Resources – Marsha Haller, MD, Medical Acupuncture

Resources for your Healing Journey

Dr. Haller’s Favorites

Alexander Technique: I truly believe this to be the best way to change your posture. I have personally benefitted from this approach and consider Alexander classes ta key part of my own care. Changing your posture is challenging, but the benefits go beyond neck pain to improved circulation and energy flow.

StressCare: Stress and pain relief through mindfulness. Eight week courses based on the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. These classes can be life-changing!  Health care providers can get CME units, and Kaiser offers a similar class.

Yoga for the Pelvic Floor: Yoga can provide great benefit for many health issues, but for pelvic pain, it is important to have a teacher with specific interest and straining is this area. Leslie Howard is a leader in the field of pelvic yoga and offers workshops and ongoing classes in the SF Bay area and around the country. She works with men as well as women.

The Center For Mindful Eating, whose newsletter is, quite fittingly called Food for Thought, will help you to place the whole subject of eating into a larger context.

Mindful Eating: a Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food, Jan Chozen Bays, MD, Shambala Press.  I love this useful and fun book by an author who is a pediatrican, Zen teacher and grandmother

Live and Dare  The health benefits of meditation are myriad.  This is a beautiful website that introduces you to meditation and its scientific benefits in a way that is easy to access, well written comprehensive.  Giovanni Dietzman also offerers a 5 week in depth online meditation course for beginners that can help you develop your own meditation practice

Self-Care Resources

Acupressure’s Potent Points, A Guide to Self-Care for Common Ailments.  Michael Reed Gach, New Harbinger Press, Oakland, CA, 1990.

Acupressure for Emotional Healing, A Self-Care Guide for Trauma, Stress and Common Emotional Imbalances.  Michel Reed Gach and Beth Ann Henning, Bantam Books, New York, 2004

The Acupuncture Response, Balance Energy and Restore Health—a Western Doctor Tells You How. Glenn S. Rothfeld and Suzanne LeVert, Contemporary Books, 2001

The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self -Treatment Guide to Pain Relief. Claire Davies and Amber Davies, New Harbinger Press, Oakland, CA.   Note: 2nd Edition (2004) has longer explanations and case history, and more detailed instructions on self-treatment.  3rd Edition (2012) is a lot easier to access, with more charts and illustrations, but instructions on self treatment are a bit less explicit.

Explain Pain, David Butler and G. Lorimer Mosley,  NOI Group; 2nd edition, 2013  This one is a must if you have been in pain for a long time and do not have a good understanding of how and why your pain trajectory has evolved.

Medical Acupuncture and Acupuncture Research

The American Academy of Medical Acupuncture: Information about medical acupuncture and referral to providers.

Society for Acupuncture Research: dedicated to improving the quality and increasing the awareness of research in acupuncture, herbal therapy and other modalities of Oriental Medicine. Up to date compendium for clinical and basic science research on acupuncture.

AcuTrials: a resource of the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine for those interested in refining their search for acupuncture research on specific conditions.