Holiday Issue
DancingBones 2023
Hattie & Nicole celebrating Halloween
We are in the middle of the holidays & hope you are thriving & doing whatever you are able to make the world a more peaceful, joyous place.
Nicole attributes her later-in-life learning to enjoy & celebrate the holidays to Rose Hatin, who some of you may remember as the office manager at DancingBones until the summer of 2022.
Rose has a Christmas sweater for the everyday of December! She also gifted Nicole her extensive collection of holiday headbands.
Three generations: Rose & her family Frosties
Two other later-in-life lessons that Nicole attributes to her life at DancingBones: Self-care (Hattie is Nicole’s self-care role model) and family fun.
Honoring these lessons, DancingBones will be closed December 24 - January 1.
Speaking of family fun…DancingBones client Jeannette Kolokoff and her husband Mark started a new theater company: Family Theatre Santa Fe.
Jeannette and Mark have a long history of teaching and directing theater in Colorado and West Texas. They moved to Santa Fe four years ago and realized that Santa Fe’s blossoming theater scene could benefit from plays aimed at younger audiences. Everyone knows Santa Fe is a great place for retirees but with family visiting for the holidays and many younger Santa Feans returning to New Mexico, Family Theatre Santa Fe is filling a much needed gap. Their inaugural production, You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown will be at New Mexico Actors Lab for two weekends:
December 8 -10 & December 15-17
Buy tickets for yourself and for your friends with children. Start your holiday singing! You know it is a musical, right?
[Sidenote from Nicole: I really want to encourage y’all to GO & support Jeannette's new venture. Starting a new venture is, gulp, hard!]
Speaking of singing…
DancingBones is blessed with an abundance of creatives. Singers, visual artists, musicians & photographers are on our schedule everyday. If you caught the Messiah at Lensic last week, you heard the voice of member Elizabeth Roghair singing with the Santa Fe Symphony Choir (SFSC). If you missed it, you have a second chance to hear her & the Santa Fe Symphony Choir on Tuesday, December 12 @ 7pm at the St Francis Cathedral. This concert is one of SFSC gifts (aka free/by donation) to our community and another family fun event. As noted on their website: “Be sure to bring the entire family! All ages are welcome. Pay what you wish! No tickets are required and all ages are welcome.”
Another talented member of the DancingBones community is photographer (& retired physicist)
Carl Bogenholm. His work is part of the upcoming group show at Gallery With a Cause within the NM Cancer Center in Albuquerque.
Photo by Carl Bogenholm
The opening reception is this
Sunday, December 10, 4 - 6 PM
This event is a special fundraiser with door prizes, baked goods and warm drinks! Forty percent of each art sale is tax-deductible and helps patients pay for non-medical expenses while experiencing life-threatening illness.
The show will be up from November 20, 2023 - February 16, 2024. Check out Carl’s photos & get more information at https://www.gallerywithacause.org
And speaking of gifts…
In addition to the great benefits I’ve experienced from doing the DancingBones program, Nicole & I have been long-time devotees to Nia. This blended movement combines dance arts (modern, Duncan dance), martial arts (tai chi, karate) and the healing arts (yoga, Feldenkrais). Dance was my first love & continues to bring me great joy well into my 8th decade. It bolsters my spirit as well as my balance and flexibility. B.C. (before Co-vid), I assisted my friend and teacher, Jamie Klein, in a variety of Nia called Moving to Heal. Moving to Heal is a totally accessible movement class.
We begin in a chair and use it as a support when standing. The chair can become our dance partner. This is a class that supports people dealing with a wide variety of movement issues from neuropathy to Parkinsons & well as people recovering from injuries & surgeries. I asked Jamie if she might let us experience a Moving to Heal class at DancingBones. And she said, “Yes!” and gifted us a complimentary class.
Given our limited floor space, there is only room for eight. Sign up at the front desk. (No worries if you aren’t able to attend the class at DancingBones, Jamie also teaches a Studio Nia Santa Fe where your first class is always free.)
In addition to moving/dancing to great music, with a great teacher, you will come away with an improved feeling of wellness – both physical and emotional. Come and see if Moving to Heal might be a happy addition to your DancingBones regimen.
Jamie Klein at Studio Nia Santa Fe
Dr. Weiss
The response and sign up for Dr. Stephen Weiss’s talk was wonderful. Saturday, November 11th we had a full house. Dr. Weiss began by noting that 11/11 was auspicious. The spiritual meaning of 1111 is one of growth and enlightenment. It was a fun way to begin. The questions that you had prepared for Dr. Weiss helped many of us understand the technology and benefits of the BeMer.
For me the highlight of the afternoon were the testimonials from our own clients who have noticed real benefits they ascribe to the BeMer and a fascinating story from Dr. Weiss’s patient Rhett who suffered a stroke in 2007. After months in rehab, he was still unable to walk or talk. Dr. Weiss set Rhett up with a once a week, 20 minute BeMer program. Rhett has been using the BeMer for only a year and I would challenge anyone who was in the room to describe him as “disabled”. After using the BeMer once a week at 360 Medicine where Dr. Weiss practices, Rhett bought a BeMer for home use and uses it twice a day for 8 minutes.
Which brings us to one of the questions posed to Dr. Weiss “is once a week for 16 minutes sufficient to get results?”
Dr. Weiss pointed out that once a week was all Rhett had to achieve his initial result. Would it be better if you could do 8 minutes twice a day? Yes, probably – especially if you have a condition that you are trying to heal or are pre- or post surgery.
So the takeaway for me was that a once a week BeMer that is part of the DancingBones program will improve microcirculation and provide health benefits. You can always add or substitute Shake and Bake or “double BeM’ing” if you are so inclined. Even better, consider buying yourself & your family the ultimate Christmas gift. The brand new EVO model of the BeMer was introduced in July. This truly would be a gift for the entire family - humans of all ages & all types of animal too!
Speaking of animals…
BeMer was the linchpin technology that got DancingBones’s founder, Sheila Nixon, started in creating our unique three-part wellness program. Sheila’s veterinarian informed her that an issue with her horse’s eye would likely require the eye to be removed. Thankfully, when Sheila’s neighbor heard the news, she lent Sheila her BeMer to use with her horse. When the vet returned, he was astonished to discover that the eye had healed. YAY!
Do try BeMer on your own eyes. We’ve heard great testimonials - including from Dr Weiss himself!
More on animals…
Last night, Nicole & I tuned into the Sunday night ASEA Zoom call with Laura Stetmaier. [Laura is Sheila & Nicole’s “upline” for ASEA. ASEA, like LifeWave patches, impressed us enough that we got over our distaste for “direct marketing”.
I am so glad we did. ASEA has proven itself to me & in clinical studies.
Anyway, last night’s call was all about the animals. It was a Noah’s ark of animal testimonials tale featuring mice, rats, fowl, dogs & horses -the grand sire of Secretariat, in fact!
Laura’s story about Gordon the mouse captured my attention & she was kind enough to write it up for us.
Laura Stetmaier & Gordon the mouse
The Sunday night calls with Laura are quickly becoming a Sunday evening @ 6:30pm tradition at our house. She is charming, smart and funny. Everyone is welcomed on these calls. Let us know if you’d like to attend and we will make sure you get the zoom link invite. (We can provide tech support too!)
Gordon the mouse joined our family many years ago. It was a cold New Hampshire winter, and she decided to move into my house. I caught her in a trap that doesn't harm animals, and when I tried to release her, she didn't seem to want to leave so we adopted her as a pet. After a couple of years, she developed a tumor on her back. I thought that was the end of Gordon, but I decided to put a little gob of RENU 28 on the tumor. In a week, the tumor had vanished.
Gordon lived with us for eight years before she died. The life expectancy of a mouse is just one year. If you contemplate the life expectancy of a human being as being around 80 years, it was as though we had a 640-year-old mouse!
ASEA is anti-aging. I had the pleasure of having breakfast with the medical atomic physicist who is the genius behind stabilizing the redox signaling molecules in ASEA. He shared a story of one of his lab experiments. He had petri dishes of senescent cells. Senescent means old and senile, but in the field of cellular biology, it refers to cells that no longer replicate. He poured some ASEA into the petri dishes with senescent cells. Some of the cells underwent apoptosis and self-destructed. Apoptosis is cellular suicide. It sounds like a morbid concept, but it is a beautiful thing. You want old cells to self-destruct before they turn into something malignant. What was even more remarkable to me is the remaining cells that did not self-destruct started replicating again!
I love Asea because every night I go to bed and I wake up feeling younger! And I think Gordon would have agreed.
-Laura Stetmaier