*** Content note: This article discusses sexual assault, trauma responses, and the harm of being silenced or denied support. Please read at your own pace and step away whenever you need to. This past weekend, the story of Jane Doe and the seven Cornell University fraternity members she has accused of rape followed me from one Facebook post to the next, bringing with it a distress that remained long after I put down the screen. According to her civil complaint, the twenty-year

When pain lasts only a few days, the most obvious door is often the right one to open: take an analgesic, if necessary, rest, and give the body time to recover. Medication is well suited to that purpose. The difficulty begins when pain ceases to be a passing event and becomes an enduring condition, recurring over weeks, months, or years until it is woven into the ordinary fabric of a person’s life. At that point, pharmacological relief assumes a different role, although the i

At some point, taking responsibility for one’s own life requires more than just making decisions. It requires becoming willing to question some of the assumptions from which those decisions are supposed to follow, usually in circumstances far more ordinary than the language of independence would suggest. I ask a second question because the first answer does not make sense, read the information for myself rather than relying entirely on someone else’s interpretation of it, wan

Gloria Steinem, the unfinished work of equality and the danger of mistaking hard-won freedoms for the natural order When Gloria Steinem died on September 2 at the age of 92, the news carried the peculiar weight of losing someone whose influence had become both immense and increasingly difficult to see. She was immediately and correctly remembered as a journalist, author, organizer, co-founder of Ms. magazine and one of the defining voices of the modern women’s movement. Tribu

Access, fragmented care and the impossible work of being a patient in Canada Whenever health advice reaches the limits of what can responsibly be said without knowing the individual, it usually ends with the same instruction: ask your doctor. The phrase appears on medication labels, accompanies discussions of supplements, closes articles about unfamiliar symptoms and resolves nearly every question requiring knowledge beyond the reader’s own. It sounds prudent because it place

Rethinking Food, Movement and Health Beyond Diets, Trends and Quick Solutions Conversations about nutrition have a curious way of becoming personal very quickly. Recently, while playing golf, we met a young couple who asked about my work, and before long the discussion turned to their own efforts to improve the way they ate. They had tried keto for a period, then vegetarianism, followed by other approaches that had seemed promising at the time but ultimately proved difficult

There are periods in life when nothing appears sufficiently wrong to explain why everything suddenly feels like too much. There has been no catastrophe, no singular event around which we can neatly organize our distress, and perhaps not even a particularly difficult day. Instead, there has been a succession of ordinary demands: work that needs finishing, an appointment hanging over the week, an unanswered message, an irritating interaction that continues to replay long after

Yoga has been part of my life for nearly forty years. Sometimes it occupied an important place in my daily routine, and sometimes it quietly disappeared beneath the competing demands of work, university studies and everyday responsibilities. I never consciously abandoned the practice, nor did I ever stop believing in its value. Like so many healthy habits, it was simply pushed aside by the persistent illusion that there would always be time to return to it later. Looking back

Self-care has become one of the most familiar ideas in contemporary health culture and one of the least precisely examined. It is commonly presented as an intentional pause from ordinary responsibility: a massage, a quiet bath, an afternoon at a spa, a walk outdoors, an evening without plans or any of the other small pleasures through which an overextended person attempts to feel restored. There is nothing inherently superficial about these experiences. The body benefits from

Every family has a way of talking about its health, and over time certain diagnoses become woven into its identity almost as firmly as the stories, traditions and personality traits passed from one generation to the next. High blood pressure runs on my mother’s side; the men in our family all develop heart disease; everyone eventually gets diabetes; my grandmother had dementia, then my mother did, so I assume I will too. These statements are usually made without drama because

There has probably never been a period in history when human beings have devoted so much attention, money, and energy to improving their health. We measure our sleep, count our steps, monitor our heart rate, estimate our biological age, analyze our gut microbiome, follow physicians and researchers on social media, listen to podcasts about longevity while driving to work, and fill our kitchen cupboards with products promising everything from healthier aging to improved cogniti

There comes a point in life when conversations about the future begin to change. For decades, the focus has been on building careers, raising families, paying mortgages, meeting obligations, and setting enough money aside to one day enjoy a well-earned retirement. We plan meticulously for our financial future because we understand that freedom later in life depends upon the decisions we make today. Surprisingly little attention, however, is given to preparing the body and min

There are some subjects that I have intentionally avoided writing about since launching Trivena. Not because they made me uncomfortable, nor because I considered them too personal, but because I never wanted a diagnosis to become the lens through which people viewed me. I wanted my work to stand on its own. If readers found value in what I wrote, I wanted it to be because the ideas resonated, not because they knew something deeply personal about the person who wrote them. Ove

For most of human history, fasting required no special plan, book, podcast, certification, or mobile application. It happened because food was unavailable, because religious traditions prescribed it, because journeys were long, because harvests were seasonal, or because circumstances left few alternatives. Today, fasting has become something people intentionally schedule into their calendars, monitor with smart watches, discuss on social media, and purchase structured program

A curious thing happens when people decide to change the way they eat. They often expect the challenge to come from cravings, habits, convenience, or perhaps a lack of nutritional knowledge. What sometimes surprises them is how quickly a personal choice can become a social conversation. Choosing a different meal at a restaurant, bringing a dish to a gathering, declining certain foods, or adopting a new way of eating may prompt questions, comments, and discussions that seem di

If there is a defining characteristic of modern life, it may not be how much we do, but how rarely we stop long enough to notice it. For many individuals, the day begins before they have fully awakened. A quick glance at a phone reveals messages that arrived overnight, news headlines summarizing events occurring around the world, reminders of upcoming appointments, emails requiring responses, weather forecasts, social media updates, and a growing list of responsibilities wait

What Yoga Philosophy and Modern Physiology Can Teach Us About Removing Obstacles We live in an age of unprecedented access to health information. Never before have so many books, podcasts, scientific papers, documentaries, courses, health professionals, wearable devices, newsletters, online communities, and social media accounts been available to the average person. Questions that once required hours spent searching through library shelves can now be answered within seconds.

There are many adults whose lives appear outwardly stable, productive, disciplined, and highly functional, yet whose physiology remains organized around levels of vigilance, tension, overstimulation, and chronic stress that have become so familiar they are no longer consciously recognized as abnormal. They move through demanding schedules with remarkable efficiency, maintain responsibilities, respond quickly to problems, remain emotionally composed under pressure, and continu

There is a peculiar contradiction built into modern life, one that becomes especially visible with age. After decades of schedules, responsibilities, commuting, deadlines, and physical demands, many people finally arrive at the stage of life they once imagined as freedom. Retirement promises slower mornings, fewer obligations, and long-awaited rest. Yet, for many, it is during this same period that physical decline begins to accelerate in ways that feel both confusing and ine

Travel is often associated with freedom, novelty, opportunity, and escape from routine. Airports represent movement, hotels imply temporary relief from responsibility, conferences promise intellectual stimulation and professional growth, while vacations are marketed as restoration and indulgence. Yet beneath the polished imagery attached to modern travel exists a far less glamorous physiological reality, one that many people recognize intuitively but struggle to articulate cl