Desert Health News - November-December 2023

www.acqpoint.com Gourmet mushrooms are certainly enjoying their glory days. These superfood superstars are showing up everywhere, from our coffee to the main course, as consumers and chefs realize their nutritional value, adaptability, texture and taste. Growers across the country are jumping on the shroom boom bringing the Pennsylvania natives to boutique farms in city and suburbs nationwide. Jim and Stacy Shaffer started growing their bounty for personal consumption in a spare bedroom of their Yucca Valley home. Friends and family started making requests, and the operation grew to their backyard barn. When restaurants began calling, the couple knew they had something special, so they moved to the valley and Canyon Creek Gourmet Mushrooms was born. They now serve around 1,000 pounds of product weekly to 40-50 restaurants valley wide including Workshop Kitchen + Bar, Wildest Restaurant and Mr. Lyons. Their store front offers freshly grown product, homemade jerky, powders, and more, and their team of nine is always happy to offer tours. When I walked through the doors of their Palm Desert facility, the first thing I noticed was the smell – or, should I say, the lack thereof. Having lived near Morgan Hill (CA), formerly known as the “mushroom capital of the world,” I associate harvesting mushrooms with manure and can immediately recognize the pungent whiff. I would soon learn that today’s gourmet mushrooms - lion’s mane, king trumpet, oyster, pioppino and chestnut - naturally grow on trees with no fertilizer involved. “Farming” simply includes wood pellets, soy husks, temperature control, humidity and time. Canyon Creek recreates the “tree” via blocks of clean hard wood pellets with soy husk pellets providing a nitrogen boost. On my tour, Shaffer explained that the blend of the two creates what they call the substrate for the mycelium to grow and produce their www.DesertHealthNews.com November/December 2023 Natural Options The Valley ' s Leading Resource for Health and Wellness 14 @SportsandMSKmedicine @SportsandMSK_Medicine Get relief from pain and stress now! Acupuncture • Electro Acupuncture Chiropractic • K-Laser • Cupping Chinese Herbs • Medical Massage Eddie Rameriz, LMT PHYSIOTHERAPY MASSAGE ACUPRESSURE Diane Sheppard, Ph.D., L.Ac. CLINIC DIRECTOR Agustin Orozco, L.Ac, LMT ACUPUNCTURE Madeline Flores, LMT, HHP MASSAGE THERAPY CRANIAL SACRAL THERAPY CUPPING Diane Sheppard, PhD, LAc Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Acupuncturist The Fine Art of Self-acupressure Call for dates and times. Tracy Smith Energy Life Coach, Hypnotherapist, Sound Practitioner • December 14 • Sound Bowl Meditation Lifewave Energy Enhancing Patches • January 11 • Tracy will be signing her new book, Moments of Divine Inspiration , and oering a Sound Bowl Meditation Please RSVP as space is limited (760) 345.2200 Please call for insurance coverage information | Hablo español Join us for these complimentary events For appointments, book online at AcQpoint.com or call 760.345.2200 77682 Country Club Drive, Ste. G • Palm Desert Robert “Buzz” Edelburg, DC CHIROPRACTOR It is true that change is the eternal constant. The average human body is replacing over 3.8 million cells a second, approximately 140 million babies are born every day and 275 million stars are born every year. And each moment of our lives is completely and uniquely different than any other moment that ever was or will be; always in constant movement as each moment creates the next in a seemingly infinite process called “the now.” We truly only live in this creative moment, and that’s the only time we have ever lived. But most of us spend the majority of our time in our heads. Our focus is only marginally in the now because we are always trying to manage the moment, focusing on the desires in the future. Most of us, to some degree, are lost in the trance of attachment to thought and like to consider our opinions to be true, because after all, that’s what we think. And what we think about, what’s happening in the moment, is what shapes our reality, not what’s actually happening in the moment. However, most people will claim it’s the conditions in the moment that are responsible for our experience. We rarely realize we create the experience, our story, by our thoughts about it; the process is so ingrained that we are generally unaware that we were thinking at all. Our thinking is quite automatic, entirely created from all our past conditioning, our experiences, beliefs, opinions, social, cultural and religious backgrounds, etc. And we rely on this conditioned mind, which is entirely made up of the past, to inform and guide us into the future. So, we often end up in a future that looks, not surprisingly, a lot like a continuation of the past, our well ingrained story, until eventually an experience comes along that disrupts that pattern. All too often, for many of us, unfortunately, it takes a disruption in our life, often painful, that fundamentally challenges our story and breaks our pattern. The experience of these disruptions can move us beyond the familiar conditioned thinking and into the present moment because that’s where the pain resides, taking us to a place beyond the limited patterns of the past and into a new potential for change, into a “liminal space.” The word “liminal” comes from the Latin word “limen,” meaning threshold. The state of being that is liminal space is outside of the old patten of “business as usual.” It is often defined as “relating to a transition,” between two states of consciousness, like sleeping and waking. It refers to a state of consciousness that is “on the precipice of something new,” having left the old behind, yet the new has not materialized, so we must live with the uncertainty of what it might be. To exist in the space of liminality is to be open and available in the present moment to the creative inspiration it holds within, while also being receptive and allowing for the uncertainty of the moment to bring unknown possibility into reality - potentially leading to authentic transformation. If our attention starts looking for certainty, we stand to miss the transcendent potential of the moment, because we are then back into our story, trying to control the moment. I have been fortunate to know, more than once, the immeasurable transcendent possibility of the liminal now in my life. The first time I really got it came as a surprise. I had the stark realization that my thoughts of a failed relationship were creating most of my suffering. There seemed to be no way out of my constant mental story of loss, continually reliving the feelings that I would never be loved nor ever love like that again, so I went in. I focused inward, allowing the pain completely in without resistance, and there I felt intensely present within myself in a quiet stillness and energized state, absent of all the mental-emotional influence. I felt like I had somehow moved beyond the agonizing pain I was just suffering moments Creativity Lives in the Now By Reverend David Flint Continued on page 21 Continued on page 23 Wood pellet blocks simulate trees. Yellow oyster (top) and pioppino mushrooms Our Local Mushroom Farm Gourmet goodness grows at Canyon Creek By Lauren Del Sarto