My History of Beginnings

Starting this new business is a definite beginning, but unexpectedly it is also a spiraling back to the numerous places in my life that helped bring me to this point. This whirling of names and faces from the past coming out to show support reaffirms I am on the right course and that somehow all along they saw this coming.

I started practicing yoga in my bedroom when I was a freshman in high school. Every night after my parents went to sleep I would pull out my copy of The Sivananda Companion to Yoga. This creased and flattened book introduced me to pranayama, meditation, postures and a healthy diet. When I started practicing I didn’t know anyone else who did yoga. Literally no one. My mother and aunt had taken one class together in the 70s, but that was it. This was before google and certainly before the idea of finding a yoga studio in the yellow pages was feasible.

I was alone in this new exciting world. Everyone in my life knew the word “yoga” the way they knew the word “tofu” but had never tried either. I still remember the first time I saw a “Namaste” bumper sticker. My father and I were in Santa Fe and we took a picture of it we were so excited.

In college the yoga morphed into dance and from there into the desire for anatomy training. When I graduated from college I just decided to pick a town, move there and figure life out. Because the universe provides in its mysterious ways I stumbled into my first job and found my first two mentors. These two amazing co-workers taught me everything I know about employment, job searches and how to build a career.

I was your typical post-private school elitist who thought I could just roll out a resume and everyone would come knocking at my door. But you don’t make or even start a career by looking through the want ads. My two brilliant co-workers taught me the first step to getting a job is knowing what it is you want and what it is you have to offer. Then they taught me not to compartmentalize my life. Instead of thinking of writing as my only career option and having a mile long list of interests and passions, I could design a career path. I could imagine a career that incorporated writing, yoga, health, nutrition, business, organizing things, planning, birthwork, sexualities, researching, helping others and dance all at the same time. In fact if I could figure out an angle and had the guts to try, I could actually make a living from the delightful mix of all of my interests.

Now years later, though not many, I’ve got my angle. For five years the IRS has received taxes from the occupation: yoga teacher. This year I could add the occupations: acupuncturist, herbalist, doula, writer and business owner to the list, but I won’t in order to avoid confusing them.

My point is your path is there for the finding. You must first know deeply what it is you want. You have to find that which causes the utmost passion. That which makes you desperate to know more. Then you brainstorm and push and pull. You ask questions, you get hung up and you get confused. Yet all the while you have to trust that your desires are worth exploring. Let me say that again, your desires are worth exploring.

As my insightful father-in-law said to me the other day “You’re going to have a rich time building this practice, whether you get rich or not.” This has already proven itself tenfold. The opening of this business has reminded me of the richness of my community. Thank you to my marvelous network of loved ones, friends, mentors, inspirations, students, teachers, clients and patients. This beginning is the most spectacular homecoming of my life.

Conversation Officially Started

After three years of Acupuncture school and roughly 90,000 miles of driving the Mass Pike to class and home again I am in recovery, both intellectually and physically.  While I am, of course, grappling with the threat of pending student loans and the usual concerns about starting a new part of my business, I am struggling with something new I didn’t expect—a loss of community to discuss the zillion things I am forever contemplating. In the last three years I’ve started making brief manifestos of discoveries I had made about the body at the beginning of each of my yoga classes. And while I will no doubt still be doing that, I want a place to go into greater detail and allow for links to further information for those that are interested in the topic.

Instead of branching out into this next phase alone, I’m reaching out for you. I already know who I am. I am Courtney Hill Wulsin, Licensed Acupuncturist and Herbalist, Yoga Teacher, Writer, Doula, Dancer, Reiki Master. I specialize in teaching people how to find comfort in their body and enjoy the sensuality of movement and awareness. It is you that interests me as I start this communication with the greater world.

You must be a reader who finds interest in the body and mind. You would have to be a wandering sort, like myself, who seeks answers in unusual places and never trusts anything that doesn’t resonate inside the body, as well as inside the mind. You would be interested in medicine as a means to prevent disease, not cure it. You would define wellness not as an absence of symptoms, but as a strength and sturdiness of body that brings you joy and comfort. You would be interested in learning about all the systems of the body and how to use metaphor to understand those systems. You would have to be an art lover and see the body as the world’s most beautiful work of art. If those things do describe you than perhaps you would care about my ramblings, even if you don’t attend my classes or seek out my services as an acupuncturist.

I am starting to write today as a declaration. I want to integrate. For three years I’ve been integrating with select, classmates, students and clients, but now I’m throwing the doors open and asking for others to join me on this path. Come integrate with me, suggest books, correct me, ask questions, get confused, get excited. Whatever it is. This is Window of Heaven Acupuncture and Yoga and I am Courtney Hill Wulsin and as of today, we are open for business. Conversation officially started.

Window Of Heaven

The logo for my business had its infancy in a google search for beautiful windows. Windows have long been a fascination of mine as they are only half about what is inside and what is outside, but also half about this moment in between. I am lover of houses with special, distinctive windows on the street side. These spectacular windows always seem like the journey or transition period from who I am on the street to who those people are living inside their unique life.

It wasn’t until we were canoeing this summer that I saw the window inspiration for my logo. Seeing it from the water made it all the more stately and elegant. Before I could protest my husband had his camera out and was swiping a picture while we paddled by. The house was one of those dream retirement houses. Okay, it was one of those houses we like to dream about retiring to—close to some quiet, but deep body of water where we could keep a sailboat, big backyard looking over the water, and a grand kitchen with tons of floor to ceiling windows so every meal cooked and tasted is also a picnic. I bet we would have missed that whole house if it weren’t for that window, which stole our attention and offered us a moment.

Windows do that. They offer a pause, and a possibility.

I decided to call my business Window of Heaven Acupuncture & Yoga when we learned about Window of Heaven points in my theory class at school. I came home that night told my husband, wrote it on a card and put it in my desk. This set of 10 points mystifies me. They are on 9 of the 12 meridians and are mostly located around the neck and throat. Here is the exciting part—they are suggested for use when the body and the mind are disconnected.  Needling them is like making a small stitch in an invisible tear between the thinking head and whole of the physical self.

It is that separation that brings me to yoga and brings me to acupuncture. I desperately want everyone to feel what is going on in their body, if they so desire. If they don’t want to feel what is happening, I want to teach them how to ask the question why. We get separated from fear, from too strong emotions, from pain or from forgetting. Naming that reason is half of the way to welcoming the body back.

On the mat this morning I was lazily enjoying a delicious moment in a hip opener as I was thinking about writing this post and the phrase “this is a window too” popped into my mind. This following of sensation and search for exceptional moments in yoga is the seeking of windows to the inner self.  In fact it is the exact way I teach though I never before would have used that word.

Some Westerners prefer the translation “Window of the Sky” because the word heaven is too loaded. I’ve never been afraid of loaded words. So today I want to express my use of the word heaven in naming my business. I’m taking the definition of place. A perfect place or ideal location. A place we arrive at every time we stumble upon beauty in any of its forms, within ourselves or in the world around us.