Placitas Healing Center on Homesteads Road in Placitas

Placitas Healing Center offers opportunities for growth and transformation

The new year is an especially powerful time for growth because we are backed by a strong cultural message urging resolutions and new beginnings. The problem is that most people tackle long-standing issues without support, leading to bursts of extraordinary energy ending in extraordinary failure. We then decide change is impossible.

Shara Moscinska, MA, a licensed professional mental-health counselor and founder of the Placitas Healing Center, explains: “Our bad habits want to live. They are energetic grooves that over time become deep and well worn, directing how we respond to life. Change requires us to break ground and create new grooves that, especially at first, require attention and care to maintain. Otherwise, it's relapse, back to the path of least resistance. Counseling is an effective way to reinforce emerging patterns of health until they become the new norm.”

The new year brings many opportunities for exploration and support. Shara specializes in holistic psychotherapy, as well as a series of three two-hour sessions designed to facilitate trust in our innate wisdom and life path. In addition, she is offering a women's process group that begins late January, a mask-making weekend workshop in February, and Wednesday-night guided meditations. Shara also works with teens, whom she feels struggle in particular in the modern world. “In their search for identity, teens are screaming for rites of passage, ways to declare their existence and emergence into adulthood. Culturally, we offer few options, so the search goes unconscious, finding initiation through self-destructive behaviors. I help teens become consciously aware of their hunger to experience life and to create ways to channel this dynamic energy into meaningful activity.”

Shara works extensively with adults, couples, and adolescents who are struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma, or grief, who feel stuck and unfulfilled, or who are seeking spiritual development. Her focus, in addition to symptom relief, is to provide a space for clients to live out their fullness and potential. “We often live in our comfort zone. To grow beyond our comfort zone we need to experience vulnerability and anxiety (otherwise known as excitement), and take risks. I help strengthen your inner voice that says ‘yes, you can do this,’ and foster self-compassion as you do the brave work of living large.”

Sessions are by appointment only. For more information, please call Shara, at the Placitas Healing Center, 03 Homesteads Road, Suite E, 385-1932, or schedule a complimentary half-hour consultation.

State Bar of NM announces payment of claims

In an effort to promote public confidence in the administration of justice and the integrity of the legal profession, the New Mexico Supreme Court in 2005 created the Client Protection Fund Commission.

The commission reimburses losses that were caused by a lawyer's misappropriation of client funds or the dishonest conduct of a lawyer admitted and licensed to practice law in New Mexico. The loss must arise out of and by reason of a client-lawyer relationship or fiduciary relationship between lawyer and claimant.

The commission met on October 6, 2006, and approved payment of four claims totaling $10,298.25: $5,000 (maximum claim amount) was paid against Gary Wayne Nelson, a disbarred New Mexico attorney; $2,475 and $2,000 were paid against Erik Thompson, a suspended New Mexico attorney; and $823.25 was paid against the Estate of James Bartholomew. All four claims involved violations of Rules of Professional Conduct Rule16-116(D) and 16-105 NMRA, pertaining to failure to deposit client monies in attorney's trust account and failure to provide legal services or refund unearned funds.

The public may contact the Client Protection Fund Commission to file a claim by calling the fund administrator at the State Bar of New Mexico, at (505) 797-6055 in Albuquerque, 1-800-876-6227 statewide.

Rio Rancho-related news now on the radio

Starting in December, the City of Rio Rancho began providing city-related news and traffic reports twice daily on the radio.

The Rio Rancho News and Traffic Report airs Mondays through Saturdays between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. on Joy AM 1550 Soft Favorites and between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. on Real Oldies 1600 AM. Listeners will be given the latest news and information pertaining to Rio Rancho. Upcoming-event notices will be provided, along with the latest traffic information.