The theory is that the fluids and membranes that surround the brain and spinal chord flow like a pulse.  Stresses and strains can make body tissues tighten and restrict this flow.  Detecting these restrictions around the craniosacral system and correcting them restores the proper flow, relieving the brain and spinal chord and the central nervous system they influence so significantly.  As a result a number of complaints are addressed from migraines and chronic pain to ADD, fibromyalgia, and post-traumatic stress.

"People really feel like they have relaxed the deepest they ever remember feeling," says CranioSacral Therapist This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .  "They'll say that at the end of a session.  Or they'll say they have less pain somewhere."

Embracing Goddess Skin SpaWhen you enter the Embracing Goddess Skin Spa on West Hill in Ithaca you feel like you are being welcomed into someone's home.  The rocking chairs by the fire in the front parlor, the cosy treatment room in the back with soothing swirls on the ceiling.  And licensed aesthetician Holly Tarantelli greeting you at the door with a warm smile.  

There is a good reason for that: it is Tarantelli's home.  And the privacy the home spa offers does feel embracing.  "I really love the word 'embracing,'" Tarantelli says.  "When I came here whenever clients left I thought, 'You have this goddess glow about you, it's like your soul is radiating through your skin.'  Then I thought Embracing Goddess.  I really love this goddess feeling of strong women who take care of themselves and are OK with letting themselves be pampered.  It's hard for a lot of us to get past being moms who take care of people all the time to let someone take care of you."

Everyone knows that Cornell and Ithaca College are the two colleges in Ithaca, and that the nearest SUNY facility is in Cortland, right?  Wrong!  The nearest SUNY facility is actually above the Ithaca Commons in the M&T Bank building.  Nested on the 5th floor is the Ithaca Unit of Empire State College.  The college is divided into nearly a dozen centers, each with local units including the one in Ithaca.

"We do not have a main campus," explains Ithaca Unit Coordinator/Mentor Christiane Warren.  "We have 35 locations throughout the state and are geared to adult learners.  We offer independent studies and on-line studies, which may seem very convenient for people who have lives, careers, volunteer activities, and cannot attend classes on a regular schedule."

You would think that starting a new business during an economic crisis would be too difficult.  But Jay Engels saw a niche that he could fill as an independent accounting firm offering not-for-profits lower priced audits.  So when he left Ciaschi Dietershagen Little & Mickelson to form Engels Accounting last September it was amiable.

"It's worked out very well," Engels says.  "I wasn't happy with what I was doing.  I thought I could fill a niche in the community that is needed for small non-profits.  They were willing to cut some of their clients loose that I had been working with.  For them it's tough to make money because they have so much overhead.  I can do it a lot cheaper from my home office.  So it works out for both sides, and for the client."

Lansing is known as a rural township, not necessarily the home of business giants.  But high tech companies along Warren Road are powerhouses in the marketplace.  Envisage Systems specializes in solutions for the retirement industry, a market that is becoming huge as the so-called 'baby boomer' generation is reaching retirement age.  In the past five months the company has brought 80 new jobs to Lansing, and is about to do that again.  Since 2009 the company has grown from 30 employees and $5 million in revenue to 200 employees with $20 million revenue.

"I think we'll do better than that in 2013," Executive Vice President John Miller says.  "I hope we do." 

Miller credits an exploding market and a passion for excellence on the part of founders President/CEO Steff McGonagle and Sr. VP Finance & Administration Robb Jetty.

"Steff likes to do things properly," Miller says.  "A lot of what he saw was not done properly.  It took some time to create the kind of products that he would be proud to offer to the market.  At the same time I think the single most important thing here is the culture.  It is very collegial, team oriented."

You may have noticed the former auto parts building at the corner of North Triphammer Road and Route 34B has had a makeover.  F & F Custom Construction has taken over the space and is open for business.  The company specializes in custom stone and hard surfaces for counter tops and other purposes.  The showroom is still being stocked with man-made quartz products, natural granite from all over the world, solid surfaces such as Corian®, and plastic laminate.  Owner Marty French says it's his staff that makes the company special.

"I have a very good staff," he says.  "If I send them in I am almost 100% positive they're going to do a great job.  Pretty much every employee has been with me for a long time.  My guys put their heart and souls into what they do.  Everybody enjoys what they're doing.  I think that's what differentiates us.  When your installers and fabricators and everyone else believes in what they're doing that makes it all that much better.  These guys are out there doing everything they can to make their work look better and please the customer as well."

Tucked between Groton and Cortland, the Fall Creek Healing Center provides a relaxing country setting for healing massage from deep tissue work to very light rocking and stretching.  The center is a merging of partners Janet Jacobs and Jim Bucko, both Reiki Masters and offering compatible services including reflexology, essencial oil therapy, shamanistic services, drum and rattle making classes, workshops on overcoming headaches, stomach issues, foot problems, back and neck problems.

"We look at a person as a whole structure," Jacobs says.  "Oftentimes in Western medicine they look at the symptom and they cure that.  They don't look at what is causing the symptom, so when they fix this symptom there are often many side effects, and then they have to look at those symptoms.  We tune the body."

The Federal House has graced Ludlowville since 1815.  For much of the time it has been a private home, but in recent years it has been a popular Bed & Breakfast. The house was sold last fall, and at the end of this month it is reopening under the proprietorship of Donna and Mike Wilson.

"The house has great bones and we both got a greet feel from it," Donna says.  "Mike said to me one day, 'You've always wanted to run a Bed & Breakfast, right?'  It seemed like the right thing.  I think Ithaca is the kind of place where people just go for it.  They experiment with their talents, so I figured I would try it."

Finger Lakes ReUse307,041,000 times an average of 5 pounds of waste per person in the United States per day equals 1,535,205,000 pounds of waste per day.  That's 560,349,825,000 (five hundred and sixty trillion pounds plus change) of waste per year.  That's 280,174,912.5 tons.  It adds up.  That's why it makes sense to reuse what we can and recycle as much of the rest as possible.

The Finger Lakes Reuse Center opened last November to try to make that easy -- easy to donate things you don't want or need any more, and easy to find those things in their Triphammer Mall store.  The 501 c3 not profit organization's mission is based on the 'Triple Bottom Line' of Planet, People, and Profit that many for-profit companies are beginning to adopt. 

You don't get a homey operator named Sarah who knows all about you and the people in your life to connect you to Floyd, who she tells you just stepped across the street to get a haircut, even when you are served by a small private telephone company.  To the contrary, the Ontario & Trumansburg Telephone Companies, and Finger Lakes Technologies Group are forward thinking firms that specialize in fiber optic transmission of data, voice and conferencing technologies, as well as e-mail and fax, data networks, backups, and co-location, and network security and services as well as traditional telephone service.

Under the leadership of CEO and President Paul Griswold, the companies are merging local service in rural areas with high-tech solutions.  "His vision has always been to connect the two phone companies with fiber and extend the fiber out to places where people need the connectivity," says Finger Lakes Technologies Group VP of Sales Peter Pizzutelli.  "So we went south to Ithaca through the Trumansburg Telephone territory, and north and west to Rochester.  Paul's vision was to put all these together so instead of having to go to one person for a phone system, and one for a phone line, and another for Internet you now go to one entity."

One way to get away from your worries and stress is to do something completely different.  Something that is creative, but with no pressure.  Where the process can be more important than the product, and where you may find talents hidden within yourself that you didn't know were there.  That is the idea behind FLOOF Collage pARTy! art-making studio.

"It's funny because people either come here knowing what they want to make or having no idea what they want to make, but thinking it's a cool idea and they just want to play," says owner Corinne Stern.  "We can go either direction.  It's called 'FLOOF Collage pARTy!' because Im hoping that people will feel comfortable combining a lot of materials. So I've got lots of different kinds of glues and paste and a hot glue gun, so that even if they start out with a work on paper they can add lots of other floofy stuff to it."

Friedman ElectricMore than 65 years ago in Pittston, PA Jack Friedman made extension cords to sell door to door from the trunk of his car.  He grew that into a family business that is still owned and operated by the third generation of his family.  The twelfth Friedman Electric store opened in Ithaca four months ago.  But even though the store is new to Ithaca, local contractors have known about the companies huge selection and personalized service for some time.  "We noticed nationwide that Ithaca was one of the fastest emerging cities in the country," says Branch Manager Benny Teitelbaum.  "A lot of the rest of the country is experiencing very slow sales, very depreciated money, the value of the house, but not in Tompkins County."

The 15,681 square foot building is located on Cecil Malone Drive, the road that winds behind Wegman's.  It is divided into a section for contractors, a warehouse, and a spacious 5,000 square foot showroom.  " You name it from Joe homeowner to somebody who is building a machine," says Teitelbaum.  "We are doing a lot of maintenance and repair at the hospital.  We do retro fits for energy savings.  We take out old controls and lighting and ballast like that and we sell energy saving products which in the long run pay for themselves over time and saves you on your electricity bill.  We are all about that.  We do backup power we do telecommunications, we do surveillance, we do low voltage landscape lighting.  We do furniture."