Newsletter: April 2008
Welcome Spring!
Welcome Folks I met at Holistic Health World!
Anarres newsletters are sent only once per month and will always contain a bonus user-friendly article on a wholistic health topic. If you would like to join the Anarres Natural Health newsletter list, please write me at anarreshealth@gmail.com.
I welcome your suggestions or comments.
Be well!
Tracey TieF
416 535 9620
1. Workshops for April, 2008: March 29 69 Olive Gallery Sale, Spring Detox Lab, Natural Cleaning, Non Toxic Women and by request...
2. Specials for April, 2008: Spring Detox Packages, Invite-A-Friend Special Offer and Pay-What-You-Want Wednesdays
3. Testimonials of The Month: I've often suspected that, if I did just the right thing at the right moment, the possible unhappy outcome could be circumvented... ~ Chris Malec, Registered Massage Therapist, Toronto
4. Anarres Natural Health Clinic Shop News: sunscreens, Cds, books and thanks
5. Bonus article: The Business of Green by Beth Terry – an article about Anarres!
1. Workshops for April, 2008
April's Theme is It Can Be Easy Being Green!
What: a Spring Shopping Spree
When: Saturday, March 29, 2 to 4 pm.
Where: 69 Olive Gallery, 69 Olive Avenue,
Home of Deb Wiles and the Marks of Perception Art School Meet the creator of Anarres Natural Health products, Tracey TieF, Certified Natural Health Practitioner. Sample cocoa, shea, almond and avocado butter and wonderful bath and body products made naturally without compromise. Shop for lotions, creams, massage and bath oils, soaps, essential oils and palm wax candles. Welcome Neighbours, Artists, Parents, Friends!
What: The Spring Detox Lab ~ a drop in, Pay What You Want, DIY event
When: Tuesday, April 8, 6-9 pm, Drop In, but please RSVP
Where: Anarres Natural Health Clinic, 12 Ossington Crescent
Move over spa – I'm learning a few tricks of my own! The Anarres Clinic kitchen will be all set up for making stimulating sea salt and sugar scrubs, magnificent massage oils, bodaceous bath salts, fantastic face masks and intriguing infused oils. Over snacks and tea, I'll guide you through the process of making your ideas take shape. You'll come away with absolutely original, and useful, deoxifying goodies you've made for yourself, or to give as a gift, and skills that can serve you for a lifetime for a fraction of the cost of a spa habit. Bring your own packaging, or buy glass bottles and vegetable cellulose bags here. You can use your Workshopper Card to attend, or Pay What You Want for what you take home (suggested prices available for the timid).
What: a DIY Natural Cleaning Party!
When: Tuesday, April 15, 6-8 pm
Where: Anarres Natural Health Clinic, 12 Ossington Crescent
Anarres Natural Health is hosting a Do-It-Yourself green cleaning party in partnership with Women's Voices for the Earth, an inspiring women's environmental health organization working to educate consumers about chemicals in cleaning products. You'll go home with your very own set of easy-to-make cleaning products (plus recipes) that have been tested for effectiveness and are good for your health and the environment!
The workshop is Pay-What-You-Can, with all proceeds going to InterPares. Inter Pares works with social change organizations around the world who share our analysis that poverty and injustice are caused by structural inequalities within and between nations, and who are working to promote social and economic justice in their communities. www.interpares.ca I have committed $260 and hope we can raise this and more!
Forward this to a friend!
For more details about this invitation and to RSVP online, go to: http://www.party2win.com/womensvoices/parties?e=diynaturalcleaningparty&...
What: Non-Toxic Women Workshop
GRASSROOTS SOLD OUT IN RECORD TIME!!!
When: Tuesday, April 22, 6 to 9 pm
Where: Anarres Natural Health Clinic, 12 Ossington Crescent
There's so much that's said to be bad for you, and bad for the environment, but who do you believe, and where do you start? Don't worry; be healthy! From phthalates and plastics, to parabens and probiotics, Tracey will talk with us about the toxins that commonly plague us in our environment and about simple, immediate solutions that will benefit our health and our planet. Together we will look at The Diva Cup and Keeper and other healthy alternatives to conventional pads and tampons. We will discuss common household cleaning, bath, baby and beauty products that can easily be replaced with healthful products you can make yourself, or buy locally. You'll come away with your own list of easy, life enhancing changes you can start making today, and the information you need to make healthy decisions for you and your family.
Please feel free bring along some of your favorite personal care products and find out what really lies within!
Anarres in-Clinic Workshops are also offered by request:
BOOK A PARTY (5 friends!), CLASS OR WORKSHOP Call for more info: 416 535 9620
Anarres' workshops are relaxing and fun and take place at Anarres Natural Health Clinic, College & Ossington. Classes are limited to six participants so that everyone gets a semi private lesson experience. There's fruit, veggies and dip to snack on, and, as always, a choice of cool crystal water or refreshing tea. There are always goodies to take home, as well as new found knowledge and skills.
Pre-registration and payment is necessary to reserve a workshop space. Space is limited to 6 people. Workshops are now: $50 for 3 hours. Pre Register with a friend, or for two workshops, for $30 each! REPEAT a workshop for $30. To RSVP, for address and other info 416.535.9620 or anarreshealth@gmail.com
2. Specials for April, 2008: Spring Detox Packages
Invite-A-Friend Special Offer and Pay-What-You-Want Wednesdays
Spring Detox Packages:
Ten treatment package for $100 + off the price of ten hours!!!
Spring is a great time to begin a detoxification program, and I feel like encouraging everyone. With the "Detox Me" package, you'll receive 10 hours of customized health coaching, body and energy work geared to the kind of detoxification that suits your body and needs, plus useful reports and email guidance. Full sessions begin in the FAR Infrared Sauna, sipping tea made just for you, while we check in. The "Detox Me" package normally costs $550, and individual ten sessions cost $600-$750. The cost for ten hours of treatment if you buy the package upfront in April is $500 non taxable. What a deal! Experiment with any of eleven different modalities, and emerge like the butterfly you are, with supple skin, a radiant face and a spring in your footstep... okay, like the human being you are!
Pay-What-You-Want Wednesdays: the experiment continues...
Every Wednesday in April, from 10 am through 4pm, you can receive any Anarres service at your price, not mine. Try it once, or be a regular. Spend your allowance on something healthy and pleasurable! Call to reserve your spot: 416 535 9620.
Invite-A-Friend Special Offer:
Help me reach more people who are interested in the body work, energy work, workshops and products that I offer. For every ten email addrersses you send me of friends of yours who are looking for what Anarres has to offer, I'll give you a Gift Certificate for 30 minutes of treatment for you or a friend to use. I'll send everyone you refer to me a trial newsletter, and if they want to receive my newsletters, I'll thank you with a Chakra Balancing, massage, reflexology, FAR Infrared sauna or Polarity Therapy treatment, or you can use the 30 minutes towards a longer session.
MENTION THAT YOU READ IT IN THE ANARRES NEWSLETTER AND RECEIVE:
A Chico Reusable shopping bag that fits in a pocket: Buy $50 worth of Gifts, Products, Gift Certificates or Services and get one FREE: It's useful! It's colourful! It's pretty! It's strong!
FREE 30 minute consultation for every first appointment. Come in just for the FREE consultation (I am a Natural Health Consultant, after all!) or enjoy a treatment with the first half hour free. That's a $30 value either way!
Referrals: Refer a friend for body or energy work and you will both get 10% off any Anarres service. PLEASE REMIND ME!!!
3. Testimonial of The Month:
One afternoon last week, I felt a very ominous sensation in my low back. It was a familiar feeling which has often been the warning sign of anything from a few days of discomfort, to a week of pain and immobility. I've often suspected that, if I did just the right thing at the right moment, the possible unhappy outcome could be circumvented.
I saw Tracey that night. We spoke about likely causes, then she spent about 15 minutes massaging my low back, and another 15 minutes doing reflexology on my feet. I laid quietly on my side for a bit, then went home to bed. It was mid-day the next day before I remembered to check in with my low back pain, which meant, of course, that I had no low back pain.
Chris Malec, Registered Massage Therapist, Toronto
Did you know that all my custom products are Satisfaction Guaranteed? If it doesn't work for you, I'll keep working for you! Just bring back your original product and I'll reformulate it with you until it does what I said it would!
If you have a testimonial you'd be willing to share, please send it to: anarreshealth@gmail.com If I use it in my promotions, I'll thank you with a free half hour treatment for your time and effort.
4. Anarres Natural Health Clinic Shop News
NEW yummy ingredients!
~Avocado Butter has natural sunscreen properties along with Vitamins A, B, G and E which makes it a wonderful moisturizing treatment for dry and damaged skin.
~Almond Butter: a soft, creamy butter rich in proteins and Vitamin D that can be used to soften and re-condition dry skin.
PLUS
~ a new batch of super sudzy shampoo ready to be customized for your hair
~ a citrus-free hypoallergenic version of the detox deodorant
~ new cocoa suncream ~ the ingredients are rated SPF 15
Foliage, a CD of tranquil tunes Chris Malec's recording of traditional instrumental guitar with meditative instrumentation offers an hour of peaceful music suitable for massage or relaxation. Features environmentally sound packaging. $10!
Practical Aromatherapy by Shirley Price, 218 pages
In this fully revised and update edition of the classic Practical Aromatherapy, Shirley Price shows how to use essential oils and massage to restore health and vitality. With an illustrated section on aromatherapy massage techniques, this book is essential for all those who want a hands-on approach to aromatherapy. Shirley Price also looks at the many beneficial ways oils can be used, from inhalation and ingestion to baths and compresses. Practical Aromatherapy is a valuable guide to blending and using essential oils. Shirley Price is one of the world's leading aromatherapists who has lectured on the subject and taught all over the globe. $25 while supplies last!
Thanks to Baby Mind and Spirit for inviting me to write be a regular columnist for the Straight Talk section of this online Green parenting resource. See my first article, Go Green! at http://www.babymindandspirit.com/articles.php?pid=163.
Thanks to my clients, colleagues, children and friends who supported me at The Holistic World Expo! I had family, clients and colleagues singing the praises of my products and services in front of expo visitors. I was embarassed, but it may just be the best form of free advertizing a person could hope for! To my daughters and my colleagues - Yazmin Shroff, personal coach www.lovewonders.com and Chris Malec, RMT, www.spiralmassagetherapy.ca - a double thank you; I could not have done it without you.
5. Bonus article:
The Business of Green Part 3: Tracey TieF of Anarres Natural Health
Tracey TieF has a wholistic health practice in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada called Anarres Natural Health. She's also a Fake Plastic Fish reader and frequent commenter, and a few weeks ago she emailed me a copy the newsletter she sends out to all her clients. I was blown away. Hers is exactly the kind of business we need more of.
Besides using all natural and sustainable ingredients (she doesn't use Indian Sandalwood or Rosewood which come from un-sustainably harvested and endangered plants), supplying the electricity for the clinic from 100% wind power, choosing suppliers who are local, small enterprises, and striving to serve the entire community through Pay-What-You-Want-Days, Tracey has a big ole anti-plastics campaign going, which she calls the The End of The World of Plastic 2008 Challenge.
Here is an excerpt from her previous e-mail newsletter:
5. Bonus article: Take The End of The World of Plastic 2008 Challenge
In short, I have always been against plastics. I've ranted about phthalates, Bisphenol-A, plastic drinking bottles, the damage to our health, the environmental destruction, the sheer waste of it all. That's why Anarres Natural Health promotes glass bottles and jars, and provides discounts for bringing in your own container or refilling. Yet, I have never been more horrified, nor driven to eliminate plastic from my life as after reading the article [Plastic Ocean], by Susan Casey from Best Life Magazine...
I challenge myself this year, and therefore I challenge you, to eliminate as much plastic consumption as possible in 2008. SPECIAL OFFER: Every month that you bring me a list of at least 10 ways you've eliminated plastics from YOUR life, I'll give you a reusable, handy, beautiful, ethically made, recyclable Chico bag to use or give as a gift.
List 10 items you'll no longer buy, and what you'll buy instead. For example:
Bad Better Best
1. tampon, plastic applicator tampon, no applicator Diva Cup or The Keeper
2. soup in can or plastic bottle soup in mason jar make own, reuse mason jar
3. brand name cleaning product Nature Clean concentrate Nature Clean in bulk, refilled
4. onions in a plastic net loose onions, in reused bag
When I asked Tracy about her refill policy, she told me that she actively encourages her customers to refill their bottles instead of buying new ones and that she breaks out the cost of the product and bottle on the receipt so customers can see what they are paying for. When customers bring in bottles to refill, they not only get a discount for the cost of the bottle, but also a discount on the cost of the product as incentive to continue the practice. For example,
if you bought a 250 frosted glass bottle of mouthwash for $10 ($8 product, $2 bottle), you'd only pay $7 to refill with the same product, or save the $2 when filling with a different product.
About plastic, she says,
Some clients INSIST on plastic bottles for the shower and shampoos especially. So my bottles come with pumps or flip tops, they are labelled by me with a stern warning to reuse until it breaks, then recycle, and I charge $3 instead of $2. I always ask clients to bring in their own bottles, and tell them I hate to sell them new!
And she's currently partnering with an organization called Green Shift to develop "least harmful PLA [corn plastic] bottles for wholistic practitioners. Green Shift is cultivating products and markets that are as green and ethical as possible." The PLA bottles would be for customers who insist on some form of plastic.
I asked Tracey what inspired her to start thinking about environmental issues and packaging and waste in the first place. She says that she
was born into environmental consciousness, because my grandparents had a place in the bush, and we used to compost, reuse and incinerate because there was no garbage pick up. We hauled water from the community pump, where people often left vegetables they'd grown....
Being poor, thrifty and political as a youth, she didn't identify with what she perceived to be the "privileged outdoorsy sorts who comprised the environmental movement in the 1980s."
Only recently have I identified as an environmentalist - although, in practice, I always have been - because Green politics seem so much deeper and the issues so critical for our survival now.
Our household of 7 (in 1300 sq ft) uses half the utilities for the average household of 4, and all of the electricity is from wind turbines - from our coop WindShare, and another coop that we purchase green tags from. Aside from saving on utilities, we grow half of our produce needs in our tiny front and back spaces, and I grow my herbs for my practice in the waste spaces on my street - all watered with grey water from the house...
And finally, about packaging, she says,
Showing the packaging price comes from my wanting to let the client know what it really costs. Most of the time, harmful packaging is cheaper to use for the maker. It's frustrating not being able to compete dollar for dollar with single use items, because I may be paying three times more for environmentally sounder packaging. By investing in reusable, beautiful bottles and such, and by showing the client what s/he is really paying for it, I hope that the packaging is reused indefinitely until it breaks, at which point it can be recycled or composted.
Tracey's seems to me to be the kind of business we always talk about but rarely see in real life. I wish her the best and hope she can succeed in her sustainable endeavors. And I hope to present her business model as an example when I visit similar shops in my area (I'm thinking of one in particular) to convince them that refilling bottles and conserving packaging should not be the exception but the norm.
Here's a copy of the Anarres Natural Health newsletter for March. I wish I lived near Toronto and could visit the shop in person. Maybe some of you can!
To read and comment on the article online, please visit Beth Terry's Fake Plastic Fish at:
http://www.fakeplasticfish.com/2008/03/business-of-green-part-3-tracey-t...
SPECIAL OFFER:
Every month that you bring me a list of at least 10 ways you've eliminated plastics from YOUR life, I'll give you a reusable, handy, beautiful, ethically made, recyclable Chico bag to use or give as a gift.
Here are the plastic soup areas of the Pacific Ocean mapped to date:
http://bp3.blogger.com/_1bKnHq3a-W8/R2hszeVgb7I/AAAAAAAAAa8/KzImdUimV8Q/...
List 10 items you'll no longer buy, and what you'll buy instead. For example:
Bad Better Best________________
1. tampon, plastic applicator tampon, no applicator Diva Cup or The Keeper
2. soup in can or plastic bottle soup in mason jar make own, reuse mason jar
3. brand name cleaning product Nature Clean concentrate Nature Clean in bulk, refilled
4. onions in a plastic net loose onions, in reused bag
Be well!
Tracey TieF
Certified Natural Health Practitioner