June Special
Usher in the start of summer with a refreshing lemongrass and salt foot bath. Then experience an exfoliating garshana followed by a rosemary, basil, and peppermint aromatherapy massage. Finish with a one hour custom facial. $220
Get Your Nails Minxed
Our airport location, located on Concourse C between gate C-10 and C-12 at The Portland International Airport, is adding nail services to the menu. We’ve chosen to forgo the typical chemical laden and smelly nail polish of old in favor of a completely new and unique product in nail fashion. The Dragontree is using Minx nails, a glamorous product that lets environmentally conscious customers stay green and chemical free while extending fashion to their fingertips. The nail wraps are cut to the shape of the nail, put on with heat, and last as long as a typical manicure- 5 to 7 days.
Minx comes in a variety of colors and patterns to express your style. We are also offering a shine finish – buffing your nails until they literally shine! Great thing about either finish is that there is NO dry time – no smudging, chipping, or dinging your newly detailed digits. So you’ll be able to catch your flight with no nail worries.
We love the product, and our clients are loving the results (and so are we – see pic)
The Big Picture, Part Six
Dr. Peter Borten, LAc, DAOM
In the past five months I have discussed the impressively broad range of factors that impact human health – or, more accurately, human experience. (you can read the previous installments here) We can be affected by anything and everything. Opening our perception to the breadth of the world’s influence stokes our fascination with life. It keeps us engaged and connected. It helps us understand why our life is the way the it is, and how to bring about change.
Last month, I introduced a foundational concept on how we influence and are influenced by our surroundings: resonance. It is the phenomenon that causes sound to be conducted through solid objects. And in a broader sense, it’s one way that energy spreads. It allows a certain feeling or quality can be transmitted within and between individuals.
The old saying "You are what you eat" might be more accurately stated as "You are what you experience," because it’s really the entirety of our experience, everything we encounter – not just our food choices – that shapes our lives. Our experience includes all we consume, all that happens to us, and all that we think and feel. In every moment, we have an opportunity to shape our life through how we guide our experience. We have some choice in the kinds of thoughts and emotions we cultivate, what we do to our bodies, the environment we live in, the people we invite into our lives, and the media we consume.
There is a qualitative difference between the Qi ("chee" – life energy) of broccoli and the Qi of a piece of candy. To me, the Qi of a living thing (or a recently living thing) is palpable, whereas I find it hard to feel the Qi of a highly processed food like candy. In order to develop sensitivity to the vitality in food, all you really need to do is eat a clean, pure diet in a relaxed and present way for a while. This sensitivity can also be greatly enhanced by the practice of Qi Gong or other meditative arts. As one might expect, foods with livelier Qi tend to have the effect of enlivening our own Qi, and foods that are more energetically "dead" tend to diminish our vitality. Many things that are technically edible (like Coca Cola) don’t actually feel like food on an energetic level, because they degrade life more than they sustain it.
Similar qualitative variations are detectible in all other facets of life, and we can develop our ability to perceive these, too. For instance, if we bring our awareness to the influence of various media, it becomes clear that a large portion of newspapers articles, movies, radio shows, and television programs have a degrading influence on our consciousness (and, therefore, on our entire being). According to a study by the UCLA Center for Communications Policy, sixty-one percent of television programs contain some violence. Violence is a rare thing in most people’s lives, yet we habitually expose ourselves to it through our media. Most adults have seen thousands of murders on TV – by choice!
A common rationale people give for reading, listening to and repeating tragic stories is the necessity of staying informed. In actuality, there is very little utility in keeping up with misfortune and deadly events. If our consumption of violent media is not purposeful, it is destructive. It is like eating a rich dessert (though much less satisfying): if we choose to consume it, we should stop the moment we have had enough. Much of the gratuitous violence in media is passed off as art. Who am I to say what is and isn’t art? I just know that it’s toxic. When we begin to perceive the qualitative differences in the things we invite into our lives, it becomes easier to make choices that support us.
Not only do external energies cause resonance within us, our own bodies influence our thoughts and emotions, and our thoughts and emotions influence our bodies. Physical structures like muscle and bone are at the gross end of the spectrum, and thoughts are at the subtle, intangible end of the spectrum. Emotions and sensations are somewhere in between, as our experience of them is kind of physical (we sometimes call them "feelings,"), yet they are invisible and frequently difficult to grasp.
If we have a persistent thought, such as, I'm messing up my life, this can be understood as producing a particular tone at a subtle (nonphysical) level. If we think this thought quite frequently, we resonate at the same tone or waveform over and over. Eventually, this resonance will tend to affect Qi at a more gross level. This could be experienced as an emotion – perhaps an enduring feeling of shame. If this emotional tone persists or has a relatively loud "volume" (it's felt strongly), it is likely to resonate beyond the emotional plane to yet a grosser level. Then it becomes a physical pattern. At this point, we may experience I'm messing up my life as tight muscles, an ulcer, or a headache. Through this mechanism, in a very literal way, our anger can equal our shoulder pain.
The same progression can proceed from the physical to the nonphysical. For example, making ourselves smile, laugh, or dance (physical expressions) can engender positive emotions and thoughts. Also, just as energy resonates through us, so does stagnation have a way of spreading through us. Stagnant Qi on any level tends to clog our flow on all levels. If we have a very sedentary life, this causes physical stagnation, or congestion of Qi, at a gross level. Eventually this will impede Qi flow at a more subtle level. Thus, physical stagnation often leads to mental and emotional stagnation in the form of depression or mental dullness. Another common example of the progression of stagnation is when we have a physical health problem, it often develops into a persistent mental and emotional response (for example, It’s not fair and anger). For this reason, I always tell my depressed patients to do some physical movement to indirectly mobilize the mind. An unfortunate aspect of this mechanism is that mental or emotional stagnation can make us feel physically lethargic and uninspired to move.
In reality, the progression of resonance and stagnation is not so linear. A pattern may originate on any level and spread to any other level, and it's often instantaneous. We could hear some bad news and within seconds our heart stops. We could smell a flower, feel joyful, and immediately be without pain.
The patterns (recurrent thoughts, emotions, and ways we use our body) that persist the most tend to be destabilizing or guide us away from a state of balance. There are two main reasons for this. First, in an imbalanced state, we are more likely to make unclear choices that further undermine our stability. Second, we resist the patterns that feel bad, and, rather than hastening their resolution, this strengthens our relationship with them.
On the other hand, some tones resonate through us in a way that promotes balance, or is uplifting and healing. These can come from experiences such as love, admiration, achievement, connecting with community or a higher power, and practices such as yoga, singing, deep breathing, and exchanging compassionate touch. In the same way that destabilizing factors tend to cause a cascade of imbalance, these healing factors can give us an experience that is so powerfully inspiring, we want to do whatever we can to stay in this zone. Indeed, it is our birthright. As a healthcare practitioner, this is the kind of experience I want most for my patients.
Until next time, I encourage you to be sensitive, to listen and feel for the qualitative differences between various foods, activities, thoughts, people. Think about what your soul wants for you, watch the choices you make, and see where they take you.
Be well,
Peter and Everyone at The Dragontree
The Dragontree Welcomes a new Acupuncturist: Brenda Harris LAc
Influenced by the power of nature while growing up in the Northwestern countryside, Brenda deepened her interest in the relationship between nature, wellness, and medicine at Bastyr University and National College of Naturopathic Medicine where she studied Naturopathic and Classical Chinese Medicines. Brenda focused on Acupuncture, Eastern and Western Herbal Medicine, Nutrition and Massage as well as obtaining certification in Qigong and Craniosacral therapy. Brenda uses a combination of these modalities in each therapeutic session to treat a wide range of health concerns and to address imbalances before they manifest as illness. She offers personal and group Qigong and Taiji instruction to keep healthy energy moving.
Brenda teaches Chinese and Alternative Medicine courses at University of Portland Nursing Program and serves as guest lecturer at PSU International Studies Nursing Department. For these audiences she draws upon her undergraduate education in Scientific Interpretation and Speech Communication to integrate Eastern theory and language with Western concept and definition.
