Tag: balance

Finding your Middleway

Written by Ann Zimmerman on May 20, 2013. Posted in Immune Health and Balance.

by Ann Zimmerman, LAc.

In a time when we are constantly feeling pulled between the desires to get more done and to relax, finding the “middle” is an ongoing daily effort. To find your personal balance point between more or less is to find your “way.”

When trying to understand the concept of balance, it is helpful to approach it through very simple questions. For example, is it good to never eat or to eat all the time? No. The pendulum here can swing from gorging yourself to starving yourself. Those are the two extremes of the pendulum: the yin and the yang, expansion and contraction, and non-doing and doing. If you are in balance, you eat when it is time to eat in a way that maintains the health of your body. To do otherwise is to waste energy dealing with the effects of eating too little, too much, or eating the wrong foods for you.

Extreme behaviors begin to carve grooves in our landscape that we get stuck in. As a result, we spend much of our energy on the effects of the extreme behaviors. Our extremes teach us what imbalanced behavior patterns feel like and why we do not always stay up super late or eat the whole chocolate cake. I love the saying, “Everything in moderation, including moderation.” My 99 year old great Aunt Dot attributes her long life to this saying.

Wired & Tired

Written by Ann Zimmerman on October 4, 2011. Posted in Immune Health and Balance, Mental and Emotional Health, Stress and Fatigue.

WIRED AND TIRED

by Ann Zimmerman, LAc.

The combination of feeling both wired and tired is one that we see daily in our clinic and seems to be a current cultural trend. Many of us, especially women, tend to have trouble unwinding or being restful, even at night. The combination of symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, and insomnia are way too common.

Our culture considers success to be a measure of how much we can get done in a day or how much money can be made. This fast pace combined with the ups and downs of life’s stress has many people feeling wired and tired.

In Chinese medicine the inability to rest, to be still or to sleep well at night is a reflection of lack of YIN energy. YIN represents literally the shady side of the mountain, the Talent/Ashland side versus the sunny Medford side of the valley. Our YIN represents our quiet, still, moistening, substantial, anchoring, slower side of ourselves, versus the opposite of these qualities, which is the YANG.

Allergies: What is really bothering you?

Written by Ann Zimmerman on September 28, 2011. Posted in Immune Health and Balance, Stress and Fatigue.

Allergies: What is really bothering you?
By Clark Zimmerman, LAc.

A lot of people are mystified by their allergies. When I ask patients about their allergies, I often hear stories of congestion and irritation of varying degrees caused by hay fever, pet dander, food sensitivities, mold in the house, etc. But often times they are puzzled by the nature of the issue, and therefore have little direction for how to change the situation.

Allergies can effect so many things in the body. They can create symptoms in the skin, digestive system, immune function, ears, eyes and respiratory system. Though it usually involves doing some detective work, with dedication and direction there is a lot that can be done to treat allergies. The first step in treatment is to identify the problem. You begin with the most obvious things, examining your environment. Do you live in a moldy house, do you live with pets, are you being exposed to toxic things in your home or work place? If something is bothering you, then you need to avoid or limit your exposure to the allergen. This sounds like common sense, but we often can overlook things that are in our environment. Just as our surroundings can contribute to allergies, foods can too. Many people find that working with their diet can drastically improve chronic health problems. Foods that are common allergens include gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, soy, and sugar. There are several ways to diagnose a food allergy. These include: blood tests, muscle testing, skin tests, elimination diets, and cleanses.