The lights go up earlier each year, it seems. Storefronts blaze with cheer, carols loop endlessly, and everyone asks about your plans. Yet for many of us, this season—the stretch from late November through the new year—feels less like celebration and more like survival. Do you feel it? The burden of being cheerful? Do you feel out of step with the season everyone else is celebrating?   If you're struggling right now, if the darkness feels heavier than it should, if you can't

Physiological Mechanisms At the biological level, SAD appears to involve several interconnected systems. The reduced sunlight in winter disrupts our circadian rhythms—our internal biological clock that governs sleep-wake cycles, hormone release, and mood regulation. Light entering the eyes signals the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the brain, which orchestrates these rhythms. Winter's darkness also affects neurotransmitter production. Serotonin, our "feel-good" neurotransmitter,

The Yi Jin Jing  (易筋經, Classic of Tendon Transformation) stands as one of Chinese internal cultivation's most profound treatises, encoding within its exercises a complete philosophy of bodily transformation through the cultivation of sinews, tendons, and connective tissues. This ancient text, traditionally attributed to the legendary Bodhidharma at the Shaolin Temple, reveals a sophisticated understanding of how working with the body's tensile structures opens the pathways of

When Ananda asked the Buddha if having good friends was half of the holy life, the Buddha corrected him: "Not so, Ananda. Having good friends, good companions, good comrades is the whole of the holy life." Not half. Not an important part. The whole.   This is not exaggeration or poetic flourish but a statement about how human beings actually become who they're capable of becoming. It is certainly true in my life. We don't develop trustworthiness in isolation, perfecting ourse

So many privileged people these days talk about "feeling safe" as if safety is an external condition, not an internal state.  There is a disease of distrust in others, definitely a result of a consumer-motivated culture where one constantly wonders: what are you trying to sell me? We scan every interaction for the transaction hidden beneath it, the angle, the manipulation. We've become expert threat-assessors, building elaborate systems to protect ourselves from being fooled,

September 2025 We're in what I would describe as a cultural autoimmune response, where we attack parts of our own social body as if they...

The black rhino's tracks were pressed deep into the red earth where she had stopped,  turned 180 degrees, caught our scent on the...

September 16, 2025 In my clinic this morning, I placed my fingers on Mrs. Chen's wrist, feeling for the subtle rhythms that diagnostic...

Dear Seekers of Wellness and Wisdom,   If you've been exploring movement-based wellness practices, you've likely encountered both yoga...

Dear Visionary Leaders and Community Builders, What if you could offer your team, organization, or community something that reduces...

The sickness of our times is doubt - in self and others. The medicine is to build your trustworthiness.   If there was ever a time to...

The Forgotten Art of Sensing In the ancient Greek conception of aisthesis  (αἴσθησις), perception was not merely the mechanical...

Dear Mamas,   What leads you to your most beautiful and best experiences? As a mother, partner, health-care practitioner and woman - I've...

5 simple tips for allergy relief

I'm on a mission to reconnect people to their most awakened authentic self, a self that is rooted and well in body mind and spirit.

How does it affect you when you're confronted with uncertainty? Before you deep dive into the hymn book of anxiety, worry, and...

Listening with the whole body. Cultivating a felt sense of the aliveness of the space around and within you. This is the deep practice of...

Moxibustion and the terroir of true moxa   Moxibustion was once regarded as one of the   main modalities of Chinese medicine . During the...

Tick Bite Protocol (in my clinical experience, you don't need to take antibiotics, there are much better alternatives listed here) Tick...

GB41 Zu Lín Qi 足臨泣 Foot Near to Tears Wood Point on the Wood Channel To fully understand what this spring equinox point is used for, we...