

With the extra walking, there’s always a chance that in addition to feeling gratitude and fulfillment in your soul, you might feel some fatigue and soreness in your feet. Liver 3, Tai Chong, is an excellent point to massage in order to soothe tired feet, nourish the Liver yin and blood, restore fluidity to the Liver qi, clear the head, and regulate menstruation (for women). LR 3’s Chinese medical benefits include the ones listed above, as well as treating lumbar pain, weakness of the knees, pain in the leg, and inability to walk, alleviating vomiting and nausea, constipation, diarrhea, amenorrhea, improving urinary difficulty, treating sighing, abdominal pain, insomnia, headache, and helping to control hypertension.

Tai Chong, or Great Surge as it is called in English, is located on the top of the foot. To locate it, place a finger where the webbing begins between your big toe and the next one over. Run your finger up the space between those two metatarsal bones (the long bones that make up the longest part of the foot) toward the ankle until you feel a pronounced depression just before the place where the two bones meet. This is Liver 3, and it is probably sensitive to light pressure.

Suggestion: Go ahead and start massaging Liver 3; try the left foot first and then the right. Give it at least 5 minutes on each foot, and remember to breathe! – especially if it is tight and sore.

Julie Festa, L.Ac., MTOM, is a licensed acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist who has a private practice at Shakti’s Elements

Simple Monthly Home Practice

Written by Judith Scott

In my college years, decades ago, I was introduced to yoga at the tiny school I attended in St. Louis. Our teachers were sophisticates from New York and we, most of us from the midwest, had no idea what yoga was. 'Extra curriculars' were de riguer. Yoga was definitely not the norm. In the mid 90's after moving to Los Angeles, I began to take yoga a little more seriously and fell under the wise containment of Saul David Raye. Since then it has been a part of my life… so much so that I cannot imagine what my body might even feel like without it. I'm fond of camel pose. In fact, I crave camel pose. After a long day of sitting in traffic or dodging the psychic energies of a vata driven city, a few moments of camel is the perfect anecdote to a closed off throat and chest. I sleep a little better and don't wake up crumbled over like someone clinging to driftwood.
Camel pose. Don't go to sleep without it.

To get into camel pose:

Practitioner Spotlight

This month we are featuring Judith Scott, who wrote this months Simple Home Practice for us.

Judith has been practicing yoga with increasing lightness for nearly 10 years. She is a professional actress making her living here in Los Angeles. A native of nowhere she has moved upwards of 300 times in her little life. You can see Judith alongside

Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling in Newline films FRACTURE in 2007. When not acting, or doing yoga, she enjoys cooking, reading and talking to her dog.

Monthly Words of Wisdom:

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; It is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; It does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.

So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

I Corinthians 13:1-13

Workshops

Schedule Changes

Saul David Raye Yoga
All Levels
Added Fridays 10:30-12:15pm
www.thaiyoga.com

 

Evan Kopelson Yoga
All Levels
Saturdays 4:30-6:00pm

Psalm Isadora Yoga
Seva Sundays with Live Sitar
All Levels
Sundays 10:30-12:15pm

Kickboxing
High energy cardio workout class for weight loss, toning and sculpting
Tuesdays and Thursdays
6-7pm