Inside The Polished Apple

We are perpetually learning and I am no different with training in Network Spinal. I recently attended the Advanced Care/ Awaken Care training that was offered in Denver, Colorado in November 2017. What a weekend!  As you can see from the photo, we had instruction from Network's Greats! In the front row are Dr Donald Epstein (founder), Dr Robin Sherman-Rothstein, Dr Richelle Knowles, Dr Daniel Knowles, Dr Sophia Rodrigues, and Dr Aiden Kinsella. Wow!  I had preconceived beliefs that Advanced/ Awaken care was for practice members who had been in care forever, spent a couple hours a day in meditation, weren't affected by stress, must love their jobs, their daily commute, their home life... you know, had this life thing figured out and under their belt. And I was wrong.  Advanced/ Awaken care can be introduced much earlier in care~even from day one in practice. Its no longer (or maybe never was) a luxury, but is a necessity for life!  Awaken care is the third season of th

The theme is Celebration this December!  Do you make celebrating a routine activity in your life? I like the concept of celebrating a win at the end of the day (soon to be added to my evening routine!) As you read this, take a moment to celebrate that you have made health improvements over last year and that you are getting healthier every year! We want to celebrate your wins with you, so please share them with us when we see you. And if you want more health wins, we can help with that too. The energy of Celebration is aligned with the Advanced Season of Care or Wellbeing that we honour in the office. I'm super excited to be recently back from training on Advanced care and will share some experiences from that in another post. I'm hoping that we can inspire you to also include more purposeful, action directed advancement in your life too, so we can make a positive impact on our little piece of the world. An example...I went to my recent seminar thinking that the advan

Late November was our wrap-up to Elan Family Wellness Centre's First Practice Member of the Week event. Here's some photos of our celebration at Extreme Restaurant here in Bowness.  We've been asked how you qualify as Practice Member of the Week? It was a hard choice, and some of the things we look for are length of time in care (we have practice members who have been with us for decades!), participation at our workshops or events, your enthusiasm, commitment to care & sharing Network Chiropractic with your family & friends. Watch for the stars in your travel card and watch for our spring program! 

D id you know that acupuncture can help with more than just back pain?   In fact, acupuncture can even help with burns and scars left by burns! Pain, infection control, and scars are the most important issues when it comes to burn injuries and acupuncture treatments can solve all these difficulties at once without using medication or surgical procedures. Acupuncture can remove the feeling of burning pain. Between five minutes and one hour after treatment, depending on the severity, the pain subsides. Usually patients feel the cooling effect of acupuncture needles. The acupuncture treatment (which is around 30 minutes) should be once per day until the site is dry and the scar begins to form. Eventually, the scar will fall off naturally. The major functions of acupuncture for burn care are: pain control without painkillers stimulating the body’s own healing power to generate new tissue and skin infection control without using any antibiotics not needing surgeries (ie. skin grafts)

S cott's Thoughts: Gratitude in November~ it's perception month at Elan Family Wellness Centre! Thanks to Scott Hutchison, Registered Massage Therapist at our office (and founder of Energy Rich Day!!) for this information on Gratitude and Priming.  And swoosh... November has blown in for it's yearly visit. As we start to shiver and wonder where our wonderful summer went, it's a great time to look back early and say thanks for an amazing year! Around our neck of the planet, we shoot for a daily practice of Gratitude. A study was once done around effect of external stimulus on the emotional preconception of our environment. Shortly, something as simple as temperature (even brief but extreme exposure) could have lasting emotional colouring in ones day. Knowing this trick of the mind and body, we can hack our day to look for opportunities of gratitude. Imagine taking just 10 minutes to set your nervous system and brain/body antenna to tune into areas in your life to f

Do you know of the many benefits of cupping? Truly deep therapy as the cupping suction can affect the tissues up to 4 inches deep with reverse pressure. Reduces muscular pain and tension as cupping stretches surrounding fascia making space in the tissue allowing for better circulation, mobility, and reduced residual inflammation. Releases muscle spasms by flushing lactic acid away from the muscle to stop the prolonged contraction. Detoxifies by draining toxins and lymph from restricted areas of the body. Helps to ensure a healthy lymphatic system. Increases circulation and warmth to limbs in winter months. Better digestive system: when applied to the abdomen the cups assist with peristalsis of tired and tense muscles in the large intestine. Relieves the congestion from coughs, colds, allergies, and asthma. Improves skin health through rejuvenating the layer of collagen and elastin under the skin. Promotes healing: initially increases inflammation to damaged tissue by bring

It's perception month-the third side of our Triad of Change! Perception immediately links me back to Gratitude as well, which is one easy way to change or influence our perception. (And ties nicely with honouring and remembering our Veterans/ Remembrance Day, US Thanksgiving, & our Practice Member of the Month program.) My favourite recent daily change has been to incorporate Morning Rituals into my day. My current morning ritual has boiled down to 3 things-a few minutes of SomatoRespiratory Integration-usually a Stage One check-in, writing down 3 Gratitudes, and Visualizing my day ahead. This action alone is helping create the routine of gratitude, expecting good things ahead and shifting my perception of my day. At our recent Energy Rich Day I spoke about how Morning Rituals can help to bridge the GAP between the person who are are today, and help to move us to the person or the action that we hope to create in our life. When there is a gap between today's ver

It's Structure month at Elan Family Wellness Centre-Thanks Dr Robert Clarke for some words about how Structure can lead to more Freedom in our Life! Sometimes we resist structure because we value our freedom. What we need to shift is our perspective. Having a structure actually allows for greater freedom within the structure. The structure, if set up well, helps take care of the essential commitments of our lives.  As an example, having a designated place for keys when you come in the door allows you the opportunity to know where your keys are, saving you the hassle of looking for them later. A kitchen where you know where everything is, is much easier to cook in and allows the creative cooking process to happen. The structure or organization of the kitchen gives more freedom to the cook. Sometimes it's externally applied structure that we resist. In these cases it is good to step back and see if the they are serving on a bigger level. Sometimes we gain perspective by doin

It's Structure month at Elan... Thanks Scott for some thoughts on this topic!  To be blunt... I have a love/hate relationship with structure in my life. I know that from a top down view, the structures that I put in place can be too over detailed when I sink down into creation mode. Meaning, I overdo it on the thinking/design phase and never get to the doing phase, because I don't know when to  quit  thinking/designing and never feel like it's complete or good enough. I've touched on this before in other posts, but it has to do with the Triad Of Change and how I feel I am wired up. That said, I know that if I start with a behaviour... any  behaviour , from writing a sentence to doing the dishes or taking a shower, that motion drives a spark and it flows into good thoughts and poof... a structure happens.  Structures come into  reality  because I have  certainty  of the outcome and I have attained enough energy to the system I am working with: my body, a task, o

I've challenged myself to improve my fitness. My working plan is to stop my post-partum (ha-its over 2 years now) weight gain, improve my strength and cardio so I can easily engage in physical activity with either of my girls, and to improve my energy, sleep, and overall well being. I've been so engaged with my story-since 20 weeks into my last pregnancy, I have been completely reliant on a steady input of nutrient dense food, leading me to learn more about the Weston A Price diet. During pregnancy and at least the first year post-partum, I would experience dizziness, fatigue, light-headedness, etc. If I deviated from my diet. (which essentially meant eating at least 6-8 times per day and I have no idea how many calories-it didn't matter since I was burning them all!). Blood work tested fine; no medical problems identified, I just kept attributing it to having a baby at 40+ years old, and then supporting a baby via breastfeeding, and burned out by lack of regular sleep

It is that time-we're about to get carried away with school, kid's schedules, and events available at every opportunity! With school starting after Labour Day, I'm beating the rush this year and have started-a la Pinterest bullet journal style-a Habits Tracker. I have projects and habits that keep falling away in my to-do list and memory and thought the easiest way to establish them was with a visual tracking system. This was a plan to establish new habits, or track the ones I hit and miss with-so you're not going to see “Feed kids. Pick up kids. Shower.” I've got those ones down. September is all about Structure and Routines, so here's my next 30'ish day plan. Every time I complete an item, I get to mark it down! Top of my list was to incorporate Morning Rituals. For me this means starting the day in gratitude, visualizing my day, and creating some routine and rituals to energize this and stick to it. Most of the inspiration has come from Tim Ferr

Elan Family Wellness Centre is excited to welcome back Mother's Wellness Circles, presented by Full Circle Parenting and Womankind Calgary. The Story: If you are like most moms, your life experienced a radical and overwhelming upheaval when motherhood happened to you. You're probably spending the majority of your time focused on your child or children, and you may feel like there's no time left for you. In the back of your mind, you may be hearing a quiet voice, whispering: Who are YOU now, anyway? You may not know what you do for fun, anymore, or what kind of career you want, anymore, or what you want to look like, anymore. You may also be trying to remember what it feels like to be 100% you - maybe you are struggling with expressing yourself fully and authentically around your children. Maybe your friendships aren't feeling fulfilling to you.  Maybe you want to go back to some of who you were before you had kids, or maybe you're pretty sure that pre-mom you i

GRIEF & LOSS GROUP: PREGNANCY LOSS This 5 week group therapy series is  focused on providing support for women who have experienced pregnancy loss. These group sessions will offer a safe space for you to share and process your loss, connect to other women who have had similar experiences, learn about and relate your experience to the different stages of grief, learn coping strategies, and find ways for moving forward.  Groups are facilitated by  Jen Reddish , Counsellor and Psychotherapist at   The Essence of You . This is a closed group with 5 sessions. Dates listed below: Monday August 21st 7-9pm Monday August 28th 7-9pm Monday September 11th 7-9pm Monday September 18th 7-9pm Monday September 25th 7-9p m   To register or to learn more, contact Jen Reddish:   jen@theessenceofyou.ca   | 587-225-1764. Group will be held at Elan Family Wellness Centre in Bowness, NW Calgary. 

Coming up October 14, 2017... 11 hours of training, inspiration and amazing vendors devoted to helping you add energy to your life! Want to hear and see more energy rich stuff? Check out our  Facebook Energy Rich Day event page !  Plug into our  Energy Rich Minute YouTube vlog here  on the Elan channel. Be aware, our  Energy Rich Day  in October is now selling tickets. Act fast... the VIP  tickets  will sell out soon. energyrichday.ca Eventbrite YouTube channel Facebook event

It's Kids Month at Elan... Here's thoughts from Scott, one of our Registered Massage Therapists at Elan Family Wellness Centre. By the way, August 15th is his birthday!  Scott's thoughts : Why are kids so full of energy??? August is bitter sweet for me. As a kid it meant my birthday... August 15 th  by the way... (wink wink)... and it meant that school was just around the corner. Kind of a “Yay/Boo!” polarity for me. Now, having a little one about to enter the third grade, I don't see that tension in her at this point in her development. What I do see is a crazy energy rich kid with passions and tension from boredom and soggy clothing from squirt guns and dirt on her pants for playing outside. All the things I remember as a kid. But done with energy, an energy that makes me envious. Is it that kids just have more energy? Or is it they are able to tap into some unseen resource and I have simply lost that skill that they have naturally? To live with that inner chi

Love Pathways to Family Wellness magazine as much as we do? We’re looking for a Practice Member Parent who would be interested in volunteering to help us grow our community of health-minded families. Our goal is a monthly meeting or activity. Talk to us if this is you!!

It's Kids Month at Elan! Here's some advice from Dr Robert Clarke, Chiropractor at Elan Family Wellness Centre, on Optimizing Kids Potential.  Eat well, rest well, spend time in nature - these are at the top of my list on how to give kids the best chance to have a healthy, happy summer. Having their spines checked is another great tool in allowing their nervous systems and bodies to stay flexible and adaptable. Start with nutrient dense foods, eat lots of fruits and veggies, water - lots of water and avoid refined sugars. Having lots of fresh fruit around and veggies cut up for snacking gives kids an easy snacking options. Another piece is getting enough sleep. During our long summer days it can be a challenge, as going to bed when the sun is up doesn’t work for many kids. One important tip in getting quality sleep is no screen time for 30 to 60 minutes before bed. This allows the nervous system to reset. As long as your little ones get a good extended sleep, they are doi

It's Kids Month at Elan! Here's a share from the archives on Wonders of Movement.  I'm going to explore some of the things we can do as parents with our young ones, from infancy to older kids. Many of these activities are easier in the summer, so kick them outside if you can (not the babes, just the older ones)! Developing Crawling Skills:  Giving baby a chance to move and stretch on her own, she will master rolling, pushing up, and eventually crawling. Crawling is a rich neurological skill-coordinating of the right and left brain, moving opposite arm and leg together, having the back muscles fire in a new pattern to help develop a side to side motion, opening up the environment to be explored. Crawling will give baby a new perspective as she's more off of the ground and can see new objects with a different depth of vision. This cross crawl and the resulting brain patterns will help form the basis for more complex tasks later in life - walking, running, writing, passi

Thank you to Dr Robert Clarke, Chiropractor at Elan Family Wellness Centre, for this article on Giving & Receiving in the Theme of Community. Giving and receiving, this is what we all crave about community. To belong to something bigger than ourselves. In days gone by it was essential to survival. We may not need it to survive in our modern era, but it's essential to help us thrive. Sharing and helping feeds our souls, it feels great to support others. The important part of the equation is to be open to receiving. This completes the cycle of being in community, it's about building relationships and these need to have balance. If you're fortunate to have some abundance and you're in a position to give to others, allow yourself the opportunity to receive. Maybe you don’t have need of things, then receive gratitude. Be open to the heartfelt thanks of others and even if you're not currently needing help from someone, graciously accept a reciprocal gift if one i

Thanks to Scott for: Scott's thoughts on Community. #Community is our Theme for July.  As some of you know, I'm the VP of the  Bowness Community Association . We're a lovely and super inclusive organization of volunteers and paid staff that run an ice rink, an event hall and are home to many charitable organizations. We have an amazing staff and a focused mandate to really do our best to honour and improve the connection of people of Bowness. It's awesome and I've met some extremely passionate and engaged folk during my time at the BCA. How I got involved is the result of Reorganization Living. I attended a Transformational Gate in 2014 that put me on a new energy rich model from restorative therapeutics to the much superior model of Reorganizational Healing (ROH). Along with ROH, the philosophy of living congruent to it. From my point of view, a person must find energy rich states and situations to fuel up the body and brain, destabilize old outdated patterns

We are excited to welcome our new Acupuncturist, Dr. Stella Choi , to our family here at Elan. She will be available to see patients on Mondays and Thursdays starting Monday July 10th. Dr.Stella Choi (DTCM, R. Ac.) is a graduate from Canadian Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine and a member of the College and Association of Acupuncturists of Alberta .  Dr.Stella is also registered nurse in South Korea and has more than 10 years of experience in Western Medicine. Combining acupuncture treatments with traditional diet therapies, Dr.Stella guides clients to discover their own potent healing power and encourages clients to develop a lifestyle that both creates and supports a healthy body that is immune to disease. Using a variety of modalities, such as acupuncture, cupping, bleeding techniques, electroacupuncture, and moxa, Dr.Stella helps clients deal with pain, insomnia, emotional issues, autoimmune conditions, weight control, burn injuries, and more.

The Back-Mobile in the Bowness Stampede Parade. This year's theme: "We've Got Your Back". Not only was our office in the parade, but we also opened Elan for a Mom and Babe Sanctuary, for parents to feed, nurse, change bums, or just escape the sun and crowds.  The Simon House invited their neighbours for a BBQ Lunch. Here we are with a former practice member Ravi and Associate Health Minister (and friend!) Brandy Payne.    Scarlett and I en route to the Carya Pancake Breakfast held in Montgomery. Carya provides resources and support for families and seniors in our neighbourhoods.  Yee-haw! Its been a fun Stampede and we hope you enjoy this look at a few of our local events! 

It's our month of #community in July!  Slower paced summer days give us a chance to enjoy the people and the places surrounding us, spending more time in community. Here's what we'll be up to in July in Bowness: the Bowness Stampede event, Movie in the Park, cycling through Baker Park, sharing our work in a retreat near town, sipping a coffee and walking around Bowness Park or at the river. And holidays to see family!    I've recently had the chance to experience a few unique things about our community: This past weekend I attended a New Moon Meditation and Yoga Workshop at  Bowga , just around the corner from Elan. Releasing the old, focusing on what we want our next 30 days to be about and creating an intention for this time, is a beautiful way to honour this watery, emotional new moon. Random perhaps, but I also have my hair stylist working out of her home in Montgomery - so convenient and nice to avoid the salons. And last, for our recent 12 year wedding anni

Mckenzie's recipe was the winning child recipe from our Appreciation Day in June. Here's how to duplicate it!  1/2 pound ground beef 2 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes 2 tsp cayenne pepper 2 tbsp chili powder 2 tbsp cocoa powder 3 tsp garlic & ginger paste with chilis 1 can corn, not drained 1 can pineapple chunks, not drained 2 cans diced tomatoes, not drained 1 can black beans, half of liquid drained 1 can kidney beans, half of liquid drained 1 can tomato paste 1 red bell pepper, chopped Cook the ground beef in a frying pan with the crushed red pepper flakes, cayenne, chili powder, cocoa powder and garlic & ginger paste. Add meat mixture and all remaining ingredients to slow cooker. Mix well and cook on high for 4 to 6 hours. ENJOY!

Thank you to everyone who came out to see us for our Appreciation Party on Saturday June 10th. We raised  over $800  for  Carya  and their amazing organization and programs! We couldn't have done it without YOUR help and support. We'd like to specifically thank the  Light Cellar ,  Pin Ups Hair Shoppe ,  Grasby Art Studio ,  Extreme Restaurant & Catering ,  Yoga in Bowness ,  Bowga ,  Bowness Health Food , Ehren & Beverly Rebmann,  Fiona Fulton-Bowles , and Yvette Falconer for their generous donations and participation in our celebration! Work by Carefully Crafted Henna