Category Chinese Medicine

What I Wish I Had Known About Women’s Health and Acupuncture When I Was Younger

As a teenager and well into my early twenties, I frequently suffered from dysmenorrhea– or painful periods. Everyone told me it was normal. Many of my matriarchs confided in me that  they had debilitating cramps when their cycles started and well through their school years– painful enough to send them home from work and school. […]

Farmer’s Market Recipes: Chilled Pea Soup

Peas are back in season in Walla Walla and you can find them at the Downtown Walla Walla Farmer’s Market this coming weekend. Normally, I focus on warm, cooked, or lightly steamed foods to help make items more readily digestible, but I experimented with this recipe during a particularly hot time last year and could […]

Spring Vegetable Miso Soup Recipe

  Ingredients:  2 carrots 1 medium yellow or sweet onion 5 cremini or shitake mushrooms 8 cups beef bone broth, chicken stock, or vegetable stock 1 box non-GMO tofu 2 heads pak choi, or 6 leaves bok choy ¼ cup miso optional: garnish of sesame oil, soy sauce , rice wine vinegar or apple cider […]

Big decisions, Little decisions

I apologize for my impromptu hiatus from blogging. Two months ago, I was given the great opportunity to expand my private practice and to add a fantastic licensed massage practitioner, Tyhra Owen, to our clinic. The act of expanding a private practice, renovating a new office space, and moving an existing office to a new space created […]

Borscht To The Rescue: Curing Irritability

  Borscht: a soup of many traditions in Eastern Europe. Depending on who you talk to about borscht, there are many right and wrong ways to make this delicious soup. I encourage you to find your favorite borscht recipe. When searching for a good recipe, make sure to read the comments at the end of […]

Springtime tips for a happy liver

Spring is upon us. As many of us plot our gardens, and springtime yard projects, it is fun to check in how the seasons connect to our internal biorhythm. In Chinese medicine the season of the spring relates to the liver and the gallbladder. These organs have a rich relationship to the epic growth that […]

Versatile Roasted Veggies: Three Recipes to Spice Up Your Roasted Veg

In an effort to make a as many meals in one cooking push as possible, I started playing around with roasting up a medley of vegetables on a Sunday, and doctoring up the leftover throughout the week. If you roast your vegetables with minimal seasoning, you can make three very different meals from your veggies […]

Curried Cauliflower Soup

The benefits of turmeric: turmeric is a natural anti-inflammatory and pain reliever.  It is an excellent spice to use when suffering with inflamed tendons, joints or muscle strains.  Turmeric provides short term pain relief.  Turmeric also pairs perfectly with cauliflower. Ingredients: 1 head of cauliflower 1 head of lacinato (dinosaur) kale 1 cup button or […]

Between Heaven and Earth: the Human Being

Chinese medical theory is based  strongly on a relationship between the natural world and the human body.  An understanding of health and illness is achieved by observing patterns in nature, both generative and destructive. Wind storms ripping apart  trees or turning into funnel clouds, versus the ebb and flow of oceanic tides all inform the […]

What You Need to Know About Acid Reflux

Why do some people suffer from acid reflux? 1) Too little stomach acid- AKA hypochlorhydria Ironically, given the high use of heartburn medication that reduce stomach acid, one of the main causes of acid reflux is low stomach acid, called hypochlorhydria. When someone suffers from low stomach acid, a few things happen that can lead to acid reflux. […]