As I’m writing this, 2011 is fast approaching. The New Year has always brought with it an opportunity for me to review my own personal and professional goals. My focus as a physician continues to remain on integrating how biochemistry, conventional medicine, science, and inspiration unite to create a coherent pattern of health that is accessible for every individual.

In 2007, one of the co-founders of Bastyr University, the premier university for Naturopathic Medicine, passed away. The American Naturopathic Association honored its members with a CD recording of one of Dr. Mitchell’s inspirational lectures. As a Naturopathic Doctor, I was proud and moved to gratitude as I listened to this pioneer of non-conventional medical thinking. His courage to think outside the box resulted in so many healings of individuals and families. Dr. Mitchell’s contributions live on in his writing of various publications that contribute to a new era in medicine in which the doctor and the patient work together.

Through all his many successes, he serves as an example of the importance to stay rooted in the humbling notion that there is a greater force at work with healing. Even today, many miracles of healing will continue to go unexplained, no matter how much more information we gather in the fields of pathology, biochemistry, quantum physics, and anatomy. Dr. Mitchell portrays the Naturopathic viewpoint, that in the end, healing is a process, an opportunity to go deeper into one’s life and re-assess if how one is living is how they wish to contribute to society as a whole.

Although this message of steadfastness and hope in medicine is one I wish to portray, in today’s society, the sad truth is that most people run away from their body in fear. They hurriedly eat their lunch while surfing through emails, stuff down pills, pour on creams, and medicate themselves with uppers and downers, as their body strives to regain balance through all the neglect and being treated as an opponent in a war zone that must be conquered. But, what if the body is really a potential friend speaking a foreign language that just needs to be translated?

Every day, I am graced with one more miracle that sits in front of me at my office. My job is to help decode the body’s messages for each patient and to assist them in giving ther body what it needs to heal as well as removing the obstacles in its way to cure. Then, as many of great predecessors before me, I get out of the way for the patient and the vis medicatrix naturae”  to do the rest.

For some patients, it’s an easier job than others; they may just need a slight twinge in lifestyle, a few supplements to correct deficiencies, and an encouraging word that they really are ok of relief from being scared to death. For others, the picture can look a little more complicated with more labels and forms. Still, here the added miracle of biochemistry provides a clue through blood work, clinical imaging, and perhaps functional tests, which allow me to view at the cellular level where things have gone array and provides me with a means to correct it. In these functional ways, biochemistry can be used to assist the chemical pathways of the body, rather than forcing or suppressing them.

This brings me to the focus of today’s blog. I want to provide you all with a way to give yourself the gift of doing less work, and enjoying more fulfillment and relaxation. I wish to help those who want it, the insight on how to move from effort and tasks, into ease and purpose driven goals.

I am providing a bi-monthly course that is open to all. It is truly a project that I feel came to me through my own shifts of moving away from the hyperactive society into a new world of true joy. Here, work is not about tasks, inboxes, and to do lists, about something deeper and more fulfilling, the kind of fulfillment most try to propel themselves into through material gains. The course details are as follows:

A Course in Ease:

An Integrative Approach on How to Reclaim your Own Happiness and Find True Success.  

The first two meetings will include the following topics:

?  Chapter 1: The Value of Success

?  How do you view success?

?  What are you willing to sacrifice for your definition of success?

?  Exploring your beliefs on success and re-writing our contract

?  The Hyperactive Society:

?  How does permanent busyness help or hurt your life?

?  What are you running from with your busyness?

?  “People Crave Success because they hope that it will attain salvation from the ego’s inner attacks.”

?  Evaluating our mania.

?  Cultivating your Personal Vision for Relationships, Work, and Life.

?  Physical Success Tip number 1

?  Foundation of Diet

?  Blood sugar Stabilization

Cost: $18 a class, meeting monthly to bi-monthly starting in the New Year, and the purchase of Robert Holden’s Success Intelligence Book.

Availability:  Right now, the class is open. RSVP by January 11th, 2011 is required to reserve a space.

Dates for January: January 18th from 6:30 until 7:45 and January 31st from 12pm to 1:15pm

Location: Healing Garden – 21 Garnsey Road, Schenectady, NY

Presenter: Dr. Sarah LoBisco, ND

Note: If you wish to attend the course, but cannot make all the dates, in exchange for the cost of the missed class, you will be provided with the breakout work from the course and an overview from the presenter to keep you up to date.

There will be an optional 21 day detoxification program with specific supplement protocols. Furthermore, essential oil recommendations for those who wish to support their physical body and current supplemental regime with be included as recommendations through the course. Everyone is welcome. 

How does chocolate fit into this?

Well, besides one of my newest snacks, cocoa, found in dark chocolate, contains flavones, antioxidants which are optimal for microcirculation. According to Dr. Mitchell, it is these flavone compounds that give plants their ability to use photosynthesis for their own growth and for human consumption. Although chocolate can have the good processed out with added sugar, milk, and hydrogenation, true dark chocolate, made from raw, organic, cocoa contains powerful nutrigenomic molecules . These molecules speak to our genes to provide health benefits, including boosting our intestinal health and giving our body minerals. (Wetherby, 2010).

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