Yoga After Heart Surgery for Stent Placement

by Baxter Back in the late 60s and early 70s, a new surgical treatment for blocked heart blood vessels was being perfected. Known as coronary artery bypass grafting, it allowed doctors to work around the heart’s own blood vessels that supply the muscle of the heart with oxygen and nutrition when they became dangerously plugged with plaque buildup. Patients that previously would have, most likely, suffered severe or life-ending heart attacks...[Readmore]

Stakeholder’s Progress report for FHIR

The following blog entry is a guest post from Grahame Grieve, creator of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR):"During the week of Sept 14th to 19th, HL7 held a working meeting during which the organization worked on further developing the FHIR specification.FHIR is an important new standard, not just because it does what the existing specifications do in a simpler fashion, but because it does entirely new things as well.  Because...[Readmore]

Heart Health and Yoga: An Overview

by NinaThe Heart by Henri Matisse*After three years of blogging, even I, the Editor-in-Chief, can't remember everything that’s on our blog. So because someone close to me has developed heart disease and I want to be able to help him, I’ve been—hahaha—reading through my own blog today. At the same time that I’m trying to see which topics we’ve covered so far (nothing on stents that I can see—paging Dr. Baxter Bell!), I’m also trying to get up...[Readmore]

Friday Q&A: Practicing to Manage Stress

Q: Following the stressful weeks you have just been through, what kind of yoga practice are you craving and what will you include in your home practice to meet that desire?A: After many, many years of practicing on my own, I do develop specific cravings for yoga poses, depending both on my emotional and physical state. In my case, stress affects me in a very distinctive way: I become hyper, a little manic, and I have a hard time sleeping. So what...[Readmore]

Attachment (Raga), Depression, and Plan Z

by NinaPlan EDid you read my recent post about attachment Attachment (Raga) to Our Ideas About Ourselves? Because I’m starting to feel I’m going to be exploring this topic for some time. For one thing, just a couple of days someone close to me found out that he has heart disease, and I know this means he’s going to have to let go of some of his plans/dreams for his future. I don’t know how this is going to play out, but I know it will be painful...[Readmore]

Unity Farm Journal - Fourth Week of September 2014

As we prepare for winter, we’re busy splitting wood, preparing the winter garlic beds, and finishing the building maintenance tasks for the cold and wet months ahead.We burn about 3 cords of wood each winter, all split from fallen trees on the farm.   We use small amounts of cedar as hot, fast burning kindling.   We use Oak, Maple, Ash, Hickory and Black Bird for hot, slow burning sustained warmth.   We do not use poplar, which burns...[Readmore]

You know Meaningful Use is Real When...

My 83 year old father-in-law returned from a recent outpatient visit to his primary care provider with two customized handouts  - a transition of care summary detailing problems/meds/allergies and an opt-in consent for the exchange of that care summary over the state Healthcare Information Exchange, the MassHIWay.We discussed them over dinner.A photo is shown below (with his consent)As I’ve written about several times, the Meaningful Use Stage...[Readmore]

Savasana: Silent or Not?

by BaxterOne of our readers recently sent us this topic idea for a post:I am usually ready to cry in class when the teacher insists on talking throughout Savasana. I had one class where the teacher literally droned about how important silence was for >10 minutes. If silence was so important, why couldn’t she have given us some?There is more to this question than meets the eye, or the ear in this case! Some of the challenge is that modern Savasana...[Readmore]