Articles

I was going to start this article with some stats that would show you just how bad chronic pain and the opioid epidemic has gotten. Stats like one hundred million Americans and 1.5 billion in the world at-large suffer from chronic pain. Or in 2016, 11.5 million people...

I think it's time to change the way rehabilitation is delivered. People who are chronically stressed and in pain aren't suffering from a diagnosis of "not enough aspirin" or "not enough flexibility". They are fundamentally threatened and insecure in their own bodies...

Most of what we learn in school is completely irrelevant and many times actually gets in the way of true growth. The deepest learning comes from trial and error…and I’ve made many, many errors.I turned 30 over the weekend so I thought I’d share a few lessons I’ve...

I have been working with a particular middle-aged woman for some time now. We'll call her Brenda. She has been suffering from poor digestive health, multiple sclerosis, and unrelenting back pain for more than 7 years now. Always on edge, she feels categorically unable...

I remember my first experience working with someone with trauma. She was a middle-aged woman with back pain who was quite rigid and despite us just meeting had mentioned a few negative-sounding comments about her husband. I didn't think much of it as a new clinician...

Compulsive thinking is a terrible human affliction. Rumination is the tendency towards repetitive thought, typically negative. Not only is this a great way to be more depressed (and is predictive of a new onset of depression), it’s also a great way to lock yourself up...

I felt compelled to write this. Every day I work with people who desperately want to get better. They want to move more easily, live without pain, and be more productive and happier. Most of them believe that the fix is to do some exercises, get stronger, and go back...

Isn’t it always a paradox when you hear someone say, “Just relax” as if it’s a conscious decision the person is making to be tensed and keyed up. Like “yeah the thing I want most in the world is to be stressing out right now”.Read on to understand a connection between...

Hello! It's been awhile since I've posted on the blog but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. Read on to discover: My thoughts on what it takes to "change' posture An exciting online course I'm going to release soon What I've been up to the last few months On...

I find the denial of human impact on climate change to be an interesting example at how we recognize and respond to threat as a humans.​From an evolutionary standpoint, we have selected for traits that allow for immediate survival: quickly perceiving the whites of...

We are not meant nor designed to be under constant stress. Take, for example, mouth breathing. When you breathe thru your mouth as your primary mode of respiration you are stressing your system.Let’s say you’re worried about something at work and haven’t been sleeping...

Look, I get the “stiff upper lip” cultural norm of just plowing thru life and pushing anything that gets in your way. A sort of self-punishment that we wear as a badge of honor – something I’ve certainly done.​But we have a biological need to come down after stressful...

2016 was a busy year for me in the reading category. I find that books are some of my best mentors: offering insights that are tangible and always accessible. To me books are an investment, not an expense, and building a personal library is a powerful source of...

What do you get when you try to force yourself to relax? Well, the opposite of relaxation. I’ve practiced meditation consistently for two-plus years now because I thought I needed to relax (and I definitely did). So I started out just sitting there trying to reduce my...

How much do you know about pain? We know pain is an unpleasant experience often associated with injury and something that most of us try to avoid. But did you know that pain is generated by the brain 100% of the time? Or that pain is not an accurate measure of the...