Doctor in Support of Health Care Reform

Here is our Dr. Chris Gaynor, joining with local physicians in support of health care reform:

One Sky Wellness Winter Closures

Due to the very snowy and icy weather, One Sky Wellness Associates will be closed on Monday, December 22.

We are also closed for the Christmas holiday, Thursday, December 25 and Friday, December 26 as well as Thursday January 1.

Established patients who must talk with their physician on an urgent basis when the clinic is not open should listen to our voice message at 206 363 5555 to get their doctor's emergency on-call number.

Warm wishes for the holiday season and a Happy New Year!

Suspended on the Brink of the Solstice

The word Solstice means "Sun stand still." On the Winter Solstice, the spinning top of the Earth has come to the farthest stretch of its tilt away from the sun, and the farther north you go, the more it can feel like the world is holding its breath in anticipation of descent into a deep, long, darkness and the next pivot step into the gradually growing light.

Chinese medicine sees Winter as the season of Water. Some correlations include these:
Water is Black and deep Blue. The Water organs and tissues are Kidney, Bladder, bones, ears. The energy of Water and Winter encompasses death and the end of the cycle; reflection, stillness, depth, silence. Fear and terror. Wisdom and the will to live.

Water is the reservoir of our lineage (genetic and spiritual), our generative potency, our seeds. In the dark and cold and silence of Winter are seeds and buds full of the intensely concentrated essence of future. One of the archetypes of Winter is the Sage.

Water is adaptable, enduring, and patient, flows according to where the way is open, goes around obstacles, stores power. The source of our capacity for awe.

In his teachings on the Elements, our friend Paul Karsten of the Seattle Institute of Oriental Medicine adds this: Water is community. Gathering. Things coming together. Sense of holding on, with feeling. Water practices: holding every moment as precious; deep listening.
Just like the water in the world, the water moving in us can be frozen stiff, can rush and flood, can drip and penetrate, can soak and nourish...how does the water within you flow these days?
Winter: ice and fear and stillness, suspended over the brink. Photo credit of a charter bus that narrowly avoided complete disaster yesterday, Ken Lambert of the Seattle Times

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from all of the staff and practitioners at One Sky Wellness Associates!

We will be closed for the holiday on Monday 12/31 and Tuesday 1/1. We have been having some voice mail difficulty lately but if you phone us (206 363.5555) during the holiday, you will be able to obtain the number for the on-call doc. If you want to leave a message and don't get that option, you can email us at and we'll get back to you on Wednesday 1/2. Remember that pharmacy refills need to be phoned into your pharmacist and they will contact us if necessary.

May 2008 be a year of increased joy and health for all.

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(Dream Work)
(from the poetry archive at Panhala.net)

Tomato-Buttermilk Skin cleanser

Our friend, herbalist-wizard Rowan Hamilton, with the first in a series of videos about superb skin care using ingredients from the market and the garden:

bee people

This is from One Sky Wellness psychotherapist, Karen Stocker:

Dear Human Cousins,

You worry we may be disappearing.

You wonder if we've died, become lost or run away.

We give thanks you wonder! We like it when you Human People wonder.

Please wonder!...about our lives, our days, our ways of flying out and all the way home on any available breeze; our yellow pollen fuzz leggings and blur of glascene wings; our ancient intimacy with blossoms; the precise hexagonal wax of our edible hives; the amazing, thick, sweet medicinal translucence of honey; our dance vibrations languages and questioning antennas, our irresistably magnetizing queen, and faithful tender attentions to each of our precious jewel-like sleeping unborn; our reason for being bees.

Please wonder!...what is flight like in a tangle of satellite signals, cell phone fequencies, exhaust and high voltage wires? What does Life feel like without Her, without Them? What meaning can be made from the taste of sugar water and 'pollen substitute'? Can we be shipped by the thousands, thousands of miles in the chaos and din of metal eighteen wheelers? How many times can we land on the open petals of ancestrally welcoming flowers to find the heart we enter sprayed or engineered hostile?

Wonder Human Cousins, could you live like this? Released, would you come back?

with Respect and Love to our Human Cousins,

Bee People

Bumblebee on bramble, originally uploaded by SouthbankSteve.
Crossposted from Life Cultivating Life.

Step It Up 2007: National Day of Climate Action

April 14, 2007, is "National Day of Climate Action." Serving as the organizing hub is Step It Up 2007, a grassroots group which has used email, word of mouth, and online networking (plus a write-up in Business Week, and an endorsement by Al Gore) to inspire and invite gatherings, actions and rallies of all kinds, in order to send the message to Congress to "Step it up -- cut carbon emissions 80% by 2050."

The Step It Up 2007 team writes,
"As a truly global crisis, global warming will impact everyone. However, the impact will be felt greatest among the most vulnerable of the world’s population. While global warming presents us with our most pressing challenge, it also presents our most inspiring opportunity. We have an opportunity and a responsibility to ensure that our solutions to this crisis take these populations into account."

So far there are over 1300 rallies and actions being planned by local volunteers, with at least one in every state, and people adding new ones to the list every day. There are going to be over a dozen in Seattle alone, including "The Marching Forest of Shoreline" ("Calling all aspiring trees, squirrels, mushrooms, suns, streams, hills, bunnies, bushes, butterflies, birds, bees, fish, flowers and bad English Ivy! We invite you, even if you don't live in Shoreline, to join our carbon-offsetting forest to help raise awareness about the global warming crisis"), a Solutions Fair, a couple of actions to mark how far the waters will rise if the polar ice caps melt into the sea, and a march between Occidental Park in Pioneer Square through downtown to a rally at Myrtle Edwards Park (across the street from Seattle icon the Pike Place Market).

Please join us! (even if you don't dress up like a squirrel, or bad English ivy!)

(cross-posted at life cultivating life)

Yoga Class Series 4/8 - 4/29

Dr. Marcie Hamrick is offering a series of gentle viniyoga classes here at the Seattle Healing Arts Center beginning on Sunday April 4, from 4 - 5:30pm. Please phone (206) 363-5555 to register or for more information.

More Fruit and Veg

A nice little article on 10 secrets to eating enough fruit and veggies:

To maximize your intake of health-enhancing nutrients like vitamin C, carotenoids (beta-carotene, lycopene, lutein, zeaxanthin), folate, potassium, fibre, and antioxidant-rich plant compounds like flavonoids, you need to reach for at least seven, ideally closer to 10, servings of fruits and vegetables each day. One serving consists of:

• 1 medium-size fruit or vegetable (an apple, orange, carrot or pear)
• 1/2 cup (125 mL) raw, cooked or frozen fruit or vegetable (a scoop of cooked peas or a small bowl of sliced peaches)
• 1/2 cup (125 mL) juice (a small glass of orange or tomato juice)
• 1 cup (250 mL) salad (a small side salad)
• 1/4 cup (60 mL) dried fruit (a medium-size handful of raisins)

For those of you who think this sounds like a truckload of fruits and vegetables, let me assure you it's only a wheelbarrow full (just kidding!). It's easier than you think:"

go read the rest!

(thank you for the pointer, Curt)

People are Each Others' Medicine

Another modality in medicine, and one that is particularly important in naturopathic medicine, is the human modality itself. I refer to this as the application of “people and organizations” to the patient. Giving the patient people, or groups of people, contains within itself a healing power. This may seem obvious to us, but we seldom prescribe people as a medicine or modality. In the practice of naturopathic medicine, as I view it, I often refer patients to a yoga class, not only for the exercise, a well recognized modality, but for the interaction of the patient to people who are also seeking wellness. People are each others’ medicine in the ideal world.

- William A. Mitchell, ND (1947 - 2007, one of the three co-founders of Bastyr University, the preeminent natural health sciences institution in the country. Remembrances of Dr. Mitchell are being posted here)

Relational Medicine I

Relationship-Centered Care (RCC) was an area of exploration cultivated by the Fetzer Institute a few years ago (they also sponsored the seeds for the Collective Wisdom Initiative, and currently are devoted to "fostering awareness of the power of love and forgiveness"). The specific kinds of relationships mentioned were those between patient & practitioner, practitioner & practitioner, practitioner & community, and self-awareness.

At our office we also consider another expression of healing human interaction: the relationship between our patients and our staff. When we are short-staffed, Dr. Gail, one of our practitioners and our de facto practice manager, adds some of the reception staff duties on to her medical practice responsibilities (thank you, Gail!!).

Her reports back to the rest of the practitioners are always eye-opening--how differently she is regarded and spoken to when she is perceived as a receptionist, than when she is perceived as a physician. Although many, most, of our patients have friendly, courteous, even affectionate relationships with our staff members, a small proportion of our wonderful patients can be rude, and even mean, to our receptionists, billing staff, and medical assistants. It's not just that folks are in pain, I don't think--even people who have very warm and mutually respectful long-term relationships with their practitioners sometimes behave disrespectfully to the rest of the staff. Our office is not so unusual--the position of receptionist in a medical office is always considered to be very challenging and stressful work, and to find people who are willing to do it for many years is rare.

What do you think?

I am always surprised to hear these stories. I'm reminded of the years I spent waiting tables while in college. My experience then was that sometimes we treat those whose work is service less like fellow human beings and more like...well, like servants, whom we expect to give us what we want whether it's possible or not.

Our goal and intention is to cultivate an atmosphere and a culture where our support staffers feel that they are supported too, and where mutual respect is part of every relationship. Our current staff people deeply understand that their interactions with patients are opportunities, often the first opportunity our group has, to offer compassion, care and healing.

Worldchanging.com Book

An important concept in public health, which has been embraced and elaborated upon by naturopathic medicine, is that of the Determinants of Health. I prefer the Buddhist-influenced phrase "interdependent co-arising conditions of health," but the idea is the same: all of those non-medicine factors that influence and contribute to our health and to the health of the community.

The basic categories are Inborn factors; Traumas, Exposures and Stresses; and Lifestyle factors. They include genetic predispositions; pre-natal exposures and nutrition; environmental exposures to pollutants, toxins and infectious agents; nutritional status; socio-economic circumstances; access to health care; access to shelter and unadulterated food and clean air and water; exercise.

I think of these conditions as the soil from which the sprouts and trunks of our individual vessels, our individual lives, emerge from the shared ground. As whole-person, whole-planet health care practitioners, we also pay attention to soil-level conditions that nourish our vitality and well-being such as individual restorative practices (rest, and enough sleep, and silence, and relaxation), meaningful work, love and friendship and feeling of belonging, access to sources of beauty and joy. The list is very long (maybe infinite!)

We also necessarily pay attention to those conditions upon which we have only partial influence as individuals, those aspects that we can really only influence by working together at the community (or bigger) level. Conditions which might not on first glance appear to be health concerns.

But clearly, when great numbers of people in a neighborhood or village or city die or are rendered homeless because of extreme weather conditions combined with unwise building practices and overpopulation, we can see that the climate crisis is a public health, and whole-planet health, crisis. The widening gap between the wealthy and the deeply impoverished turns out to be a situation that strongly impacts the health and wellness of everyone. War and political repression are powerfully destructive influences on health, and in our increasingly globally interconnected world, those influences will affect us all directly or indirectly.

There have been many--sometimes entirely opposite--ways of interpreting the causes of these conditions and strategies for addressing them. The perspectives that make the most sense to us are those that take a broadly interconnected systemic view, and we'll be offering resources here that come from that perspective.

Beginning here: from Worldchanging.com, a wonderful on-line resources, comes their first book.

"Worldchanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century is a groundbreakiung compendium of the most innovative solutions, ideas and inventions emerging today for building a sustainable, livable, prosperous future.
From consumer consciousness to a new vision for industry; non-toxic homes to refugee shelters; microfinance to effective philanthropy; socially responsible investing to starting a green business; citizen media to human rights; ecological economics to climate change, this is the most comprehensive, cutting-edge overview to date of what's possible in the near future -- if we decide to make it so."

You are welcome to come take a look at the copy in our reception room next time you visit us--but since it's over 600 pages long, you might want to plan on coming early!

Happy All Saints' Day

(you can't tell from this photo, but Heather's sweater says "SAINTS")
Playfulness and delight = important determinants of health

birds

that the birds of worry and care
fly above your head
this you cannot help
but that they build nests in your hair
this you can prevent

photo originally uploaded by ehoyer

New Sky

We have a new website to go along with this weblog!

Our deep appreciation to my friend Jana Mochkatel and her team at Net-Time, who designed and developed our logo and site.

Our great appreciation, too, to Fred First of Fragments from Floyd, who so generously gave us permission to use his gorgeous photo, Transparent Green of Spring (above, and see it enlarged here, and in context, here)

We began our medical and health care practice a little over 6 years ago, as a not-for-profit called One Sky Medicine (which we now call "Old Sky"). In our idealism and naivete we made numerous excessively expensive business choices that compounded over time, and by the end of 2004 we decided to acknowledge all the good intentions, hard work, tremendous struggle and tremendous contributions by so many (hundreds of) people (staff, administrators, board members, colleagues, our wonderful patients and community supporters) and to ask the board to cut our losses and go out of business.

A seed group of practitioners, our bonds forged in that kind of heat that comes from hours and months and years of working together, playing and eating (a lot) together, living through difficulty, and becoming like family to one another, decided after long discussions that we would stay in business together. Our form now is of independent practices joined in partnership, our overhead is much less than half of what it was, we are steadily paying back the debts, and most of our patients came along with us when we moved. We're grateful to all that has sustained us and brought us this far. It feels as if our transplanted roots have had a chance over the past 18 months to settle in and grow, and so now we have more energy to reach from the inside out and extend our tender stems and leaves into the wider world.

cross-posted to life cultivating life

Health Care for All

A brief excerpt from the Fall 2006 issue of YES! magazine, a large portion of which is devoted to the theme of "American Health Care. A System to Die For?":

(selections from) Principles of Real Solutions
--by Sarah van Gelder, Executive Editor

Cover everyone.

• Health care is a public good. Like fire or police protection, universal coverage benefits each one of us and society as a whole. Unlike consumer choices, we don't know when we--or a loved one--may need expensive treatment.

De-link coverage from jobs.

• Employer-based insurance hurts entrepreneurs and independent workers, the self-employed, the unemployed, part-time workers, free-lancers, artists, and the working poor.

Control costs by cutting bureaucracy.

• Enormous savings are available simply by freeing doctors from the burdensome paperwork required by insurance companies. Negotiated fee structures and a single payer--or a few regulated payers--would save enough to cover the uninsured, studies show (see page 22 of the magazine)

Invest in prevention.

• We should suppport healthy habits through treatment of substance-abuse, smoking and domestic violence. Open space, bike trails, and community gardens improve health, too, and we should reduce the toxins that contaminate our food, water, air and soils.

Reduce poverty and inequality.

• Poverty, powerlessness, and inequality damage the health of the entire society, and each one of us, rich and poor (see page 29 of the magazine, and here). A huge health dividend would result simply by reducing excessive CEO salaries and profits, and raising up those at the bottom of the income scale. We could start with the health care sector.

If you are interested in YES! magazine--which is ad-free, and printed on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper, and always full to the brim with thoughtful articles and useful information--you can get a free copy, and if you are a schoolteacher you can get a free one-year subscription.

fall

The Art of Disappearing

When they say Don't I know you? say no.
When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.
If they say we should get together.
say why? It's not that you don't love them any more.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees.
The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished. When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.
Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second. Then decide what to do with your time.

~Naomi Shihab Nye

baked butternut squash

Dr. Dan offers this for the change in the weather:

Baked Butternut Squash:

Cut a butternut squash in half and scoop out & discard the seeds.
Put a tablespoon of butter into each of the halves.
Then sprinkle a little spoonful of brown sugar on each half and then bake at 350 degrees for a half hour or until the the meat of the squash is soft and ready to eat.

Deelish!

Welcome!

Welcome to our new weblog!

The world offers a vast bounty of ways to nourish and tend our clarity, vitality, joy and wisdom, among other integral components of wellness. We will use this space to share with you as many of those ways as we know. Some of the categories that we're thinking about include: recipes for delicious healthy dishes, meditation practices, instructions for various home health care techniques and remedies, opportunities for participation in support of health-promoting projects, inspirational verses and passages, updates from the world of medicine that catch our attention, glimpses of art and beauty, our current thinking about health care (practice, business, philosophy), links to colleagues and resources. You'll be able to use the tags at the bottom of each post to find the entries that are most interesting to you.

As is the case in most of the world of weblogs, we have some measures in place to filter out spammers and disrepectful comments, but please know that we do invite your thoughts and contributions. We look forward to learning with you,

One Sky Wellness Associates
Chris Adams, Dan Buquicchio, Gail Buquicchio, Chris Gaynor, Marcie Hamrick, Mark Lamden, Christy Lee-Engel, Dave Smart, Karen Stocker