Comprehensive Integrative Nutrition and Energy Medicine Certification Program
    
     Seven Bowls certification program in Integrative Nutrition Counseling and Energy Medicine offers a full-range curriculum in the art, science, and energetics of nutrition, counseling, intuition, plant medicine, cooking, gardening, lifestyle, body awareness and emotional nourishment. The curriculum embodies the innovative field of Nutritional Psychology, which draws from principles of Nature Cure and the Wise Woman Tradition, as well as the Allopathic, Oriental and Ayurvedic disciplines. The program design is based upon the seven directions of the Medicine Wheel of Nourishment. This design is symbolic of an individual’s journey to find his/her own path of healing. Together, we explore the dynamic workings of the human body, mind and spirit using nourishment as our vehicle. This program constitutes a re-education from the theoretical, linear learning model to an experiential, multidimensional orientation, where theory merges with experience and comes to life. While our minds may grasp concepts and ideas, it is through our senses that we interact and connect with the world. Only through our bodies can we truly feel that link and know that connection.
     Throughout the program students are engaged in a parallel process: one follows a course of self-exploration and self-healing. The other prepares one for professional opportunities to collaborate with other health practitioners as a Certified Nutritional Counselor. Together they encompass a journey directed toward a client’s own optimal health.
     An ancient proverb states, "Man does not live by bread alone." When we nurture the soul, life is rich, happy and awake to its full potential. In modern times, while we hold higher standards for physical care and comfort than ever before, we generate as much disease. In this time of abundance we suffer from over-nutrition, even as we hunger insatiably for some deeper connection (with people, purpose, nature and spirit).

"Let your food be your medicine and
your medicine be your food."
Hippocrates

     Nourishment encompasses all that sustains the needs and development of body, mind and spirit, not only to maintain life, but to enrich and enliven our being. It is that which we are instinctively driven to seek, and is that which satisfies the sensual through taste, touch, sight, sound and smell.
     Nutrition, a living matrix of essential nutrients, is a delicate balance, which promotes homeostasis and vitality. Our personal relationship to nutrition - how and what we eat - governs the quality of our nourishment and how it supports our physical health. Potentially every food, thought, impression and experience is nourishing for our being. Through the Seven Bowls program students study how each choice affects one’s state of health and well being. The student undertakes a program of self-study in order to contemplate and develop a deep understanding of one’s relationship to food, nutrition and nourishment.
     The Seven Bowls program incorporates the study and application of Eastern, Western and energy healing philosophies. Furthermore, by integrating movement exercise, and body awareness, as well as intellectual, emotional and intuitive practices, the student learns how to move through a process of change so that he/she can facilitate lifestyle changes for future clients. We continually ask the question: How is the physical manifestation of food transformed into the substance that builds, maintains and restores every cell, every emotion, and every action in our being?

"...our three basic needs for food and security and love, are so
mixed and mingled and intertwined that we cannot straightly
think of one without the others."
M.F.K. Fisher
     A unique aspect woven into the fabric of Seven Bowls is an emphasis on self-discovery and a deepening of inner knowing. As a path to self-awareness, practices of conscious eating, intuition and body sensing are presented. This cultivates each individual’s awareness of, and confidence in, the inherent wisdom of his/her own inner voice. Students will keep personal and food journals to bring to light their emotions, attitudes, habits, and physical patterns around nourishment on all levels. Weekly round table discussions and intimate class size provide a safe environment where students can share, learn, and support one another’s personal processes.  Practice of Yoga, Five Element Qi Gong and Aerobic Exercise integrate intellectual learning into a body experience.  Unique "Vibrational Structure" and Structural Transformation classes further develop the student’s own body awareness. We explore how past experiences and trauma reorganize our structure and affect our sense of well being and accomplishment. Through recognition of patterns and emotion holdings as part of a person’s health history, students learn valuable diagnostic tools to help release, process and heal these "stories in structure."

"Don^t feed both sides of yourself equally. The spirit and the
body carry different loads and require different attentions."
Rumi
     To honor these distinctions, we feel it is important for the student to undertake a personal practice of spiritual nourishment. Time and attention away from the busy-ness of our day-to-day lives allows us to relax into and recognize our resonance with the rhythms of the natural world. Rituals, nature awareness, and experiential activities provide tools for establishing a constant connection with nature, a sense of ourselves as microcosms within the macrocosm of the phenomenal world.  This program is designed to work in harmony with the seasons. Students and teachers fully immerse themselves in the natural wisdom of the Earth, observing how the body’s cycle and biochemistry reflect natures. Again, these practices allow the intellectual learning to assimilate and become living wisdom.