Newsletter & Specials

January Special

Exfoliate away 2006 with a Chocolate sugar scrub for your legs and feet followed by a cardamom foot soak. Next, refresh your skin with a daydream facial by one of our amazing skin care experts. Complete your renewal for the new year with a 30 minute Swedish massage. $120

What’s Happening at The Dragontree?

Sugar and Spice Contest

Thank you to everyone who nominated that "everything nice" person in your life. Due to an overwhelming response and an extraordinary number of amazing nominees we are delaying announcing the winner until January 15th!

Holiday Retreat Closure Dates

The Dragontree will be closed Monday January 8th and Tuesday January 9th so that our staff can have an escape of our own on Mt. Hood! We will be refreshed and ready to see you again on Wednesday the 10th.

Welcoming 2007

By The Dragontree’s Acupuncturist and Chinese Herbalist, Peter Borten, L.Ac., M.Ac.O.M.

Happy New Year, Everyone.

We hope you are able to look back fondly on 2006, wave goodbye to any regrets and let them go, and to see with clarity and eagerness what you want to make of the coming year.

The digits of this year add up to the number 9 – the largest single-digit number, and a symbol of abundance, fullness, and completion. We wish you all of these in 2007. February 18th is the Chinese New Year and marks the beginning of the year of the pig (or boar). While Americans have mixed feelings about pigs, Asians generally have a positive impression of them. In fact, the Chinese character for "home" depicts a pig under a roof. This reveals a historic association of the pig with family and wealth. Thus, the year of the pig is said to be a good time to have a baby (there are predictions of a baby boom in Asian countries in 2007 since many believe a child born in this year will be lucky). It’s also considered to be a good year for focusing on family, and it’s seen as a time of great prosperity.

Have you made any resolutions for 2007?

When I was first studying medicine, I was lucky enough to have a professor who deeply embraced "holism," and this really expanded my understanding of life and health. Holism, or "whole-ism," is the philosophy of seeing and treating a person as a single complex entity (rather than merely the sum of their many systems and pieces). No part of a person – not their thoughts, their joints, their diet, their relationships, or any other part – should be considered in an isolated way from the rest of them. In an even broader sense, holism considers each person within their larger world environment.

As a guiding principle in healthcare, being able to see a person as a vast, unified constellation is actually just the first step. We also need to have a sense of what each person would look like in a state of health. As a holistic practitioner, I try to envision my patients as balanced, functional, happy, healthy, vibrant beings so I have a clear picture of where we’re headed. If I find that I keep seeing a patient as sick or imbalanced, I know I need to step back and recalibrate my focus before I do anything for them.

The same is true for all of us in how we see ourselves and how we think about goals. The parts we focus on (sometimes the "big picture," other times the "little picture") tend to dominate our experience. A clear vision of the attainment of our goal can be used to set our internal compass. The more vividly we can imagine the actualization of the goal – how it would look, feel, sound, smell, and taste – the more powerfully we will be inspired by it and even compelled towards it. (And if nothing else, while we’re waiting for it, we’ll feel much better than if we focus on how much it stinks that we don’t have it yet.)

If you’ve made a resolution, even just a little one, ask yourself, can I see myself attaining this? If not, consider what obstacles must be dealt with or beliefs must be dismantled in order for you to allow yourself this possibility. Next, try watching your thoughts around this goal. If you tend to have thoughts of doubt, excuses, hurdles, etc., see if you can steer yourself back to envisioning the attainment of your goal again. This requires some discipline – you have to catch yourself thinking in the negative and change course, sometimes over and over and over.

To see your resolution in a more holistic light, consider this: who would you be if you attained this goal? Again, see how vividly you are able to imagine the whole, new you – how your thoughts and outlook would be, how your body would feel, the overall sense of how it would feel to be you. May this guide you to a happy, healthy home with a full piggy bank under its roof.

Best wishes,

Peter Borten and all of The Dragontree staff