Like the Snickers Hangry commercial, which reminds us that we’re probably just irritable because we need a snack. Or this Doc Morris Christmas kettlebell commercial that paints a perfect picture of a deeply personal and emotional connection to exercise.

I still think about both years after I first saw them. But the commercial that lives rent-free in my head is that pesky progressive one about young homeowners becoming their parents.

The first time I saw it, I laughed wholeheartedly. The next time, I chuckled anxiously. The third time, I looked in the mirror in dread. Now I find myself continually and uncomfortably aware of all the ways I am becoming my parents.

One of my earliest memories is of my mom sitting on the floor of her office surrounded by stacks of printed pages. It’s the mid-1990s, and she’s organizing “A Moving Journal,” the publication she created with a few friends about Authentic Movement and somatic exploration.

It was a “niche newsletter” created 23 years before Substack existed. Instead of email, it was physically mailed around the world to a few hundred paying subscribers.

At the time, I thought it was bizarre. Now I see how badass it was.

As a baseball-obsessed kid, I had direct access to my mom’s expertise in the Alexander Technique, a popular method for improving performance in activities like music, acting, and sports.

Yet, I rejected it entirely. Because it came from my mom, it was so obviously silly and unhelpful. I dismissed the power of embodied movement like a teenager judges and rejects their parent’s musical tastes. I ran from the parental association as hard as I could, only to discover decades later the wisdom I’d pushed aside.

Now, I can only laugh that reconnecting to the body and embracing more intuitive exercise have become central to my life.

Despite my mom publishing “A Moving Journal” for 12 years, I never saw her as a writer. After all, she was just my mom.

So when she told me she was writing a book about her experience of my grandfather's death, I was surprised. The thought of reading something so personal brought a wave of tension, a mix of curiosity and trepidation. It was an invitation to experience a part of her I'd never seen before.

In reading her book, The Watch, I was captivated by both the story itself and the continual realization of the uniqueness of our subjective experiences. I was there, experiencing his death with her, yet in my own world. There was just so much I missed.

We can live in proximity through the same moment yet experience it fully in our own way. The vantage point is different. The relationships are different. We are different. So, the feelings and sensations we encounter and the meaning we take from them are often surprisingly different.

In many ways, I sense my mom was wrestling with this same idea as she lived through my grandfather’s death and wrote her book. In her words:

When my father was diagnosed with cancer, the ground beneath my feet seemed to fall away. As he faced the upending of his life, I felt woefully ill-equipped to offer support to the person who had always been the center of gravity within our family.

A moment like this upends not just each person but also the way everyone interacts and relates to each other. Thankfully, my mom had thirty years of relevant practice she could lean on.

Through Authentic Movement, I learned that if I close my eyes and attend to how my body wants to move, something meaningful happens, and that having an outer witness to the process profoundly deepens the experience.

Authentic Movement is a practice grounded in relationship: When you see me with compassion, as I am, I can see myself more clearly. An awakened presence of the inner witness begins to develop.

This isn’t restricted to just movement practice; it’s an approach that deepens and appreciates each of our subjective experiences across life:

When we are seen enough, we can see ourselves with compassion and greater awareness of the way our minds produce the judgments and projections that cloud our vision, we may find it possible to see someone else more clearly as they are.

Our differences, including our physical bodies, our sensations, our emotions, our dreams, our images and memories, our languages and cultures, become infinite details to be discovered, to be cherished.

In a way, the whole book is an exploration of what it means to truly connect with our experience in even the most intense and poignant moments:

The Watch invites you to witness your own experiences, discovering what wants to be felt and known within the mysteries of life, death, and time.

So, if you enjoy personal memoirs, stories about life and death, or examples of how decades of awareness practice can ripple across your life, I think you’ll enjoy my mom’s book, The Watch.1

As I write this, I feel proud of my mom for courageously sharing her experience of such a powerful and vulnerable moment in her life. It reminds me how often we don’t open the door to these deeper parts of ourselves and our experiences with even our closest family members. But when we do, the vulnerability is an invitation to greater understanding and connection. Her book is an immense gift to not just me but anyone who discovers it.

This is what I love most about writing: not trying to convince others of anything or preach absolute truths, just giving a glimpse into our unique vantage point, thoughts, and experiences. In this way, we leave a few breadcrumbs that might be of value to others on their own journey.

In a world that seems to be shifting increasingly toward artificial abstractions, it’s human stories and personal reflections like The Watch that feel most alive to me.

When I first thought about those progressive commercials, my main questions were about why so many of us have a tendency to become like our parents and how to avoid this unfortunate fate.

But now I find myself more curious about why we resist their gifts in the first place, only to discover them later. Ideally, not too late to share the joy of them together.

Like the way I avoided helping my dad in the garden all those childhood summers, only to fall in love with gardening while living 700 miles away. Or how I dismissed his tendency to tackle ambitious home improvement projects, just to now discover the delight in inviting him over for a demolition day.

Maybe the way to think about this pattern is that our parents and our early childhood experiences plant seeds within us that lie dormant waiting for when conditions are ripe to sprout. Maybe there’s an intelligence behind the way we resist them at first, holding them at bay until we’re ready to make them our own.2

There’s something significant about discovering an idea yourself or starting an activity on your terms. By embracing our own journey with it, we can more fully honor our subjective experiences and authentically connect with others. I felt an extreme version of this in reading my mom’s book about her father, as I also digested my own early experiences as a new father to my daughter. The window into my mom’s experience enriched not just our connection but also continues to influence my relationship with both my kids and my parents.

Just as there’s wisdom in resisting parental influence early in life, there’s also value in allowing it to reemerge.3 So now, instead of running from or toward the vortex of my parents’ experiences and preferences, I just sit back and marvel at all the fascinating ways certain themes, ideas, and activities weave across generations and bubble up in my own life.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear from you with any reflections in the comments or by replying directly to this email.

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Now, it was the summer of 2020, and before we had kids, so I had a lot of time on my hands. But if I’m honest, or if you asked my wife, this is a common pattern for me. I never dip my toe in the water. I just jump in. I don’t take things slow. I ramp them all the way up. I did the same thing when I picked up golf and started backpacking. It’s how I launched my first business and began writing online.

There’s something exhilarating about the process. I love how it creates an entirely new lens through which I see the world. Take gardening. All of a sudden, there were plants everywhere I looked. Even my metaphors changed. Instead of competition, I began to think in terms of cultivation. Instead of chasing growth, I learned to build healthy soil.

But there’s a shadow side to this.

It’s not sustainable or balanced. You can’t be all in on everything. So often, I flame out or move on to the next new thing. There are many reasons for this: the novelty runs out, the progress stalls, and the time commitment adds up.

But there’s a subtler piece at the root of this shadow side. One that explains why I often struggle to sustain new activities and why many people bail on new habits like exercise.

When I plunged headfirst into gardening, I naturally began to look for experts to guide me. I read all of Monty Don’s books.1 I devoured hours of YouTube videos about homesteading. Very quickly, my sense of what was possible expanded. But so did my bar for what was enough. I began to think like and compare my efforts to people who were professional gardeners or full-time homesteaders.

Not surprisingly, it felt like I couldn’t keep up. I slowly became more and more aware of all the things I wasn’t doing.

Awareness and knowledge come with costs.

When you embrace a new activity and try out a new worldview, you don’t just sign up for the good parts. You are also gifted with new concerns and greater complexity.

I started to become more attuned to the damage we were doing to our natural world. I began to recognize how little connection most of us have to where our food comes from. These are important realizations that I continue to deepen into, but they also magnified the feeling that I wasn’t doing enough.

It’s challenging to be 60% into a way of life or to embrace 80% of a philosophy. In this messy middle, we’re aware of the issues and opportunities but not deep enough to feel fully aligned or reap all the benefits. When I’m here, I notice a pull in both directions. To opt out and bury my head in the sand, and to lean in and devote my whole identity to the cause.2

The problem is, in most cases, neither is a realistic option.

Once we know, we know. I cannot magically forget all of the things that gardening has opened my eyes to. I can’t shed my new connection to the land or my growing disgust with our modern food system.

And I cannot become a full-time homesteader or professional gardener. Well, I could, but I can’t do that and also work on our healthcare crisis, be the dad I want to be, deepen into the spiritual path, and build a vibrant social life. I have to balance competing priorities and conflicting desires.

In each domain, I have to answer for myself: what is enough for me?

You may not struggle with this pattern like I do. Maybe you’re far better at naturally finding the level that’s right for you. I have many friends who pick up an instrument without feeling pressure to become a great musician or start yoga without feeling the need to become a good yogi.3

But nowhere do I see this pattern play out more clearly than in today's health and fitness world. When it comes to embracing exercise and living a healthy lifestyle, this question nags at us:

Am I doing enough?

When I look around to answer this, most of the guidance is from experts who devote their entire lives to optimizing fitness and hacking health. So it’s no surprise that they gift us with a laundry list of ways to be different to do enough:

Wake up at 5 am. Get 10 minutes of sunlight (even though it’s dark). Do 45 minutes of exercise. Make sure to cycle each day to achieve the perfect ratio of zone 2, HIIT, and resistance training. Sauna, then cold plunge. Don’t forget meditation. At exactly 90 minutes, you can have a cup of coffee. Make sure to build your entire life around optimizing sleep. But don’t forget your relationships. And eat whole30, except when you’re fasting. Oh, and buy this supplement stack to lower your biological age.

Wait, you have young kids and a busy job? Sorry, enjoy your early, untimely death.

This isn’t to criticize the people who share these messages. Or to say that many of these things can’t be valuable. It’s to point out the frustrating reality that I keep encountering. I can’t be all in on everything. The experts I look to for inspiration and guidance can also cast a shadow of idealized standards. I can’t embrace their definition of healthy without welcoming all parts of their life.

I need to determine it for myself.

Instead of adopting their scoreboard, I can embody a version that fits all of what I care about. Instead of optimizing every facet of my life, I can find levels that are aligned and sustainable. Instead of abandoning an activity altogether, I can embrace the tension of the messy middle.

As a result, my gardening has become a slow burn.

I grow what I can and lean on our local farm. I plant what will feed our family for years, like medicinal herbs, berry bushes, and nut trees. I think less about what I didn’t get to this month and more about what I can build in this decade.4 I remember that my life, just like the garden, has seasons.

It’s enough for me.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear from you with any reflections in the comments or by replying directly to this email.

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4

Here’s a project that didn’t go as planned. I created these beds for more berry bushes and some small fruit trees but ended up filling them with a messy emergency flower garden. We’ll try again next year!

To him, “alcoholism was a malady of mind, emotions, and body.” He viewed addiction as a “spiritual malady” that required a “spiritual remedy."

His perspective was shaped during a fourth inpatient stay at a local hospital when he had a “White Light” spiritual experience, became sober, and never relapsed.

He began to spread this message and support other alcoholics in what he called a “nameless squad of drunks.” With a few groups, he helped 100 alcoholics get sober and then published the book “Alcoholics Anonymous” which included the now-famous 12 steps. He kicked off a movement that still continues to grow almost a century later. Today, there are more than 100,000 groups in 180 countries and over 2 million active members.1

Despite how much substance use and addiction treatment have evolved over the last 100 years2, AA remains largely the same and still plays a central role in modern addiction treatment. The grassroots, community-based, and, yes, spirituality-informed nature of AA has helped shape the broader culture of treatment. There’s an ethos of dogged persistence, comprehensive support, and holistic care that is present in most modern addiction treatment.

I saw this firsthand when I worked with the largest safety net hospital system in Boston. To get to our corporate office, I walked past what is often called “Methadone Mile” or “Recovery Road.” Here, I would see hundreds of people living in the throes of deep addiction and all of the hospital services and community organizations set up to support them. The severity of the suffering was vast and visceral. But so was the depth of commitment and collaboration to help.3

In many ways, we’re still wrestling with the question of whether addiction is a moral failure, a “spiritual malady,” or some “secret, more complex, third thing.”

This same debate is now spreading to the world of chronic illness, where people are discussing if conditions like obesity and type 2 diabetes are more indicative of individual character deficits or a deep spiritual crisis in modern life.

So, it’s worth exploring this question through the lens of how people have healed severe addictions. There are valuable lessons we can take by looking at what makes AA, spirituality, and psychedelics so powerful for so many people on the road to recovery.

To do this, I spoke with about his journey into and out of addiction. We discussed how addiction is a defining characteristic of modern life, how it affects most people in subtle but significant ways, and what we can learn from how people heal from it.

Alex is not only someone who has healed a severe polysubstance addiction but is a prolific writer, experienced meditator, and deep spiritual practitioner. He’s the founder of a non-profit addiction program, an executive coach, a somatic practitioner, and an expert group facilitator. Most of all, he’s a deep believer in and champion of people waking up into a more free and joyful life.

You can listen to the full conversation here:

For those of you who aren’t podcast people, I’ve highlighted some of the things we can learn from Alex’s story and the perspective of addiction as a spiritual malady below.

Episode Highlights and Takeaways:

How can we understand addiction?

To orient the discussion, Alex defines addiction as “something that is done compulsively that creates negative consequences.”

To him, Addiction is a spectrum that “modern life is really swimming in”. It’s not just hard drugs but shows up in our relationship with things like screens, social media, and food.

Alex view’s addiction as a way we “distract ourselves from our emotions. So you can really become addicted to anything, any behavior or substance that distracts you from your emotions.”

In what ways was his addiction itself spiritual?

Alex’s addiction was the “gnarly” type and included a severe dependency on drugs like “opiates, amphetamines, and benzos.”

This led to a dark place where “I was in six figures of debt, and my relationships were in shambles. I was pawning electronics to get my next fix.”

Alex shares the perspective that addiction is “a spiritual malady”:

“I was viewing the world as a dead, inanimate, cold universe. I was able to create a cocktail of narcotics that gave me this feeling of aliveness and freedom.”

“When you combine that with then risky behavior like seeing if I can make it in the Tenderloin as a guy who shouldn't ostensibly be hanging out there… there was something deeply spiritual about that.

And I think in hindsight now too, I see that like what I was seeking and all that was just the pure bliss of this moment that you don't need anything to access.”

It’s may seem counterintuitive but there are ways addiction is protecting or even serving the person. For Alex, it was the only way at the time he knew how to get the aliveness and freedom he was seeking.

What did his path to recovery look like?

This led to Alex rock bottom, where “I was so broken and so humbled that I was just ready and open to try anything.”

So, he finally and fully committed to treatment:

“I had to do medically supervised detox for a year in an outpatient program to detox off all the substances. And then simultaneously, I plunged really into AA and the steps… I started working out a lot, eating healthy… and then Buddhist-based recovery and yoga, and then the healing arts, somatics, plant medicines, then onwards.”

It wasn’t about picking between modern traditional medicine and holistic or spiritual-based interventions. It was embracing all of them.

He wouldn’t have been able to engage effectively with AA without the medically assisted detox. But also, his recovery would have stalled and even regressed if he hadn’t deepened into AA, fitness, Buddhism, and psychedelics.

What makes AA so powerful?

Alex described the elements that he felt make AA so transformative and healing, specifically:

Community and Open-Sourced

First and foremost, it’s the people and the tangible support around doing the work:

“The community is what really did it for me… the men in those meetings just really took me in… I needed the practical help of making it through the next day and not relapsing, but also, what do I do about this situation? I'm in debt, my marriage doesn't look so good, now I'm out of work”

“AA is open-sourced, right? Here's the playbook, here's how you can make your own chapter anywhere, but we're not gonna do anything around self-promotion. It's all about the work itself and the members. It's free, and there's a recipe here.”

Self-Awareness and Ownership

It puts ownership fully on the person to understand how they got here:

“In my opinion, why it's been so successful is that it points people to deep inquiry into your own, what they call resentments or character defects…

It forces people to actually look at yourself and produce ownership in your experience. Not blaming other people, but just taking ownership for the situation you have got yourself into.”

Surrender and Spirituality

It asks members to surrender to something bigger than themselves and to go on a spiritual path:

“And then I think the biggest thing is that it's fundamentally a spiritual program, right?”

“A program where you are asked to surrender yourself to any version of that higher power that's bigger than you”

“For instance, the serenity prayer. I recited: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

In those early days, I was reciting that thing like a mantra. You know, I was in that much pain. I was in and didn't know what to do. And they said, say this prayer over and over again, and you don't know what to do. And I did it hundreds, thousands of times a day.”

Service and Helping Others

It nudges members toward service and helping others:

“Another thing that is beautiful about the 12 step community is that it orients towards service. Even when you're new, and you feel like your life is falling apart, they'll be like, okay, you're gonna do the coffee at the meeting, or you're gonna collect donations.

“And it forces people to really orient to the idea that we keep what we have by giving it away. And that is really a heart-centric opening. I'm going to help others”

“Then step 12, after having a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, you then help others. It's in the damn steps.

In these descriptions, it’s striking how different and deep the process is than most approaches to healing. It blends tangible peer support with extreme ownership. It invites full acceptance while demanding concrete action. It forces you to simultaneously look in the mirror and step out beyond yourself.

Does this Spirituality create challenges?

It’s clear that AA is a spiritual program and that this has led to controversy. Alex explained how it can even create a barrier for many people:

“This is the biggest hang-up that that most people, including my former self have… when I first started this, I was like, all right, my higher power is like nature or it's something else, but it's not God.”

“A lot of modern people are like, no, that's just not me. There's some people who just, for that reason, still won't go near it.

And I know people in successful recovery who don't view it as a spiritual problem, but I would just strongly disagree with that.”

Despite the challenges, Alex, like Bill Wilson before him, fundamentally views addiction as a “spiritual malady” requiring a “spiritual remedy.”

What makes Spirituality so valuable for recovery?

To understand why, Alex highlights the way addiction involves contraction:

“Addiction is a reciprocal narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. You start to lose agency in your life to interact with the world because you're only caring about that thing. And it just gets worse and narrower and smaller and smaller and more contraction.”

While the spiritual path involves expansion:

“Spirituality is like this opposite move where you continually open yourself to possibilities in the world.”

This path of expansion can create a shift that heals the core wounds that were contributing to the addiction in the first place:

“A spiritual orientation is deeply rooted in the understanding that there's nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with how you're feeling, that you belong here on this earth, and that you can open yourself to whatever it is that you're experiencing.

When done on its own time, this just unlocks deep happiness and joy for no reason that you didn't know was possible previously”

What takeaways can we bring to other health conditions?

Toward the end of our conversation, we explored similarities and applications for the current chronic health crisis.

Conditions like obesity and diabetes are not only also often viewed as moral failures but involve similar interactions between behavioral, environmental, and genetic components.

In listening to Alex’s story, I was struck by even deeper similarities around self-image, identity, loss of meaning, disconnection from the body, lack of safety, and contraction of what feels meaningful or possible.

So, this discussion left me even more convinced that there is so much more we can and should be doing to fully support people navigating chronic illnesses and the challenges of modern life.

To learn more about Alex, please check out his website, where he has more on his journey and programs. If you’d like to listen to the whole thing, you can access it here:

Thank you for reading. As always, I’d love to hear from you with any reflections, questions, or ideas in the comments or by replying directly to this email.

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So little humanity.

I was on vacation last week with my family, and after five days of soaking up the sun and basking in our kid’s enjoyment of the beach, we all got hit by a brutal stomach bug. I got so dehydrated that I couldn’t stand, and my body started cramping. As I lay there with the room spinning and muscle spasms cycling around my body, I gave in to my wife’s pleas to let her call the EMTs.

Despite a language barrier, it was clear to them and us that I needed fluids. The problem was that they could only give me the IV they had with them if I agreed to go to the hospital. So off we went. Given the dizziness, I was desperate for anti-nauseous medicine, yet again, there was red tape. They needed to call and ask some distant person for permission. Worst of all, their “standard of care” was to take me 40 minutes to the regional hospital, which was only avoided because my wife intervened and convinced them to take me 10 minutes to the local emergency room (ER). The bureaucracy and rigidity added friction to each step, dragging me along while the world spun and my body cried out for water. In the grip of these “protocols,” I felt a growing anger and gnawing helplessness.

Yet when we arrived, I was brought right into a back room where two wonderful humans immediately and lovingly nursed me back to health. It felt like being transported back 50 years. There were no computers anywhere but paper charts and paper scripts. The young doctor showed up in jeans and a sweatshirt with a casual and warm: “What’s going on? How can I help?”. He then proceeded to listen to my story, treat my symptoms, and check back in until I was ready to go. Simple, yet so refreshing.1

Now that we’re home and on the mend, I can’t stop thinking about the differences within this experience.

The EMTs were friendly and kind. They playfully joked with my wife in Spanish that I was likely another victim of the local fish and teased me for working too hard in the gym. Yet the system wouldn’t let them bring this same humanity to my actual care. The ER was somehow an oasis from this bureaucracy where the doctor had the freedom and confidence to treat me like a human. In his presence, I felt myself relax, and I knew I was safe.

This is a minor example, but it’s fresh, and I’m sure you can relate. Unfortunately, everyone I know has had or knows people who have experienced something similar.

This lack of humanity is present in so much of our modern healthcare.

I don’t have an easy solution to share today, but I want to discuss why I think it matters. I want to poke at the problem to highlight what is lost.

I’ve had my share of run-ins with healthcare throughout my life— A stomach surgery at 14, a type 1 diabetes diagnosis at 15, a Thanksgiving morning trip to the ER for stitches, and now this latest island ambulance adventure.

The simplest way I can describe how I felt in each of these is deeply vulnerable.

In many ways, these moments are when we feel most human, most raw, most alive, and most aware of our mortality. All the bullshit fades to the background, and we’re left face-to-face with what matters most to us.

To take a full breath, to swallow and digest our food, to stand and smile without the room spinning, to hold our kids, to kiss our loved ones, to be with our people, to do our work, to move our bodies, and to savor every moment.

Yet, in these moments when we are most human and most vulnerable, we are met with a system so lacking in compassion, empathy, support, and connection.

It breaks my heart to think about all the different ways I’ve seen this play out. The person whose life is thrown upside down by a cancer diagnosis and then spends their precious energy navigating insurance roadblocks and scheduling headaches. Or the person who returns home from the hospital after suffering a heart attack, alone, with no one but themselves to adjust to their new world of rehab, medication, and lifestyle change. Or the person who suffers from chronic pain or treatment-resistant depression who bounces from provider to provider and treatment to treatment in desperate hope for something and someone to finally help.

Often, a family member or a friend jumps in to help navigate the mess. Or, if you’re lucky like we are, you have a rolodex of friends who are doctors that you can call. My wife and I joke that we’ve collected someone in every specialty to backdoor the system. We can talk human to human and get personal guidance and ongoing support.

But even with this immense privilege and access, there’s only so much they can do. At the end of the day, when you’re in the system, you’re in the system. There’s an ICD-10 code to diagnose you. A CPT code to submit a bill for you. A prior-authorization or a claim review to hassle over the reimbursement of you. The insider lingo doesn’t matter, the point is we’re just numbers— unique identifiers with associated dollar signs.

There are amazing people in healthcare. There are doctors, nurses, and armies of support staff that show up each day to care for the vulnerable and heal the sick. Even most of the administrative people throughout the system are well-intentioned. I know because I’ve worked with them. The humans working in healthcare go to extremes to work through and around the system.

But everything in the system pushes us away from being treated as people and toward being treated as numbers. They are fighting against the tide, and we’re just along for the ride.

So, what happens in this mismatch? In the discrepancy between our humanity and vulnerability and the system’s callous indifference and detached bureaucracy?

People give up.

They stop trying. They shut down. They lose hope. They stop taking their medication. They bail on the lifestyle changes. They skip the next appointment. They opt out of the system. Sometimes, they even pay with their lives.

Some will read this and think: “But where’s the personal responsibility?”

That exists. It’s real and needed. However, we should ask how our healthcare system can encourage and empower this responsibility instead of tearing it down. We should push for a system that nurtures the human spirit instead of extinguishing it.

If this sounds idealistic or naive, then we’ve lost the plot.

There are so many patients who respond to life-threatening diagnoses and near-death events by transforming their lives for the better. There are people like Dr. Paul Farmer who create beautifully human community-based care models. There are organizations like Boston Healthcare for the Homeless that support some of the most complex and challenging patients with the deepest levels of compassion and connection.

These examples point toward what is often missed about the failings of our current system. The moments when people need the system, when they are in their darkest and most vulnerable hours, are moments ripe with everything that makes us human. These moments open us to love, death, beauty, connection, gratitude, renewal, aliveness, and so much more. Yet so often, and for so many, the door slams shut before they can step through. Our current system snuffs out the flame.

To me, this is both a grave failure and a tremendous opportunity.

So, while I don’t have answers, I plan to share more stories and ideas that bring me hope. I plan to connect with people and contribute to projects striving to bring more humanity to our healthcare.2 My guess is this will require the people inside and the people outside the system to come together to tackle the problem. Human to Human.

In the next post, I’ll share a deep dive into one area of healthcare that I think is way ahead of the game on this.

Thank you for reading. As always, I’d love to hear from you with any reflections, questions, or ideas in the comments or by replying directly to this email.

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I had just shared an update on a work opportunity I was exploring. I felt tense and a bit tired, but thought I’d given a compelling overview. I wondered—Did I not provide enough context? Did I not highlight the benefits well? I asked— “What do you mean?

The other guy doubled down— “It sounds attractive, I just don’t think you actually want to do it. I didn’t feel any connection or excitement when you spoke.”

In most contexts, I’d be taken aback by such direct feedback. But this was a part of why I was here. It was a Tuesday night in late August, and I was gathering on Zoom with a group of 8 guys who meet each week in a men’s group facilitated by .

At that moment, I was more relieved than offended. I felt my chest loosen and my shoulders relax. I noticed I was smiling. He was right.

I had joined the group back in February. My motivation was partly theoretical and partly practical. I’d read books on modern manhood and masculine archetypes that made me curious about men’s groups. My wife and I were about to have our second kid, and I figured I could use some extra support. I hoped the group could help me balance my commitment to my family and my excitement for some emerging work pursuits.

When I chatted with Alex before joining the group, he asked me what I wanted most from the experience.

The question nudged me deeper: “I want to show up authentically and be seen by the other guys. I want them to challenge me and to challenge them back. I want to be more vulnerable and feel more connection.”

He smiled and told me I’d find these in spades within the group.

Despite his warm confidence, I was skeptical. It was hard to imagine a video call would deliver this. I was coming in with significant zoom fatigue. I’d tried to find a local in-person group and was frustrated that one didn’t exist.

As we hung up, I noticed some fear bubbling up. I was about to step into a group that all knew each other. I was about to be the new guy.

Would they accept me? Would they like me? Would I like them? Would it be worth my time?

A quick picture of the virtual room and the gallery of guys looking back at me:

Tech leaders, executive coaches, creatives, entrepreneurs, and advanced meditators. Dads with multiple kids and men exploring relationships with new partners. Guys a decade older and guys a decade younger than me.

Some are ramping up their career aspirations. Some are ramping down their professional pursuits. Some are very into woo stuff. Some are barely into woo stuff.

We share brief updates and Alex leads us through some guided exercises. Sometimes, someone asks for more space, and sometimes, someone is called into the hot seat.

As I leave my first meeting, I’m struck by how we’re all so different yet so similar. We’ve shown up with vastly different histories, experiences, and stories. We’ve come for different reasons. We’re experiencing different challenges and bringing different goals.

Yet there’s something that connects us and binds us together. I can’t place it yet, but I already feel a strange familiarity and comfort. I feel welcome.

As the year progresses, some guys leave the group, and others join.1 There’s an energy and excitement with each change in composition. A freshness and dose of unknown.

The milestones we experience together are significant: Guys get new jobs, make career changes, explore new relationships, become dads, have more kids, face health challenges, lose loved ones, explore spiritual edges, go on retreats, and so much more.

It feels refreshing to have a group ready to celebrate our wins together. It feels even more essential when we gather and support someone through darkness.

Underneath these big moments is the simmering reality of each of us wrestling with who we are as men in this complex modern world. We share our aspirations and our fears. We nudge each other to go deeper, to see blind spots, to think bigger. We share our experiences of each other, offering back curiosities, questions, love, and fire.

Each week, I learn a bit more about the other men. Each conversation reveals more of who we are and what we care about.

The picture grows wide and deep. It’s not abstract philosophical ideals or curated reflections. But a real-time, raw, unfiltered view of how we move through our lives. We wrestle with emerging situations before they are resolved, revealing how we truly feel emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually in the moment.

There’s immense power in the context these weekly glimpses provide. None of the conversations exist in isolation. If we say something is important but then don’t take action, the inconsistency is obvious. So, someone inevitably challenges us on it.

I learn that providing this kind of blunt and sometimes painful feedback requires a lot of trust. Trust in ourselves and our own experience of the situation. Trust in the other to receive it in good faith.

Each time I push through the discomfort, it feels more natural. I notice how often it lands with appreciation. How what felt hard to say is received as a gift.

But even more so, I recognize how much I value and appreciate when other men have the courage to challenge me, sharing their experiences and perceptions for my benefit. It helps me unwind false stories, expand my perspective, and open more possibilities. Even when the specific message doesn’t land, I feel gratitude.

Getting this form of honest challenge makes receiving love and support land deeper. Once someone is willing to give tough feedback, I trust their encouragement more. Once someone has the courage to name a weakness of mine, I believe their reflection of my strengths more.

As I continue in the group, I remember an observation I once heard: Women tend to prefer face-to-face interactions while men often engage in side-by-side activities.2 This stuck with me because it rings so true in my own life.

I often gather with my guy friends to watch sports, go golfing, do a hike, or work on a project. The action of the activity is the focus, and the conversation is secondary.

My wife, on the other hand, will orient many of her activities with her friends, so the dialog and emotional connection are front and center.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. Many of the deepest and most enjoyable discussions I’ve had with friends were late into a round of golf. There’s something magical about sitting side-by-side for hours on a golf cart or a long road trip.

But it means that it takes an intentional container to push many of us men outside this comfort zone. To turn and fully face each other. To be eye-to-eye, belly-to-belly, and drop the masks.

Yet when we do, something special happens.

Nothing made this more clear than when our group finally gathered in person in late November for our annual retreat.

Meeting people I already knew so well for the first time felt surreal. The air was buzzing with energy, and the house became a container of trust and connection. We turned off our phones and embarked on a long weekend that transformed us in different and beautiful ways.

I won’t bore you with the details. In many ways, I don’t think they matter.

What mattered was that each and every guy was willing to show up fully. To share their truth and be seen as themselves. To bring love and fire to the other men.

For me, a pesky self-limiting story I’ve been wrestling with most of my life unkinked that weekend. Surprisingly, it was from a short observation that our newest member shared on our last morning. In just a few simple words about his own experience of me, he shared exactly what I needed to hear. I’ve felt lighter ever since.3

As I drove home from the retreat, what is so transformative about participating in a men’s group finally clicked for me. Everything occurs in relationship. We can’t hide our habitual patterns, faulty perspectives, or beautiful gifts. We can’t run from our challenges. We can’t shy away from our dreams. It all bubbles up naturally.

As we returned from being physically together to meeting on Zoom, I worried it would feel less fulfilling.

In my head, I’d always thought my time in the group wouldn’t last longer than a year. I figured by this point, the weekly commitment would be too much. I assumed I’d have gotten as much as possible or would be ready for something new. I imagined that my responsibilities as a dad and commitments to other pursuits would pull me away.

Yet now that I’m here, entering my twelfth month in the group, all of that feels strangely beside the point. My frame has shifted.

It’s no longer just about what I can get from the group; it’s equally about what I can give. The other men matter to me. I want to show up for them. I want to hear what unfolds in their lives and support them on their journeys. I know my time to move on will eventually come. But for now, I just want to keep gathering around our virtual fire every Tuesday.

There’s something about this container that just feels so natural and important.

We’re supposed to gather like this. Ideally, not on Zoom, but certainly in some form. It taps into something primal. Perhaps our ancestral roots in early human history of a small tribe coming together at the end of a long day.

In today’s world, we live such isolated lives. Our communities are fragmented. We rarely see our neighbors. Many of us don’t leave our houses to work. Few attend church or participate in local organizations. Less families have three generations under one roof.

I’m blessed with a wonderful family and friends. I have great male friendships with guys I admire and enjoy being with. I see some occasionally and talk to others every week.4

But it’s often a struggle to fit these relationships into the pace and constraints of the modern world. We all talk about how we want to spend more time together, but our commitments seem to get in the way. It often feels like we’re updating each other on our lives rather than truly living them together.

So, my experiences with this group remind me of the deep value in making the commitment to and showing up for our people. It highlights ways to bring our whole selves to the table, even if we’re physically apart.

After the last twelve months, it’s clear that deep connection doesn’t happen by accident. If something is important to me, it’s on me to create the container for it. Values aren’t what we say, they are what we embody and live each day. And sometimes that means simply showing up week after week for the people who matter in our lives.

Thank you for reading. If you’re interested in Men’s Group, has created a great overview on starting your own. And has also published a helpful guide.

If you want to learn more about joining an existing group, I encourage you to reach out to , who can share more about SONs and other options.

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The extent of the draught hit home when one of the local attendees took us to the Ashokan Reservoir, which can hold 122.9 billion gallons of water and supplies 40% of New York City’s daily drinking water. It looked like a half-filled bathtub. He said he’d never seen it so low in more than a decade and another attendee mentioned that the NYC mayor had just urged residents to begin decreasing water use in advance of potential restrictions.2

Looking out at the water, I felt awe at the complexity of our modern systems and the depths of our interdependence on the world around us.

Creating this reservoir in the Catskill Mountains required clearing thousands of acres of forest and relocating entire communities. Construction started in 1907 and took almost a decade to complete. Tunnels and pipes that span almost 100 miles were built to move the water entirely via gravity. It’s mind-blowing to imagine all the people who built it and all the processes that keep it running smoothly.

Yet, this is all hidden when someone in New York City turns on their faucet. The water just flows. It’s modern magic.

I first realized how disconnected I was from these intricate systems and finite resources when I started a local food business. As we designed our mobile food truck, I discovered that I needed to account for every bit of water, electricity, and gas we would use. There simply weren’t enough AMPs in our generator for a coffee machine on top of our other appliances. And we had to closely monitor our propane and water use to ensure we never ran out in the middle of a service. I had previously never thought about how much electricity our appliances or habits required. I only ever considered water consumption when our town limited outdoor use. I received these daily benefits without any appreciation for where they came from.

This disconnection only began to fade once I started gardening. As I struggled to keep my plants alive, I learned about permaculture and discovered ways to capture rainwater and harness solar energy. Seeing firsthand how long it took to fill our rain barrel gave me a deeper gratitude for the simple luxury of every shower. Exploring alternative energy sources made me fully appreciate the convenience of our gas and electricity.

I don’t share this to advocate that we should abandon modern utilities or that everyone needs to harvest their own water and produce their own energy. But I do believe something important is lost when people are blind to how these resources are dependent on complex infrastructure and the natural world.

It separates us. It creates a mirage of independence. It hides the fact that the water we drink is sourced somewhere specific, moved via remarkable engineering, and replenished by the earth’s natural water cycle.

Even individuals who live in more rural areas and source water directly through private wells aren’t immune. When we moved back to New England, we looked at a property in one town where there were growing concerns that new housing developments had permanently altered the water table and degraded well production. I have family that lives in a town where residents’ wells are prone to go dry during droughts.

Once you experience this, it’s hard to forget. As Ben Franklin said in Poor Richard’s Almanack: “When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” Just like when the power goes out with a newborn in the house (or a freezer full of meat), we know the worth of electricity. When we push the edge of our capacities or encounter limits, we begin to understand things more fully.

So maybe there’s a silver lining in how we seem to be more frequently bumping into the fragility of modern utilities and the volatility of Earth’s natural systems.

Maybe it will finally wake us up to how connected and interdependent we are. Maybe it will nudge us back to live more in tune with the rhythms of nature. Maybe it will inspire us to build the next generation of engineering accomplishments. Like so many areas in today’s world, I sense there’s no going back. The only way forward is to integrate all that has come before. To expand into more mature, more complex, and more sustainable systems.

I have no clue what this looks like. But one place to start is to at least marvel at the magic already around us. To appreciate the worth of water before the well goes dry.

Thank you for reading! Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any ideas, reflections, or questions by adding a comment or replying directly via email.

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As a refresher, this newsletter explores how we can reconnect with our bodies, learn from nature, and embrace change. Now on to today’s post about Dancing with Stress.

Dancing with Stress

One of the surprising things about becoming a parent is how much disagreement there is about, well, pretty much everything. Each activity and every stage somehow morphs into a spirited debate. If you want a taste, just poke around any online discussion about feeding, sleeping, schooling, or disciplining.

But one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that parenting inevitably involves added stress. So much so, that the Surgeon General recently released a 36-page Advisory on “Parents Under Pressure.”

It’s a powerful read and an important call to action. “Raising children is sacred work,” and “the well-being of parents and caregivers is directly linked to the well-being of their children.” We cannot have a healthy society without healthy parents and healthy kids. So, we should all be advocates for actions that communities, companies, and people can take to reduce the stress of parenting.

Yet, the more I consider it, the more I believe that we need to tweak how we view and approach stress in the first place.

Defining Stress

In the report, the Surgeon’s General defines stress as “A state of worry or mental tension caused by a difficult situation.”

This is a common definition that conceptualizes stress as a psychological state, as in, “I’m feeling stress.” It’s the outcome of internal or external pressures. It’s the impact of when challenges in our lives snowball and stick with us.

Yet, viewing stress in this way feels too narrow and negative to me.

If I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that all of my moments of greatest growth involved added stress: starting my first business, having our first child, and pushing through double sessions with teammates.

Everyone who exercises quickly discovers an important lesson. Stress is a key ingredient to growth. New challenges create new capabilities, and increased efforts unlock greater capacities. Added stress opens the door to new growth.

But it’s a fragile balancing act. Take on too much stress and the reverse happens. Instead of growth, there’s decline, decay, and sometimes even death. It’s the ultimate double-edged sword.

Stress can sharpen us and it can kill us.

So, perhaps it’s more useful to view stress through the lens of its broader and more neutral definition, where it is simply “a pressure or tension exerted on something.” Instead of an outcome to avoid, it’s a mechanism to harness.

Framing stress in this way reminds us that stress isn’t just something that happens to us. It’s a process we participate in. We cannot avoid stress but we can increase our capacity to absorb and respond to it.

Stress is Everywhere

The Surgeon General’s report does a beautiful job of highlighting how parenting weaves together so many stressors. From the practical reality of decreased sleep, increased time demands, and greater financial strain to the more existential questions of how to balance societal pressures and prepare your kids for a changing world.

But it’s not just parents that face increasing stress. Our modern culture emphasizes productivity and performance over recovery and rest. Our environment introduces us to increasing toxins, viruses, and pollution. Our technology inundates us with never-ending information, addictive alerts, and FOMO.

Everything we do exerts demands on us (both externally and internally). Simply eating a meal is a form of stress on the body… but so is not eating. Just as exercising is a form of stress… and so is not moving.

These daily demands challenge our state of balance and encourage or require an adaptive response.

Stress is Interconnected

The difficulty is that nothing happens in isolation. After our son was born this spring, I stubbornly tried to maintain the same exercise routine. Within days, everything hurt and old injuries were reemerging. Not only was I not progressing, I was moving backward.

Even after I dramatically lowered the volume and intensity, I still ran into issues. When I started deadlifting again, I slowly worked the weight back up. Nevertheless, on the final rep of the final set, I felt a sharp pull in my back, and my whole body froze up.

The same demands that were leading to growth had become detrimental and led to injury. Stress in any area is dynamic and interconnected. The safe and beneficial amount is always changing. Our capacity to handle stress in one domain is influenced by stress in other domains.

Stress is Contextual

This back injury reminded me of a frustrating lesson I learned last fall when I cleared out the woodland edge behind our house. We removed a dense section of invasive shrubs and vines around our well-established trees. Then, just days later, a rainy wind storm blew down our tallest cherry tree. It was dead in an instant after decades of growth.

This tree was unable to handle the stress of the wind gusts without the support of the surrounding plants, just as my back was unable to handle the stress of the deadlift without the support of my pre-newborn habits like quality sleep and consistent movement.

Precedent influences the impact of stress. Our historical environment and previous experiences shape our ability to absorb stress. It’s overwhelming to recognize that everything we encounter and do contributes to stress. Yet, it’s inspiring to appreciate the ways we can increase our ability to adapt and grow in response.

When we exercise effectively, we strategically increase the external demands to encourage adaptation. We train our bodies to positively benefit from increasing levels of physical stress.

In a similar way, we can build an increased capacity to respond to all kinds of stress. Spend time in cold water and even freezing temperatures feel more tolerable. Sit fully with your emotions and even the most intense ones feel more welcome. Practice public speaking and even the largest crowds feel more comfortable.

Stress is Compounded

When you have your first child, everything is new. Each day represents uncharted waters. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the unknown and uncertainty. Novel and unfamiliar experiences introduce stress because we are calibrating to a new reality. Yet, once we adjusted to these new demands, it felt like our family stress stabilized quickly.

Having our second kid was entirely different. None of the experiences with him felt particularly new or uncertain. Yet, the stress felt constantly higher. The best way I can describe those early months is relentless. Looking back, it’s a perfect example of how stress compounds. Any challenge, tension, or exhaustion from caring for him bumped into the needs and challenges of supporting our toddler. Stress and overwhelm rippled across the family. As a result, it’s taken twice as long for things to stabilize into our new normal.

Given how stress compounds, one of the best responses to added stress in one area is to decrease it in others. We may not be able to remove our stressors at work or at home, but we can likely find a few areas to introduce more rest, more connection, and more support.

Stress is Unsolvable

A natural response to all of this is to seek control and certainty. We buy wearables that provide real-time biofeedback and a proprietary algorithm for our “stress score.” We frantically attempt to better measure the inputs and monitor the outputs.

Yet, if we try to be too scientific about it, we only create a mirage of understanding and a false sense of safety.

The dynamics of stress are simply too intricate for purely analytical solutions. The variables are too interconnected and the context is too fluid.

If I had lifted 10% less weight, would I have still hurt my back? Could I have accurately measured my readiness to absorb the force of the barbell or our cherry tree’s need for a wind barrier?

Instead of seeking to answer these unknowable questions, it seems more prudent to cultivate a deep appreciation and curiosity about the role of stress in our lives.

To notice all of the different areas where these dynamics are at play. To hone our intuitive grasp of its holistic and interconnected nature. To build an embodied awareness of its power for growth and destruction. When we appreciate how complex stress is, we naturally begin to respect it.

We cannot “solve” stress, we can only learn to dance with it.

Thank you for reading! Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any ideas, reflections, or questions by adding a comment or replying directly via email.

As a child, I was obsessed with playing sports. I loved being on a team, competing to win, and striving to get better. During these years, exercise felt easy. I thrived on external motivation, tangible goals, and consistent progress. Yet, within a year of graduating college and "retiring" from baseball, I felt stuck. My body hurt. I lacked the motivation to exercise. I could feel my strength and energy decreasing by the day.1

I have a vivid memory of standing in the gym one evening with a gnawing sense of pointlessness. I looked at the weights and felt empty. I asked myself why I should lift them and got no answer. I felt weak, both physically and mentally. My strength was decaying. My willpower was nonexistent. My spirit seemed broken. 

It may sound dramatic, but I’m willing to bet you've felt like this. Most people I chat with have encountered similar feelings about exercise at least once. Some people get stuck here and struggle to ever get out.

A common response is to fight through the malaise: set an exciting goal, make a public commitment, or hire a coach. These external motivators are intended to inspire action and create accountability. They sometimes work but far too often we find ourselves back where we started. We repeat the cycle assuming something is wrong with us and looking to the external world for an answer. 

I think there’s a better way: intentionally cultivating intrinsic motivation for exercise. Take a quick look at these definitions:

Extrinsic motivation involves engaging in an activity because it leads to a tangible reward or avoids punishment.

Intrinsic motivation involves doing something because it is both interesting and deeply satisfying for its own sake.

Now think of why and how most people exercise. 

To lose a few pounds or gain muscle? To achieve a PR or complete a race? These are rewards we chase. Hitting the gym to not feel guilt or shame? Creating an accountability system to never miss a workout? These are punishments we try to avoid. Our society is built around extrinsic motivation and this defines the default path to exercise. 

You hear it in how many people talk about exercise. A focus entirely on the benefits you get after doing it. Or, the strategies to “push through the pain” and “embrace the suck.” Ironically, people who say these things have often discovered their own intrinsic motivation. Many truly enjoy exercise during the activity itself. 

I believe this happens naturally for most people who exercise regularly. There’s some truth in the expression “just do it and it will become enjoyable”. Yet, the sad reality is many people never get to this point. So I’ve spent years exploring how others could recreate this shift more quickly and reliably. I now believe everyone2 can intentionally design an approach to exercise that unlocks joy for the activity itself. 

So, let’s get you out of your head and into your body where you can discover the intrinsic joy of exercise.

Introducing embodied exercise

Embodied exercise is moving your body while paying attention to everything you experience. Move and feel it. Cultivate presence to experience whatever emerges within. Your breathing, muscle contraction, heart rate, adrenaline, fatigue, and yes even joy. 

Taking an embodied approach unlocks intrinsic motivation because it connects you to the actual experience of exercise within your body. This unlocks deep intrigue and satisfaction. Curiosity and enjoyment occur during the exercise itself not when you have completed it or when you’ve achieved an external goal. 

You shift from the satisfaction of completing a workout to satisfaction of doing a workout. Instead of grinding through months of painful or unsatisfying exercise with blind faith, you can intentionally cultivate this approach from day one.

If you’re like me, you may be more familiar with the opposite approach. Instead of feeling what’s happening within our body, we disassociate from it. Instead of listening to what our body is saying, we force it to comply. Instead of letting our body naturally complete movements, we use our minds to control every move.

Now imagine you want to start running and let’s compare two different approaches:

“Default” Running: You set a goal to run a 10k and sign up for a race. You tell all your friends to create accountability. You start pushing yourself to run further and faster to quickly achieve your goal. The pace feels uncomfortable but you force your body through it. Time goes by faster if you disassociate so you lose yourself in your thoughts or a playlist. Sometimes you get a “runner’s high” but it’s a vague satisfaction you can’t describe. Your mileage increases. You complete the race. Your friends are proud. But you’re not sure what to do next. Sign up for a longer race? Take a break because you hit your goal? You’re stuck in a loop of extrinsic motivation.

“Embodied" Running: You set an intention to fully experience the activity of running within your body. You ask friends for tips on technique to cultivate enjoyment. You start slowly and listen to your body. You explore how different paces and distances feel in your lungs, heart, and legs. You find that if you bring your awareness deep into certain places in your body you experience a flood of interesting sensations. Sometimes you stop thinking altogether, lost in the meditative flow of each foot hitting the ground. You’re intrigued, so you start running more often. Your runs get longer. You realize your pace has increased without even trying. You aren’t worried about what’s next because you enjoy the experience so much. You’ve become someone who runs for the joy of it. You’re effortlessly powered by intrinsic motivation.3

Call me crazy but the second version sounds less stressful and way more fun. And the beauty is you can take a similar approach with any type of exercise.

“Doing” embodied exercise

Here’s a secret. You don’t actually need me or anyone else to teach you how to “do” embodied exercise. It’s innate. A natural capacity we’re born with that so many of us lose. Just watch an infant learning to crawl or a group of kids playing during recess. You’ll see them fully immersed in their own experience of the activity and often radiating joy.4

Recapturing this magic is a process of unlearning and unwinding. I’ll provide a few entry points and intentions for you to experiment with but the ultimate shift is to begin to listen less to others like me and more to your own sensations, desires, and evolving experiences. 

Experiencing Embodiment in a Single Exercise

Pick a specific exercise that you are already familiar with. Perhaps a push-up or a bodyweight squat.

Do a few reps without thinking. Now slow it way down. 

Can you feel how different muscles activate at different points? Can you notice where it’s smooth and where it feels sticky? 

Bring attention to sensations of fatigue as you do these slow reps. Notice how much harder the slow reps are than normal reps. Take a rest and bring your awareness to how your entire body feels.

What do you feel in your body?

Now let’s flip the tempo and speed it up. Do the same exercise but even faster than normal. 

What shifts do you notice? Can you feel your heart rate increase? 

Bring attention to whatever sensations are most present in your body. Now rest again and bring your awareness back to how your body feels.

Any different?

Congrats, you’ve just done embodied exercise.

You can extend this approach of going super slow or increasing the tempo to jogging, dancing, swimming, and any other movement. Shifting the pace and intensity is a way of intentionally heightening our internal experience so we can more easily experience it.

Bringing Embodiment to any Physical Activity 

The power of an embodied approach is that we can introduce it into any movement and bring it to the physical activity we already do. One way to do this is through somatic cues. Short questions to nudge our awareness into the sensations with our body. Some of my favorites are:

What muscles can I feel contract during this exercise?

How is my breath changing throughout this activity?

Can I feel my heart rate go up as the intensity increases?

At what rep do I first feel subtle burning (lactic acid) in my muscles?

Where am I holding tension in my body during this movement?

What does my contact with the ground feel like?

How do I feel when I invite this movement to be 10% more fluid?

Another counterintuitive portal into the body is fatigue questioning. It occurs in the moment during a run, a ride, or a set of reps where you start to hear that familiar voice saying “stop” or “I’m tired”. Instead of shouting back or trying to push it down, you can get curious.

Oh, my body is telling me something. Can I experience it fully?

Where is the fatigue? Is it in my muscles? My lungs?

What part of my body can’t actually do this anymore?

This curiosity and somatic exploration often soften the feeling of discomfort. You realize that the voice saying “stop” wasn’t coming from a place of danger or failure but a place of discovery or newness. You’re on the edge of your comfort zone. This is a place where magic can happen. An opportunity to open to new sensations, new feelings, and new capacities.

The more you lean into your body at this moment, the less scary it becomes. Not only are you discovering a new terrain of sensory experiences but you have contact with your body to know when it actually needs to stop. Experiencing this edge of our comfort zone fully within your body is a transformative moment on the path to experiencing the full joy of exercise. For many, this becomes one of the experiences they love most about exercise.5

Unlocking intrinsic motivation and joy

Now that you’ve experienced embodied exercise let’s return to how it can shift our motivation and cultivate joy within the activity. We’re not here just to add more exercises that you should do. We’re here to become people who truly enjoy exercise.

Embodied exercise nudges us to intentionally focus on how it feels to move our body. By bringing our awareness to the various physical sensations that arise we more deeply connect with the immediate experiences of exercise. We develop a relationship with exercise that is grounded in the present moment. It is only here that we can fully experience joy during exercise.

As we cultivate deeper awareness and understanding of our body, we uncover previously hidden connections between mental, emotional, and physical states. Through these connections, we further connect to our inner desires, preferences, and patterns. This growing field of awareness unlocks more of our intrinsic motivation, for exercise and life more broadly.6

From this space, we can build a deeply intuitive approach to exercise. Instead of looking to experts to tell us what we should do, we can listen to our bodies to hear what we want to do. Instead of forcing ourselves to rigidly follow a predefined schedule, we can cultivate space within our daily life that makes exercise inevitable. We can let go of grinding and discover flow. Exercise can feel effortless. 

Embracing embodied exercise is taking the courageous step to welcome the full breadth of our experiences and unlock the full power of our bodies. The way we approach activities like exercise is often how we live our lives. We can grind through it chasing external accomplishments and rushing to the next milestone. Or, we can deeply connect to our own experiences and discover the joy within the journey.

Thank you for reading! Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any thoughts or questions by adding a comment or replying directly via email.

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This moment feels familiar and special to me. For almost twenty years of my life, my world centered around it. Every year structured around this date.

The start of baseball season.

Most other kids experienced the year around the school schedule— starting in September and ending in a magical summer break. But not me.

Summer was my season of peak performance. Fall was the season of shifting down. Winter was the season of getting ready. And March 1st was when the year turned and the cycle began again.

When I retired from baseball after college, I lost this structure and seasonality. I entered the corporate world and my year blended into a monotony of similar weeks. The rhythm of the seasons softened to a faint whisper.

I became aware of how much our dominant activities and identities shape the flow of our lives.

My sister-in-law is a school principal, and so, the school schedule still dominates her life. Her year begins in September and concludes with her summer break. My friend is an accountant whose life unfolds around April’s tax deadline. His year builds toward this two-month sprint and concludes with his spring break.

When we jump into a new job or industry, its structure pushes back into us. When we pour ourselves into a new hobby or identity, its shape and seasonality flow back.

Work in sales and encounter the never-ending march of quarterly deadlines. Become an avid golfer and feel a subtle reorientation toward summer. Become a serious skier and experience a tip toward winter. Embrace competitive running and begin to see the year through the shape of the racing calendar.

These dynamics are personal and shift as our lives evolve. Yet, they leave marks— like water carving the landscape as it moves through it year after year.

Perhaps this is why becoming a gardener has felt so natural for me. Its seasons flow along the same well-worn path that baseball carved. Even after more than a decade of not playing, my body was still tuned to the shape of its seasonality.

In conversations with friends, some describe this seasonal structure emerging from within. Others experience it imposed from outside. The first feels fluid and enlivening. The latter feels rigid and stifling.

Maybe, a big part of our desire for independence and autonomy is a longing to shape the structure of our seasons. To bring awareness and intention to its deepening path. To embrace the natural rhythms of our lives.

The Pulse of Life

As I was reflecting on these dynamics, tweeted: “I wish we were taught to manage our energy instead of just managing our time.” It reminded me of one of my favorite books, The Power of Full Engagement.

In it, the authors argue that “Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance.” And, energy is made up of “four separate but related sources: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.”

Because energy capacity decreases through overuse and underuse, “we must learn how to rhythmically spend and renew energy”

To increase our capacity, we must safely stretch beyond our comfort zone because “We grow at all levels by expending energy beyond our normal limits and then recovering.”

This rhythmic pattern and dynamic balance represents “the pulse of life”:

Embracing these natural rhythms helps us thrive and sustain. Balancing moments of peak effort with moments of deep rest. Shifting between seasons of peak performance and seasons of deep renewal.

Exploring Energy States and Shifts

There must be something in the air because a flurry of writers just shared ideas that connect with these natural states and rhythmic shifts.

wrote about the “The Primordial Force of Stoke”:

“It feels like raw enthusiasm for life and the experience of being alive coursing through my veins, pervading every cell.”

This is a state of being I lost contact with in my shift from baseball to the corporate world. Then rediscovered through embodied movement, gardening, and hiking.

created a free nervous system self-assessment, that highlights how to improve your resilience, regulation, and recovery.

Even after years of exploring Jonny’s work, the assessment highlighted ways I can tweak my environment to further nurture rest and rhythms in daily life.

shared a powerful piece exploring “When Safety Becomes Dangerous” on how trauma and psychological safety are intertwined with human capacity. I love his closing reminder:

“Your ancestors fought saber tooth tigers; you can, too. Never forget who you are.”

published “Drowning in Dopamine” highlighting how this neurotransmitter creates cycles of pleasure and desire in daily life:

“It was like for five minutes my life was glittering and wonderful, and then for the following hour it was dark and worthless.”

I believe the way modern life hijacks our natural dopamine cycles is one of the core contributors to the prevalence of addiction, obesity, and many forms of suffering.

It’s inspiring to see so many creative people exploring, experimenting, and sharing around these themes. To me, deepening into the rhythm and seasonality of life feels essential.

Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear from you on how you relate to the shape of seasons and natural rhythms in your own life. If you have reflections, please reach out in the comments or by replying directly via email.

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We go from running every day to not at all. From writing every week to barely ever. We forget to floss and never start again. We finish thirty days of Whole30 and immediately revert to old eating habits.

Given it was so easy to see this pattern in myself and others, it frustrated me when I couldn’t avoid it. Until I discovered a new perspective in an unexpected place.

Learning in the garden

When I first started gardening I approached it like I did most things. I dove in. I raced to dig up the grass. I rushed to plant a bunch of vegetables and flowers. I added compost and fertilizer to encourage growth.

Most things died.

I had neglected a key problem. My soil sucked. It was hard-compacted North Carolina clay. There was no drainage. The compost and soil amendments washed away. The struggling plants required constant attention and care. It was exhausting and frustrating.

So I looked for a better approach and found Gia’s Garden, a book on embracing permaculture in the backyard. In it, Toby Hemingway describes the importance of "Bringing the Soil to Life”:

"Think of soil life as the base of a pyramid. Stacked upon this base are the plants, then insects, and finally animals, each dependent on the creature below it.”

So I followed Toby’s playbook to rebuild our soil from within.

I grew tillage radishes to break it up. Planted cover crops to add nutrients. Introduced microbial inoculants with beneficial fungi and bacteria. Mulched with shredded leaves to improve fertility and water retention.

Within a couple of seasons, the soil transformed into a rich dark loam. It became light to the touch and easy to dig. Every handful was full of worms and other critters.

The plants now grew effortlessly. I barely needed to water, even during hot summer days. Instead of adding fertilizer and pesticides, I just fed the soil with mulch, and the soil fed the plants.

By building healthy soil, everything else becomes easier and more sustainable.

A Metaphor for Most Things

This experience gardening led to an unexpected shift. The dominant metaphors in my life slowly changed.

From competition to cultivation. From teams and opponents to environments and ecosystems. From winning contests to nurturing vitality. From chasing goals directly to creating conditions that let intentions unfold naturally.

As George Lakoff says in Metaphors We Live By: “New metaphors are capable of creating new understandings and, therefore, new realities."

Ideas are powerful. Especially once we embody them. They become part of how we see, experience, and act in the world.

With this new lens, I began to see that building healthy soil was foundational to successful behavior change. It was the key to creating conditions needed to sustain an activity and thrive in a domain.

So now I see soil everywhere. Yes, in the landscape outside our new house where I’m starting another garden. But also in how I approach exercise, writing, raising children, building a business, and so much more.

Healthy Soil for Exercise

These dynamics are especially prevalent with exercise.

Many people engage in fitness like corporations engage in factory farming— rushing to optimize performance, focusing on a single output, and rigidly controlling every aspect of the process. They prioritize short-term gains over long-term sustainability. And diminish their vitality in the process.

The alternative is to embrace the lessons of the garden. Spend a few seasons focused on creating a foundation to fuel a lifetime of exercise. Build the soil and let the soil feed everything else.

This process will look different for different people, but valuable components include:

Embrace simple movements. Walk, stretch, dance, push, pull, and squat. These types of foundational moves are the cover crops of exercise. They help rebuild our capacity to exercise from within.

Identify deficiencies. These simple movements surface unique limitations. Perhaps it’s flexibility, stability, strength, or cardiovascular function. These are crucial nutrients needed to sustain exercise over the long run.

Learn the fundamentals. Understanding form, technique, and training principles is pivotal. These ingredients enable growth and prevent injury. Investing in strong movement patterns and knowledge pays dividends for decades.

Nurture your nervous system: Exercise is stress. Your ability to push your body, recover, and grow is dependent on your ability to handle added stress. Supporting this process through things like breathwork, meditation, and sleep is invaluable.

Cultivate enjoyment: An exercise routine without enjoyment is like a garden that needs constant attention. It’s another thing to manage and direct. When enjoyment emerges during exercise it pulls us forward almost effortlessly.

Develop somatic awareness: It’s hard to enjoy exercise if you don’t experience it in the body. It’s difficult to prevent injury if you dissociate from pain. Experiencing the sensations of exercise in your body can unlock a lifetime of curiosity and satisfaction.

Introduce diversity: The health of soil is not in the quantity of any one component. It’s in the breadth and interconnection of all the elements. Exercise is the same. Strong muscles need a healthy heart and lungs. Resilience requires flexibility and a capacity to adapt.

This perspective of building healthy soil is not just a tool to sustainably engage with exercise. It’s also a frame for how to think about why we exercise in the first place.

Just as everything in a garden is downstream of the soil. Everything in our life is downstream of the body. It is the foundation and fuel for all that we do and experience in life.

A healthy body nurtures our sensory perceptions, cognitive ability, and physical capacities. It feeds our mental, emotional, and physical vitality.

The body is the soil for our life.

Thank you for reading. If you have any reflections or questions, please reach out in the comments or by replying to the email.

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So she has no idea how the book is landing. The curiosity would kill me. I can’t imagine sitting in silence in the wake of releasing such a vulnerable project.

But that's not even the craziest part of the story. It's the fact that she wrote the book in five days. After being challenged by to write a short book in less than a week, she actually did it.

I pre-purchased it because I thought it was a cool story (and I like Kelly). I downloaded it because I was curious about what someone could create in five days. I finished it in 24 hours because it was shockingly good.

I keep stumbling upon people talking about it on social media. Multiple friends have texted me about how much it surprised and motivated them.

And that's the part that I find most inspiring. By publishing it, Kelly unleashed a wave of excitement and energy. It's disrupting people's perception of what’s possible. It's inspiring action. People with the seed of a book in their head are thinking... "maybe I can actually write it."

But that's just the starting point.

There is also the impact of all the ideas in the book. Plus, the second and third-order effects of the ideas that get shared by people that Kelly inspired to write their book or release their creative project.

For example, let’s dig into the core idea in the book.

Creative Dysregulation

Kelly defines Creative Dysregulation as “the inability to sustainably and reliably create without a mental, emotional, physical, or spiritual crisis along the way.”

As I read Kelly’s story, I thought about my own creative journey. I remembered all of the times that I flew too close to the sun. Instances where creative projects fizzled out or led to burnout.

I thought about all of my friends who suffered through similar challenges. And then friends who seem immune to dysfunction in their creative work.

I realized that sometimes these friends were dysregulated in other areas. They might be able to create effortlessly but struggle to consistently exercise or sustainably save money. Often, our challenges are not only deeply personal but domain-specific.

Take a look at how Kelly describes the impact of creative dysregulation:

“the inner imbalances that disrupt an individual’s ability to consistently engage with their creative work… hinder the fluidity, productivity, and fulfillment of the creative process, as well as one’s ability to see themselves as a successful creative.”

I see this exact same dynamic with so many people and their relationship to exercise.

Dysregulation in Fitness

The difficulty is not in learning new physical skills or completing hard workouts. It’s in how these activities bump against inner wounds and habitual patterns. These “inner imbalances” then “hinder the fluidity, productivity, and fulfillment” of exercising.

This manifests in different ways. For some, it’s perpetually starting a new fitness activity in a blaze of enthusiasm, only to flame out within a few weeks. For others, it’s stubbornly suffering through a routine they don’t enjoy, frustrated by a lack of progress.

In either case, the experience prevents people from “seeing themselves as a successful” exerciser.

The similarities between these challenges with fitness and Kelly’s stories of creative inconsistencies are striking. The problems may feel wildly different but the solutions can be quite similar. Many of Kelly’s recommendations for overcoming Creative Dysregulation also apply to exercise.

And this is what I think is so inspiring.

The Ripple

Not only can we learn from other people’s journeys to overcome their creative (or fitness) dysregulation, we can learn from ourselves. We can bring our experiences from a domain of success into a domain of difficulty.

The beauty of learning to thrive in our creative work or our fitness routine is that it gives us meta-skills we can apply everywhere. It strengthens a growth mindset that is universal. It brings awareness to inner dynamics that may be holding us back elsewhere.

To me, this is the most powerful lesson in Kelly’s story.

It’s the way in which a single activity like writing or exercising can unleash a ripple in ourselves and the world around us.

Thank you for reading. If you have any reflections or questions, please reach out in the comments or by replying to the email.

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p.s. Kelly’s book has not only inspired this post but a few creative tweaks. After months of talking about it (sorry and ), I’ve updated the name of this substack publication to “The Ripple by Sam Sager”.

This captures the essence of how the ideas I’m exploring weave across domains and activities like exercise spread across our lives. The visual of a ripple has always been in the logo for Intuitive Fitness and has captivated me since childhood.

It feels like a fitting way to create a container that sits above all of my projects and points toward the essence of what I’m writing about (reconnecting with the body, learning from nature, nurturing renewal, etc) and working on more broadly.

Lastly, after reading Creative Dysregulation, I’ve begun working on a short book on Intuitive Fitness. Thanks Kelly! More to come.

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At the same time, you don’t have to pursue greatness to enjoy making art.

Kids don’t fall in love with writing or painting because they experience the grind of it. They get swept into these worlds when they discover the joy of creative expression — the flow of losing themselves in their words or the strokes of their brush.

So, instead of rushing to optimize exercise, we should first focus on experiencing joy during it.

When it comes to running long distances, I had to learn this the hard way.

A Journey to Enjoy Jogging

For most of my life, I hated jogging. I wanted to enjoy long runs, but they felt dull and tedious. I was jealous every time friends would describe a runner’s high. They spoke of settling into a state of magical bliss. I experienced a state of disgruntled rumination and physical pain.

So I kept trying and hunting for a magic bullet.

I experimented with the typical advice. I signed up for races to create external motivation. I tagged along with runner friends for accountability and companionship. I listened to my favorite podcasts only while I ran. I found music playlists designed around specific beats per minute.

These tricks sometimes made the process a bit more enjoyable. But I still dreaded lacing up my running shoes. I still didn’t enjoy the actual jogging itself.

Looking back, I was unconsciously orienting my quest around running faster, further, and more frequently. I told myself I wanted to enjoy running, but I evaluated myself on my pace and distance. I strapped on a heart rate monitor and got frustrated if it went high.

It was only when I finally stopped trying to optimize my running that I began to fall in love with it.

It started on a stifling July morning in North Carolina that felt like stepping outside into a steam room. Maybe it was the comical heat and humidity. Or perhaps my frustration had just reached a breaking point. But that day, I ditched the fancy watch, left the headphones at home, and made a commitment to focus exclusively on the experience of jogging.

I started moving slower than normal. Like embarrassingly slow. I began to notice each step. The rhythm of my feet and the burst of energy up my legs. I felt the hot air entering my nose and my lungs expanding to welcome each breath. The sensations were strangely pleasurable.

Previously when running, I would fixate on a point ahead of me, chasing the destination. This time, I let my eyes soften and my vision widen. The space around me took on more shape. I felt myself moving through the world in a way I hadn’t before. The colors of the trees brightened. The sounds of birds got louder. Even the subtle gusts of the wind took on greater intensity.

I felt alive. The landscape felt alive. My body was moving, but there wasn’t any effort or grinding. There was just bliss. After years of straining, I was finally experiencing the joy of jogging

Try it Yourself

The good news is I don’t think you need to struggle for years to find enjoyment during jogging. In fact, my bet is that most people could actually do it today.

In the years since, I’ve experimented with replicating the experience for myself and others. There seem to be a few small tweaks that consistently lead individuals to experience more flow and enjoyment while jogging.

Here’s a step-by-step approach if you want to play with it yourself:

Embrace the intention

This works best if you shift your orientation away from optimizing the outcome toward experiencing the activity. So let go of any focus on distance, pace, or heart rate. The goal is to simply move your body continuously and discover what happens.

Pick a beautiful location

Our environment matters. If you’re dodging cars or hostile pedestrians, it’s hard to fully experience the jog. Instead, try to find a protected trail where you feel safe and free to move. Ideally, surround yourself with nature, like in the woods, by a beach, or in a park. Even large cities have options. Some of my favorite runs occurred on the Highline in NYC and El Retiro Park in Madrid.

Start slow

If you never enjoy jogging, you're probably going too fast. Try to find a pace you can comfortably breathe out your nose and carry a conversation. If this means starting with a brisk walk, then start with a brisk walk.

Ditch the headphones for nature

Stay with me. I love running to music and losing myself in a story. But at first, these pull us out of the experience of running itself. They distract. We use them to dissociate from the discomfort. We get swept away in the beat of the music. Instead, listen to the birds chirping and the trees rustling. Open up to the sounds of your environment.

Use panoramic vision

Don’t fixate on a single point or destination ahead. This type of vision with a narrow field of focus is associated with being alert or stressed. Soften your gaze. Embrace your peripheral vision. Expand to see how much of the landscape you can take in. Notice how the trees and ground slowly recede as you move forward. Experience the depth and dimensionality all around you.

Expand your awareness

By now, your awareness is open and expansive. Feel into the space above and behind you. Sense the vastness of the sky above and the distance stretching backward. Welcome all the sensations bubbling up within you. Invite all the sensations from the animate world around you. Lose yourself in connection to your environment.

Don’t close or judge your experience

The final step is to simply stay here. Ideas and stories will likely come. Your mind may try to wrestle control of the experience — comparing, evaluating, or even judging. These thoughts are just sensations like everything else you’re experiencing.

Just welcome it all in and keep on moving. Perhaps that magical runners high is just around the corner.

Becoming a Runner

A funny thing happens once you experience joy and flow during an activity. You return to it with new excitement. You engage in it with more enthusiasm. Consistency develops naturally. You begin to push your edge. You discover that increased difficulty nurtures the flow. That intensity feels good. That progress is satisfying.

You begin to increase the distance and the pace of jogging without losing the enjoyment.

You become a runner.

Thank you for reading. If you have any reflections or questions, please reach out in the comments or by replying to the email.

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This approach pulls from and points toward the work of many others. Thanks to Matt Fitzgerald for inspiring me to embrace running slowly. Thanks to Paula Sager for teaching me to embody and experience the space around me. Thanks to for helping me learn to play with expanding my awareness. And thanks to Russel Delman for encouraging me to bring embodied mindfulness to everyday activities and just be with the experience.

This is the bold argument proposed by Harvard Psychiatrist Christoper Palmer in his book Brain Energy.

His basic theory goes like this:

“Metabolism is how our body creates and uses energy… And we can think of problems with metabolism as energy imbalances”

“Metabolism affects the structure and function of all cells in the body” “Mitochondria are the master regulators of metabolism... When mitochondria aren't working properly, at least some of the cells in your body or brain won't function properly"

“A mental illness is when the brain is not working properly over a period of time, and this causes mental symptoms, which lead to suffering or impairment in functioning”

"Symptoms of mental illness can be understood as overactive, under-active, or absent brain functions”

"Mitochondrial dysfunction or dysregulation can cause all of these through five distinct mechanisms:

(1) cell activity can be overactive (2) cell activity can be underactive (3) some cells can develop abnormally (4) cells can shrink and die (5) cells can have problems maintaining themselves”1

Dr. Palmer’s conclusion of this argument is that to understand and address any mental illness, we must understand and address the causes of metabolic and mitochondrial dysfunction.

And this pisses off a lot of people.2

A part of this negative reaction is healthy skepticism that something as complex as all mental illnesses could have a single cause. But I think another big part is resistance to the suggestion that our current approach is missing such an essential piece.

Now, I'm not qualified to weigh in on the validity of Dr. Palmer's grand theory. I would not be shocked if there are forms of mental illnesses that do not involve metabolic or mitochondrial dysfunction.

But we don’t need to prove that every form of mental illness has a metabolic cause to find the obvious value in Dr. Palmer’s work.

If metabolism is how our body creates and uses energy. And, effective energy utilization is essential to how the cells in our body (and brain) function. Then surely, nurturing healthy metabolism and cell function is an important contributor to brain function and mental health.

In this context, it’s hard to imagine many people rejecting the statement that a healthy metabolism is an essential part of creating conditions to support mental health.

And yet, there has been so little focus on addressing metabolic health in how we currently treat mental disorders.

Gaps in the Status Quo

Imagine a patient who presents at their primary care doctor with moderate-depression symptoms. The standard of care in most places would be a referral for therapy, a prescription for an SSRI, or both.3

Therapy can be transformative and SSRIs can save lives. Yet, in the context of the importance of metabolic health, there’s clearly a glaring hole in this approach.

Where is the focus on behavioral interventions that might help the patient create a healthy metabolic environment to support their mental health? Why are there no prescriptions or referrals that center on sleep, diet, or exercise? At what point will the patient learn about how stress, inflammation, and hormonal imbalances could be affecting their metabolism and mental health?

I don’t blame individual providers for these gaps. In our existing system, there’s no time for these discussions. Worse, there’s no clear reimbursement for these interventions. In healthcare, patients are typically directed toward interventions that organizations can get paid for.

The reality is that our existing healthcare organizations are simply not well-designed to embrace the complexity of Dr. Palmer’s conclusion.

As he so beautifully highlights, there are numerous causes and potential solutions to mitochondrial dysfunction and poor metabolic health. There are genetic and epigenetic components, chemical and hormonal components, inflammation and circadian components, and diet and exercise components. Dr. Palmer even touches on the potential role of love, adversity, and purpose in life.4

Since “all the contributing causes and interventions I have discussed are interrelated and affect each other”, it is challenging to know where to begin. It is also more difficult to implement a single behavioral intervention in isolation.

The Challenge of Prescribing Exercise

Let’s use the example of exercise.

I was surprised by Dr. Palmer’s chapter on physical activity. If metabolic health is so important and exercise improves metabolic health then surely everyone (including people with mental disorders) should benefit from exercise.

Yet, it’s not that simple. Dr. Palmer highlights exercise studies with mixed results. He suggests that people with insulin resistance may see fewer benefits from exercise. Additionally, medications that individuals with mental or chronic illnesses are taking may blunt the positive impact of physical activity.

While he still believes that everyone should exercise, Dr. Palmer introduces the important context that it may be more challenging for or slower to benefit people with metabolic and mental disorders.5

This may further explain why doctors are less likely to prescribe exercise and other behavioral interventions. Perhaps they lack conviction that patients will comply with the program or see results quickly enough. They certainly don’t have the right infrastructure to help patients navigate these challenges. So they default to the easier path of prescribing a pill.

New Possibilities on the Horizon

The good news is that exciting work is being done to address these gaps.

My favorite example comes from my wife, a clinical psychologist who studies the impact of exercise on people with severe mental illness. Over the last few years, she has highlighted the benefits of physical activity on people with schizophrenia and begun to design interventions (like walking groups and virtual programs) tailored to support this population. The early results are very promising.

To me, this example points towards a solution.

We need to create interventions, organizations, and incentives that make it as easy for a primary care provider to prescribe exercise (and other behavioral interventions) as it is to prescribe an SSRI.

We need to bridge the gap between fitness and healthcare. We need to shift from treating sickness to nurturing wellness. It’s only by integrating these types of interventions into the scale of the existing healthcare system that we can meet the needs of those who need it most.

Thank you for reading. If you have any reflections or ideas on this topic, please reach out. I’m working on a few initiatives in this space and always enjoy comparing notes or brainstorming potential solutions.

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Over the last year, I’ve become a bit obsessed with transition zones.

It all started when we moved to our new house, which is surrounded by a forest. At the edge of our yard was an overgrown mess of brambles, vines, and invasive plants. They climbed up and choked out the trees. They wove together into a thick wall. I couldn’t see or walk through them.

Yet, everything changed when I hacked past this dense barrier into the forest. The ground was a mix of dancing ferns and wild ginger. The air was open. The trees had space to breathe. It was calm and inviting.

On the other side of the overgrowth was a different world. The edge marked the space between—the messy middle where change occurred.1

Transition zones like these are all around us. They exist in nature’s ecosystems and our built environment. More subtly, they also exist in the moments we shift through our days and evolve across our lives.

Transitions in Daily Life

Imagine the moment we decide to shift from working at a desk to going to exercise.

As we sit and work, our bodies are in one state—physically at rest and mentally in motion. From the vantage point of our office chair, the blood-pumping and heart-racing sensations of exercise often feel daunting and uncomfortable.

Yet, if we hack our way to the other side, these same sensations can become energizing and enjoyable. Our bodies feel alive. Our minds quiet. The momentum and movement pull us forward effortlessly. We enter a different world.

Much like the edge of the forest, the resistance exists in the space between. We bump into pesky but critical transition zones.

Learning from the Physical World

To understand how to navigate these transitions, it helps to look to our physical environment. And there’s no better guide than the architect Christopher Alexander, who spent his life exploring how we relate to the space around us.

His books, The Timeless Way of Building and A Pattern Language, highlight how we can design our towns, neighborhoods, and buildings so that they are more life-giving. Alexander often focuses on transitions and the relationships between components.2

Here’s what he has to say on the importance of an Entrance Transition:

“The experience of entering a building influences the way you feel inside the building. If the transition is too abrupt, there is no feeling of arrival, and the inside of the building fails to be an inner sanctum.”

Therefore Alexander advises us to create intentional transition zones:

“Make a transition space between the street and the front door. Bring the path which connects street and entrance through this transition space, and mark it with a change of light, a change of sound, a change of direction, a change of surface, a change of level, perhaps by gateways which make a change of enclosure, and above all with a change of view.

Intentional transition zones strengthen the boundary between two areas and help us experience change as we move between them. The space between is crucial to our experience on the other side.

Returning to Daily Life

We can think about transitions in our day in the same way. If the shift is too abrupt, we never fully arrive and settle into the new activity.

Rather than rushing through, we should nurture the space between to create conditions for change to occur. Let’s explore this with exercise:

Designing our Environment

The environment around us shapes much of our experience. The layout, light, and objects create subtle reminders and subconscious cues. Our setting evokes memories, emotions, and energy.

If I exercise surrounded by laundry and undone work tasks, I struggle to shift into the workout. And as much as I love working out in my home gym, other environments feel more alive for certain types of movement. Yoga at the studio on the river and calisthenics in the park just hit different.

Creating or discovering a dedicated place to exercise, even just a tiny corner, provides a destination. It gives us space to move into. It provides a threshold to cross and contextual cues to begin to shift us through the transition. It creates a physical shape and felt movement to the psychological and physiological change we want to experience.

Embracing a transition routine

Even after moving into a dedicated exercise space, it can feel like our energy hasn’t caught up with our body. Sometimes, even the warm-up activities feel daunting.

So it helps to have a transition routine that eases us into exercise. This can be anything that slowly and reliably elevates our physiological and psychological state. For me, a few minutes of light breathwork and spontaneous dancing always do the trick.

Repeating this transition routine sets the stage for the rest of the workout and creates a built-in milestone for the future. The simple activities become another threshold we move through in the transition.

On days I feel resistant to exercise, I focus on just getting to the exercise space and doing the transition routine. Almost without fail, my state then shifts and I feel pulled forward into more exercise. Knowing that the beginning will always feel easy and enjoyable reduces the perceived effort to get started.

Shaping Our Memories

The transitions into and out of activities like exercise also play a pivotal role in how we remember them. The beginning, end, and moments of peak intensity of an experience disproportionately impact our memory and impression of them.3

So, just as we have an intentional beginning to the workout, it helps to bring intention to the end. By incorporating activities that help us savor the sensations of exercise, we support our future desire to exercise.

Many Yoga practices embrace this through the bliss of Savasana— a final pose where one lies in complete stillness. The muscles relax, the breath slows, and the body shifts down as we integrate the previous movements.

Down-regulation activities like slow breathing, calming music, and darkness at the end of a workout also improve our recovery.4 By embracing an intentional transition out of exercise, we remember it more fondly and make it easier to start again.

Beyond Exercise

These dynamics apply beyond exercise. Just ask any writer.

The book Daily Rituals, shares the elaborate tricks, transitions, and routines that famous creatives used in their work. For instance, Hemmingway intentionally stopped writing in the middle of his flow so it would be easier to return to the next day.

Transitions even matter with activities as innate as sleep. To improve sleep, the recommendation is to focus on your pre-sleep routine and the transition into the morning with early sunlight.

Embracing Transitions through Life

This may seem mundane and obvious to you. Some people naturally recognize and savor the space between. But much of modern life rushes us from thing to thing.

We’re encouraged to optimize every minute. To squeeze as much as possible into each day. To chase the next opportunity. To rush toward the next stage.

At least, this is how I used to live my life.

But now I see crucial transition zones in space between the seasons of our lives. If we rush through these, we lose something valuable.

It takes time to shed past stories and embrace new ways of being. We must face the uncomfortable task of clearing out the old and making space for the new. It can be messy, dark, and uncertain. Yet, there’s immense power in these liminal spaces.5

These moments ask us to let parts of ourselves die to open to whatever it is we are becoming. They challenge us to adapt and evolve. They invite us to be changed by our own lived experience. Embracing the space between means giving life the opportunity to work its magic on us.

Thanks for reading. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the power of transitions and the space between.

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Last month, our daughter started walking. Over three days she went from stumbling a few steps to walking with great care to running like a maniac. Her pace of improvement was rapid and her determination was inspiring.

The excitement at her newfound abilities poured out in gleeful shouts. Within a few steps, she’d thrust her hands up in celebration with so much enthusiasm that she’d topple over.

Soon, she realized her victory dance was hindering her progress and channeled her energy forward. Her shouts and laughter grew louder as she paraded further and further around the house.

We didn't teach her any of this. We didn't give her walking aids or push her along the developmental journey. She wouldn’t even hold our hand while she was practicing, giving us an intense stare that said: “I’ve got this.”

Watching our daughter her ability to roll, crawl, and now walk has been beautiful. Everything was instinctual and innate. A reminder of our primal desire to move our bodies. An example of our deep capacity to learn from within. And, a montage of the visceral joy in discovering new physical abilities.

Embracing the developmental journey

As parents, we're told not to focus too much on developmental metrics and milestones. Yet, doctors are quick to show us a growth chart with our child's percentile relative to other kids. Grandparents, friends, and even strangers love to remind us that kids “typically walk at one and talk at two". Most parents have had a few late nights googling: “when should my kid....”, hoping their toddler isn't falling behind.

These fears feel especially pronounced with walking. It hits different when your kid is still on the ground with their peers running laps around them. So many parents feel pressure to speed their kids along to get them walking asap.

This would have been me had I not attended training in Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS). DNS is a rehab approach that focuses on movement through the lens of developmental stages and the nervous system.

During a lunch break, I told the instructor how fast our kid had started rolling and asked about the timing of developmental milestones. I was hoping he'd tell me that we must have a future athlete on our hands but his response surprised me:

“it’s far more important that kids spend enough time in each stage than that they quickly progress to the next one. In fact, developmental issues sometimes occur because kids skip stages or advance to a level before their bodies are ready”

He was telling me to be patient. To let our kid go through her own development journey. Babies need to develop the ability to stabilize before they can crawl. Toddlers need to get comfortable loading their hands and feet before they can walk. None of these movements or stages happen in isolation. They all are valuable. Embrace the journey, don't chase the destination.

Lessons for Adults

I don't share this story to tell other parents how to approach parenting.1 But because there’s so much we can learn by watching the way young kids experience and navigate the world:

Rediscover the childlike joy of mastering a new movement.

We can't rewind the clock to experience the shock and satisfaction of our first steps. Yet we can feel the delight and pride of learning a new movement.

We can nail our first handstand, conquer the pistol squat, or deepen into that elusive yoga pose. We can learn a complex olympic lift, discover the flow of surfing, or level up to new rock climbing heights.

In doing so, we recapture that feeling of those first few steps into uncharted new terrain.

Spend time working on the foundational elements before chasing performance.

When embracing a new form of exercise, it’s common to rush through foundational stages. New weightlifters feel pulled to load the bar to the max. New runners feel called to attempt a half marathon.

These pursuits are motivating and satisfying. Yet rushing to achieve them risks injury and burnout.

Instead, it's valuable to focus on the form, give your joints and ligaments time to adjust, and build the intensity on top of a solid foundation.

Explore development movement patterns to improve your stabilization and mobility.

While we can't redo our own initial developmental movement journey, we can return to it. We can still play with foundational movements like rolling, crawling, and sitting up. We can unwind decades of stress and disruption to our natural capacities.

This is the approach of DNS. It encourages adults to get on the floor and recondition their movement patterns by mimicking a developing toddler.

I'll share more in the future on this approach but here's a good example video if you want to try:

Thank you for reading and joining me in exploring these themes. As always, don’t hesitate to reach out directly or via the comments if you have reflections, ideas, or questions.

The land around our house is bursting with life and it’s been fun to integrate exercise into the spring activities around the garden.

Last week, I mowed the grass for the first time and experienced how hilly our land truly is. As I pushed the lawn mower up the slope, I felt my heart rate and breathing quicken.

Instead of a chore to rush through or outsource, I savored it as an opportunity for mindful movement. I felt the ground beneath each step and listened to the birds chirping over the humming of the mower. As the aroma of fresh-cut grass grew stronger, I settled into a smooth flow. My pace varied with the grade and my path emerged naturally. The time flew by and I basked in the satisfaction of the light exertion and beauty of the landscape.

If we were to categorize this activity in fancy fitness terms, it would be an easy zone 2 workout. My heart rate was about 65% of my max. The effort felt like a light jog or bike ride. Yet at no point did it feel like a “workout".

Celebrating What We’re Already Doing

This is the beauty of integrating exercise into our daily life. The movement fits in so effortlessly that many people don’t even realize it’s happening. They often don’t give themselves credit for what they’re already doing.

A highlight of running a live course on Intuitive Fitness has been watching people discover ways they’re already exercising. By better understanding different forms of exercise, you begin to see all the moments they exist in your life:

In the morning play session with your kid as you deftly move around the floor. In the stressful work call that you pace around your office or blow off steam walking outside. In carrying groceries through the city and up a few flights of stairs. In the club you rhythmically bop around with your friends.

Look at a typical week through this lens and I bet you’ll be surprised at what you see.

Identifying Opportunities for Integration

Awareness of this type of integration also enables us to also spot moments we can sprinkle in more exercise.

I can throw on my ruck (a weighted backpack) before taking my dog for a walk. I can mix in a stretch while playing with my kid. I can organize pickleball, rock-climbing, or dance to catch up with friends.

The simplest way I've found to do this is through Implementation Intentions. These are simple If, Then plans:

This creates a cue of an opportunity to integrate exercise into our day. A student came up with a great example during the course: “if I go to check Twitter, then I’ll do a movement first”. One I’ve created is: “if I write about doing push-ups, then I will immediately do a set (e.g. right now!).

If these intentions feel too rigid, just view the process as planting invitations for different forms of movement. Rather than rules we have to follow, they are a collection of possibilities within our day that we get to choose from.

This type of exercise may seem small but it has significant benefits. During his guest session, , shared research on the health benefits of these type of "exercise snacks:"

Connecting the value of fitness to daily life

Noticing the way exercise integrates into these activities provides a powerful picture of how essential it is to daily life.

So often we think of our fitness as what we do in the gym or on the track. In reality, fitness is not just about how much you can lift or run, it's about how well you can live the life you want to live.

It is about having the strength, stamina, and mobility to embrace the activities that emerge in your day. It’s nurturing these capacities so you can continue to do the things that bring joy and meaning to your life.

Playing with these ways of integrating exercise throughout our day helps us deepen our appreciation of movement and our intuitive approach to fitness.

Thank you for reading. Please consider sharing this with a friend if you think they will be interested in Intuitive Fitness. I’d love to hear any reflections, ideas, or questions you have about integrating exercise into daily life in the comments or by replying directly to this email.

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When many people think of strength training, they imagine a sleeveless dude grunting while doing bicep curls in the mirror. When I think of it, I see a grandparent lifting up their grandchild while they laugh and play together.

Strength training isn’t just about increasing our ability to lift things in the gym. It’s about sustaining our ability to live a long, meaningful, and active life.

Most people don’t need to deadlift 500 pounds or do 25 pull-ups. But everyone has an activity they love and want to continue throughout life. Strength training helps preserve our physical capacity to enjoy these special moments. It protects against muscle loss and frailty as we age.

Best of all, strength training is fun. The feeling of getting stronger is hard to imagine until you’ve experienced it. The surge of energy after lifting a weight you never thought was possible. The joyful shock of doing your first pull-up. The deep satisfaction of seeing months of small gains compound in your body.

Playing with Strength Training

Strength training can feel intimidating and complex. So let’s look at it through the lens of a single exercise: the push-up.

Imagine two friends. Adam is a beginner and Lillian is more advanced. Adam can do 3 push-ups, while Lillian can do 30.

The good news for Adam is it doesn’t take much to reach the edge of his capacity. In seconds, he’s hit a meaningful level of stress and adaption. Meanwhile, Lillian needs to slog through 25 push-ups to get to a similar place.

The challenge for a beginner is that it's a huge leap to add even a single rep. For Adam to go from 3 to 4 reps is an increase of 33%. While Lillian only needs a 3.3% improvement to go from 30 to 31 reps.

Looking at how these friends might approach building strength highlights how simple it can be and the underrated role of rest intervals.

Greasing the Groove

Since Adam can only do 3 push-ups in a single set, one approach is to focus on how many push-ups he can do throughout an entire day. By using long breaks between sets, he is able to do a high volume of reps and stimulate strength gains.

As Adam experiments with strategies to increase the daily volume, he may discover it’s more effective to do sets of 1 or 2 reps than 3. This is “Greasing the Groove”, where you do lots of sub-maximal sets in a day. By doing fewer reps per set, Adam is able to do more sets and total reps.

The game of greasing the groove is to find the balance of reps and rest that make each set feel effortless. This sweet spot enables you to maximize the reps and impact across the day.

Our more advanced friend, Lillian, could also play with Greasing the Groove. A good rep range for her would be 10-15 reps per set.

But that approach might take more time than she has. So let’s come up with a different one.

Intentional Rest Intervals

Instead, Lillian could focus on the total reps she can do over 3 sets with only two minutes of rest. It’s often surprising how much our reps decrease each set with short rest. As a baseline, she might go from 30 to 22 and then 15 for a total of 67.

The consistent rest interval creates three chances to progress. It’s often easier to increase the reps in the second and third sets than in the first. These increases represent gains and added stress on the body to further progress, a virtuous cycle. Before long, we start to see increases in all sets.

If Lillian hits a plateau, she could decrease the rest to make each subsequent set harder. Or, she could take a longer break between sets to increase the recovery and make it possible to do more reps. Tweaking the rest interval in either direction will mix up the way it challenges her body and help her continue to progress.

Within a month or two, Lillian would likely be able to knock out more than 100 reps over three sets.1 In this case, the short and controlled rest creates a hyper-efficient training environment.

Cluster Sets

Now I can’t leave our expert readers who love strength training without something to try. Jesse at Central Athlete shared a fun example in this week's newsletter:

Cluster training involves sets with built-in, intraset rest periods ranging from 10-30 seconds, which allows for more weight, reps and total volume lifted within a single set. For example, in the context of strength, instead of doing 4 sets of 6 repetitions, the athlete would perform 4 sets of 2.2.2 repetitions with 30 seconds of rest between each cluster.

This is more complex than most ever need to get. Yet, it’s built around the same principles.2 It creatively uses rest and rep ranges to tweak the amount of stress to encourage growth and progress. The small doses of rest inside the set give us just enough recovery to handle more weight and increase our strength.

The Essence of Strength Training

Strength training is working against a force (resistance) to create stress for the body to adapt to. By increasing this stress, we challenge the body and it responds by getting stronger.3

The key is to create a training environment where we can understand and adjust the variables that impact stress. The more you simplify the structure, the easier it is.

You can then bring awareness to how these changes feel in your body. You can notice how different variations challenge your muscles. You can develop an intuitive sense of the different ways to increase the stress on your body and build your strength.

Foundations of Intuitive Fitness

Last week, I announced the first cohort of Foundations of Intuitive Fitness and was blown away by the response. We already have an amazing group of people signed up and only a few spots left.

If you’re interested, you can check out the course and apply here. I plan to share a more detailed overview of the experience next week if it hasn’t already sold out. I’m intentionally keeping this first group small to ensure I can tailor it to everyone who joins.

To see what others are saying, check out the testimonials in the quote tweets of my announcement thread:

Apply to the Course Here

Thank you for reading. Please consider sharing this with a friend if you think they will be interested in Intuitive Fitness. I’d love to hear any reflections, ideas, or questions you have in the comments or by replying directly to this email. You can also reach me at sam@intuitivefitness.co

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Revisiting our Narratives

I attended the Thesis conference in NYC last week and perked up when Nathan Bashez brought up strength training during his talk about narratives. He shared how he use to have a story that he was an “intellectual” and therefore not a “barbell guy.” Nathan retells it in the essay he just published:

I love this anecdote because it highlights so many of the narrative dynamics that emerge around exercise.

Narratives we tell ourselves

At the core of our relationship with exercise are the stories we tell ourselves. Nathan had a story that he wasn’t the kind of person that ran or lifted weights. In this frame, he couldn’t entertain doing these things, much less enjoying them.

One of my clients started working with me because she wanted to feel stronger and more resilient. But she had a narrative that women shouldn’t lift weights and that strength training would make her bulky. Even after we unwound this narrative, we discovered another. She believed that people at the gym would make fun of her for her lack of knowledge and experience.

Yet just a few weeks later, she called as she left the gym to share that she’d made a new friend who had asked about an exercise she was doing. I smiled when she added that she now felt like she knew as much as most people there.

The beauty of exploring these stories is we can rewrite them and begin to change our relationship with exercise.

Narratives others tell us

Yet, these narratives aren’t isolated to ourselves. They are shaped by the people around us. One of the reasons Nathan didn’t see himself as someone who exercised was because his friends didn’t see him that way either.

Back when I played baseball, I had a coach that sometimes pushed players by questioning their commitment, capacities, and emotional make-up. His goal was to toughen up the team but it frequently had a negative effect. Some players would begin to buy in on his narrative and their performance would suffer. In extreme cases, they’d never rewrite their story and would eventually leave the team. Negative narratives often become self-fulfilling prophecies.

At the same time, others’ stories can have a positive impact on us. The more Nathan’s Tech Twitter friends talked about strength training, the more likely he was to see it as something he could do and enjoy.

As much shit as CrossFit gets, it creates unrivaled narrative shifts. People arrive barely exercising and immediately adopt a new story built around community, boxes, WODs, Paleo, and more. The CrossFit cult vibes are largely due to the speed and magnitude of this transformation. Plus the pull many CrossFitters feel to tell everyone about this new story.

The point is to be aware of how deeply susceptible we are to the influence of the narratives around us, for good and for bad.

Narratives we can’t see

The challenge is how frequently we are blind to these narratives. They influence us without us even knowing they exist. After his talk, Nathan and I joked about how he thought he was making an independent decision to start lifting unaware of the influence of his peers.

I’ve experienced this myself on my own journey with my previous hatred of jogging. I used to have a story that long-distance running was dumb and wasn’t even good for you. I’d smugly explain how I wanted to look like a sprinter, not a marathoner.

The true story only emerged after I read 80/20 Running by Matt Fitzgerald and experimented with his recommendation of doing most runs at a super slow pace. To my surprise, the runs became enjoyable.

I realized that the true thing holding me back was my ego. I had a narrative that I was in good shape and it should be easy for me to run a few miles at an 8-minute pace. In reality, my true “easy pace” was a 12-minute mile. Once I uncovered this hidden and faulty story, I could write a new one as someone who enjoyed long runs (and was willing to admit how slow I needed to go).

Narrative Whiplash in Fitness

As Nathan writes in his essay, these narrative dynamics exist across our lives. Yet, they seem particularly strong in the world of fitness. Why?

Exercise is emotional for many people. We have deep stories stuck within our bodies that bubble up when we begin moving (or even thinking about moving).

Exercise is a frequent discussion topic regardless of whether we love it or hate it. We often look to our friends to support our decisions and behavior.

But the biggest reason that I believe narratives are so powerful around fitness is that there is a constant stream of new stories. The entire industry is designed in a way where novel approaches get all the attention. Experts gain influence by weaving new stories about the latest secret to achieving our wellness dreams. Just think about the last decade or so:

High-Intensity Interval Training bursts onto the scene as the key to fat loss. But then jogging gets rebranded as Zone 2 Cardio and the foundation of a long life. Breakfast is the most important meal. No, skipping breakfast and fasting is essential to our longevity. Fat is bad and carbs are good. Actually, flip that, carbs are evil and fat is good. Oh wait, never mind, you can eat both as long as you avoid seed oils.

The narrative whiplash is exhausting. New stories create a subtle pull in different directions. If we adopt the latest story and begin to build an identity around it, what happens when the prevailing narratives swing in a different direction?

Writing our own story

I don’t think it’s realistic to eliminate these narrative dynamics. Humans are storytellers and social creatures. We’re influenced by the people and narratives around us.

Yet, we can bring awareness to the stories that aren’t serving us. We can try on new narratives and rewrite our script. Perhaps a good approach is to view others' narratives as a lens we can experiment with.

For example, just listening to this episode I recorded with will immerse you in his love story about strength training. My guess is you'll feel an increased desire to go to the gym and toss around some weights:

You don’t need to fully adopt Mehdi’s narratives to benefit from it. His passion and experiences introduce the possibility of an entirely different way of relating to exercise. It’s simply an invitation to explore and create a new story for yourself.

The beauty of exercise is how quickly this can happen. The progress is visible. The change is tangible. We can feel it in our bodies. It only takes a single moment of joy on a run to realize: “I am someone who can enjoy jogging.” It only takes a few strength workouts to discover: “I am someone who can get stronger.”

It’s through these experiences that we unwind old narratives and write our own story.

Foundations of Intuitive Fitness

I’m excited to invite you to a virtual course I’m running in April called Foundations of Intuitive Fitness.

The goal is to create an experience where people come together to transform their relationship with exercise and design their own approach. It is intended to be a place where you can begin to rewrite your story and create the foundation of a lifetime of fitness. You can see all of the details here:

Foundations of Intuitive Fitness

I’ll share more in the coming weeks but wanted to announce it here first since space is limited. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at sam@intuitivefitness.co.

Thank you for reading. Please consider sharing this with a friend if you think they will be interested in Intuitive Fitness. I’d love to hear any reflections, ideas, or questions you have in the comments or by replying directly to this email.

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My Journey into the Power of the Body

I was fifteen when my body first failed me. I was chasing my younger cousin on the beach and felt an unprecedented level of physical exhaustion. Instead of the normal voice claiming tiredness, I heard a primal scream from my body. As if my cells were yelling: "we can't do this". 

I had always been an active and energetic kid. I was stubborn and prone to repress rather than admit weakness. Yet at that moment, as the sun beat on my back and the waves crashed over my feet, reality hit me in the face. I could no longer ignore the many signs that something was wrong: the constant thirst, persistent fatigue, and black spots in my vision.  I felt a wave of fear and sadness wash over me. Tears emerged. I looked at my body and saw a shell of itself, just skin and bone. I was down thirty pounds from where I had started football season three months before and I had no idea why. 

When I returned from vacation, I went to the doctor and discovered I had type 1 diabetes. A disease where the body destroys its own capacity to produce insulin, a hormone required to live. The next few days were a blur of bright lights, rotating clinicians, and never-ending information. Yet, by the time I left the hospital, I felt relief and commitment. I knew what had been wrong and was going to do whatever it took to regain my health and my life. 

Regaining Physical Health 

The first step was getting ready for baseball season. I had thirty pounds to regain, muscle to rebuild, and energy to recapture. I had a sense of purpose that made learning the intricacies of managing the disease easier. Yes, there were injections to take and foods I couldn't eat. But there was also the steady progress of my body regaining its strength.

Exercise helped restore my body and my confidence that I could persist despite the disease.  Each rep brought relief that I was regaining my strength. Each workout proved that progress was possible. Each burst of energy demonstrated that my body was healing. My recovery was rapid and nourishing. Within a few months, I was ready for baseball season and felt like myself again. 

Over the next few years, I fixated on the singular goal of playing college baseball. I became addicted to progress, savoring every small improvement and chasing new milestones. I loved the adrenaline of heavy deadlifting. Each workout inching the weight up toward an attempt of four hundred pounds. My chalked hands desperately gripped the bar as my leg muscles buzzed with energy. I stood tall in triumph, smashed the weight to the floor, and unleashed years of hard work in a resounding smash. 

Moments like this proved my body was capable of renewal and supported my desire to thrive on the field. These efforts culminated in one beautiful moment during my sophomore year. I stood at the plate with the game tied against our rival and hit a walk-off home run. The ball exploded off my bat and soared over the scoreboard. I felt a weightless euphoria as I jogged around the bases with my teammates waiting to celebrate. 

Yet, this story of recovery and progress hides some of the truth. It buries the fear that kept bubbling up. The gnawing sense that something else might go wrong. It masks the constant anxiety I had each day. A desire and crushing responsibility to control every element to keep me safe. 

Exercise helped me recapture the vitality of my body, but not my trust in it. Back then, my association with exercise was transactional and external. I did it to perform as an athlete, to attract a girlfriend, and to counteract the damage of my disease. This extrinsic focus and lack of trust in my body made me fragile. Coming out of college, I had no clue how fast everything was about to come crashing down. 

Regaining Psychological Health 

Within a year of graduating, my body was failing me again. I drove to the gym after a long day working in management consulting and felt dread. My strength and energy were a fraction of what they used to be. I had started to lose focus at work. Some days, I had difficulty getting out of bed. 

As I entered the gym, my dread and frustration spiked. I had zero motivation to be there. I was forcing myself to go, clinging to an old identity as someone who exercised. My mind raced with calculations of how much less weight and fewer reps I could do. I felt humiliated thinking about how fast I would fatigue. Just as I relished the positive ripple of doing more exercise, I now wallowed in the negative cascade of doing less. I felt shame. “I let myself go.” “I’m not the person I used to be.” I went through the motions in the gym that day aware that my vitality was diminishing and desperate to fix it. 

I tried all the usual things. I set ambitious fitness goals. I signed up for competitions. I got a workout buddy and even hired a coach. Yet, none of these external motivators helped. My goals with baseball had carried deep personal resonance. These new ones felt contrived. I’d have a few weeks where I felt a shift and then a month where I’d lose all motivation again. But, somewhere within me, I knew there was a way to rediscover my love of exercise. 

One day, I went to a spin class. The instructor yelled at us over loud music, encouraging us to move up the leaderboard. In the past, I would have killed myself competing to get to the top. Now, I felt no attachment to the goal. I was just there to enjoy myself and discover if I liked the spin class. I didn’t love it, but, I left feeling relieved. I had let go of the need to chase every arbitrary milestone. I didn’t have to force myself to embrace every kind of exercise. I could experiment with curiosity to discover what I enjoyed. 

Without even knowing it, I shifted from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation. I let go of the outcomes and began to rediscover the joy. I shifted my strength training to focus on the experience of doing my favorite exercises. I started doing hill sprints because I loved the challenge and intensity. I began to find deep satisfaction in doing these activities, not just in completing them. 

This shift melted away my resistance and restored my well-being. I started to look forward to workouts again. My energy returned. My strength came back. New desires emerged and I found new ways to challenge my body. 

The physical progress and mindset shift rippled across my psychological health. My mood improved and my mind felt clearer. I started to bring more curiosity to the rest of my life. I saw how my job was not aligned with my values. I regained belief in my ability to embrace change. I quit and my depression faded away. 

The next few years were a whirlwind. With my vitality renewed, I attacked life with vigor. I launched a local food business and got married. Even when things were chaotic, exercise was a consistent and positive force in my life. It gave me the energy to pursue the new venture and supported my mental health when it didn’t live up to its potential. 

The zest I had for exercise bled into the rest of my life. My experiences were so positive that I became a personal trainer to help others channel fitness as a source of transformation. But, despite my deepening relationship with exercise, I was missing a critical element. I was about to discover the true costs of not trusting my body and living in my head. 

Regaining Spiritual Health 

As I continued to work with people as a personal trainer, I felt my frustration grow. I was teaching people effective exercise principles but not how to make the activity their own. I could hold them accountable but not help them cultivate intrinsic motivation. Most became dependent on my services, not empowered by them. 

After a particularly long day with clients, I had a crisis of conviction. Personal training felt rigid, forcing fitness into scheduled blocks of time. This traditional approach was prescriptive, telling people what they should do. Despite our best efforts to promote health, our country was still getting sicker. 

That night I shared these challenges with my wife and revealed a plan to take my work in a new direction. I had consulted with healthcare companies and now felt pulled to help fix the broken system. I argued that joining a healthcare organization would enable me to have a greater impact. I was craving external validation and this seemed like a logical move. Unfortunately, I lacked contact with my true desires. I was making decisions with my head but not my heart. 

Blind to all this, I pushed my fitness business to the side and hustled into a role with a large hospital system. Despite amazing colleagues, a meaningful mission, and stimulating work, I sunk into the worst burnout of my life. 

I began to experience that familiar sense that my body was failing me. Except for this time, it was as if I was losing contact with it altogether. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was living someone else's life and drifting further out of my body. One day, I presented at a meeting and realized I was watching myself talk from above. I heard the words coming out of my mouth as if someone else said them. The dissociation was so surreal that I knew something needed to shift. I had a faint sense that this meant plunging into the depths of my body. My exercise practice supported my physical and mental health, yet something was missing. As the meeting ended, I ruminated about potential ways to find the remaining piece of the puzzle.  

This hunt took me down different paths until I found myself lying on the floor of my bedroom wearing an eye mask and listening to electronic music. My friend Jonny Miller was guiding me through a circular breathing pattern. Suddenly, I felt my fingers and toes start tingling. A blissful vibration radiated through my arms and legs. I became embodied, experiencing an unprecedented breadth and resolution of inner sensations. 

It felt magical. My body bubbled with aliveness. I felt both grounded and expansive. I started laughing. There was a strange blend of curiosity and calmness. I felt clarity, yet could not put it into words. I realized I didn’t need to and could trust it to unfold over time. The music slowed and I savored a felt sense of the vast inner terrain of my body.  

I began to apply embodiment to exercise and felt all the sensations arising within my body. The movement took on new life. I noticed my breathing, muscle contraction, heart rate, adrenaline, and fatigue. I uncovered hidden connections in my mental, emotional, and physical states. Buried desires, preferences, and patterns bubbled up. My body started guiding the exercise. I stopped telling it what to do and listened to what it requested. One morning, my body asked for a ton of heavy squats. The next, it pulled me towards a long slow jog. I stopped grinding and found flow. The workouts were often still hard, but exercising felt strangely effortless. My approach to fitness had become intuitive. 

By welcoming the full breadth of my experience, I reconnected with the power of my body. I discovered a new source of wisdom within. I connected my body, mind, and soul. I realized that this integration is essential for the continued renewal of my health, relationships, work, and life. I learned to trust my ability to live in line with my desires and values. I healed spiritually.

Sharing with Others

With hindsight, I can see how I kept nurturing these seeds despite the false starts and setbacks. Even when I jumped into healthcare, I stayed immersed in the fitness community. When the pandemic hit, I restarted my fitness business with a coaching focus and incorporated these ideas. 

Rather than prescribing workout routines, I focused on helping others embrace embodied exercise. Instead of short-term goals, we played with techniques to cultivate intrinsic motivation. The focus became helping them shift into people who enjoyed exercise. Success was when they had true confidence in their capacity to carve their own paths. 

My clients began to transform their relationship with exercise. They stopped looking to others to tell them what to do and explored their own why. They embraced effective techniques in a way that fit their life. They found their own form of Intuitive Fitness. Instead of needing me for accountability, exercise became inevitable. Rather than rushing to an arbitrary milestone, they embraced fitness as a life-long journey and a continual source of renewal. 

Going Forward

As I reflect on this winding and often frustrating journey, I sense sadness. I wish I could teleport back in time to share what I’ve learned with the younger versions of me. Yet, at the same time, I have gratitude for the ups and downs. Aware that the intensity of these experiences shaped the pillars of Intuitive Fitness. 

In response to the rapid decay of my physical health, I learned the value of effective training. I felt how nourishing it is to regain your vitality. Through challenges to my mental health, I found the power of intrinsic motivation. I experienced how finding joy during exercise can improve our psychological health and ripple across our life. By confronting the way I lost contact with my body, I discovered embodiment. I uncovered how we can design exercise to reconnect us to our bodies and help heal us spiritually. 

Most of all, these experiences have taught me that our ability to renew ourselves to meet the challenges of life starts with our body. It shapes not only our vitality, but also our felt sense of everything we experience. I know that I’ve only scratched the surface and have so much more to explore in these domains. I have no doubt that the years ahead will bring more challenges. Yet, I now have a deep faith in my capacity to not only meet these challenges but grow from them. 

I'm now weaving these lessons together with the hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own journey. I believe everyone can create an effective and enjoyable approach to exercise. Each of us can discover our own intrinsic motivation in fitness and beyond. We can all benefit by living a more embodied life. We are all capable of creating conditions to support the renewal of our health and ourselves. 

So I invite you to embrace exercise from within and discover your own form of Intuitive Fitness. 

Thank you for reading. Please consider sharing this with a friend if you think they will be interested in Intuitive Fitness. I’d love to hear any reflections, ideas, or questions you have in the comments or by replying directly to this email.

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A special thank you to , , Jude Klinger, and Cameron Zargar for their feedback and contributions during the development of this story. And to everyone who led and participated in Foster’s Season 2 writing community.

Normally when I ride, I listen to music and do a slow self-guided zone 2 ride. I try to keep my heart rate between 120 and 130 beats per minute, breathe slowly through my nose, and feel into my body. Yet, given the cold creeping through our windows, this wasn’t going to cut it.

So there I was with Hannah Frankson yelling at me to push through the final sprint. My quads burned and my lungs cried out for air. I was drenched in sweat, finally warm. It felt good. I savored the accomplishment, not just in finishing the workout but in meeting my body’s desire for intensity.

Classes like this can be amazing tools in our intuitive fitness toolbelt. The wide variety allows us to sample techniques to explore differences, find what we like, and select one that fits our intent for the day. We can minimize the stress with a low-impact ride or maximize burn through a climb workout. We can enjoy the rhythmic nature of a Tabata or choose a HIIT class with longer rest. We can match the vibe with our mood by selecting a specific instructor or genre of music.

Another benefit is how classes enable us to turn off our brains and focus on the sensations in our bodies. I let go of the need to plan or control the workout and just let Hannah guide me. I brought my awareness to how the changes in resistance and shifts in tempo felt in my muscles, lungs, and heart. I naturally dialed the intensity up and down without thinking. Sometimes I was slightly below her recommendation and sometimes well above. I used to resist classes because it felt like someone was telling me what I had to do. Now I see them as a container to connect with my body and align with my intent.

Building Out a Menu

This sampling of classes connects with a broader theme of building a flexible approach that fits us. I like to think of my weekly exercise routine as a menu. Similar to a good meal, I have a rough structure for what’s a good week. Right now, it’s a few strength training workouts, a couple of slow cardio sessions, and at least one bout of high-intensity training. I sprinkle in mobility and flow movement like side dishes.

Yet, within each of these sections, there are tons of options to choose from. I don’t have to do the same things each time or the workouts in the same order. Currently, I do more bodyweight calisthenics for strength but mix back in heavy barbell training. Due to winter, my slow cardio is usually on the bike. Yet sometimes, like yesterday, I feel pulled out on the trail behind our house for a jog.

I’m in the process of mapping out different modalities of training, exercise types, and workout variables to help others explore their own menu development. Hit me up with any thoughts or questions you have on the topic so I can incorporate these ideas.

Trade-Offs and Optimization

It’s important to name the trade-offs we make in our choices around exercise. The menu-based approach is geared towards combining enough structure to make progress with enough variety to make it fun. If my goal was short-term optimization in one facet of fitness, I’d be better off with a more rigid approach.

My friend wrote about this concept of extreme optimization in this week's edition of The Long Game: “On a personal level: the moment I feel the best, and the healthiest are not moments of obsession; quite the opposite.”

In fact, he argues extreme optimization can actually create fragility: “when your diet is extremely specific, your routine very rigid, you take dozens of supplements, etc., the slightest change in your preferred "perfect optimized life" will ruin how you feel.”

I love how Mehdi reframes this and highlights the way extreme optimization can set us up to fail. Over the long run, I believe tailoring our approach to increase enjoyment almost always pays dividends.

Playing with these ideas

Here are some prompts to explore these ideas in your own life:

Reflect: What is your version of a good week of exercise? Can you come up with a list of activities you enjoy that fit into each section?

Experiment: Spend one week where each day you select something from your menu instead of planning out all the workouts in advance.

Experience: Notice if choosing an activity each day creates any shifts in how you experience the exercise.

Thank you for reading. Please consider sharing this with a friend if you think they will be interested in Intuitive Fitness. I’d love to hear any reflections, ideas, or questions you have in the comments or by replying directly to this email.

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