The Songbird Health Approach

rainbow hands and heartsRather than create a new blog this month, I have decided to share my Five Year Anniversary speech from last weekend with you.

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I invite you to take a moment to bring yourself present to the energy of Songbird. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath in and slowly breathe it out. How are you feeling? Are you relaxed or tense? What issues are you facing in your life? Do you know how to handle them? Do you feel supported? Do you feel alone?

Sit with these answers as you open your eyes and explore what Songbird has to offer you. Perhaps one of our practitioners can help you on the next stage of your life journey. Or perhaps it will be someone you meet when you come to an event in our community. You never know where support will come from.

Twenty years ago, I was diagnosed with a hyperactive thyroid. Prior to that, I was extremely healthy. At that time, there was no worldwide web to learn more about my condition beyond what the doctors told me. It was a challenge to find alternative or complementary treatments. I felt overwhelmed and alone. However, I persevered in exploring other options.

I tried a variety of treatments for my thyroid and the side effect of my bulging eyes. Some of them included acupuncture, homeopathy, naturopathy, hypnotherapy, Reiki energy healing, diet, and colored light. Being able to explore other options helped me feel comfortable with my choice to eventually take thyroid medication, and my choice to use that over radioactive iodine to destroy part of my thyroid, the preferred choice of my doctor. It made me feel comfortable treating my eyes with an x-ray radiation treatment to reduce the swelling in the eye muscles. I felt I had explored other healthier options to the best of my ability at that time. After two years, my thyroid went back to normal, and I went off the medication. My thyroid has been healthy for the last 18 years.

In today’s world, we can become overwhelmed in a different way. There is too much information. There are too many options available. We can feel just as alone as we try to wade through all the options by ourselves. However, at the same time, with all these options, we have more opportunities to find the right one. If the worldwide web had been around 20 years ago, I might not have needed the mainstream treatments I used.

That’s why I created Songbird Community Healing Center five years ago and the Hands of Gold Healing Clinic ten years ago. I want you to have a warm and welcoming community where you can feel supported on your journey to health. I want you to have access to quality alternative options on your healing path, regardless of your financial means. I want you to be able to avoid the struggle I had to go through.

The Songbird practitioners are here to help you explore different options and find the right one for you. We believe that being healthy requires being healthy in body, mind, and spirit. While the physical treatments I explored for my thyroid were very important, equally important was my exploration of the Toltec path of don Miguel Ruiz, author of the Four Agreements. I started on the Toltec journey 14 years ago, when I moved to Sonoma County. The Toltec path is a way of life based on freedom, unconditional love and non-judgment. These values are part of the foundation of Songbird, along with my personal vision of sharing information and supporting growth for everyone through community, connection, and creativity. However, my path is not necessarily the right one for you. Each person is different, and each person needs to find their own unique path.

That’s why Songbird offers a wide variety of services and classes. Some of them are fairly mainstream, and some of them are very unusual. Some of them are donation-based like our Hands of Gold Healing Clinic on 2nd & 4th Tuesday evenings, where you can explore different services with about 10 of our practitioners, and our Friday Night Flock Nights where we bring in outside speakers, as well as Songbird practitioners, to talk on a variety of topics. You can find fliers for these on our flier table. You can also meet our practitioners and explore our services during our drop-in hours during the day. Once you have found the right choice for you, you can sign up for classes and private appointments with our practitioners. We recently opened up a new gift store across the street, Stones Throw, where you can find crystals, health products, books, and many other gifts for your body, mind, and spirit.

It takes time to manifest a dream, and even after five years, Songbird is still growing into all that it can be. We are heading many new directions this year including a Saturday morning tai chi class followed by a Self Care & Wellness series with chiropractor David Armstrong and acupuncturist Mark Velez.

I hope you’ll take the time to discover how Songbird can support you on your journey and manifesting the solution to what you saw when you closed your eyes at the beginning.