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Be it allergies, insomnia, or just about any other health complaint, Chinese medical wisdom and herbal formulas can help. If you don’t have the time or inclination to get a full acupuncture treatment, consider contacting Dixie for a phone consult. The cost of $60 includes an interview, suggested regimen, and 4 weeks of follow up.
Tell her what ails you and she can tell you what you need to do and then you can come by the clinic and pick up your herbs during regular business hours, or in some circumstances have them delivered to your home
You can contact Dixie by email here or text at 512.963.8333. To help speed things along please let her know what is going on in as much detail as you want when you contact her.
In terms of ongoing care, we strongly encourage any client using our herbs or other health regimens to review their regimen with their practitioner every 4 to 6 weeks.

Freedom is an enticing, perhaps elusive, concept to most of us. We know we want it but we are not even sure what it would look like. What is apparent is that few of us feel like we are truly experiencing it right now.

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves.
Thich Nhat Hahn

There are many things that can prevent us from experiencing freedom in our day to day lives, one important factor is trauma. To be clear, trauma is not an event or series of events in our lives but rather our reaction to those events. For one person an event may me extremely traumatic and for another completely inconsequential. What is relevant is that most of us have trauma that we carry locked in our bodies and it affects all aspects of our health both physical and mental. Because trauma affects how we perceive and interact with the world, it can be a profound constraint on our ability to live freely. In his groundbreaking new book The Myth of Normal, author Gabor Mate argues compellingly that the very nature of our current culture is inherently traumatic. Mate builds upon the work of visionaries such as Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, and explores the way our experiences get trapped in our bodies, deeply affecting our health and well being.

It is clear now that trauma is physiological, it is in our bodies, therefore somatic therapies are essential to recovery. Polyvagal theory demonstrates that the trauma we experience becomes ingrained as postural habits. The dorsal vagal, fight, flight, or flee/freeze, response is encoded in our bodies with a forward projected head, slumped shoulders, and tight chest. It is important to note that this posture is overly common in our society due to overuse of computers. There is strong evidence to suggest that this posture can be acquired through habitual body use patterns and then take on the appearance of trauma in our life. Trauma tends to negatively affect our perception such that we perceive threats when they are not there which then goes on to reinforce our traumatic, disregulated outlook.

The good news is that we can access the embodied trauma we carry through somatic therapies such breath work and trauma informed manual therapy. Much healing can also be achieved through mindfulness meditation and movement therapies such as Tai Chi, qigong, and yoga.

If you are interested in deepening your healing journey and unlocking trauma patterns in your body, please consider contacting Devon here to discuss a strategy that best suits your needs.

Our ability to breath is the fundamental basis of life, it is an expression of our autonomy as an organism, and it is a powerful bridge between the voluntary and involuntary functions of our body. Our ability to breathe is affected by the external environment such as allergens and poor air quality. Unfortunately, our ability to control our external environment is limited. Fortunately, our ability to breathe is also greatly affected by a number of internal circumstances which we have a lot of control over.

Poor postural habits and unconscious, inefficient’ breathing habits greatly inhibit many people’s ability to breath properly. This, in turn, has a negative effect on body function and emotional state. Poor breathing habits can impair intestinal and metabolic function and contribute significantly to perceived stress, which in turn contributes to anxiety and depression.

Adding a 10 minute, simple, deep breathing exercise to your daily routine can significantly improve both your physical and mental health. Try this simple practice: Lying on you back on a mat or other comfortable surface bend your knees and rest your feet flat on the mat. Put your hands gently on your belly just below your navel. Expand your belly and use this expansion to draw your breath into your body, taking a full, relaxed, deep breath. As your lungs fill with air gently release your belly and allow the exhale to come out naturally as your abdomen descends. Repeat this process at a comfortable pace for ten minutes (set a timer). Try and keep your breath cycle relaxed continuous, with no holding or tension. Be gentle with yourself, this practice may be simple but it is not necessarily easy. When you are done gently rub your hands together and then rub your face to bring yourself back. Slowly get up and go about your day feeling relaxed and renewed.

If you would like to go further with improving your breathing or exploring breath work as a healing modality please book a manual therapy appointment with Devon here.

Men, Improve Your Health Now It is a fact that most men ignore their health until they are sick or hurt. They may work out to stay ‘fit’ but do very little to protect or improve their overall health. Health is much more than basic fitness. It is a comprehensive state of being encompassing our body, internally and externally, and our mind. It is much more much about how we feel and function than how we look. It is important for all of us to realize that, in regards to health, it is much better to be proactive. In order to keep your health in perspective, you should ask yourself on a regular basis: How do I feel? Am I at peace? Am I physically capable to a degree that makes me feel confident and competent in my day to day life, in an emergency? Are there any areas of my life with which I am dissatisfied? What can I do to improve them? Some of these questions may stir up some concern, maybe even a bit (or a lot) of overwhelm. Keep in mind that it is NEVER too late to turn things around. The first step is accepting where you are, the next is acknowledging where you want to be. Then you must chart a course. Health is a path not a place. Once we acknowledge where we are and where we would like to be, we can begin to chart a course. Typically the trick to success is to improve your trajectory by making small adjustments, corrections, and improvements although sometimes dramatic course corrections are necessary. There are multiple areas of our lives that constitute our overall health, metabolic function, diet, fitness, psycho-emotional state, and sexual well-being are a few important ones. It is best if we look at each of the areas and determine what needs to change. Making small, incremental, disciplined changes to our lifestyle can move us into a trajectory of improved health and increased satisfaction in life. If you are having difficulty determining what are your best steps forward consider booking a health consultation with Devon. You can meet in person or virtually. You can book an appointment here.

Aging, What It Is and What It Is Not Aging is often positively associated with increased wisdom, clarity of purpose, and increased responsibility which helps give meaning to our lives. Aging does not have to be marked by increased pain, weight gain, loss of strength, worsened metabolic function, lower hormonal production or any other of the long list of ills we can end up resigning ourselves to. Many of the health issues we associate with aging are actually the result of lifestyle habits we have adopted as we age and are reversible when we make the right adjustments. If you would like to get a handle on the many factors of healthy aging consider booking an appointment to talk to Devon here.

Prostate Health One age related health complaint men often need to address at some point is prostate health. An enlarged prostate can disturb our sleep and become an annoying inconvenience during the day with frequent trips to the bathroom. Prostate health is complicated but simple steps like supplementing your diet with beta sisterol and limiting your refined carbohydrate intake often make a big difference. If you are struggling you may also want to consider trying the most recent addition to our herbal tincture formulas here at the clinic. Kai Kit San is a powerful formula which is used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat the root causes of prostate and urinary dysfunction. Our first batch will be ready in about a week. Order some for pick up at the clinic here. We will let you know when it is ready.

Let’s Talk About Sex A healthy sex life is often an integral part of a man’s wellness. The stresses of life and other metabolic and environmental factors can greatly reduce our sex drive and can even effect our ability to perform sexually through erectile dysfunction. Appropriate sleep, proper nutrition, hormonally intelligent exercise programs, and stress management techniques are all important tools to help us get to the right place but sometimes they are not enough. We have two valuable formulas at the clinic to help. Vigor is designed to increase sex drive and enhance your enjoyment of sex. It is derived from an ancient Chinese tonic that has been used for centuries with impressive results. Vigor XL is designed to go above and beyond by enhancing blood flow to the penis and thereby overcoming the common cause of erectile dysfunction. You can order both of these formulas online for pick up at the clinic here – Vigor and Vigor XL.

In Classical Chinese medicine, we organize phenomena into five phases of existence, these phases have elemental correspondences of fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. This method of organization allows us to analyze and see patterns in the human body and our external environment.

The metal element is of great importance at this point in history, in terms of our individual health and society as a whole. Within the correspondence of the metal element, we have the lungs which connect to respiration and immunity. In this time of widespread respiratory illness and social unrest, we can use the five-element system to understand our situation and gain insights on how to move forward.

In the virtue healing system of Wang Fengyi, we learn that the lungs/metal element can be injured by holding on to irritation. With this in mind and considering how divisive our society, and the world at large, has become there is no wonder that we are faced with a global outbreak of respiratory illness. Our intolerance leaves us rejecting the very humanity of our neighbors just because of differing priorities and viewpoints. Much like an allergic reaction, we are rejecting people, ideas, and perspectives due to a hyperactive sensitivity to what we perceive as threats when in fact they should be welcomed as opportunities to expand our perspective and our world.

The five element system teaches us that we can nurture the fortitude necessary to balance our metal element by engendering trust (earth element) and we can control the excesses by fostering our propriety/politeness (fire element). We can take deep breaths, practice compassion and generosity, do qigong and taiji, and seek to see the divine in every living creature that we meet.

Not from rain recoiling
Not from wind
Neither recoiling from snow nor summer’s heat
One who is sound in body
Is free from greed
And never resorts to anger
Ever with a quiet smile
Subsisting on plain and simple fare
A little whole rice, miso, and a few vegetables
Taking little account of himself
Who has seen the world, understood it well
And bears in mind its nature constantly
Living alone in a small thatched hut
In the shade of a pine grove by a field
Learning of a sick child in the east
He sets off there to nurse the child
Learning of weary mother in the west
He sets off there to toil in the fields for her
Learning that someone is dying in the south
He sets off there to say “don’t be frightened”
Learning of a fight or dispute in the north
He sets off there to talk of peace and
the meaningless of animosity
Shedding tears in times of drought
At a loss when the harvest threatened by cold
Called a good-for-nothing by the people
Praised by no one
Yet a burden to none
Such a person, I wish to be

Miyazawa Kenji 1896-1933

translation from the Japanese by Edward & Junko Giorgilli