Natural Health & Wellness
Balance · Vibrancy · Resilience · Wholeness
A more natural way of living is not only possible, it lives within you as your birthright
We Are Nature
We sometimes speak about health as though it were something we have to acquire, optimize or manufacture.
But human beings were healthy long before there were wellness industries, fitness trackers, supplements, diets or elaborate protocols telling us how to live.
The foundations of health are considerably older and simpler.
Safety. Rest. Sleep. Movement. Healthy food. Sunshine. Fresh air. Fire. Nature. Ritual & Ceremony. Play. Humor. Laughter. Dance. Touch. Sex. Love. Music. Children. Animal Companions. Friendship. Community.
Not necessarily in that order.
These aren’t simply pleasant additions to an otherwise healthy life – they are the various dimensions of a healthy life.
In other words, we are not separate from Nature. We are Nature.
So, the further we live apart from natural cycles, rhythms, food etc., the more difficult it becomes to remain well. The good news is that more we are aligned with the natural order, the healthier we are – on every level.
Of course, modern life cannot—and need not—be abandoned. Medicine, technology and science have given us extraordinary things. Nor is every illness the result of lifestyle, and living “naturally” is no guarantee against disease.
But our biology hasn’t changed nearly as quickly as the world we’ve constructed around it.
Sometimes improving our health therefore begins not by adding another intervention, but by asking two simple questions:
What is missing?
What currently exists in excess?
Followed by a few more:
What nourishes you?
What depletes you?
What does your body seem to be asking for? What is your Life asking for?
Health rarely exists in isolation from the rest of life.
How we sleep affects how we feel. How we feel affects how we eat, move and relate to others. Stress changes the body. Relationships affect the nervous system. Our environment influences our energy and mood. Meaning, purpose and belonging can affect how alive we feel.
Everything touches everything else.
This is why I am less interested in imposing a particular health philosophy or prescribing an ideal way to live than I am in looking with you at the whole ecology of your life.
What nourishes you?
What depletes you?
What does your body seem to be asking for?
Sometimes the answer is surprisingly ordinary.
More sleep. Better food. More movement. Less stimulation. More stimulation. Sunshine. Time outdoors. Human contact. Pleasure. Quiet. Play. A change of environment. Something meaningful to do. Someone meaningful to do nothing with.
Health doesn’t always require doing more.
Sometimes it asks us to restore something fundamental that modern life has gradually displaced.
My Understanding of Health and Wellness
My relationship with living in alignment with nature began long before “wellness” became an industry.
I initially trained and worked as a bodyworker and myofascial therapist, and in the late 1990s helped create aspects of The Sanctuary Spa and Wellness Centre in Southern Thailand, where I became deeply involved in fasting, cleansing, nutrition and other approaches to natural health and self-care.
Over the decades since, that exploration has continued through yoga, meditation, Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, integrative and regenerative medicine, stem cell therapy, shamanism and plant medicine. Much of it has also involved experimenting on myself—exploring different approaches to diet, supplements and herbs, movement and contemplative practice, as well as exploring the various rhythms of sleep, rest, activity and recovery.
In other words, I have been interested not only in what different traditions and systems say about health, but in what actually happens when I live them—what seems to help, what doesn’t, what works for a while and then stops working, and what changes as the body, circumstances and life itself change.
Some of what I believed thirty years ago has changed. I hope some of what I believe today will change too.
Natural health can easily become another ideology—a collection of rules about what we should eat, how we should exercise, what we should avoid, which supplements we should take, or what a “healthy” person is supposed to look like. I’m not particularly interested in that.
I’m interested in what actually helps you live well. Now.
Working Together
A Natural Health & Wellness consultation is therefore less about receiving a predetermined protocol and more about taking an intelligent, curious look at your life as a whole.
We might explore sleep, food and nourishment, movement, rest and recovery, stress, habits, environment, relationships, connection, pleasure, purpose, or the ways your emotional and inner life may be affecting your physical wellbeing.
We may discover an obvious place to begin. Or we may discover that the thing you thought was the problem isn’t really where the problem begins.
My role isn’t to diagnose illness or replace appropriate medical care. It is to bring decades of experience, careful attention and a broad perspective to the conversation—and to help you notice relationships, possibilities and practical changes that may be difficult to see when everything is considered separately.
There is no perfect diet. No perfect exercise program. No perfect morning routine. And certainly no perfect human being.
There is only the ongoing question of what supports greater balance, vibrancy, resilience and wholeness in the life you are actually living.
Begin with What Is Missing
You don’t need to overhaul your life.
Sometimes one small change in the right place affects everything around it.
If something here resonates, we can begin by looking together at what is present, what is working, what isn’t—and perhaps return to the two simple questions with which we began:
What, and where, is “too much”?
What, and where, is “too little”?
A more natural way of living is not only possible, it lives within you as your birthright