John W Travis MD MPHImagine trying to blow up a balloon that is knotted in the middle, and you'll have some idea of the stress created in your body when tight clothing restricts normal breathing. A tight and contracted abdomen, moreover, will adversely affect normal...
One of the simplest and most effective ways to release tension and energize yourself is to take time out for a good stretch. You can stretch in almost any position, and, in fact, a good stretch before you get out of bed in the morning is a fine way...
If your approach to life is mainly one of "going with the flow," you're likely to find yourself being washed down the stream, backward. To have any real sense of getting somewhere, it's helpful to know where you're starting from and where you want...
The human body needs the touch of nature along with the touch of human skin. Yet too many people have dulled their senses and thus silenced that need. It’s easy to go several months without ever touching the earth, as most of our activities involve...
The childhood rhyme that says, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me," is far from true. Words can literally kill. In the introduction to Norman Cousins’s The Healing Heart, Dr. Bernard Lown, professor of cardiology at...
Wellness starts with the recognition that your body is wise, your mind is wise, and your soul is wise. You may not always honor that wisdom in yourself, but it is there nonetheless. You are at the leading edge of over five billion years of evolution...
Painful or confusing emotions are par for the course during a time of change, even when it's a positive, life-affirming change in the direction of overall health and wellbeing.
Adult humans normally breathe at the rate of one breath every six to eight seconds and inhale an average of sixteen thousand quarts of air each day. If nothing is done to restrict breathing, it will happen naturally and fully. But people continually...
Twenty-four hours a day your body is talking to you—giving you feedback about what it needs for its survival, its pleasure, its growth, and its balance. Many of those messages go unnoticed or unheeded because of ignorance or lack of appreciation, or...
Becoming well in body and mind and spirit is our focus of my book, Simply Well. Ageless wisdom teaches that only when you are experiencing life simply, and celebrating its ordinariness, are you living in harmony. In contemporary times, the Zen...
