Individualized Care
Prevention. Maintenance. Restoration.
Holistic medicine goes hand-in-hand with Western medicine to support overall health and well-being. Diane Macchiavelli offers a variety of ways to address your health concerns. Click on a modality below to learn more about how she could help transform your health and your life.
Learn How to Bring Balance to Your Life.
Return balance and harmony in your life with ancient practices, modalities, and educational opportunities that tend to your body, mind and spirit. A holistic healthcare professional, Diane is an experienced and long-time practitioner and teacher of Taiji, acupuncture, and meditation. She is available to guide you to achieve a life of overall health and wellness.
T'ai Chi
Pronounced tie chee chwan, T'ai Chi Ch'uan is an ancient Chinese exercise that blends self-healing, meditation, and martial arts. Noted for its slow, steady, and rhythmic movements, T'ai Chi is a gentle exercise performed calmly and peacefully, often in groups in the outdoors. The relaxing state that results in reduces tension and increases vitality, making it a beneficial practice for all, regardless of age or condition!
As a long-time T'ai Chi practitioner, Diane offers the Yang Style—Short Form—as taught by Professor Zheng Manjing (Cheng Man-ch'ing). Students learn the 37 postures linked by flowing movements that fully exercise the body, the mind, and the spirit. During the practice, students become aware of body mind spirit as one and its inseparable connection with one's subtle breath energy or qi (chee), the life force or energy found in every living thing. Life is movement! Even stillness contains energy. We will explore the many different qualities of qi in our classes.
Diane was a direct and long-time student of the renowned writer and incomparable Martial Arts Master Robert W. Smith (b. 1927–d. 2011). Robert W. Smith brought Professor Cheng Man-ch’ing (Zheng Manjing) to the United States in 1964, a well-documented journey found in films and print. And he, most notably, embraced teaching eager Westerners the cultural heritage of Tai chi, painting, poetry, and calligraphy. Diane also studied extensively with Benjamin Lo (Pang Jeng Lo) until his passing at 93.
Contact Diane about her current T'ai Chi offerings.
Meditation Classes
Meditation For Everyone
Are you looking for a way to begin or develop a meditation practice but don’t know where to start? Maybe you’ve tried a class or attempted to start on your own but are frustrated because nothing has helped calm your “monkey mind.” Diane teaches the tried and true method of “Loving Kindness Meditation” (Metta Meditation) as a much-needed anchor to free the mind from discursive thinking. Learn how to calm the whirling, repetitive, or troubling thoughts that plague our days and nights, robbing us of our peacefulness and contentment. As a 40+ year meditation practitioner, Diane teaches this mindfulness practice along with other techniques that can be used as remedies for the inevitable pitfalls of a meditation practice. Diane typically uses guided meditation and teaching techniques that will help get people into an Alpha State of mind.
Referred to in Western countries as “Mindfulness,” meditation has been practiced worldwide for millennia, most notably within the Asian countries of India, China, Japan, Korea, and Tibet. Within these Asian countries exist the long-held lineages of the world’s master meditators. Meditation is a natural part of the Asian culture. Abrahamic traditions also have contemplative practices, but these have been lost in the mists of time. Asian nations were not historically materialistic, as we mostly are in the West. For that and many other important reasons, Asians have extensively studied human nature and the workings of the human mind for many thousands of years. Diane has studied Asian philosophy, art, and culture for over 50 years. Tibetan Buddhism’s Middle Way philosophy of Madhyamaka is her area of study and practice. Therefore, the methods and techniques taught to her by several Tibetan Buddhist scholars and masters over the last 30 years, including His Holiness 14th Dalai Lama, are from where she draws. Her solid and deeply rooted foundation guides the much simplified and accessible meditation classes that she leads.