January brings a new year, and another 365 days full of promise and hope for a happier family, more prosperous business, healthier body, and more compassionate world.  It’s exciting to set goals for a new year and envision your aspirations coming true.  I’ve become a true believer in the power of intention and invite you all to join me in creating a vision for the year that allows you to be your best self, the self that you’ve always known you were meant to be.

If part of your vision includes better health, creative expression, and a higher consciousness, then I hope that Natural Awakenings can play a role in getting you there. 

This month’s issue relates to the heart of Natural Awakenings’ mission: to encourage natural and holistic solutions as an alternative or complement to Western medicine.  Each year there are more consumers, organizations and practitioners who embrace the concept of integrating conventional medicine with natural medicine. Thanks to demand and interest from people like you who want alternatives to drugs and surgery, it has become a growing trend, visible even in our most prominent hospitals.

We are pleased to give you a very hopeful article about behavioral improvements seen in autistic children after increasing their levels of Vitamin D and eliminating gluten and casein from their diets. You’ll find “Addressing Autism: Families Have Reasons for Hope” on page 22. Another feature article shows how some simple and natural lifestyle changes have been shown to increase wellbeing among adults; the benefits of controlling electronic pollution, walking barefoot, and other simple changes are detailed in “Healthy Lifestyle Tweaks” on page 24.

To address the spiritual side of the body-mind equation, we are pleased to have an article by Dr. Deepak Chopra, a well known authority in mind-body healing. He shares with us his understanding of consciousness, God, and the need for personal transformation.

As always, I thank the readers, distributors, advertisers, friends, fans and staff for being part of our Natural Awakenings family.  Happy New Year to everyone. I wish you all peace prosperity and good health in the coming year.