An avid storyteller and brand journalist with content strategy skills
The Primal Connection | Mark's Daily Apple
Primary writing and research assistant for this full-length book, which placed Silver in the Body, Mind & Spirit category for the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award; the Eric Hoffer Award for best self-published book; and a Bronze medal from IndieFab for their health category.
A Healthy Way of Life Nutrition Manual
In this guide you’ll find all the basics for making the best nutritional choices to optimize your health and well-being. You’ll also find personal reflection points that can help you
create individual goals, as well as concrete action items you can use in implementing your plan. By focusing on one change at a time, you’re more likely to make each step a permanent and powerful part of your lifestyle. Changing your lifestyle may not be an easy process but we’ll keep it simple and focus on one success at a time. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Let's get started.
Examining the Concept of Self-Care
More than anything, self-care as I see it is less than a list of behaviors and more a mindset that you’re going to do what serves you rather than what upholds the typical routine and others’ infinite expectations. If that sounds selfish, I’d offer you the seeming irony that when we let go of the obligation to react to others’ expectations, we can actually be more present to their needs as well as our own. We’re off the manic carousel and standing on solid ground. It’s a much better vantage point from which to perceive, act, and relate in life.
Spiritual Direction For Journeying Into Your Deeper Soul Story
There are countless paths to Spirit within and beyond the traditions we might be familiar with. Yet our own stories—including the events and elements of our lives that we struggle with the most—can be Holy ground for meeting the Divine Presence of our understanding. Passages we often view through a secular lens—grief, divorce, medical challenges, career shifts, creative endeavors, identity quests, recovery commitments—belong as much to our soul journeys as do questions of faith. Spiritual dir...
30 Days – 30 Healthy Experiments - Articles - LifeTime WeightLoss
Major health change happens with 1000 modest efforts.
While the "big basics" (e.g. the Healthy Way of Eating, resistance training, ample movement, quality sleep, etc.) universally hold, you’d be surprised at how much license you have to "play" on the path to good health.
Viewing our journeys through the lens of experimentation can underscore the truth that our commitments are made and remade every day - choice by choice. It can also encourage us to try on new practices that fit our interests and progress us further in our lifestyle change.
What new ideas have you attempted lately?
The Pleasures of Slow Living
We all live it or live with it to some extent – our society’s obsession with speed. Whether it’s with omnipresent traffic, constant deadlines, or crammed schedules, too many of us spend too much time running or overrun. The pace itself can over time become a lens for life, our focus in constant erratic motion. In the cursory sweeps of our day, we miss out on the nuanced textures of life – the sensory pleasures of a good meal, the subtle changes in our growing child’s face, the quiet beauty of...
Calling All Doctors: Why Your Patients Need Health Coaches
The numbers are staggering…. According to the CDC, 7 out of 10 deaths are attributable to chronic disease. Those with chronic conditions account for 76% of physician visits, (PDF) and their care by the latest estimate comprises 86% of U.S. health care costs. There is growing and dramatic concern among health care providers, administrators and public health experts over the time required for the care of chronic conditions, particularly with the corresponding pressure to increase clinical time ...
What Is Health Coaching?
When people are looking to make major health change—from losing weight to addressing chronic conditions, transforming their fitness to recharging their vitality—it’s easy to become overwhelmed. Questions abound. Where should they start? Where can they fit in these changes? How much do they really need to change? How do they deal with stumbling blocks? What if it’s not working? What if they fail?
With so many uncertainties and variables, with so much at stake, the most important question for t...
Traveling Still: Relinquishing Control as a Daily Commitment.
A few months following my divorce, a spiritual director asked me a question made famous by transition theorist, William Bridges: “If this time period were a chapter in the book of your life, what would the title be?”
I sat back in that oak rocking chair, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. With my elbows on the armrests, I clasped my hands together and rested my chin on two extended fingertips. “Traveling,” I shared with a quizzical smile.
As I sat pondering my unexpected answer, I acknow...
January Pages: A Sacred Space to Reverently Engage a Greater View of My Own Story.
I admittedly own a small mountain of journals — notebooks of every cover and color imaginable — all stashed around my home.
They’re my drafting boards, my exploratory spaces, my confessional havens. More than pages of brain dump, they invite me to take apart whatever I’m experiencing in the moment, or a long-term vision I’m toying with. Oftentimes, I don’t fully grasp what I’m moving through until I write my way through the clutter, burrowing to the definitive energy beneath. That, I finally ...
The Restorative Power of the Personal Retreat
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I’m not talking here about the two-day relocation of everyone in the office. I don’t mean the family vacay, enjoyable but fraught with chaos as it often is. I don’t mean a couple’s getaway, (which of course has its own unique benefits). And as much as I look forward to PrimalCon and encourage everyone to join us in April, I don’t even mean that kind of event. I’m talking about a different kind of retreat here, specifically the personal retreat, that solo venture in which one gets...