Newsletter & Specials
February Specials
Experience Chocolate in a new way with an Organic Chocolate mud foot treatment for detoxification followed by a rose aroma therapy foot bath and 20 minute head, neck, and shoulder massage. Next embrace deep relaxation with a 60 minute aroma therapy massage followed by a 30 minute organic chocolate day dream facial. $200
Valentine’s Special (for couples of any sort)
Sink into our luxurious red couches with your loved one and start melting away with a rose and milk foot soak and 15 minute hand massage. Next receive a decadent organic chocolate mint sugar scrub for your lower legs and feet. Then let warm paraffin envelop and heal your hands while your feet enjoy a 20 minute massage that will relax your whole body. Finally, complete your treatment with 30 minutes of heavenly massage for your head, neck, and shoulders.
Priced for 2 - $240
From February 9th - February 18th we will be serving champagne (or sparkling cider) and organic truffles for all of our guests.
Symbol of the Month – The Heart
By Peter Borten, L.Ac.
The Dragontree’s Acupuncturist and Herbalist
The heart icon is almost omnipresent in our culture. It is an international symbol for love, featured on innumerable bumper stickers and t-shirts, as in I 
NY or I My Cat. Young girls dot their i’s with hearts. Lovers use them in graffiti to enclose two sets of initials or to declare, “I so-and-so.” While it’s easy to dismiss hearts as cliche, it’s worth remembering the depth of this beautiful idea – this symbol is a simplified picture of a human heart, that throbbing muscle in our chests that pumps life through us. This says a lot about our origins. For ages, humans thought of our hearts as the palace of our emotions, love in particular. Over the past century, though, our hearts have been largely displaced by our brains. The way to happiness, we’re told by modern science, is to adjust our brain chemicals, shock our brains, or change our thinking. Interestingly, as we’ve placed less importance on the heart, there has been a simultaneous rise in the incidence of heart disease, now the number one cause of death in the U.S.
In Chinese medicine, the internal organs are thought of as a community, with each one having a societal role. The ruler of this community – the heart – is the emperor. The emperor, though most important, doesn’t appear to do as much work as, say, the general (the liver), who must develop and implement life plans. The emperor rules mostly from within the castle. A line from the Daoist classic, Dao De Jing, speaks of this form of subtle, centered power: “Thus the Master travels the world without ever leaving home. However splendid the views, he remains serenely in himself.”
The heart is seen as the center of awareness and as the organic embodiment of the Fire element. As such, (when healthy) it has a certain weightlessness, luminosity, and warmth. These associations clearly aren’t exclusive to the Chinese, as Westerners, too, have expressions like “heart warming,” “lighthearted,” and “lifted my heart.” Fire, like love, invites people to come closer, to be held in its glow. To add another ethereal dimension to the role of the heart/emperor, the ruler was traditionally seen by the Chinese as a direct extension of God. As a representative of Fire and the Divine, an effective emperor should extend the warmth of inclusion to all reaches of the kingdom. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj gave a sense of this unconditional inclusion when he said, “When I look out at the world, I see that I am everything, and this is Love.” Our hearts do this as well, pumping blood to warm and sustain every bit of us.
Another noteworthy characteristic of fire is its variability. It’s always dancing, always changing. Chinese medical theory says that all emotions flow through the heart. Thus a healthy heart fluctuates in its rhythm like the flickering of a flame. So does an emperor, who must be constantly in touch with the moment-to-moment dynamics of the kingdom. Beyond keeping pace with and responding to the tide of our lives, the emperor/heart (through the virtue of fire) has the vital task of reminding us to be conscious of the fleeting nature of life. It attempts to keep us connected to each moment by beating out these moments for us – prompting us to be here now, and now, and now, and now. . .
We heartily encourage you, as a celebration of Valentine’s Day or simply an expression of the fire within you, to see the world as you and shine into it Love.
Warmly,
Peter and All of Us at the Dragontree
