you are already enough.

How we work.

Chinese Medicine

Acupuncture + Herbal Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine dates back about 5, 000 years. That is a lot of great clinical history to figure out what helps the body. Acupuncture uses very thin needles in specific points of the body to manipulate the movement of “qi” or your body’s own energy to resolve health issues. We use the body as the medicine. This is great news because it means you receive a very effective treatment that stimulates your body to heal, relieve pain and inflammation in a safe and gentle way.

Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine always looks at the body as a whole system; Mind | Body | Spirit. It also takes into account many other layers that affect the human body, things like how seasons and changes in temperature affect different body types, how sleeping patterns give insight to how you handle stress, to how different cooking methods can be beneficial to certain constitutions. Humans are dynamic by our very nature. We are complicated and amazing and it is important to have a tool set that recognizes the whole system. Because Chinese Medicine looks at the body as this whole system, it can address numerous health concerns. At Joyful Living, we take advantage of how good acupuncture is at addressing pain. From old injuries to acute pain, acupuncture effectively reduces pain and inflammation and stimulates repair.

NeuroEmotional Technique

NET

NeuroEmotional Technique (NET) is a stress reduction tool based in Chinese Medicine that helps restructure the physiology and physical patterning of a chronic stress response, stressful memories and stressful triggers. NET is a way to resolve acute and chronic stress patterns through the neurobiology of how we store stressful experiences.

Unresolved emotions and the duration of an unchecked stress response can dramatically affect our health, decreasing the immune system and wreak havoc on organ systems. Generally, we stuff unpleasant feelings away for a reason, NET allows a way for brain and body to quickly move through the stress response and return to a healthy “neutrality” response.

This could be something like general levels of anxiety, tightness or unease in the body that is constantly felt. Old stressful stories we carry tend to limit us in feeling our full worth, our joy or calmness in our body. NET is a simple and effective technique empowering you heal from these stressors or old stories.

It is a tool set with one foot in neurobiology on how our brain stores stressful experiences and one in Chinese Medicine on how to re-pattern this behavior and return back to a state of healthy baseline, where we feel calm, at ease and joyful in our body. The combination of the two sciences overlapping is truly unique and very effective.

With NET, we can check if stress or emotional components are creating a barrier for healing and work to allow your physical stress response to come back to baseline, creating more time in the parasympathetic mode (a calming space with rest, recovery and healing).

CranioSacral Therapy

CST

Craniosacral Therapy (CST) is a gentle hands on therapy that helps to relieve pain and tension in the body to improve the health of the tissue and organ systems. CST releases tissue restrictions in the cranioscaral system (cranium, sacrum, dural tube and cerebral spinal fluid) and other joints of the body. CST looks at the connection between the muscles, bones and connective tissue. It is another technique that uses the body’s own ability to heal itself and return to its equilibrium. This is an important technique when there is chronic pain in the body, tension, postural imbalances, scar tissue, trauma and more.

CST has it’s roots in osteopathic medicine dating back to the 1900’s with teachers and physicians like Dr. Andrew Still and more recently Dr. Sutherland. A biomechanical professor, John E. Upledger at Michigan State University, developed these early techniques into what is now called Cranio Sacral Therapy. He studied and widely researched this technique and how to apply it to many different health issues. CST is such a gentle and nourishing technique, it is a wonderful tool to use with young kiddos as well.