We are excited to kick off 2014 with this special Health & Wellness issue, our biggest one yet! It is jam packed with articles tapping national and local experts selected with the aim of providing helpful resources for you to make good use of all year long.

Kathleen Barnes’ feature article, “Build Your Own Wellness Dream Team,” provides a compass to assist at a time when most people find navigating today’s complex and confusing conventional health care options a daunting task. We challenge you to build your own custom team of caring and multifaceted professionals selected to actively support you in achieving and sustaining all aspects of your well-being.

We’d like to think you’ll find good reasons to draw members of your team from those you meet monthly in these pages. This month affords profiles of 18 local experts ranging from professional coaches to chiropractors, naturopathic doctors and holistic dentists. These are complemented by a targeted Natural Health Glossary to clarify local practitioner offerings and modalities. For a more comprehensive glossary, visit NABoston.com/MIDS/Health/Natural-Health- Glossary.

Staying on track with our good intentions is a challenge for most of us. For me, working with a life/professional coach has proved to be my most demanding yet personally fulfilling work ever. I highly recommend it. As local Achievement Coach Leigh Doherty reminds us in “Beginning Again: Fortifying Resolutions with Compassion and Courage,” even when we slide off track, a willingness to correct our course on the spot and continue allows fresh beginnings to occur at any moment. It places the concept of new beginnings into everyday life, well beyond the context of a once-a-year calendar event.

Several other local experts weigh in on additional helpful topics this January, as well, including transforming stress, whole body thermography, muscle response testing and preventing winter colds and flu. As always, we hope you find something or someone that resonates and helps so that you increasingly feel good, live simply and laugh more every day.

To a happy and healthy new year for all,

Maisie Raftery, Publisher