To or from? that is the question
Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
~ Viktor Frankl
As so often happens, the Onion puts its finger on the pulse of American culture, even in the world of health and fitness ...
New year, new program
Have you heard about the hot new fitness program that’s poised to sweep the nation in 2015? This one will just blow you away. It’s better than Zumba, Pilates, TRX, Taebo, Viper, ultra-marathons, the Navy Seals workout and the Race Across America ...
We need to talk...
Hey you! Put down that device and listen up. I have something to say and I need your complete attention. This is your body speaking. Remember me? I’m the one that keeps you alive. I’m the one that makes it all happen for you ...
This just in!
Attention health and fitness consumers! Medical scientists from Stanford University have just announced the groundbreaking discovery that there is no fountain of youth, no way to turn back the clock and no way to prevent the aging of the human body ...
Good news situation
The future begins today. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman
As the seasons change and the days get shorter, the darkness creeps in and reminds us that there’s another shadow looming over our lives, an ominous story of environmental and social apocalypse.
Experience or catastrophe
With all the noise about the new information economy, the digital revolution and the potential of “big data,” it’s easy to assume that these things are somehow important and necessary. The media is in a feeding frenzy and venture capitalists are lining up to put money in the pockets of anyone with a new, disruptive technology ...
All together now
Do you ever feel like you’re going to pieces? Disintegrated and fragmented, as if the various forces within your body are pulling your life in wildly different directions? Of course you do. We all do ...
Embrace the mystery
This week brings another wave of books, research reports and expert interviews about our crushing epidemic of lifestyle disease; another round of mind-numbing statistics of human bodies degenerating before our eyes, another call for action in the face of what is beginning to look like a global pandemic of misery ...
Turn out the light
We can only imagine the night on the African grassland, a million years ago. With no light pollution to obscure the sky above, we had a perfectly clear view deep into the heart of the cosmos ...
On being whole: the art of living
There’s a lot of hand-wringing going on these days about the epidemic of “lifestyle diseases.” You know the list: obesity, diabetes, heart disease and by some accounts, depression and neurological disorders ...
Smart is the new dumb
This will come as a surprise to many of our so-called “digital natives,” but back in the Paleo, people actually experienced their bodies and the world directly, with no outside intervention. We used our nervous systems to feel our flesh, our habitat, our movements and each other ...
Letting go of the power sucks
Everyone wants to be stronger and more powerful. And these days, a lot of us have a strategy for making it happen. Our most typical approach is to do it directly, through physical training and by developing the knowledge and strategies that make us more effective in the world ...
Your most invisible ally
Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense. ~ Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713)
What’s the most familiar object in your universe? Hint: It’s not your smart phone. It’s not your running shoes. It’s not your favorite coffee cup.
Release the hounds
“Would you like some help out to your car with that?” I did a double take. “Excuse me?”
“Would you like some help out with that?”
I had just purchased a few supermarket items with a combined weight of perhaps 2 pounds; a can of shaving cream, some dental floss, a head of broccoli and a jar of salsa.
The mother of all lifestyle diseases
As we all know, humanity is experiencing a planet-wide wave of lifestyle diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, and neurological disorders. There’s a lot of hand-wringing going on, but the epidemics only seem to be getting worse ...
Unities
Everyone wants integration, but there are lots of ways to go about it. Here are a few examples, all constructed as spokes on a bicycle wheel. Each speaks to unity in the art of living. The yin-yang mandala is the all-time classic. Opposite forces are interconnected and interdependent ...
See me, feel me, touch me, heal me
Please allow me to introduce myself.
I was born about 2 minutes ago into the wild, mosaic grassland of East Africa. I am, of course, entirely naked. My skin is soft, my senses are untrained and my limbs are nearly useless. I am, to put it in the most elemental terms, some 7 or 8 pounds of high-quality protein, protein that is craved by a wide range of predators and carnivores that prowl nearby ...
The end of hyperbole as we know it
Everything in excess is opposed by nature. ~ Hippocrates
Sometimes it seems that the health and fitness industry is hell-bent on turning itself into a cartoon. Every weight-loss and athletic training program is declared to be “the ultimate.” Outrageous claims are everywhere and extremism is the order of the day ...
Diagonal reaches
In a world gone mad with exercise machines and high-tech strap-ons, we might well wonder what, if anything, the body might still be capable of doing on its own. The answer is “quite a bit.” All we really need is a couple of bodies, some gravity and imagination ...