DIY

Winter 2015 Newsletter

Dear friends of White Pine,

Hello, brrrrrr, and welcome to 2015!

Let’s hop straight to it! In this newsletter, you’ll find:
1. New Year(s) Special
2. Moxa for sale, get ’em while they’re hot!
3. Brian’s free class series
4. Massage promotion
5. DIY food therapy
6. Sally’s (in lieu of) haiku

1. Happy new year(s) special
In honor of 2015 and the impending Chinese new year, we’re offering a special at White Pine:
Buy a gift certificate for a friend and save money on your next treatment!

gc pic

Here’s how it works:

  • Buy a gift certificate for a new patient ($140) and receive $30 off your next treatment.
  • Buy a gift certificate for an existing patient ($80) and receive $15 off your next treatment.

Treatments must be used in 2015. Discount offer expires on the Chinese New Year (the Year of the Sheep!), February 22, 2015.


2. Moxa sale!

Bring home some moxa for warm, DIY nourishment. Loose moxa and sticker moxa products are 40% off, and pole moxa is two for $1. Offer ends March 1, 2015.

3. Brian’s leading “Touchstones”

We’re excited for Brian’s upcoming collaborative discussion group, Touchstones.

Read and discuss excerpts from the Great Books and other great authors and:

  • Join a community rooted in collaborative discussion
  • Speak authentically in a supportive environment
  • Learn effective group dynamics through specific exercises designed to avoid group pitfalls

The group will meet (most) Sundays here in Asheville from March – August. Click here for more information and to sign up.

4. Massage promotion!

If you’ve never gotten a massage from Tara at White Pine, now’s a great time to start.

Tara is offering a 20% discount off her 60-minute and 90-minute massages to new massage clients.

This offer ends March 15, 2015. Click here to schedule your massage!

5. DIY recipe – love your kidneys

As we’ve probably told you in previous newsletters, each season corresponds to an “element” within Chinese philosophy and medicine. Each element also corresponds to our bodies. Winter, as we know, is the darkest time of year – when the world burrows down deep to rest and prepare for the great effort of spring. Winter embodies the water element: darkness, deepness, powerful creative potential, wisdom, and fear. This is a huge topic – deep and fertile soil – but suffice to say here that within the body, the water element coalesces as the kidneys.

There are lots of reasons to want to nourish your kidneys (fertility, longevity, avoiding low back pain, caring for the knees, the teeth, the bones, the hair on the head…) and lots of ways to nourish your kidneys according to Chinese medicine (soaking the feet, eating seeds, staying warm with moxa, getting more rest than you might think is reasonable.) An ideal time to nourish the kidneys is, well, all the time. But an especially ideal time is during winter, when we are at our slowest.

Sesame seeds are considered to be a direct kidney tonic in Chinese medicine food therapy. Click here for Sally’s favorite (dairy-free) “snowy sesame milk” and give your kidneys a little wintertime love!

6. In lieu of haiku

While gazing up at the winter night sky, pondering the fathomless depths of the dark night, feeling the mystery, it became clear this mirroring of as above, so below.


The black watery depths riddled with starlight miraculously reside also in me. 

A flicker of golden light, a tiny little flame emanates through the darkness, birthing infinite possibilities, sourcing the cerulean dawn.

Blue arising from the black! Light warming the darkness…….  

Wishing you well, 

Sally Robinson, Brian Huwe, Mary Beth Huwe, and Heather Spangler

Late Summer 2014 Newsletter

We here at White Pine hope you have been enjoying the bounty of late summer – long days, prolifically producing gardens, and cooler mornings and evenings that hint of the approaching autumn.

I have lots of news to share with you in this newsletter:

• Online scheduling

• Web site redesign

• Treatment and herb price changes

• Special discount offer

• Seasonal self-care

• Items of beauty

• Haiku

 I. Online scheduling

We’re excited to announce that soon we’ll be able to offer online scheduling. This service is free to you and it eliminates the need for phone tag to schedule an appointment. Instead, you can schedule yourself when it’s convenient for you, and spend more of your appointment time getting acupuncture – not scheduling acupuncture.

You can sign up to receive confirmation email or text messages and appointment reminders. If something comes up and you need to cancel and reschedule your appointment, you can do that, too! The online scheduler we’re using, Full Slate, is HIPAA compliant, so you can be confident that your information is encrypted and private.

Online scheduling is completely optional. If you still prefer to schedule by phone or at the end of your appointment, you’re welcome to do so. When the system is ready for use, you’ll receive an invitation email from us with a link to the scheduling page. Please let us know what you think about it!

II. Web site redesign

whitepineacupunture.com is getting a facelift! The new redesign will feature an online scheduling link, FAQs about acupuncture, practitioner bios, and haiku by yours truly.

III. Price changes

Effective September 1, 2014 treatment prices will increase to $140 for an initial visit and $80 for a follow-up visit. Prices for certain herbs will marginally change in September, and tax will be included in the new prices. The net result of this change is that some prices will go up, and some will go down.

IV. Special discount offer

In the last newsletter I let you know that Mary Beth Huwe (pronounced “Huey”) would be joining White Pine. She’s here on Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays and has already begun to do great work. Her care is excellent, focused, and appropriately nourishing.

I’d love for you to get treatment from Mary Beth; to encourage you to do so, we’re offering a special discount offer of 15% off your first appointment with MB in the months of September and October.(That’s an acupuncture treatment for $68, instead of $80.)

V. Seasonal self-care

Each season belongs to a particular element in Chinese medicine, and late summer is the seasonal embodiment of the earth element. It’s also said that any seasonal transition is an earthy time, because earth is about transformation. This makes sense in terms of the body as well; the organs of the earth element are the digestive organs: the spleen and stomach. Taking food and drink and assimilating them into something that the body can use to thrive is the essence of transformation.

This time of year is a sweet and fleeting one, full of the promise of fall. As the light begins to change and the leaves start to show signs of losing their lush green, it’s normal for people to feel twinges of sadness. Autumn belongs to the metal element, whose chief emotion is grief. Autumn is all about letting go – it’s the ultimate seasonal surrender, and it’s achingly beautiful.

One way to take care of yourself in this time of transition is to pay special attention to the way you’re eating. In high summer, our eating habits change. Notice that the weather is changing: the mornings and evenings become cooler; it’s time to seed fall crops. Consider modifying your diet to meet that change by observing what grows naturally at this time, and inviting those foods into your kitchen.

VI. Items of beauty: Green Turtle Quilts

One of the reasons I love to live in this area is for its beauty: not only the natural beauty that surrounds us daily, but also the beautiful, creative people. I’m including this information here because I love to pass along beautiful things.

Many of you have commented over the years on the beautiful mural painted on the White Pine bathroom wall. The talented artist who painted it, Marie Marcella, recently stopped by to show me her beautiful quilted pillowcases. They are exquisite, so I’m sharing the link to her Etsy site here:http://www.etsy.com/shop/greenturtlequilts

If you know of someone local doing or making something beautiful that you’d like us to share in this newsletter, please contact us.

VII. Sally’s haiku

yellow sun sinking,
leaves sing-songing here and there
landing in between

Thank you, as always, for being a patient of White Pine.

Peace and love,

Sally

Fall 2014 Newsletter

by Mary Beth Huwe

The toasty, fiery heater is on at White Pine these white and misty mornings – a sure sign that we are in the midst of autumn. Here’s what you’ll find in this season’s newsletter:

  • New WP Web site!
  • Welcome to the newest Huwe
  • Fall discount deal
  • Free consultation
  • DIY care for lung dryness
  • Sally’s haiku

I. Our new site is live!
We’re tickled pink, as the saying goes, to announce that our new site is live.

Please visit it at www.whitepineacupuncture.com. From our new site you can schedule an appointment, find info about our rates and services, our clinic’s history, FAQs, practitioner bios, haiku, and more! We’d be grateful if you’d poke around a bit; your clicks will help our site be found by search engines. Please let us know what you like, and what you’d like to see that’s not there. If you come across any typos or broken links, you can contact us. Thanks!

II. Brian Huwe, L.Ac.
We’re happy to welcome another acupuncturist to our team, Brian Huwe. Brian is White Pine’s first-ever male practitioner, and we’re delighted to have him. Brian was a student of science and philosophy, and his love for Chinese medicine is palpable. You can check out his bio (and his photo) on the practitioner page of our new site!

III. Treatment discount

Acupuncturists and herbalists Brian and Mary Beth Huwe have recently joined White Pine, and we’re offering a discount on acupuncture to welcome the Huwes and to encourage patients to experience their treatments.

New patients to White Pine can schedule their first visit to the clinic with Mary Beth or Brian to receive 15% off the treatment cost ($119 instead of $140 for a two-hour appointment.)

For existing White Pine patients, the first acupuncture treatment with Mary Beth or Brian is 15% off ($68 instead of $80.) This appointment will last 1.5 hours.

Please help us spread the word, and share this info with your friends! This offer ends November 30, 2014.

IV. Self-care for fall
In Chinese medical theory, each season has an organ pair associated with it. For autumn, that pair is the lung and large intestine. Autumn is all about letting go, as the dropping acorns and leaves remind us. In terms of organs, the lung and large intestine are the body’s clearest examples of letting go. We can inhale, but we need to exhale so that we can inhale again. The large intestine, of course, is a very concrete demonstrator of releasing that which we no longer need.

The lung suffers from dryness (think of a dry, hacking cough and you’re likely to agree.) Here is Sally’s do-it-yourself recipe for a lung-moistening food, in three easy steps:

1. Cut pears in half
2. Bake with honey
3. Yum!!!!

V. Sally’s haiku

fall haiku pic

letting go of you
clouds dropped down their emptiness
pining in the mist

 

Wishing you health and peace,

Sally, Brian, Mary Beth, and Heather