Move, play, and explore like children A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to go on a family vacation to a relatively remote area in Vermont. During this time, I had the unique opportunity to share a house with my siblings, their significant others, and their children. In order to truly recover, I find it necessary to remove yourself from the stimuli you are constantly exposed to during your traditional (work) week and allow yourself to immerse deeply into other activities. One of these activ...

What Factors Contribute to Health? There are many factors that contribute to your health. While healthcare is often viewed as one of the most important factors, it has been estimated that medical care contributes only about 20 of overall health, therefore contribute substantially more than actual healthcare. The other two major categories that influence health are environment, which is estimated to contribute 10. It is the latter that you have the most direct control over. Whether addressing ...

Diaphragmatic Breathing When we are stressed, our bodies go into “fight or flight” mode; heart rates increase, respiration speeds up, blood pressure increases, and we involuntarily prepare ourselves to deal with whatever is stimulating the nervous system. This is an effective system in the short term, but ourbodies are not meant to be here for long. Time in a sympathetic state should be properly balanced with time out of it. Unfortunately, given the amount of stressful stimuli we en...

Seven Cool Facts About Sleep  We are a society full of under-slept individuals. The purpose of sleep is to facilitate an optimal level of waking function, so why are we so consistently short-changing our own daily potential?  Below is a list of seven facts that may make you rethink what you know about sleep:  1.) We can, indeed, “pay back” our sleep. Sleep has been shown to work like a bank; if your individual ideal is eight hours, you owe that number of hours to yo...

How to Change Your Habits As we approach the end of our second month of social distancing, the urge to get out and start engaging in life again is strong for most of us. However, the return to anything resembling normal activity will likely be gradual and will take place over a matter of months. For many people, routines that include regular exercise at a gym, yoga studio, or YMCA have been disrupted during the Covid 19 pandemic. This has led in some cases to a decline in physical and mental he...