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Natural Awakenings Atlanta

Letter from Publisher: It’s 4 a.m. Where are my ideas?

It was bound to happen sometime; I have no idea what to write about.

It’s 5 a.m. on the Tuesday morning of production week and I have been awake for well over an hour. I rarely toss and turn; on those infrequent occasions that I wake up in the middle of the night, I can very quickly tell if I’m going back to sleep or not, and if not, remaining in bed never seems like an attractive alternative; I am not one who worries or stresses much, but it seems as if the ideal time for worry to enter my mind is in the middle of the night. 

To some degree, our journey together through the pages of this magazine reflects my own journey of discovery and learning. It goes without saying that many, many, many readers are much farther along the roads of natural health, emotional healing and spiritual awakening than yours truly, so it is fortunate that the nature of wide-circulation publications is more broad than deep. Moreover, when the longest single article in this magazine is no more than 2,000 words, or about a 10-minute read, it is difficult to get past introductory and beginner-level pieces.

Nuts! Not knowing what to write about, I just started writing, and now I realize this piece is about making sausage; the behind-the-scenes thinking about how our content is chosen. It’s exactly the sort of writing that our franchisor teaches us not to do. Oh well...

What I am driving at was this: the path of any awakening is, by definition, one of depth. But the magazine format stands in opposition to this. What we’ve tried to do here at Natural Awakenings Atlanta is go deeper into subject matter by employing one of three methods: 1) special sections, 2) series and 3) ongoing follow up.

We’ve done a number of special sections, three in this year alone. The largest, our April section on Energy Healing, has been followed up with articles on some research behind sound healing, the Emotional Freedom Technique. In this very issue, contributor Janet Raftis offers more science behind energy healing, and staff writer Noah Chen writes about the Harmonic Egg, a sound therapy device that one actually sits in!

Now we’re in the midst of a three-part series on Ayurveda, a subject so vast that three articles seem terribly insufficient. Sounds like a reason for another stream of follow-up pieces!

By far, the deepest we’ve gone is on the topic of yoga. I believe that we’re the only publication in Atlanta to feature yoga content in each and every issue. Moreover, we’ve intentionally gone deeper, wishing to draw yogis further into all eight limbs of yoga and not just talk about asanas. But more about that next month.

So, we try to extend the boundaries of the magazine format and its insistence on a maximum of 10-minute reads. We do this because we like depth, and depth is required for personal transformation, and we believe that you, our readers, want and appreciate depth as well. Our editorial team will soon meet to plan into 2020 and beyond. We would love it if you would let us know what you might like to see in print. Here are some of our ideas for topics to address more deeply. What do you think?

Hacking the Subconscious
Holistic Skincare
All About Water
What is Self-Love?
What is Mindfulness?
Meditation
Physical and Emotional Detoxing
Building Community
On Abundance
Surviving the Dark Night of the Soul
State of Talk Therapy
A Course In Miracles
Raw Food Diets
Naturopathy

Which of the above topics resonates with you? Is there something missing that you’d like to see? Let me know! After all, the farther I travel this road, the more interested I become in co-creating content, and the most important of potential partners is you! Email me! [email protected]


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