I won!!! For the second year in a row now I won a Nattie Award, a.k.a. Natural Choice Award, from Natural Awakenings Magazine. Actually, not just one but TWO!! I couldn't be more honored, humbled or gracious. 

Award winners are listed in the November issue available in most natural foods stores around town. They'll be announced on the website too in short order I'm sure. 

So for those of you, my incredible amazing patients, you can now say that you not only see Portland's Favorite Acupuncture/Traditional Medicine Practitioner 2 year running, but also the 2015 Holistic Practitioner of the Year Award Winner. Kind of a mouthful, but cool to say its true!

My Alma Matter the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine also won for Favorite School for Holistic Medicine and I feel quite honored to have gone there and to be sharing the same awards page. 

The Natural Choice, or Nattie Awards are patient/community nominated and voted for, and that means it is YOU my incredible patients who have made this possible. I always strive to provide the best service I can and to help all of my patients not only heal, but to reach their full potential for lasting health and happiness. I'm pretty good at being my own worst critic, so it feels doubly amazing to receive such incredible recognition from so many of you.

Truly, thank you for voicing your confidence and support.

I consider it and honor and a privilege to be a partner in each of my patients' individual healthcare journeys, helping them assess from a Chinese Medicine perspective what is working, what is not, using Acupuncture to create lasting change, and acting as a guide to long term health and wellness using Chinese Medicine principles.

With deepest gratitude and appreciation for this special honor,
Rebecca Hurwood, LAc

The Year of the Ram starts February 19th, 2015 and with it a new and inspiring Lunar New Year!  

2014, the Year of the Horse, seemed to bring challenges for many but the Year of Ram should promise new direction.  As a Wood element year, its a great time for creative passions to manifest - so if you have a project waiting on the back burner for inspiration to strike, expect it to come soon! The Ram itself is known as sensitive, considerate and honest so we can expect 2015 to also be a year of personal growth and self discovery.

As a seasonal energetic medicine, Acupuncture is an excellent way to harmonize the body with the seasons, not to mention a proven method for reducing pain, increasing energy, improving digestion and reducing stress!

To ring in the Year of the Ram I am offering a 3 Treatment Special for the month of February - purchase a package of 3 one-hour Acupuncture sessions for $200 instead of $231!  A great way to save some funds while meeting your deductible if needed, OR an excellent gift for a friend.

Click the button below to purchase online via my "gift certificate" service.  If you're purchasing it for yourself, just gift it to you! This offer is available all month (as many as you'd like to bank!) until February 28th.

Thank you SO much to everyone who voted, I was really taken aback by winning in two categories!  

Hoping for more good fortune for all in these last few months of 2014 and into 2015 as well! 

~Rebecca

#gratitude #humbled #acupuncture

This advice is so simple, classic and timeless it has always been on of my favorite basic beauty "to do" lists.  It is something I learned when I took my first Facial Rejuvenation Acupuncture certification course back in 2006.  Yes, this is a list about attitude as much as it is a list about at basic home care for avoiding facial wrinkles, but you know what - it works.

If I were to rename this list, I would call it The Zen of Being Beautiful and all of this advice is right in line with my Facial Rejuvenation Acupuncture training and teachings. To truly look and feel beautiful, it has to come from the inside and then be nourished by your activities outside - that is the heart of Facial Rejuvenation Acupuncture treatment.

This list is so synergistic with my work, I had to share.  It comes from the book Inner Peace, Outer Beauty: 

In my Facial Rejuvenation treatments I seek to naturally lift, firm and tighten the skin while removing facial fine lines and wrinkles by strengthening the constitution, calming the emotions, nourishing the skin and re-sculpting the face with acupuncture, gua sha, cupping, facial massage, and natural Chinese herbal facelift treatment masques and products as needed.

I have to say that I love this advice because if you follow this advice AND do natural facial lift treatments like Facial Rejuvenation, the results are so incredible its hard to describe.  The difference is visible, but more than that it is something you feel - my patients often report feeling more confident, beautiful, sexy, more themselves.  Facial Acupuncture seems to help them navigate the world of aging a little more gracefully because they feel supported and nourished as their bodies age and change. 

Just like the quote above - everybody gets wrinkles - but truly some are due to natural aging, and some are due to expression which does make them a reflection of our thoughts and feelings.  If you change your thoughts and feelings to be more positive, you can change those expression lines too.  And if you need a little help, Facial Rejuvenation Acupuncture may be just the thing to help you turn back the clock and learn more about caring for your skin as the natural course of aging progresses along.

If you want to know more, please call, email or book online! Facial Acupuncture is unique and deeply healing and relaxing - everyone should try it at least once you know! 

Until next time,
~Rebecca

A coach once gave me an analogy I never forgot - that life is a juggling act and while most of the balls will bounce, health can be made of glass; if that ball breaks, it might never go back together quite the same.  

The key message? Health MUST be a priority in the juggling act we call life because of all the things we can recover from, a true health crisis can change our lives irrevocably and irreparably. 

Another good way to bring this message home, is to take a lesson from our own body processes - from the heart specifically.  In our own bodies, the Heart actually pumps blood to itself first before it pumps blood anywhere else in the body.  This is because the body knows that without proper nourishment of the Heart, everything else in the body will fail.

Our lives are the same - if we don’t take care of ourselves, we cannot take care of anything or anyone else in our lives.  Its imperative to put your health first, to have an eye on preventative care and stress management in particular, so that you know you are doing everything within reason in this moment in time to take care of yourself. If you can do that, you are much more likely to continue leading the long and healthy life you want to live.

If you don’t want to drop that glass ball, you’ve got to keep your eye on it, and the best way to do that is to have a plan for self care.  I believe a successful self care plan needs to be simple and flexible because at different times in our lives (or even day by day) sticking to our plan can be more or less difficult. Your self care plan needs to assist and support your health, not stress you out, but you also have to be accountable to your goals to succeed in them.  Having a plan can help you in all these areas.

Devising your plan can be a simple exercise in assess, plan, execute.  Then revise and repeat whenever necessary.

STEP ONE - ASSESS

You might know this right off the top of your head, but if you don’t take 5-10 minutes to make a mental tally (or physical list, your choice) of the areas you feel you are successful with your self care and the areas you feel you could improve.  It should be something simple like this:

It doesn’t need to be exhaustive, but I do recommend including these categories - diet, exercise, sleep and stress. You can include as much or as little detail in these areas as you want, and you can also include any other areas you like that directly affect your health, such as self care, family time, sport, etc.

If STRESS is in the “weak” list, meaning it is too high or uncontrolled, make another list like this:

Now you have a clear picture of your strongest and weakest areas.  Your goal? Create a plan that will shift more into the “strong” column and the “stress reducing” columns of your lists.

STEP 2 - PLAN

You can be as simple or as complex as you want with your plan.  The most important part is that you are devising a plan you can achieve. You can revise your plan as often as you want, so set goals you can reach in a reasonable period of time to ensure success and motivate you to keep making positive changes.

For example, if Sleep and Stress are the biggest items in the “weak” column, choose these two areas to focus on and pick one or two activities that will help you improve them.  Better yet, choose one activity that can help with BOTH. For Sleep + Stress there are two primary activities that come to my mind - Exercise and Acupuncture. Exercise and Acupuncture can both drastically improve sleep and stress, and if you combine the two its a magic double whammy!

Schedule time for these activities as part of your plan - for example, decide that you are going to exercise 2x/week on specific regular days/times or book an acupuncture appointment once a week.

To complete your plan, choose a timeline for these activities during which you are going to focus on doing them and not worry about assessment or about what comes next.  For this length of time, you are just going to walk the walk.  You’ll look back and see what happened later.  It could be 3 weeks or 3 months, but whatever it is set it, schedule a reminder when the time is up, and forget it.

Now its time to EXECUTE.

STEP 3 - EXECUTE

Okay, execute the plan! Some days or weeks it is going to work great, other days and weeks its going to be hard.  That’s okay.  Right now all you have to do is do the doing and accept that all you can do is all you can do and that’s just how it should be.

REVISE AND REPEAT

Once you reach the date you set to look back, take a moment to go back to step 1. Run your list again and see how you did.  Did anything shift out of “weak” into “strong?”  Are your plans working for you in your life or do they need to be revised? Do you just need to walk the walk a little longer on these goals or is it time to choose a new focus to get in line?  

I know these are a lot of questions, but they will be intuitive as you look at your list and seek to shift more items into the strong column.  It will only take you a few minutes, and it will help you keep that glass ball in play as long as you can bring yourself to focus on it.

At a minimum, I recommend doing this exercise quarterly with the change in seasons - it is a natural time to assess your health and your goals.  If you reach your goals quickly or want faster change you could repeat it weekly or monthly even - its totally up to you.

If you look at this exercise and feel too daunted, then don’t do it alone - your friendly neighborhood Acupuncturist is an expert in preventative medicine (we have 3,000 years of clinical data behind us which supports living a healthy balanced life!)

In my practice, in addition to helping my patients reach their immediate health care and pain relief goals, I always have an eye on improving my patient’s health long term. As a holistic medicine tied to the seasons and body rhythms, in my mind there’s just no other way - Acupuncture can’t treat anything without treating a little bit of everything.  If you’re looking to keep your eye on the ball, Chinese Medicine has a plan to help you.

If you have questions or want help devising your own plan, contact Rebecca via email anytime, or book online anytime! You can also post in the comments section and I’ll do my best to address your concerns.

Until next time,

~Rebecca