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Matthew Thie on Touch for Health Basics and Why They Matter
Originally published in Specialized Kinesiology Magazine, Winter 2017 Back to Basics issue. Photo credit: Jan Cole, 2016 TFHKA Conference Growing up with the creator of Touch for Health for a father, the system seems to be in Matthew Thie’s blood. Any conversation with Matthew about kinesiology work eventually makes its way back to the core tenants of self-responsibility and why basic, simple techniques are the best ones; and he has made a career out of travelling the world speaking on this subject and teaching others. And so for this issue, Matthew and I sat down for a long-distance conversation about the basics of kinesiology, what has changed and why it…
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Homesteading in Costa Rica, 2017
2017 Homesteading Goals Normally, I subscribe to the ‘don’t tell people your goals’ school of thought. Due to my introverted nature, I prefer to work quietly behind the scenes and then appear magically with finished projects no-one saw coming. But this whole homesteading/self-sufficiency thing is new to me and I am genuinely curious as to what my family will manage to accomplish this year and what other families are planning on doing in the same vein. So please, include your homesteading goals for this year in the comments below and let’s see how we can grow our Permaculture community (no pun intended)! Here are three areas where I see big…
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How to Make Tamales – Tico Traditions
Tamales are traditional Costa Rican cuisine. While the ingredients are simple, they are time consuming to make. They remind me of my Ukrainian family making perogies, women working together in an assembly line to make hundreds for a special event or holiday. Last Friday we were invited to join a Tico family to make tamales and, while it was great to learn how to make this local staple, the best part was that feeling of community. A kitchen full of people talking, laughing and working together. I have seen recipes for tamales online and in books, but learning from a matriarch is different. Family recipes are passed down in approximations.…
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5 reasons why your holistic business is failing (and how to fix it!)
You have mistaken ‘holistic’ for ‘unprofessional’. Holistic business means a business model that touches all aspects of your life and is more personal and vulnerable than the corporate model. It allows for you to make some of your own rules. It does not mean that you don’t need proper licenses or training, or that you are above traditional business methodology. You can skip shoes, but not pants, know what I mean? Show your clients respect. You haven’t properly defined your business. What I mean by this is that you haven’t taken the time to sit down and really think about what your business offers and who you want to attract.…
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Is kinesiology ‘Un-Christian’?
Every once and awhile I get questioned by someone who believes that kinesiology and muscle testing are not Biblical and should not be sanctioned by true Christians. As this has come up for myself and a few of my students recently, I thought I would take a minute to write about it. If you believe in an almighty and benevolent Creator, it makes sense to think that He would make our bodies in a way that would allow us to heal ourselves. We have brilliant systems for self-healing in place; the procedure your body goes through to close up an open wound for instance, platelets, plasma and fibrin working to…
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Expectations vs. Reality
…In which I meander aimlessly on the topic of money and how it’s working/not working for us in the rainforest. It is always interesting to see what happens when expectations bump up against reality. We have been living in Costa Rica since late February and extremely few things have gone according to plan. The overall shape of life that I was looking for is here, but the path was not at all what I thought it would be. And for the most part, that’s ok, but in other ways we need to seriously re-evaluate where we are at and what we are doing. Money is one of those areas.…
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The Body is Electrical
The body is electrical. You often hear people in the holistic health field referring to the body as energetic, but not giving any thought to what that actually means. If the ‘energy’ that we are referring to when we talk about ‘energy work’ is electric in nature, then we can begin to explain how it works a little better – it means that we can discuss energy in terms of physics, rather than esoteric terminology. This idea appeals to people like me who want to know the ‘how’ of what holistic practitioners do. If you tell me that you can help me feel better by waving your hands around and…
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How to get your goat pregnant in Costa Rica
It is more difficult, and expensive, to knock up a goat than you would think. There are interesting perks and challenges implicit in attempting to farm in the jungle. I have been learning everything I can about how to take care of our animals online, but the problem with that is that the vast majority of the information available is written in North America. Everything is just so different here: the climate, the food that is available, the building materials, etc. Add to this the fact that, in rural Costa Rica, animals are meant for food – they are not in any way pets, which means that people care for…
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Why SK Magazine?
Why put together a magazine? I love to write. When I was a little kid, I figured I would be a poet and fiction writer when I grew up. When I was in high school and began to understand that poetry may not be a lucrative field, I decided I was going to be a journalist. That career path was unceremoniously tossed aside when I fell in love with the natural health world, but I have always kept my toes in it. Over the years I have written for newspapers, magazines and websites as a freelancer, usually on the topic of health and wellness, trying to demystify subjects like kinesiology…
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Specialized Kinesiology – What I Wish I Knew Before I Started
Lately, as I have been attempting to navigate my way through new adventures in homesteading, I have been reading a lot of blog posts. Many of these have had similar titles of the, “5 things I wish I had known before getting goats” or “10 things you should know before buying chickens” variety. This has lead me to think a lot about one of the most common questions I am asked as an instructor of Specialized Kinesiology – what do you need to know before you start? The truth is, looking back, I am embarrassed by how little I knew when I started out. I had a background in nutrition…
