| Meet Moni Castaneda
Moni was born in Quito, Ecuador (South America). She moved to the United States several months after she married her husband Marco Castaneda (known by his chiropractic patients as "Dr. C"), in 1995.
Moni brought with her from Ecuador a degree in Architecture and several years of experience learning and teaching Macrobiotics cooking, as well as her skills in Graphic Design and four years of training in modern art at a private school.
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| Moni had put herself through college working in desktop publishing and graphic design. When she found out that her degree in architecture did not transfer to the United States (without going back to college for at least four years) she got a job as a Graphic Designer at a commercial printer in Mississippi, while she engaged in practicing her art. She was very active with the local art association and participated in several exhibits.
A friend introduced her to Feng Shui, the ancient oriental art of Space Arrangement and for Moni it was love at first sight. She devoted years to study this art and decode it in order to sift the superstitious beliefs from the actual knowledge, based on traditional Chinese Philosophy, the same knowledge base for acupuncture.
Moni has written two books on Feng Shui and taught many workshops and classes on the subject.
Another passion of Moni is food. Moni loves to eat so she loves to cook and prepare nutritious and delicious meals for herself and her family. Moni comes from a family with slim genes... but she did not inherit the slim genes. She struggled from an early age to keep a healthy weight until she found Macrobiotics, a lifestyle that is based on healthy nutrition for the body, mind and soul. While Macrobiotics served her well in her native country of Ecuador, when she moved to the United States she gained a lot of weight in the first year and from then it only went up. Moni had to study about food in the United States: how there is hidden sugar in most convenience foods; how high fructose corn syrup is an artificial sweetener that has been linked as one of the main causes of obesity in the US, especially in youth; how most bottled fruit juices have a lot more grams of sugar than the home made juices she was used to in Ecuador. Moni now has a handle on "How to Eat" in the United States, but it took her many years to get to this point.
Moni grew up without a particular love for exercise. She was not very coordinated and she had flat feet. She always exercised some out of a sense of responsibility towards herself, but she never enjoyed it. For years she kept trying different types of exercise waiting to see if she could confirm what other people said about how exercise makes you feel good -- this was never true for Moni until she found Zumba Fitness. Zumba is exercise in disguise, while dancing to (mostly) Latin music. Dancing at parties is one of the things Moni most missed from her culture so this was a perfect fit for her. With Zumba Moni finally met endorphins (the hormones of happiness that are released with exercise) and she made a shift from "looking for any excuse to not exercise" to feeling disappointed when she had to miss a workout. Moni is now a licensed Zumba instructor.
Moni has been practicing healing modalities in one way or another for many years, but only for her family and friends. Moni now offers healing modalities to clients because of the amazing results she has seen. Moni enjoys helping others get connected with the power of their own life force and its healing powers.
Throughout all the changes that Moni has experienced in the United States, moving from the Mississippi Gulf Coast to Iowa, and then from Davenport, Iowa to Knoxville, Tennessee, and giving birth to two awesome boys, Moni has continued to grow her Graphic and Web Design business, and now helps clients achieve an adequate online presence through effective websites, social networking accounts, google listing, blogs and newsletters.
Contact Moni
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Moni' full name is Mónica, which is written almost the same but pronounced a little different than the English equivalent (with the accent on the first syllable). Since she was a child her family and friends always called her Moni.
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