Turtle Islander
If you’ve ever seen my photograph, you might be surprised to learn that I was born indigenous...
Sick Bird Syndrome
By now, everyone on the planet has some awareness, however dim, of our epidemic of lifestyle disease. The list is familiar...
Less Self, More Health
It seems like a stupid question: What could be healthier than health and fitness? Likewise, What could be healthier than the health and fitness industry?
Elder Vision
Everyone knows the standard narrative of aging in the modern world. In a nutshell, it sucks. According to the dominant story of our day, getting older is one long, depressing decline into degeneration, illness and irrelevance...
Speed Trap
“How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flown. How did it get so late so soon?”
Dr. Seuss
Just try this..
Like most people, I want to be healthy. And like many, I turn to the Internet on occasion to find out how to do it. All goes well at the beginning, but after awhile I start to get a creepy sense that something’s backwards...
Perfect circles
No one on the playground seemed to know where it came from or what it was all about, but it sure was fun. Just square off with a friend and off you go. Rock smashes scissors, but can be covered by paper. Paper covers rock, but can be cut by scissors. Scissors cuts paper, but can be smashed by rock. Maybe you called it ick-ack-ock, ching-chang-cholly, zig-zag-zog or ro-sham-bo….
Our work matters
As 2015 winds to a close, it’s time to reflect on who we are and what we’re doing in this world, but sadly, it’s easy to get discouraged. Our culture puts physical training and education at the bottom of just about every hierarchy. In schools and universities, we’re at the bottom of the academic totem pole. In gyms and clinics, we’re constantly under pressure, our jobs vulnerable to the youngsters who’re willing to work for free to get started in the business.
The ultimate med ball guide
If you don't have a med ball, you should probably get one. Med balls are one of the greatest movement toys out there. We can use them for functional training and they're also great for games and fun. But what to do with the ball on your own?
New big game
In the modern Paleo world we spend a lot of time talking about our heritage as hunters and gatherers. We like to imagine ourselves chasing down animals and picking out roots, nuts and berries for our daily fare. Much has changed in the modern world of course, but in spite of all the differences, our bodies are substantially the same as they’ve always been…
Triage gone bad
Just in case you haven’t noticed, just about everyone in this modern world is freaked out, teetering on the edge of cognitive overload, burnout and outright panic. Everyone’s to-do list stretches to the distant horizon. There’s just too much to do and not enough time to even scratch the surface. We hit the ground running in the morning and keep on tasking until our heads hit the pillow. It’s an insane way to live.
Your life is the medium
We are delusional. As trainers, coaches and medical professionals, we give our patients and clients neat, rational prescriptions for getting in shape or treating their various afflictions. We tell them to do so many reps or miles at such-and-such an interval ...
Falling short
“Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination.” ~ Alan Watts
What do you see when you look at a human body? If you’re typically modern, you see a stand-alone organism that stops at the outer layer of its skin. You see an individual.
Wising up
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” ~Isaac Asimov
By this point in the game almost everyone in the Paleo world is familiar with the idea of mismatch (Or, to dress it up in sexy academic language, “the evolutionary discordance hypothesis.”)
Genius or bozo?
Life is short, the Art is long, opportunity fleeting, experience delusive, judgment difficult. ~ Hippocrates
In 1983, American psychologist Howard Gardner famously speculated that people have more than on kind of intelligence.
Blinded by walls
Have you ever been part of a great human migration, a diaspora?
As you ponder this question, you might ask yourself about the great migrations of human history: our epic journeys out of Africa, emigrations out of Europe to the New World or the countless displacements of people fleeing war and environmental catastrophe ...
Re-wilding our language
Every now and then a word creeps into our language and begins to replicate like a fungus, invading every available corner of our consciousness. The word takes on a life of its own and begins to infect our conversations and weaken our powers. One such word is wellness ...
Habitat is tissue
A human being is part of the whole... He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us ...
Bigger picture
“Doc, there’s more to life than health.” The simple statement put the doctor back on his heels; he’d never really looked at things quite this way. He’d been giving his patient the standard boilerplate advice to lose weight, get more exercise, eat more vegetables and all the rest ...