2012: Full of Newness....

Here we go again - re-defining our look, our web presence, and our services. Without necessarily intending it, one thing just always seems to lead to another. So deciding to have our website redesigned then led to a new logo design, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages, and a re-clarifying of our goals and services at Middle Way Health.

What we learned (or re-learned) along the way is that doing a new website is also a process of self-discovery. What comes to the surface is often surprising, but always beneficial if you know what to do with it. We learned – among other things - how well we compromise and share ideas, how well we actually collaborate, and what we really want to achieve.

Individually and as a team, we want to help others make sense of the world, gain a healthier perspective about their role in it, and create more positive, healthful interactions from day to day. We want to help people heal and give them the tools to continue doing so. But in order to do this, we each have to sweep away what is clouding our vision and no longer serving us. Sometimes this is a fresh start, other times just a good, deep spring cleaning. So we took a collective look at what people need most right now (us included), such as cleaning out cobwebs, relishing the sacred space, and creating positive momentum for our lives.

We’ve been at our new location across from McKinley Park a year now and we’re taking it to a new level. Our new website and social media tools are ways to connect with the community near and far, but they’re also symbols of our new collaboration and expanded vision. We all have to work together to make anything happen – whether it’s a website, business or relationship, and this requires communication, patience, effort and understanding.

Expanding our online presence is also about presenting ourselves more to the world and letting people know what we’re doing at Middle Way Health. We are happy to say that we have some pretty unique features and offer a combination of wellness services that is truly a collaborative, coordinated, one-of-a-kind effort. Newly-expanded programs include:

Embodied Mind Therapies

Embodied Mind Therapies involve the mind-body connection and the empowerment that comes from it. Embodiment means "awakening the body" and much of this is done by arousing the senses, for our sensory experiences create our connection with the world. Thus, it is through them that we can feel truly alive, balancing both mind and body. Examples of Embodied Mind Therapies include Biofeedback, Mindfulness Meditation, Hypnotherapy, and Health & Self-Care.

Biofeedback is the safe and gentle process of learning self-regulation of physical and mental processes, from which we can become much more in charge of our everyday wellbeing. Mindfulness Meditation is defined as moment by moment nonjudgmental attention to what is happening. Through sitting still and being alert we settle our mind and body and develop clarity, balance and focus. It is taught one on one through private interview or an eight-week group-setting course “Mindfulness and Movement.” Hypnotherapy is an ancient technique that uses deep relaxation coupled with positive suggestions to reinforce positive habits and extinguish negative habits. And Health & Self-Care is about the healthy balance of outlook, lifestyle, diet and exercise with psychological and spiritual growth.

Spiritual Guidance & Mentoring

Also offered by Middle Way Health practitioners is Spiritual Guidance & Mentoring, which we feel is becoming increasingly necessarily during these challenging, uncertain times. Under this multi-faceted umbrella fall Buddhist Psychotherapy, Shamanic Healing and Soul Retrieval, and Dream Life Designing. Buddhist Psychotherapy explores the human condition from both a personal and transpersonal side, using the meditative traditions of mindfulness and yoga. The goal of Shamanic Healing is to bring the human spirit into harmony. And Dream Life Designing is geared for anyone ready to take a more deliberate role in the design of their life. It includes Expressive Writing Coaching, which guides you along a simple but profound pathway of self-discovery, where you learn to analyze thoughts, obtain ‘Ah-ha’s and clarify desires.

What We Aim to Provide at Middle Way Health:

A Sense of Place = To help you connect with where you are and feel a sacredness about it.
Nonjudgmental Awareness = A safe space to reveal fears and frustrations, and identify their source.
Expanded Outlook = The fostering of healthy perspectives and expectations that are not limited by the broken record of the mind.
Options & Opportunities = The right to find the freedom you possess and exercise it beneficially.
Support & Guidance = Knowledgeable and intuitive assessments that are aligned with your current pace and progress.

Please stop by and visit our website at www.MiddleWayHealth.com. Your feedback is appreciated and we hope to connect with you in person soon!

Sincerely,
Stephen, Judy & Melanie

Collaboration

When I headed out to meet Lama Jinpa for our regular Tuesday meeting it was a cold teaser of a morning, with the sun trying to get through the hazy clouds after a weeklong storm spell. When LJ greeted me at the threshold of his office, I noticed he was wearing all black and a lot more hair than this time last year. It didn’t take me long, either, to sense a certain impatience about him – something I likened to crabbiness and he equated to edginess - the difference between the two, as he put it, being an “anxiousness to make things happen.”

On this day, the priority of our collaboration (understanding, respect and cooperation) was to create a column that would serve as a soundboard for Lama Jinpa’s psychotherapy practice Middle Way Health, his Buddhist meditations and ruminations, his Middle Way workshops, our book projects and the miscellaneous happenings currently encircling us (for instance, the Dalai Lama’s visit to Sacramento in 2010). And somewhere in there as well, we decided - perhaps too subtle to detect - would be a sprinkling of my thoughts and perspectives on the experiences.

But where to begin the introductions, I wondered? How to begin updating our readers on the happenings of the collaboration between myself and LJ?! I suppose one simply begins by recognizing a pivotal moment in time… It all started a few years ago when I was writing my very first article for Midtown Monthly. I chose a complementary health clinic Downtown and Lama Jinpa was one of the only practitioners there to return my call. Never mind the fact that the article went to print with the words ‘complementary’ and ‘complimentary’ sloppily interchanged throughout, Lama la saw something of substance in it. And when the time came for him to begin writing his first book a couple of years later, he called upon me… and so began the beginning of a very fruitful working relationship. Since then, we’ve partnered on the creation of a newsletter and a series of workshops, and have collaborated on a plethora of projects, including both a fiction and nonfiction book.

Often, community (cooperation, collaboration, kindness) begins when the simplest of equations – like two people – have a multiplying effect that produces benevolent thought and action. Meaning, we work together because we have similar visions for the good of our own lives and the betterment of the greater good. Yet it’s all cyclical, it’s all connected… so the consequences of and reactions to our actions always somehow come back to us.

Lama Jinpa teaches me how to make sense of, make peace with, design and harmonize my own life. I in turn reiterate and write about this knowledge so that together we can share it creatively within our communities. It’s a balancing act that helps us reach our potential as individuals, hopefully do the world some good and fuel our own fires so we keep heading in a healthy direction.

Being open and honest with ourselves and each other, being lighthearted but focused, being complete by being balanced… Life doesn’t have to be as hard as we often make it. We don’t have to choose to live by extremes. There’s a much easier, kinder, gentler way… and it resides within the vast, magical and practical space between the extremes ~ The Middle Way.