Newsletter & Specials

September Special

Relax with a 20 minute head, neck, and shoulder massage while you soak your feet in a detoxifying salt bath and have your hands enveloped in warm paraffin. Then let us melt the tension in your muscles with an hour deep tissue massage. $120

For the ultimate experience add an hour custom facial for $80

Book an appointment for September 19th through the 30th valuing $125 or more of spa services and receive a free Bistro candle.

What’s Happening at The Dragontree?

The Dragontree is expanding! Coming in October we will have showers, saunas, and more and look forward to sharing our new space with you! We will be closed for construction from Sept 5th - 8th and Sept 11th – 18th. During this time please feel free to call to make an appointment for when we open, we will be answering the phone to the best of our ability and returning phone calls in a timely manner.

We will be open on the 9th and 10th of September.

We appreciate your understanding during this time of construction.

Expansion Party

Please come with your friends and family to celebrate with us on Thursday, October 5th from 6 - 9 There will be food, drink, entertainment, and education and we hope to see you!

Time, Movement, and Health

Briana Borten CAS, LMT & Peter Borten LAc, MAcOM

It’s September again: when the school year starts, our summer fun winds down, and we turn our focus back to work. Since this seasonal shift tends to be the hardest one for people to adjust to, it’s worth taking steps to support ourselves to be healthy through this transition. One way we can do this is by exploring the balance between heart-centered and mind-centered activity and how this affects the passage of time.

According to the Caraka Samhita, one of the major classical texts of Ayurvedic medicine, there are three causes of disease: unhealthy attachment to sensory gratification, contradicting one’s inner wisdom, and decay due to time and motion. The focus of this newsletter will be this third cause – time and motion.

While we all understand that bodies (and often minds, too) decay over time and are subject to "wear and tear" from activity, Ayurvedic teachings remind us that these factors are relative and changeable. "Decay due to time" refers to two kinds of time – objective time (for instance, how many years old the body is), and biological time. Objective time is linear, but biological time is non-linear. Biological time is dynamic – its pace is relative to motion. Thus, as we move faster, biological time moves faster, and as we slow down, biological time slows down.

In general, the busier we are, the faster biological time moves. Gross physical movements, such as air and car travel, are significant contributors to this process. Repetitive motions and ongoing labor have a similar effect. However, it is important to mention that "movement" applies not only to physical motion but to mental activity as well. So, though we may sit still on the couch while watching TV, the mental activity this generates means that we’re not really immobile.

When the mind is overactive, we may feel that time is passing more quickly – hours and days slipping by as we run the mental hamster wheel. Through worry and distraction, being engaged in rehashing the past or trying to predict and plan for the future, some minds are forever moving. This activity can become so habitual that we find ourselves unable to resist reaching for a newspaper while we eat, reading shampoo bottles in the shower, reading while sitting on the toilet, counting things, and replaying conversations. The more we dwell on the belief that "there’s not enough time to get everything done," the more this becomes a reality for us. This activity speeds up biological time and is a major cause of aging and disease. On the other hand, when the mind is focused and in the present, biological time slows down. When the mind is perfectly still, as occurs in deep meditation, there is no passage of biological time.

While this concept has its merits, it should not be reduced to black-and-white terms. For instance, while a fun-filled day might zoom by ("time flies when you’re having fun"), this kind of activity will not have the same impact on us as a day spent active in tense business meetings, because having fun provides its own health benefits which, if anything, tend to turn the clock backwards. So, here is a corollary to the rule of biological time: the more heart-centered an activity, the less effect it has on biological time. The heart beats out every moment, calling us to stay in the present. Thus, if we spend the day dancing, playing with our pets, and enjoying nature, we allow our hearts to engage more directly with the world, and this tends to guide us to health rather than decay. If, however, as we do these activities we are saying to ourselves, "I should be taking care of this and that," it’s the mind, not the heart, ruling us – and revving up the speed of biological time.

The meditative arts are of supreme benefit in achieving balance of heart and mind and slowing biological time. These practices include yoga, tai chi, chanting, meditation, qi gong, breath work, biofeedback, and more. Certain therapies, such as acupuncture, shirodhara, massage, herbal medicine, and Ayurvedic counseling, can also be of great benefit in stabilizing the mind and opening the heart. (However, there is no substitute for having a practice of slowing oneself down on a daily basis.) These arts cause the breath to be slower and fuller, they bring us into our bodies, they guide us to open the parts of ourselves which are constrained, and this calms and centers the mind. When the mind is at peace, we are simply okay with our lives – nothing needs to be different. In this lull of biological time, not only do we gravitate toward health, we also get to savor life and all its beauty.