Health
Naturopathic doctor's book examines why people make unhealthy and destructive choices.
Workshop for the Soul
LAUREL MYERS
Winter 2007 |
His book, Ssshhh: Listen! Natural Cures: A Workshop for the Soul, is the result of 10 years of compiling information and four months of organization.
The book focuses on a different aspect of the body in each chapter, including the lifecycle, the immune system, mental health, and the musculoskeletal system, among others.
A total of 37 different natural cures are spread throughout the chapters along with stories, photos and poetry. At the end of the book, there are questions and activities.
“I did that because I knew there were different kinds of learners, so I wanted to appeal to visual, tactile and audio learners as best I could,” Mazzuchin said.
“And the stories were important because I wanted people, while they were reading, to feel emotions so they can have something to compare to in their real life.”
When writing the book, Mazzuchin crafted it in an effort to appeal to all age groups.
“I wanted a teenager and an elderly individual to be able to read the same book and get something out of it,” he said. “But my main intention was to help people see in themselves what I see.”
So far, the book has had nothing but positive feedback, the author said. In fact, he has been asked to write a sequel, which he hopes to have compiled by the fall of 2008.
A personal ambition for optimal health and a desire to aid others in that pursuit lead Mazzuchin to a career as a teacher and a healer.
A professor of health education in the kinesiology department, and nutrition and mental health in the gerontology department at Laurentian University, he also dedicates his time to the Life Zone Nutrition and Fitness Centre, offering services in naturopathy, acupuncture and meditation.
Mazzuchin admitted that part of his intentions in writing the book were self-serving.
“I wanted to understand why people made unhealthy and destructive choices, myself included,” he said. “With feelings and thoughts, we repeat them often in very destructive and unhealthy ways.”
For example, why would someone who’s had a hangover ever drink again, or why would someone have conflict in a relationship and yet have that same conflict again, he said.
“It was self-serving in the beginning as I was collecting this information, but then I felt it was my responsibility to give back to people, to help reflect back on some of the consequences,” he said.
Though emotions are not a simple or transparent concept to comprehend, Mazzuchin – who has a bachelor of science in biochemistry and physical therapy and a diploma in naturopathy – poured all his resources into the book in an attempt to make some sense of emotions and their relationship to the human body.
Growing up in Sudbury, the author had significant opportunity to foster an “intense imagination and curiosity,” he wrote in the preface of his book, which was released exclusively in Sudbury and Manitoulin Island last summer.
To get a copy of Ssshhh: Listen! Natural Cures: A Workshop for the Soul, phone Life Zone Nutrition and Fitness Centre at 522-0689. The author can be contacted at mazzuchin@bellnet.ca.
