Our last Green Movie Night on the theme of Wellness! was very instructional. The speakers for the evening Dr. Namrata Patel of Teleosis and Alexa Engelman of the Center for Environmental Health provided excellent contextual perspective on the local initiatives on wellness from the sustainability movement. Namrata shared with us elements of her personal story of how she greened her health care dentistry practice and more about Teleosis approach to and vision for Ecologically Sustainable Medicine and invited us to ask our health care professionals about what they are doing to green their physical practice space and their practice itself. Alexa provided additional insights on the multi-facted approach of the Center for Environmental Health to create a healthier environment - drawing clear the connection between our surroundings, the materials around, on and inside of us, and our health and wellness.

The film we screened, "Ayurveda: The Art of Being" showcased some sensational examples of how an ancient holistic practice could result in remarkable healing through various modalities of diagnostics and treatments like herbal remedies, pressure touch, massage, mud scans and others that might appear "unconventional:" to those only familiar with allopathic medicine. The film emphasized that Ayurveda, as a system of "medicine," is more of a "way of living" and looks at the complete individual - one's environment, one's mental states, diet and other factors when considering health. In consideration of a vision for a sustainable health care system this message seemed to resonate.

In the discussion afterwards we discussed questions like how ayurvedic, and similar non-allopathic, healing modalities are practiced here, locally, and how we can know such medicine is being practiced sustainably with ecological integrity (e.g., in consideration of wildcrafting herbs for medicines and taking payment). We discussed how one can learn more about Ayurvedic medicine and, although no one at the discussion has any experience in Ayurvedic training, a friend of one participant has had a good experience in training here: http://www.ayurvedacollege.com/. We also discussed the importance of community in the vision for a sustainable health care system and how we can prioritize our efforts on preventing disease by treating our bodies to healthy food and water and our minds to preferred thoughts.