Karen's specialty is private consultations.  During the session (1 or 2 hours) Karen will determine the elemental forces which lie deep within the realm of your Being.  Karen uses ancient ayurvedic and yogic teachings and techniques along with therapeutic yogasage to help you find a space for resolution and develop a compassionate sense of well being and wholeness. Karen's empathic ability aids her in all her private sessions.

Karen offers the following Integrative Therapies in private sessions.

Yoga: Hatha yoga training is an athletic form of yoga.  It helps the mind focus, strengthens the body and builds confidence. You get increased energy and stamina from regular yoga excercise.

Yogassage: A yogassage is a deep, long-holding stretch facilitated by a therapist.  Yogassage therapy incorporates elements of ayurvedic massage and Thai massage.

Astrolgy:  Karen offers 20-minute astrology readings which explore the school you are in (rising sign), the tribe you are in (moon sign) and where you have been in the past (south node), where you are headed (north node), and how you are going to get there (Pluto polarity point). 

Ayurveda:  During a Ayurvedic consultation Karen identifies your dosha (vata, pita or kapha) and shows you how to optimize your body type through food and lifestyle choices.  Specific herbs and aromas are prescribed for each dosha.

Aroma Therapy with Essential Oils calms, energizes, balances, purifies and rejuvenates the mind and body.  Essential oils stimulate the olfactory receptors in the brain to effect change at the level of the DNA.  Develop a grounded, earth centered awareness by using the five senses, particularly the sense of smell.  Karen uses primarily Young Living Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils in her work.   Check out these links:

Young Living Essential Oils
When asked, enter Karen's distributor #:  434607

Wisdom of the Earth aromatherapy

Hawaiian Wellness Center

Purgation Therapy: In Ayurveda this therapy is called Virechana (purgation therapy) and is the simplest of Pancha Karma (purification) therapies.  It is a therapeutic method to treat many conditions. It is used to cleanse the liver, gallbladder and the small intestine.   This therapy can be used whenever we experience constipation, intestinal obstruction, old fevers, acute diarrhea, dysentery, food poisoning, gallstones, kidney stones, boils, or any other symptoms of excess bile and toxic blood.  Spring and summer are the best seasons.
  
Emotional Release: By using methods for Self Questing developed by Dr. Gregory Hitter and methods by The Hendrick's Institute, Karen has developed her own technique for emotional release and soul retrieval.


Yoga, Meditation, Ayurveda, breathing exercises, and visualization are proven techniques that help bring us back into union with ourselves.  Introspection teaches the need for discipline and self-examination.  It helps one feel refreshed, calm and balanced after experiencing physical and mental stresses, as well as aids the body in detoxification, rejuvenation and recovery.  Rooted in behavioral sciences private classes are aimed at self-understanding, self-acceptance, anger management, understanding food as medicine and intuitive development.

The goal is to gain a personal understanding of how connected we are to the things around us and to glean personal insight on our personal relationship to breath, body, our five senses, food, subtle environmental factors, and overall lifestyle habits and how they increase or decrease balance in the body, mind and spirit.  Even seasonal influences affect us by reducing or increasing stress, and our ability to focus or feel a sense of joy.  Yoga and many other manipulative and energy based therapies help effect change at a level beneath the sub conscious mind and often without the conscious mind ever even knowing what happened.

This program is designed to help the individual become aware of what being centered and grounded into ones “Self” means.  Mindfulness approaches are tools to relieve stresses like worry, anger, hyper reactive behavior, mis-directed energy, lack of focus, fatigue and overall brain fog.

A description of the program includes meditation and visualization to harness the mind and to learn how to turn toward the inner eye and toward the development of the sense organs of perception.  Doing this strengthens ones intuitive nature and enables one to touch upon the observer inside, the one that looks out upon the world.  These techniques help a person to take responsibility for their actions and to make wiser choices. 

The practice of yoga asanas is to create space in the body and the nervous system.  By creating flexibility in the backs of legs, hips, spine, neck and arms awareness of undercurrents of feelings which lie deep in the sub conscious mind can rise up and be integrated and brought into wholeness with the body mind connection.  Natural chemicals are released in the body neutralizing constricted holding patterns.  Yoga asanas are a vital part of the program, giving awareness of how ones body alignment expresses a language to the world and the world responds to this body language.  The body seems to be all-knowing and all-powerful, fully equipt to heal, rejuvenate and recover.  Our bodies want homeostasis all it takes is an ability to listen and a desire to allow health, balance and non-suffering into our lives.

Breath exercises (pranayama) to enhance a sense of wellbeing in the sympathetic nervous system and calm the fight or flight response.  Pranayama breathing exercises is another activity to promote proper balance and integration of the neuro-respiritory system also considered breath absorption.  The same way we digest our food and our thoughts we also digest our breath.  By creating an intimate relationship with breath (in Sanskrit is called Prana and means life force) one can go to places in their psyche that they don’t normally get to access let alone experience.  Watching the breath flow in and out develops concentration and strengthens the muscle of the inner eye.  Human beings by nature emote energy out through speech and breath.  Breath awareness allows one to harness the wandering mind and just be not having to do anything, produce anything, choose anything or control anything.  Just be. 

Philosophies and vocabulary are presented to enhance ones ability to wonder.  These wisdom and compassion based philosophies are like seeds; the more they are nurtured and watered the more likely they are to come to fruition. Wisdom based philosophies are presented as a model to discover what it is to be fully conscious in body, mind and spirit.  Understanding this enables one to springboard toward a more fulfilling and blissful life experience.

Interactive discussion is encouraged, topics include “food as medicine”  what and how we eat, how food affects our views on life by the way it makes us feel in our digestion, how we interact and digest our thoughts, and how these forces effect not only the physiology of the body but the psychological state of mind as well. 

The human body is designed to experience six tastes or flavors in food.  Each taste is responsible for its own action and is affected by different organs of the body.  For example the flavor of sweet isn’t only refined sugar or fruit, but grains, pasta, meat, dairy, nuts, oils and more.  Sweet is anything that puts bulk on the body.  Interestingly this taste of sweet is the first flavor a new baby experiences as it suckles the mother’s breast and is nurtured with mothers milk.  Society as a whole can’t seem to manage their sugar intake, possible correlation toward our desire to feel nurtured and loved.

The taste of sour like what’s experienced in lemons, berries, pickles, tomatoes and condiments are flavors that increase bile, which is made by the liver and stored in the gallbladder.  A taste believed to have originated in our human evolution to determine if food has gone bad by its sour taste.  It increases fire in the body and is responsible for much of the hyper acidity doctors are prescribing ant acids for.  Decrease sour flavors and the nasty side effects go away.  Sour can be useful as well like in yogurts or buttermilk.

Salty which is also responsible for heating the body up internally, and according to Ayurveda a heated body creates a heated mind lending a hand to anger, criticism, and judgmental behaviors.  Salt is found in just about all processed foods as well as fish, soy sauce and of coarse table salt.

The taste of pungent or spicy is generally found in spices.  For example pepper, cayenne, ginger, garlic, radishes, salsa and basil to name a few.  They have antibiotic properties as well as aid in digestion and absorption of vitamins, minerals and nutrients.  Aside from promoting digestion pungent taste help aiding the ability to sweat, clears channels and releases toxins from the body as well as being a natural expectorant.

Bitter is found in green and yellow vegetables, leafy greens and even bittersweet chocolate.  Bitter herbs would be considered Echinacea and goldenseal and are considered light, airy and cold.  Bitters are anti inflammatory, aid in reducing fever, and are detoxifying; they are generally cooling to the body but are known to be depleting to the body if taken in excess.

Finally, astringent found in beans, peas, pomegranates, apples and aloe vera.  Astringent tastes reduce sweating are drying and firming to the body, stops diarrhea, and helps close wounds.  Astringent seems to be more of an effect than a flavor and promotes absorption of bodily fluids, and can be considered sedative.

Tastes and emotions can be linked in that they affect the body according to their qualities.  There are bitter emotions like grief or astringent emotions like fear.  There are sour emotions like envy or pungent emotions like anger.  Sweet emotions correspond to desire and salty are likened with greed.

Activities regarding food are considered the science of rasa (in Sanskrit rasa meaning taste or flavor) and explain a whole psychology of mental states and emotional behaviors through energetics that either increase or decrease balance in the body.

The above stated healing techniques cover a broad range of tools for transformation affecting change at a sub conscious level and often times without the conscious mind even knowing.  The program is designed to act like a door opener toward a path of personal purpose, what in Sanskrit is called Dharma and implies ones “Truth”.  The desired outcome is to discover ones own strengths and assets, enhance discernment, cultivate non-judgment and non attachment and to see oneself as a positive force in society.
 
These proposed activities are presented in 1 to 2 hour long sessions.  They are not designed to be rigid, rather to be flexible and to move with the interests and needs of the client while having a general guideline for study.  This allows the individual to be an active participant in their own healing program.  These modalities are a discipline to implement and integrate into ones life over the course of a whole lifetime.  There is no time frame for the completion of this program rather an ongoing study of oneself.   Uncover layers of deep truths and timeless realities on your path toward health and healing.

Namaste’