Why You Need A Health Coach

You can imagine my surprise when a prominent New York City physician told me that doctors don’t know a thing about health. He argued that yes, they were extensively trained to diagnose symptom patterns into disease names and to treat the symptoms through pharmacology, but that these disease-management skills are not the same skill set needed to cultivate health. This innovative doctor saw an obvious gap in healthcare and was calling for a new profession-- a profession that was similar to a primary care doctor but instead a generalist expert in health. Long story short, I asked him if he’d heard of health coaching and landed myself a job as a resident wellness expert at his healthcare company. But that’s another blog post. At that time, I had already spent a lot of time in clinical settings, trying to figure out if I wanted to pursue my passion for health by going to medical school. I had reached a similar conclusion as my doc friend. Even the more holistically-minded clinicians I had worked with faced frustrating limitations in their capacity to elicit health-behavior change due to time and insurance constraints. 

I now find myself in the unique but awesome position of working in a clinic where the doctors actually do know a heck of a lot about health. My doctor colleagues are naturopathic physicians, trained in primary care medicine from a natural-perspective. Unlike conventional doctors, their training focuses on food as medicine, botanicals, psychosocial wellness and root-cause resolution of disease. 

The obvious question in a setting like Wellness Minneapolis is why would someone see a health coach rather than a naturopathic physician? 

Here are some reasons it may make sense to begin your health journey with health coaching.

In most cases, the keys to creating health are shockingly simple and don’t require a medical degree to understand. They are so simple in fact, that you’d think everyone would be vibrantly well. But unfortunately, KNOWING what you should do, does not usually translate into doing it. I deeply wanted to become a daily meditator about 2 years before I actually did it. I currently know I’d be 10X happier if I spent less time each day on my phone and I have yet to solidify this behavior change. So many of my clients are focused on debating the tiniest minutiae of health (ex. which brand of supplement is best) and have yet to master the basics that would have the biggest impact (like consistent sleep and daily movement). What’s needed to create health behavior change is usually not more complex health knowledge and information. It’s usually two-fold approach: accountability and strategic support to create different daily habits +  breaking down psychological barriers and cultivating health supportive mindsets. This is where coaches excel. 

Alternatively, naturopaths are able to hone in on the root cause of chronic symptoms and disorders and creating a holistic treatment plan, accordingly. A naturopath’s treatment plan usually includes lifestyle changes, botanicals, and supplements. With some variation for specific issues, any plan your naturopathic doctor recommends will involve consistently getting quality nutrition, sleep, movement and managing the stress in your life. These are the four areas you need to build consistency in and a health coach is an expert at making that a reality. If you’ve already worked with a health coach, you’re likely a superstar at rocking the foundational habits of health. With these foundations in place, any targeted solutions offered in your clinical plan will yield faster, more efficacious results. Additionally, a coach can help you actually implement the lifestyle changes suggested by your naturopath.

Here’s why a health coach may be your most powerful tool for finally getting healthy:

Health Coaches Understand That The Key To Health Is Daily Habits: 
Health is created by your daily choices over time. In other words, health is simply a sum total of your habits. Often we have psychological barriers that limit our ability to create lasting change. For example, I bet you already know the basic things you need to do to be healthy. But unfortunately, knowledge does not necessarily lead to consistent action. We are not rational creatures but instead influenced by myriad factors including psychological barriers (limiting beliefs), and cues in our environment. This is why it’s so important to create systems and structures that automate your health behaviors rather than relying exclusively on willpower and good intention. 

Health Coaches Have A Truly Holistic Definition Of Health: 
A good health coach possesses a truly holistic model of wellness, understanding that often what’s needed to create vibrancy isn’t just kale smoothies but may involve things like expanding social supports or tapping into a sense of purpose beyond the humdrum of the mundane. A good coach has strong intuition and is able to break out of any cookie cutter treatment protocol and instead taps into their clients deeper needs and unique vision for what true wellness means for them. Signing up for a coaching program also gives you the time to address multiple layers that impact health beyond just the obvious physical ones. 

Health Coaches Know Health Is Simply A Series Of Learnable Skills: 
A coach is an educator who can help you fill in any skill gaps that may be limiting your success. Often times health is touted as a fixed state (for example a fixed body ideal or something gifted to you only if you’ve won the genetic lottery) that some people have and some people don’t. A more empowering view is that deep self-care and health consists of consistent habits and learned skills. There are a few essential skills that make healthy living accessible and easeful. For example, some essential skills of a healthy person include basic cooking techniques, knowing how to create routines and rituals the automate behavior change without relying on willpower and learning some basic breathing and mindfulness techniques that put you in control of the state of your nervous system. 

Health Coaches Help You Shift Your Mindset and Beliefs:
A coach doesn’t just focus on the externals but evokes paradigm altering mindset shifts that can change not just your behavior but how you view your sense of reality. A few key health mindsets involve adopting a growth mindset, a stress-is-enhancing mindset, and a self-compassionate mindset. A coach can also help you re-frame your limiting beliefs, expanding your sense of agency and possibility for your life. Often times these beliefs operate below our subconscious mind. A coach can help bring them into the light of awareness, where they can be questioned and changed. An example of this may be an old belief that you don’t have the right body type to attend a yoga class or that food equals love. 

Health Coaches Emphasize That You Are The Expert, and focus on helping you tap into YOUR intuition and body wisdom. A coaches magic involves consistently directing you towards your own deep wisdom and desires. In a world filled with health experts, many of whom disagree with each other, it’s easy to feel confused, overwhelmed and paralyzed about where to even begin. Our current medical paradigm often exacerbates this by asking us to hand our personal power over to clinicians. A good coach teaches you tools to consistently access your own inner wisdom to find out what would be most nourishing for your body and soul. This cuts through information overwhelm and the feeling that there are a million things you SHOULD be doing. Instead, you learn to write your own prescription for what’s going to lead you to your best life. 

Health Coaches Offer Accountability and Individualized Support: 
A coach is an accountability partner and having accountability towards a trusted other is often one of the missing keys to changing behavior. Since a coach gets to know you deeply and works with you over time, they can uncover your unique barriers that have prevented you from achieving your health goals in the past, and hold you accountable to intelligently crafted goals uniquely suited to you. This is how you finally get the outcomes you’re desiring. 

The essential ingredients that lead to health are not rocket science. In fact, the suggestions that can create profound changes in energy levels, vitality, and wellness are usually shockingly basic and simple. The reality is that most people don’t consistently do the things that lead to health. Yes, we all know getting sleep is vital for everything from weight management to optimal brain function but the tricky part is how YOU, with your unique psychology, lifestyle, and values are going to create a sleep habit that is realistic and effortless given the context of your daily life. It is at this juncture, between what you know you WANT to be doing and the REALITY of what you are doing, where a coach can be incredibly valuable in closing the gap. By working with a coach you’ll develop the key skills and habits needed to create a lifetime of health. 

If you’re intrigued and would like to see if coaching is right for you, you can get started by scheduling a free 20 minute intro coaching call.

We all know we should be eating more vegetables...Here’s how to actually do it.

There still remains a lot of debate in the nutrition world. Paleo or vegan? What ratio of macronutrients is optimal?  Couple this with the powerful lobby influence the food and agricultural industries have on government regulatory bodies like the USDA, and it’s no wonder we live in a society of confused eaters. Yet, there is one indisputable recommendation that ALL nutrition experts agree on, and that is the power of increasing vegetable intake. Despite this being the most unequivocal piece of nutrition advice out there, most of us consistently fail to meet the recommended daily dose.

There are many compelling reasons to eat your vegetables. For example, the gut microbiome ( the microbial population that lives in our GI tract) and its impact on human health is THE hot topic in the scientific and medical community. Every day there seems to be a new study linking the health of your microbiome to everything from mood disorders to obesity to cardiovascular disease. And what is the key to a healthy microbiome? Eating a diversity of plants. Plants provide the indigestible fiber which feeds the beneficial bacteria in your lower intestine, which leads to a healthy intestinal lining and encourages beneficial strains of bacteria. Additionally, plants offer a variety of polyphenols, vitamins and minerals, and antioxidants which have innumerable disease fighting properties.

While we all know we should be eating more vegetables, getting the recommended 6-10 servings a day often remains an elusive target. I’ve tried many different techniques to inspire myself and my clients to turn this recommendation into a daily habit and the following are the best methods I’ve encountered.

my top secrets For finally eating enough veggies.

1. Batch cook your vegetables. My vegetable guru and solver of veggie angst is the food writer, Tamar Adler. My favorite thing about Tamar Adler is that she is not motivated by health. Her writing rarely, if ever, talks about health benefits. Her eating and cooking philosophy is motivated by flavor, pleasure, frugality, and food traditions. A bi-product of this is that she cooks primarily with local, whole foods and lots of plants. She shows us that there are much more elegant ways to “eat your veggies” than a sad-looking salad next to your grilled chicken, which can quickly make you feel like you’re on a 1980s-style deprivation diet. Instead, while you prep your veggies, you can feel like you are Alice Water’s in your Berkeley kitchen or at least a vibrant Sicilian grandmother. She recommends batch cooking your vegetables all at once and eating them throughout the week in various dishes. It’s common in other cultures to eat cooked, room temperature, leftover vegetables but Americans don’t have this food tradition. The result is good intentions and a plethora of limp, rotting vegetables in crisper drawers. For full instructions on the batch cooking ritual, watch this enviable video series of Adler prepping her farmer’s market bounty. Written instructions here. The basic idea is to roast a few trays of veggies in your oven at once (try broccoli, cauliflower, beets, sweet potatoes, etc). While these cook, sautee some greens on the stove. Store everything in glass containers in your fridge and eat your way through the veggies throughout the week.

2. Eat a super salad once a day. My brilliant nutritionist colleague, Jesse Haas, has a salad formula that takes care of most of your veggie requirements in one sitting. Try to eat this once a day and you’re golden. Here’s the basic recipe (customize to your liking and to what veggies are in season) :  2-3 cups greens + 1-2 cups cut veggies + 3 oz. protein + 2 Tbsp dressing (here’s a nice basic salad dressing recipe) + 1/2 c cooked whole grains (optional) = 4-7 servings of vegetables and limitless possibilities.

3. Drink a Micronutrient Smoothie. This tip is from one of my favorite scientists, Dr. Rhonda Patrick. She is a cancer and aging researcher who has done extensive health studies on micronutrient deficiencies as one of the key factors in disease prevention. The secret to getting adequate micronutrients? Again, dietary plant quantity and diversity. Her health hack is a daily smoothie where you get your fiber + plant intake in one (slightly intense but worth it) veggie-smoothie. Here are two videos (smoothie recipe 1 and recipe 2) with the ingredients and overview of the benefits. If you’re not ready to go all-in you can start adding a handful of greens to your fruit smoothie and call it good!

4. Aim to fill half your plate with vegetables, especially at lunch and dinner. One Medical's blog offers a great infographic to demonstrate the distribution of a healthy plate. 

Pick one new veggie habit to try and notice how it affects your energy and overall health. As always, I would love to hear how it goes!  

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Emotions 101: The Healthiest Ways to Relate To Your Feelings May Surprise You

There is a persistent meme in our culture that we should feel happy all the time. Particularly in the spiritual world where the latest spin on the Law of Attraction meme can give the impression that if only you felt good all the time and just maintained “higher vibes” you’d attract everything you desire (gotta love when consumerism and pop spirituality converge). This can fuel the belief that feeling the whole range of emotions is somehow bad, unevolved, or unhealthy. The science of mindfulness and emotional regulation is showing that the opposite is true. A recent study showed that believing that certain emotions are “unacceptable” was associated with an increased risk of depression, anxiety, and fatigue. The key to becoming an optimistic, happy person does NOT, in fact, lie in never experiencing unpleasant emotions, but rather becoming skilled in relating to the full spectrum of emotions that will inevitably arise. Since there seems to be a lot of conflicting ideas about the how to best manage emotions, I sought the most useful, well-researched techniques on how to best relate to  “all the feels”.

Before I dive into techniques though, you may be wondering how this relates to your physical health. The connection is through the stress response. For many of us in the Western world, our biggest stressors are no longer external threats such as wild animals, or imminent starvation but rather internal stressors, ie. our emotions and thoughts. When these “internal threats” are poorly managed our stress response is activated chronically. Chronic stress is implicated in nearly every disease and mood disorder, so in many ways learning how to healthily relate to your emotions is one of the most important healthy living skills to cultivate. What determines whether our emotions elicit unnecessary stress is how we relate to our emotional states as they arise. Here are the most practical, science-backed ways to develop a compassionate, healthy relationship with your emotional landscape.

 4 Ways To Befriend Your Emotions and Drastically Reduce Your Stress:

1. Don’t try to THINK your way out of emotions. Instead, change your breathing to create true emotional shifts. Rather than trying to force shifts in your thinking, your breath is the key to regulating your emotional state. In research studies, they’ve shown that there are distinct breathing patterns associated with different emotional states. The fascinating part is that this relationship is bidirectional, meaning state shifts can be created in two ways. When you feel a certain emotion you breathe in a specific, predictable way AND if you breathe in a specific way, you will change your emotional state. Slow, deep breathing is associated with more “positive” emotions like happiness. Shallow, rapid breathing was associated with emotions like fear, sadness and anger.  The next time you’re experiencing a distressing emotion, consciously take slow, deep breaths until you feel better.

2. Self-compassion is your best friend in emotional regulation. A common reaction to a distressing emotion is to beat yourself up for feeling bad, which makes you feel even worse. Kicking yourself while you’re down isn’t helpful and leads to rumination, depression, and re-triggers the initial unpleasant emotion. Use your unpleasant emotions as an opportunity to give yourself love and support, just as you would to a good friend who is suffering. Make a pledge to pile self-compassion on top of any emotion, particularly the “negative ones”.  A practical way to evoke self-compassion is mindfulness + kindness. This looks like bringing your awareness to the reality of what you’re feeling and if you recognize it as a moment of suffering use it as a cue to be kind and gentle towards yourself. You can solidify this kindness through a mantra, touching your hand to your heart, or anything else that feels compassionate in the moment.

3. Stay focused on the body sensations associated with the emotion, not your thoughts about what the emotion means. Emotions are inherently an embodied experience as the feelings are a result of a cascade of hormones and neurochemicals. This actual physiologic emotional reaction does not last long unless re-triggered by the mind replaying the story around the emotion. A simple practice is to drop the story (even if it’s really compelling--you can always come back to it) and non-judgmentally observe your body sensations as you experience the emotion. Feel free to label the sensations you’re feeling in your body and watch as they shift and change. This allows the physiological emotional response to dissipate without re-triggering the emotional reaction with our thoughts and narratives about what it means. Meditation teacher, Tara Brach, offers a mindfulness practice that encompasses this technique here.

4. Label the emotion you’re experiencing. There have been some studies showing that simply labeling your emotional experience (ex. I’m feeling sad/mad/anxious ect.) reduces the physiological signs of distress associated with the emotion. This may be due to the recruitment of the higher brain centers  (prefrontal cortex) required to label the emotion, which helps shift out of the more reactive, lower brain centers. Additionally, acknowledging the presence of an emotion brings mindfulness to your experience. Also, labeling offers some distance between you and the experience of the emotion allowing for more space to notice its transience and mindfully choose your response.

Feeling the entire range of human emotions is normal, and necessary. What determines whether our emotions elicit unnecessary stress is our relationship with our emotions as they arise. Embrace the whole range of human emotions and relate to them skillfully using labeling, self-compassion, breathing and awareness of body sensations. As always, I would love to hear about your experience using these techniques!

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Don't be afraid of the dark: It may be our most potent medicine!

If there were such a thing as a panacea in the wellness world, I’d place my bet on optimizing circadian rhythms by getting appropriate exposure to light and dark. In ancient forms of medicine (such as Greco-Roman Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine), there was a heavy emphasis on Nature as healer and physicians recommended aligning with nature as a disease cure. Within modern biomedicine, extolling the healing powers of nature has largely fallen out of fashion. But recently, this theme is beginning to crop up again in medical literature. This isn’t some outdated, sentimental notion after all, but rather an entire field of science known as chronobiology. Chronobiology is a branch of biology that studies how our body's natural cycles—mental, physical and emotional—are affected by solar and lunar rhythms. Our physiology has evolved to function optimally when aligned with natural rhythms of light-dark. Disrupted circadian rhythms are being correlated with a myriad of illnesses such as mood disorders, metabolic issues, cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer, and menstrual disruptions. And unfortunately, this doesn’t appear to be a part of our physiology we can override or “hack”. A lack of adequate bright light during the day or excessive exposure to light at night both have consequences. In an era when it’s increasingly more tempting to live out of sync with light-dark cycles, aligning with the rhythms of nature may be one of our most potent forms of preventive medicine.

SO, what exactly disrupts our “inner clocks”? Our circadian clock is primarily set by exposure to light and dark. For my science lovers out there, let me explain how this works physiologically. In our brains, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) keeps track of light-dark signals from the optic nerve and triggers hormonal and behavioral outputs accordingly. The reduction of light at night is detected by our SCN and triggers the release of melatonin from our pineal glands, which causes sleepiness.

For most of our evolutionary history, as the sun went down we were no longer exposed to bright light (more specifically light in the blue spectrum) so the current problem lies in an evolutionary mismatch from what our bodies have evolved to expect versus recent technological developments. With the invention of the lightbulb in 1879 and the technological revolution, we have unprecedented inputs of light at night ( or LAN, as it is called in the scientific literature) that lead to circadian disruption. The use of artificial light and devices after dark disrupts the environmental cue and our levels of melatonin are abnormally suppressed which reduces both the quality of sleep and the ability to fall asleep. This is problematic for reasons beyond melatonin’s impact on sleep quality. It is less commonly known that beyond its influence on sleep, melatonin is also an incredibly potent anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, immunomodulating and oncostatic hormone. It’s currently being widely researched because of its potential anti-cancer effects. So basically, every hour after dark that you are exposing yourself to blue light, you’re decreasing the levels of this powerfully health-promoting hormone you’re exposed to. Or in simpler terms, as far as our physiology is concerned, exposure to adequate darkness each day is a form of vital medicine. The official recommendation is maintaining a window of 9-10 hours of darkness each 24-hour cycle. For most of us this would mean an hour or two before bed we’d stop looking at screens (T.V., computers), devices (phones, Ipads) AND dim the lights or use lights in the red spectrum.

Secondary inputs that influence our circadian clock are eating patterns, exercise, social inputs, and levels of stress hormones such as cortisol. The most powerful secondary input is meal timing or more precisely, cycles of feeding and fasting. For optimal health, our meal timings would correspond with light/dark cycles (a.k.a no late night eating). Limiting feeding to daytime hours and increasing periods of fasting at night does the body good. This doesn’t need to be extreme. See my recommendations below for the details.

HOW TO RESET YOUR CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS FOR OPTIMAL HEALTH:

1. Expose yourself to natural light first thing in the morning. Circadian alignment starts as soon as you wake up. Exposure to natural light, ideally in the morning before 10:30 am, aligns your circadian rhythm and has been proven to result in better sleep at night. The best way to do this is to get outside in the morning, without sunglasses, for at least 10 minutes (cloudy days included). At the very least, open the shades and let natural light into your living space. If it is not possible to get outside, considering using a light box of at least 10,000 lux.

2. Exercise in the morning. By getting some gentle movement in the morning, even 5-10 minutes counts, you optimize your circadian rhythm by appropriately setting your cortisol curve. Exercise helps ensure a spike of cortisol in the morning which leads to lower levels at night, which improves sleep quality and melatonin levels.

3. Avoid screens AT LEAST 1 hour before bed. Again, think of darkness as medicine. Darkness leads to the release of melatonin and melatonin increases sleep quality and reduces chronic inflammation. The most powerful way to ensure optimal levels of melatonin is to set a digital sunset each night. This means no longer looking at your phone, screens, Kindle, etc. after a certain time each night. As a compromise, you can download f.lux on your computer and use Nightshift (if you have an iPhone 5 or higher) which limits the blue light emitted from your computer and phone. Another option is wearing really dorky blue light blocking orange sunglasses at night.

4. Make sure your bedroom is completely dark. Using an eye mask is a great start but it been discovered that your skin has photoreceptors which detect light and can disrupt your melatonin levels, so it's important that your room is completely dark. Invest in blackout curtains and get all devices out of the bedroom. For extra insurance, consider getting a nightlight in the red spectrum for your bathroom and hallway so you don’t have to turn on the blue-light emitting overhead light if you wake up in the middle of the night.

5. Stop eating or drinking alcohol at least 3 hours before bedtime. Late night alcohol or eating disrupt sleep architecture. A lot of great functional medicine practitioners recommend a 12-hour window between dinner and breakfast, or simply stopping eating 3 hours before bedtime. Alcohol may help you fall asleep but it disrupts sleep quality and depth so it is best avoided near bedtime.

6. Ritual and consistency are key. Going to bed and getting up at roughly the same time each day entrains your circadian clock. Ideally, go to bed between 10-11p and wake up around 7 am.  Create sleep rituals that help you wind down at night and do your best to stick to them.

7. Start Earthing. One of the best ways to reset our circadian rhythms is to get barefoot contact with the Earth aka Earthing or Grounding. This is a slightly unconventional recommendation that I’ve written off in the past as too hippy, even for me. But I’ve become convinced after reading some amazing journal articles on the benefits. According to Chevalier et al., “Mounting evidence suggests that the Earth's negative potential can create a stable internal bioelectrical environment for the normal functioning of all body systems. Moreover, oscillations of the intensity of the Earth's potential may be important for setting the biological clocks regulating diurnal body rhythms, such as cortisol secretion”. From a practical standpoint, the recommendation is “barefoot sessions” (weather-permitting) for as little as 30-40 minutes daily. There are also some emerging grounding technologies that give you the same benefits without the barefoot time. For more on Earthing, visit this website.

The full effects of aligning your circadian rhythm with natural rhythms of light and dark are just beginning to be understood. We’ll likely find out more details about the consequences of circadian misalignment as more of the population experiments with living out of sync with natural cycles. My bet is that it is a bit like how we’ve come to understand the importance of eating whole foods. We don’t fully understand all of the intricate biochemical components in the whole plant that positively interact with our physiology, but since we’ve co-evolved eating plants it has a net positive impact that processed food can’t match. Similarly, our bodies have evolved eating, sleeping, moving in rhythm with natural cycles or light and dark and thus following this evolutionary pattern impacts our health in ways we may never fully understand. Try optimizing your circadian rhythm yourself and see how you feel!!  As always, I’d love to hear how it goes.

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The Female Orgasm Gap Part 4: The Power of Owning Your Orgasm!

“Masturbation is a primary form of sexual expression. Not just for kids or those in-between lovers or for old people who end up alone. Masturbation is the ongoing love affair that each of us has with ourselves throughout our lifetime” - Betty Dodson, from her book Sex for One

I’m going to close out this series with my #1 DIY tip for closing the female orgasm gap.....masturbation. I intentionally saved this recommendation for last because I first wanted to highlight the broader sexual norms that contribute to the orgasm gap rather than placing the responsibility for solutions exclusively on individual women.

To set the context, it’s important to know that there is not only a female orgasm gap but there is also a female masturbation gap. Of men in their thirties, 93% report having masturbated at any point in their life whereas only 80 % of women report the same. Yet, multiple studies show that women are infinitely more likely to achieve orgasm during masturbation than in partner sex, making it a more accessible way for women to explore their orgasmic capacity. While I can’t prove this, I’m convinced the female masturbation gap has a lot to do with the orgasm gap.

In a culture that has historically sought dominion over female bodies, it isn’t surprising that female masturbation isn’t encouraged. Women who are tapped into their bodies amazing capacity for pleasure and can access it at will, without male assistance, are a huge threat to the status quo. In this way, taking ownership of your sexual energy through masturbation is revolutionary and flips the script on the sexual narrative women are fed. The female body and sexuality are traditionally valued through the lens of the male gaze, leading to an emphasis on appearance and sexual objectification. If internalized, this can lead to a sense of disembodiment and disconnection from felt experience. This can remove women from the glorious fact that we are all sovereign sexual beings whose sexuality is first and foremost an amazing gift for each individual to enjoy and cultivate for the sheer joy of it----rather than just of value for the pleasure it can endow on a partner. In this way, it is revolutionary for women to know their bodies’ pleasure potential deeply and to enjoy it for themselves frequently. The way to do this is through masturbation, or as I prefer to call it, self-pleasuring.

So why, is there a masturbation gap? Unfortunately, there is still a lot of shame and taboo surrounding female masturbation. Language reflects the culture it exists in and it’s telling that there are myriad common phrases for male masturbation but no equivalent for females (somehow “jilling off” never really caught on). It’s common to hear about young boys discovering masturbation but not as much for young girls, which frames it as a normal developmental process for males but not females. Also, from a young age women are force fed a narrative around love and sex where prince charming swoops in and offers security, happiness, and lots of orgasms. As a result, many women expect men to give them their first orgasm. Unfortunately, this is not realistic as most men are not prepared with accurate knowledge about female bodies. If women are faking orgasms, their sexual partners aren’t given the opportunity to learn, and the cycle persists. The tendency to “outsource our orgasm” can be seen when people talk about whether or not someone “gave them an orgasm”. It’s essential that we start owning our orgasm. We are all responsible for our own orgasm - for learning how we have them, and how to communicate what works best for us to our chosen sexual partners.

Another reason that many women may not masturbate is shame. Shame can be a result of a sex negative culture/parent/religion/trauma etc. It’s normal to feel some level of shame around your sexuality and consequently, masturbation can be a shame trigger. So, in order to combat shame and get comfortable with solo sex it’s imperative to surround yourself with sex positive content and information. If you still feel a bit awkward about masturbation, it can also be useful to get some specific instruction on how to begin a masturbation “practice” (top resources: Emily Nagoski’s nuts and bolts of masturbation article here and Betty Dodson's instructions for first-time orgasm here). The “Mother of Masturbation” is the feminist artist and sex educator, Betty Dodson, and I can’t recommend her work highly enough. She wrote a masterpiece book on the topic called Sex for One and has tons of resources on her website, including a masturbation technique that is designed to translate into easier orgasms during partner sex (if you’re interested click here). Dodson considers solo sex an act of meditation and extreme self-care and will make you feel all giddy, empowered, and feminist about being a ‘self-lover”. Shame thrives in isolation so hearing others talking openly and positively about masturbation helps dispel lingering shame.

If you need additional motivation to prioritize masturbation consider it an essential part of your wellness plan. Masturbation (orgasm) releases a cocktail of positive endorphins and hormones that create less stress and greater health. As a result, orgasms are associated with endless health benefits including stress reduction, increased mood, pain relief, improved sleep, and even increased body confidence (more on all of that here). Another benefit is that it stokes your sexual fire as sex energy begets more of the same. Since many women today suffer from low libido, this increase in desire can benefit your current sexual partnership or fulfill your sexual needs if you’re single. Also, masturbation offers a safe way to explore your fantasies and turn-ons, which helps you more intimately know your sexual desires and preferences. This knowledge empowers you to more clearly share your needs with your partner. And last but not least, masturbation is one the best way to increase your orgasmic capabilities whether you’re seeking a first-time orgasm or looking to deepen your repertoire. You can then bring your orgasmic virtuosity to any partners that are lucky enough to play with you.

I believe the orgasm gap will be closed by individual women who know their bodies and pleasure pathways and communicate that knowledge to their sexual partners. Self-pleasuring women, who take ownership of their orgasms, are less likely to settle for bad sex that exclusively prioritizes male pleasure. This will change sexual expectations in our culture and finally make reciprocity and mutual pleasure the norm.

*I want to be clear that my intention with these articles is not to imply that orgasm is the ultimate goal of sex or put any pressure on women to have orgasms. In my view, orgasm isn’t the goal of sex but rather mutual pleasure. Instead, my goal with this series is simply to encourage a context where female orgasm is more viable and accessible and placed in equal importance as male orgasm.

The Female Orgasm Gap Part 3: Ladies First

When we become educated about female pleasure anatomy, the reasons for the persistence of the female orgasm gap begin to make more sense. It becomes clear that there is nothing lacking in a woman’s capacity for orgasm but rather that the sexual norms are constructed with male anatomy and pleasure as the priority. Once this is understood, the solutions to close the female orgasm gap become more straightforward. One of the barriers to mutual pleasure is that the timing and order in which sex proceeds often doesn’t capitalize on the differences in male and female pleasure anatomy.  

Most women have had the frustrating experience of laying in bed next to a satisfied, post-orgasmic sleeping male, while they remain wide awake, their bodies still in a heightened state of arousal, with no resolution and no hope of sleep. Over time, this sexual satisfaction mismatch can lead to many things, including a perceived low libido and lack of desire for sex, a feeling that your pleasure is less valued than your partners, or even worse an idea that your body is somehow faulty. One simple solution to minimize sexual encounters where only men enjoy orgasm, is to employ a “ladies first” approach to sex, where men postpone their orgasm until their partner has one.

Keeping in mind some basic facts, it’s clear why a ladies first approach provides a context where mutual pleasure is most easily achieved. Let’s take a minute to recap:

1) Less than a third of women orgasm from penetration alone whereas men have orgasmic inevitably once penetrative sex starts.

2) Women require female erections for truly satisfying penetrative sex.

3) Women are easily capable of multiple orgasms whereas men have long refractory periods which make multiple orgasms difficult.

Logically, if mutual pleasure is the goal, it makes sense to craft the order and timing of sexual activities with these differences in mind. 

Sex therapist, Ian Kerner, wrote a whole book on this timing issue called, She Comes First. Kerner delves into the orgasm gap and female pleasure anatomy which leads him to the conclusion that it’s logical for men to postpone their orgasms and to focus on female orgasm first. In his book, he cites a study from Kinsey and Masters and Johnson, which found that among women whose partners, spent twenty-one minutes or longer on foreplay, only 7.7 percent did not reach orgasm consistently. This simple emphasis on female-centric “foreplay” (manual and oral stimulation), drastically closed the orgasm gap. Kerner advocates for renaming foreplay “coreplay” so that clitoris-focused activities, like manual and oral sex, are put in their rightful place, as complete events on their own rather than a precursor to the main event (intercourse).

As an additional benefit, by orgasming prior to penetration (or at least reaching a state of high arousal), the woman establishes an erection prior to the possibility of penetration, making intercourse much more pleasurable if it happens. As stated above, focusing on female orgasm first, also provides a context to take advantage of her body's ability to have multiple orgasms. Kerner discusses the multi-orgasmic potential of women by saying “More women don’t experience their second or third orgasm with men for the same reason that many don’t experience their first--they’re not receiving appropriate clitoral stimulation and male gratification is not postponed.”

Another welcome benefit of a ladies first approach is potentially less performance anxiety for men. Many men feel a sense of performance pressure if they’ve internalized that their size and stamina during intercourse are the main correlates of being a good lover. This belief is a side effect of a culture that is clitoris illiterate and has glorified penetration. It was Kerner’s own struggles with premature ejaculation that led him to study female pleasure anatomy and to adopt his “she comes first” approach. The impact issues like premature ejaculation have on mutual enjoyment of sex can be drastically reduced if men realize that intercourse isn’t the most reliable pathway for female orgasm anyway. So, rather than feeling pressured to maintain their erection and prolong penetration for longer in order to bring a woman to orgasm, men can redirect their efforts to clitoral focused activities and satisfy women regardless. If more men realized the pleasure they could give women through their mouths and fingers alone, they’d relax and enjoy the opportunity to expand their repertoire. When intercourse is no longer the main event but rather one option available among many pleasurable activities, suddenly, performance pressure for men significantly recedes.

With sex, like many other things, it seems that timing is everything. And a ladies first approach, is one that capitalizes on the differences in male and female physiology in the most logical, mutually satisfying way.

Up Next: Solo Sex: The Power of Owning Your Orgasm!

*I want to be clear that my intention with these articles is not to imply that orgasm is the ultimate goal of sex or put any pressure on women to have orgasms. In my view, orgasm isn’t the goal of sex but rather mutual pleasure. Instead, my goal with this series is simply to encourage a context where female orgasm is more viable and accessible and placed in equal importance as male orgasm.

The Female Orgasm Gap Part 2: Why Aren’t We Talking About Female Erections?

In order to close the orgasm gap, it's important to understand what contributes to it. In this series of posts, I’ll be exploring the key barriers that allow the female orgasm gap to persist, followed by proposed solutions. For the first two posts in the series, click here and here.

Sex, like eating, is a natural biological impulse. But the way it’s practiced is a learned phenomenon, highly influenced by the culture it exists in.  For this reason, it’s important to frame the orgasm gap not as an individual problem but rather to investigate what in our sexual culture contributes to its persistence.

One contribution to the persistence of the female orgasm gap is the shocking lack of knowledge about female genital anatomy and physiology. It wasn’t until 1998 that Dr. Helen O’Connell, an Australian urologist, described the anatomy of the female clitoris, including its network of pleasure-inducing nerves. This new, more complete view is slowly trickling down into medical textbooks and gaining traction in popular knowledge. In 2009, Dr. Dr. Odile Buisson and Dr. Pierre Foldès conducted the first complete 3-D sonography of an erect female clitoris, which further educated us to the true size of women’s internal sexual anatomy (more here ).

While we are finally clear on the anatomical structure of the clitoris, it important to also consider the physiology, which is even less commonly discussed – in particular, the female erection. The conversation around female arousal and readiness for intercourse still focuses almost exclusively on vaginal lubrication while ignoring the female erection.

SOLUTION #2: Let’s update our knowledge of female physiology and prioritize female erections.

Surprisingly little is understood about the importance of female erections in female pleasure. It may come as a surprise to learn that women possess the same amount of erectile tissue as men (it’s just internal). A woman’s erectile network is vast and comprised of the entire clitoris, the vestibular bulbs (a.k.a. clitoral bulbs), the urethral sponge and the perineal sponge (for a diagram visit the brilliant sex educator, Sheri Winston’s site). When fully engorged or erect, these tissues surround the vagina, making it both snug and expandable, creating an optimal climate for penetration. When a woman is fully (or at least partially) engorged, penetration is far more pleasurable as her body is prepared.

It is widely understood that attempting penetration before a man is erect is difficult if not impossible. Yet women’s genital erection, which happens to be internal, is ignored despite being equally important to their sexual function and pleasure. For maximum mutual pleasure, it’s key to wait until a woman is erect before entering her. Marcia Douglass and Lisa Douglass, social scientists and authors of The Sex You Want: A Lovers’ Guide to Women’s Sexual Pleasure, refer to penetration without a female erection as premature intercourse. According to the authors, “Intercourse without [female] erection can feel about as exciting to a woman as inserting a tampon. Worse, it can make a woman feel like a mere vehicle of a man’s pleasure, or even as if she is having sex against her will.”  When the erectile network that surrounds the vagina is activated, the vaginal walls are sensitized and prepared, making intercourse far more comfortable and pleasurable.

For maximum pleasure for both partners, let’s make it the norm to minimize premature intercourse. The way to make penetration mutually pleasurable is to wait until a woman’s erectile network is fully engorged prior to intercourse. And – surprise, surprise – the best way to engage a women’s erectile tissues is through clitoral stimulation, which leads to engorgement of the clitoral legs and bulbs. (To engage the full erectile network, also focus on stimulating the urethral sponge, which can be accessed through the anterior wall of the vagina a.k.a. “the g-spot”, and the perineal sponge, which can be stimulated through the posterior wall of the vagina or anus).  With adequate clitoral stimulation, a woman will have a distinct “hard-on” as the clitoral bulbs engorge, forming a tumescent cuff around the vaginal opening. You can tell a woman is erect when her genitals take on a flushed look, and her labia and perineum swell. The vaginal opening will feel more snug as the erectile tissue puff up and press on the vaginal walls. Another clue is that her state of arousal will drastically heighten.

Let’s learn to identify a female erection and make it as important as a male’s erection; because if mutual pleasure is the goal, it is!

Next Up: Why a ladies first approach is best...

*I want to be clear that my intention with these articles is not to imply that orgasm is the ultimate goal of sex or put any pressure on women to have orgasms. In my view, orgasm isn’t the goal of sex but rather mutual pleasure. Instead, my goal with this series is simply to encourage a context where female orgasm is more viable and accessible and placed in equal importance as male orgasm.  

The Female Orgasm Gap Part 1: Rethinking Foreplay

In order to close the orgasm gap, it's important to understand what contributes to it. In this series of posts, I’ll be exploring the key barriers that allow the female orgasm gap to persist, followed by proposed solutions. In my first post, I introduced the details of the issue, so check it out here if you missed it. 

Sex, like eating, is a natural biological impulse. But the way it’s practiced is a learned phenomenon, highly influenced by the culture it exists in.  For this reason, it’s important to frame the orgasm gap not as an individual problem but rather to investigate what in our sexual culture contributes to its persistence. One of the main culprits is in the way sex is defined. Sex is synonymous with intercourse. In sex defined as penis-in-vagina intercourse (PVI), the woman’s clitoris receives only indirect stimulation for a large portion of the sexual encounter.

The acts that directly stimulate a woman’s clitoris—manual and oral contact--are typically relegated to foreplay, a period prior to the real show (PVI) and treated as an optional sideshow. This is largely because sex has been defined in terms of reproduction and male pleasure. This limited definition of sex leads to the misconception that female orgasm SHOULD come from penis-in-vagina intercourse. Yet, with a basic understanding of female anatomy, this is an unrealistic expectation.

We can blame some combination of porn/ movies/Freud/patriarchy for perpetuating this understanding. Most media depictions of heterosexual sex involve little or no foreplay but instead proceed quickly to penetration and the woman’s nearly immediate (typically loud) climax. These scenes show the women’s experience only from the outside observer’s viewpoint and imagination. Women may experience orgasm through intercourse as long as they have first become aroused and erect (yes, women’s clitoral tissues become erect just as men’s do) through direct clitoral stimulation. Yet, these depictions typically ignore the woman’s clitoris, perpetuating Freud’s view that a clitoral orgasm was an “infantile” phenomenon, and that mature women should aspire to the “vaginal orgasm”, meaning orgasm through genital intercourse without any direct clitoral stimulation.  

The result of this persistent narrative is that many women feel “broken” if they don’t orgasm during intercourse without understanding that PVI is an effective path to male pleasure because it directly stimulates a man’s clitoris (Yes, men have what is essentially a clitoris in the erectile tissues that run the length of the penis). Without clitoral stimulation, there is little wonder less than 25% of women say they climax from penetration alone. Yet PVI that ignores the woman’s clitoris persists as a synonym for sex itself.  

A related myth is that women take longer to orgasm than men. While this can be the case during sex that bypasses the parts of a woman’s anatomy that give her pleasure, this is certainly not a reflection of any inherent physiologic limitation. Both women and men have the capacity for orgasm; any difference is because the sexual culture pays little attention to women’s subjective pleasure. How women (and men) come to orgasm is something that is learned. If all a woman learns via the sexual culture is how men gain pleasure, she may face unnecessary obstacles to cultivating her own orgasmic capacity.

So, what to do? SOLUTION #1: RETHINKING FOREPLAY

Let’s finally do away with the word foreplay and bring the acts that most effectively help women climax to the main stage where they belong. It’s ridiculous that the sexual activities that most reliably bring women to orgasm are still known as “foreplay.” There is deeply sexist bias in the relegation of female-centric activities as optional precursors to the main event of intercourse.

A brief anatomy lesson helps guide us toward sexual activities that are more female-centric. A key concept is that, as mentioned above, women and men alike have a clitoris, though it is situated differently in the body. While men’s clitoris receives maximum stimulation during PVI, woman’s clitoris is mostly bypassed. Expecting a woman to orgasm just from penetration alone, is like a woman rubbing her clit against a man’s hip, occasionally bumping his penis in the process and wondering why it’s difficult for him to reach climax.

To make mutual pleasure a priority, let’s do away with with the very notion of foreplay. Marcia Douglass and Lisa Douglass, social scientists and authors of The Sex You Want: A Lovers’ Guide to Women’s Sexual Pleasure elaborate, “Sex without a man’s ejaculation is considered incomplete. Yet heterosexuals regularly leave out the woman’s clitoris and, as a consequence, her orgasm, and they still call it sex. In reinvented sex, “foreplay” would be forgotten, intercourse, optional, and manual and oral sex done to the woman’s satisfaction.”

We need a common dialogue to redefine heterosexual sex to be centered around mutual pleasure. Sex educator, writer and author of O Wow: Discovering Your Ultimate Orgasm, Jenny Block, offers tips for starting a conversation that sets the stage for requesting and redefining sex to be more female-centered. Try telling your partner “Penetration is not the main attraction for me. It’s not the main attraction for most women. It’s part of the menu but orgasm is easiest for me with manual and oral (or insert your personal taste here)”. This allows women to shift from seeing themselves as deficient or broken if they can’t orgasm easily from intercourse and start acknowledging that the way our culture defines sex is broken instead.

My next post will focus on updating our understanding of female anatomy and physiology, more specifically diving into female erection!

*I want to be clear that my intention with these articles is not to imply that orgasm is the ultimate goal of sex or put any pressure on women to have orgasms. In my view, orgasm isn’t the goal of sex but rather mutual pleasure. Instead, my goal with this series is simply to encourage a context where female orgasm is more viable and accessible and placed in equal importance as male orgasm.  

The Female Orgasm Gap and How To Close It: Introduction

Orgasm is a natural fount of pleasure; it is a birthright and a necessary ingredient to a healthy lifestyle. This powerful pleasure eludes many women because stubborn cultural barriers persist that make female orgasm more difficult and rare than it needs to be.

As a health coach, I partner with women to help them find greater health and happiness. One secret to improving health, I have found, is to simply focus on bodily pleasure. By attending to pleasure, a woman can set off a domino effect that leads to better health overall. When women prioritize pleasure in sex, i.e., orgasm, a similar cascade effect can occur. As a woman discovers the pleasure potential in her own body, food cravings decline and a negative body image falls away. For this reason, I believe the orgasm and pleasure gap are missing conversations in the women's health movement. Accordingly, I've taken a deep interest in examining the reasons behind the persistent female orgasm gap. In my research, I’ve found some fascinating (and often disturbing) statistics. At the same time, I’ve also come across several compelling ways women can expand sexual pleasure.

Research shows that 95 percent of men nearly always orgasm from intercourse while only about 25 percent of women do (statistic from Indiana University Professor of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine Dr. Elisabeth Lloyd). This is a staggering gap! For too long, many women have internalized this discrepancy, worrying that perhaps they are deficient or that something is lacking in their anatomical make-up. Yet, from a biological perspective women are exquisitely built for orgasm. The clitoris boasts 8000 nerve endings whose exclusive function is pleasure. Women also have the unique ability to have multiple orgasms with no refractory period. The truth is that our cultural construct of sexual norms were simply not built with female anatomy and pleasure in mind.

For several reasons, this blog series will focus on cispeople having heterosexual penis-in-vagina intercourse (PVI). Firstly, I work primarily with ciswomen. Secondly, the available research is mostly about cispeople engaging in this type of sex. Thirdly, of the available research, it is clear the biggest orgasm gap occurs with this demographic. The pleasure and sexual experiences of trans and queer women is an even less discussed topic facing similar cultural barriers of patriarchy and secrecy. An excellent perspective on this can be found here

Over the next month, I’ll post a series of articles exploring the key barriers that allow the orgasm gap to persist, followed by proposed solutions. My hope is that we can finally shift some of the cultural norms around sex that do not provide a supportive context for female pleasure.

Stay tuned!

What’s Underneath All the Noise? Reflections from Ten Days in Silence

Recently, I attended a ten-day silent meditation retreat. At a Vipassana retreat, your aren’t allowed access to books, journals, iPhones or even eye contact. The intention is to eliminate all external noise in order to create a conducive container for meditation.

Left to my own devices, I’m the type of gal that reads three books a week, listens to podcasts constantly, and compulsively checks social media. I knew this was going to be a challenge. My neurons were habituated to constant stimulation and the transition was rocky. On day three, I was sitting on a bench outside and a mosquito bit me. I was elated---finally some stimulation! On day four, I found myself laughing a little too loud at the nightly dharma talk, reaching desperately for some comedic relief. I read and re-read the course rulebook.  And, eventually, I gave up. I finally surrendered to my inability to control my sensory input and started tuning into my surroundings.

So, what was underneath my constant need for stimulation? Lots of boredom. Emotions: some pleasant, many not. A mind that is obsessively interested in replaying past memories (mainly regarding ex-boyfriends and even some reality TV episodes. Careful what you take in folks, it stays there.). And a persistent feeling of emptiness that I’ve all my life felt compelled to constantly fill with noise, busyness, and persistent stimulation. Pema Chodron talks about making contact with the fundamental slipperiness and mystery of our being, which has no fixed identity. She calls this place the fundamental “groundlessness” of being. This was the place I’d been running away from.

But, is this “groundlessness” to be feared? What compelled me to persistently run away from it? As I continued to sit with this groundless feeling in my meditations, I realized that it is extremely threatening to the part of me that believes I’m in control, the part of me that’s attached to a fixed identity, and prefers pleasure, and resists pain. Sound familiar to anyone else? These are evolutionary mechanisms our brains have evolved to protect us, so moving away from these instincts naturally brings up resistance. As I began to feel more comfortable with and even to befriend the sense of groundlessness, I found a newfound fearlessness arise. If I could stay with the discomfort long enough to notice that all my sensations were in constant transformation, I felt braver to sit with whatever arose. Also, as I was able to sit with the direct experience of groundlessness, there was, in fact, all the stimulation I could ever crave. Here, everything constantly arises and falls away. There is nothing stable in sight. Everything is always new.

Tuning into this constant flux, with neutrality and kindness, offers wisdom about the very nature of reality. Sit with this direct reality long enough and you may even make contact with that which is eternal and unchanging.

To experience the raw nature of reality for yourself, I’d highly recommend attending a course. They are free (donations accepted) and one of the best investments of time you will ever make. In a culture that is hyper-focused on the value of the mind through education and accumulation of knowledge, we are not given tools to understand the mind’s limitations and train it for liberation. Vipassana is Bootcamp for mind liberation. For more information visit: https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/index

Mindfulness + NEAT: 2 unexpected keys to finally getting enough exercise

Confession: I haven’t exercised regularly in a year. Sure, I’ll go to a yoga class here and there and sometimes will go on a really short jog, but I don’t adhere to a regular exercise regimen. And I don’t feel guilty about it. In fact, I feel pretty great! As an ex-collegiate competitive track and cross country athlete, I can’t say I feel grossly out of shape or that my figure has significantly changed since my college glory days. What’s inspiring my new movement perspective? Two things: the science of NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) and the mindfulness research of Ellen Langer. Let me explain.

In our culture, there is a prevalent myth: physical movement doesn’t contribute to your health and fitness unless it happens in a gym as “formal exercise”. Yet in cultures known as hot spots of longevity or health (check out Dan Buettner’s Blue Zones book for more), there is rarely an overt concept of exercise. Rather, movement is integrated into daily living as a necessary, utilitarian part of life—opposite of our sedentary or, at best, “actively sedentary” culture. The regular exercisers among us likely fall into the actively sedentary status: you get your daily recommended exercise but are mostly sedentary for the rest of the day. For example, someone who goes to the gym for 45 minutes in the morning but sits at a desk job the rest of the day. We now know this single bout of movement in a sea of sitting doesn’t cut it. Sobering new evidence shows higher amounts of daily sitting are associated with greater risk of all-cause mortality (even if you exercise). With new emphasis on the dangers of sitting for uninterrupted periods of time, scientistsare finally studying the importance of “smaller” forms of movement that break up long stretches of sedentarism throughout the day. In the literature, these smaller movements are known as Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or NEAT.

How would your daily life change if you knew reducing sitting and increasing NEAT might be more vital to your health than engaging in formal exercise? I’ll talk more about how to transform your movement routine at the end of this article.

Beyond NEAT, my other movement inspiration comes from the mindfulness researcher Ellen Langer. She concisely defines mindfulness as the simple act of actively noticing things resulting in increased health, competence, and happiness. Langer studies how our perceptions and beliefs (which can be changed with mindful awareness) directly impact our physiology. Her work quantifies the power of the mind-body connection by illustrating how our perception impacts everything from blood sugar levels, the aging process, and potentially cancer remission states. A powerful study she conducted with hotel maids tested the physiological impact of the perception of whether something “counted” as exercise. Initially, most of the hotel maids reported they didn’t exercise regularly. Langer took several measures of their fitness levels which concurred that most had the markers of a sedentary lifestyle. She and her colleagues then told half the maids that, in fact, their job duties, such as cleaning rooms, scrubbing toilets, and vacuuming, actually exceeded the surgeon general’s recommendation of a half-hour of physical activity daily. In other words, they were told their cleaning activities “counted” as exercise. The other half of the maids served as a control group. A month later, researchers retested the biomarkers (weight, blood pressure) of both groups. The control group’s markers had stayed the same, but the group that now believed themselves to be regular exercisers had lost weight and significantly reduced their blood pressure without changing their level of physical activity! For in-depth details on this study, check out this New York Times article.

So how can these two fascinating bodies of work improve your fitness routine?

First, radically expand your definition of exercise to include and prioritize NEAT: all-day, low-impact movement.This will minimize the harmful effects of sitting and allow you to meet your daily movement requirement more easefully.

Second, be mindful of the fact that all movement “counts as exercise”. This awareness means you’ll be more likely to take the stairs, change up your commute, and seize every opportunity to move. Plus, your belief in its effectiveness actually improves its measurable physiological benefits.

Want to revolutionize your exercise routine? Take these 4 steps.

1. Change your mindset to recognize all forms of movement count toward greater health and energy, not just “formal exercise”. Start seizing every opportunity to move, no matter how small, with the knowledge that it’s significantly contributing to your health. Challenge yourself to move as often as possible throughout your entire day.

2. Take movement breaks. To minimize the risk associated with extended periods of sitting, make sure you’re taking a movement break at least every 25 minutes. Set an alarm at first to solidify the habit. Or download an app like Move to remind you to take a movement break at regular intervals. Even just standing up and sitting back down has been shown to reduce damage. Everything counts!

3. Rethink furniture. At the very least, occasionally sit on the floor. If you’re feeling hardcore, consider getting rid of some of your furniture, forcing you to floor sit. Use bolsters and pillows to make it comfortable. Floor sitting basically allows you to get the benefits of a yoga class (diverse joint configurations, stretching and shifting) while just hanging out. When you get up off the floor, try to do it using as little support as possible. It turns out the ability to get up and down off the floor without using your hands, arms, or knees to help boost you is a pretty accurate predictor of life expectancy. Work this skill daily by conscious floor sitting, paying particular attention to working on the ability to spring up and down without support. Check out Katy Bowman’s furniture-free home or this badass guide to going furniture free for inspiration.

4. Walk a lot! Measuring your steps is one of the best ways to encourage all-day movement. Walking is the key movement our bodies evolved to do, and there are myriad consequences when we don’t get our daily intake of walking. Aim for at least 10,000 steps a day. If you’re not already measuring your steps via your iPhone or pedometer, I can’t recommend this highly enough. For a free option, I love the app Moves.

Take a look at your daily routines. How can you add more simple movements throughout your day? Can you change your environment to ensure you’ll move more? Can you rework your perception to acknowledge that any mini-movements throughout your day truly count? With a little bit of awareness and planning, you can increase the effectiveness of your daily life and decrease the risks of common behavior. Happy moving!!

The Struggles of a Tech-Addicted Meditator

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

 -Simone Weil

My red flag moment was when I found myself scrolling through my iPhone on my meditation pillow. In a laughable yet not uncommon moment my phone worship became undeniable. Through this daily meditation practice, I was committing to training my attention each morning. Yet I also had the habit of checking my phone immediately after my sit, often before I had even left my cushion. As proud as I was of my dedication to my morning practice, it became clear that the remainder of my days often felt like one big training in the art of distraction.

I became interested in attention largely because of the personal consequences I’ve noticed as it’s diminished. With the ubiquity of smartphones and social apps, I’ve noticed my attention span waning (and let’s be honest--mine wasn’t top notch to begin with). A few examples include difficulty finishing books, feeling the need to multitask during movies, and most disturbingly, decreased tolerance for “slow talkers” and lulls in conversation. When you’re used to the predictable and always entertaining input from a device the mysterious, often meandering process of human connection can feel too risky, time-consuming and even boring. Anyone who’s ever attempted a meaningful conversation with someone more interested in their instagram feed knows how damaging this distraction can be.

My movement teacher Katy Bowman teaches that one hour of exercise each day doesn’t offset 23 hours of being sedentary. We are evolved to move with frequency throughout the day and this movement frequency is arguably more important to health than one intense bout of physical activity. I wanted to apply this logic to my meditation practice. A brief attention training in the morning is wonderful, but couldn’t possibly be offsetting the massive splintering of my attention the rest of the day. Perhaps some of my efforts would be better spent reorganizing my 23 1/2 hours to be less of a worship of distraction, which means seriously examining my current relationship with technology.

If our attention is our most valuable and increasingly rare resource, it makes sense to be intentional about how we interact with the devices that strip it of its acuity. And the blame cannot be entirely on those of us who find ourselves unable to control our digital addictions. Some of the brightest minds at the most prestigious companies (Facebook ahem) use the most effective behavioral strategies to keep you clicking, scrolling and liking. Yet, rejecting technology completely is a luxury that many of us cannot afford.These tools can enhance the ability to pursue things like entrepreneurship, education and social connection. In our increasingly tech-enabled world, resistance can seem futile. Yet going with the flow and keeping up with societal norms does not ensure a healthful relationship with our gadgets. Like many other health behaviors, it seems you must deviate outside the cultural norm to protect your health and happiness.

So, in my quest to confront my techaddiction I’ve been experimenting with ways to still engage with technology but set stronger boundaries that prioritize what’s actually important in my life---things like quality of attention, presence and relationships. I honestly had low expectations for my compliance with this new strategy but it’s been surprisingly easy once I started feeling the benefits. Here are some things I’ve been experimenting with.

• Set rules about when I turn my phone on and off each day. I do a digital sunset at the same time each night and don’t turn my phone on in the morning until after my meditation practice. This has drastically improved the quality of my sleep and increased the consistency of my meditation practice. This is coming from someone who used to look at my phone first thing after waking up! Change is possible!

• Beware of the iPhone effect. Research has shown that keeping your mobile device in sight during a conversation significantly lowers empathy level and the quality of conversation. Don’t leave your phone out if you’re talking to someone. This is an easy switch that can significantly improve your relationships.

• Take your most addictive social apps off your phone--- it’s amazing how boring your phone quickly becomes. Or as a compromise try keeping those apps on the last page of your iPhone so you have to scroll for a bit to open it. This gives your slow brain and willpower some time to kick in and decide against opening the sites. I took Facebook and Instagram off my phone. I’m not ready to quit Instagram all together and can’t easily post via my laptop so I now allow myself to re-download the app one day a week if I want to make a post. A bit clunky but worth the sense of freedom I’ve felt.

• Have phone free blocks where you leave your phone at home or hide your device for periods of time.

• Check out these additional resources for further inspiration and ideas on living a less distracted and deeper life. The books Deep Work by Cal Newport and The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. A couple quick videos--- Kelly McGonigal’s advice for breaking tech addiction (2 min video) and  Brian Johnson on the digital sunset . Also, Dallas Hartwig's More Social, Less Media Movement. 

Surprisingly quickly my phone has lost its allure. You can only check for a text or email so many times before it gets boring. I knew that something had shifted when I left my phone at home and I didn’t notice for a couple hours. A month ago that would have been unthinkable. The quality of my relationships has increased and my attention feels stronger. Slowly my tolerance for boredom and silent moments has improved. I even took a nap the other day as I couldn’t turn to Instagram scrolling as my go-to way to relax. The only drawback I’ve noticed so far is the pain of looking around, finally ready to connect, only to notice how distracted most people are.

Sexy Wellness Fads: Inspiration or Distraction?

On a bitter cold night in rural Wisconsin, I experienced one of the most nourishing meals of my life. I had been taking a break from my whirlwind NYC lifestyle, living with my folks in hopes of regaining some vitality before moving back to one of the coasts. This respite meant spending more time with my parents than any healthy, self-reliant adult probably should. As such, I found myself sitting down for a meal with two of their close friends, a potter and a professional gardener whose lifestyles epitomized the most aspirational qualities of the “back to the land” movement of the ‘70s.  In their sprawling backyard was a brick oven, pottery kiln, and a remodeled 19th century schoolhouse that now functioned as a gathering for yoga, zen meditation, and community art events. Despite the frigid cold they had miraculously just harvested the last vegetables from their greenhouse which contributed to our dinner. This particular meal started with traditional Italian fermented eggplants, fatty olives, hard sourdough, aged cheeses, and grass fed butter. Wine was poured and conversation flowed as we caught up on each other’s lives. Soon the poached carrots with honey and ginger arrived, as well as a big green salad with shallot vinaigrette. Fillets of venison, hunted by their son earlier in the season, eventually arrived at my plate. I was struck by how nourished I felt by this simple meal. The experience of slowly enjoying whole foods cooked to their highest potential, eaten in a warm communal setting, left me feeling deeply healthy and alive.

When I came back to NYC, I was inspired to bring this culinary enthusiasm back with me. Growing up with hippy parents who emphasized macrobiotic health foods and massive amounts of vitamins left me with an insatiable appetite for the latest health trends. As a budding wellness entrepreneur in the New York City scene, I am inundated and often inspired by the flashy, pristine Instagram feeds of my fellow wellness warriors. While I’ve always loved to cook, I’ve tended to follow health trends rather than focus on culinary pleasures. Feeling inspired by my winter meal in Wisconsin, my boyfriend and I started cooking more in the Alice Waters and Tamar Adler vein. This style emphasizes whole foods-based, pleasure-oriented eating in which health is not the emphasis but rather a natural byproduct. Health arises from using local, fresh ingredients that lead to optimal sensory pleasure. The result is meals that intuitively contain the right combination of nutrients - without the often reductionist approval of movements in modern nutrition.

One night, we sat down for big bowls of homemade ribollita stew. We’d been saving the crusty, stale ends of our sourdough for weeks. We mixed the bread with big tomatoes, homemade chicken stock, bunches of kale, grated Parmesan, dollops of olive oil and cracked pepper. This meal felt indulgent, like a slight deviation from our usual emphasis on healthy eating. No this was not a vegetable curry, kale salad, or chia pudding. Yet, I looked down and realized that within this one bowl lived an amalgamation of health trends that were masked by the delicious full-bodied flavor. This bowl provided the much touted benefits of the fermentation movement with the sourdough bread and aged cheese. We also were inadvertently following the latest dietary trends emphasizing healthy fats with the spoonfuls of olive oil, bone broth and parmesan. It offered the healing power of herbs through the oregano and parsley and our phytonutrient content was maximized through the variety of veggies. It even featured the prom king of all vegetables kale. Yet, the meal felt like it wasn’t fit for a self-congratulatory wellness Instagram post, and I didn’t even register it as a meal that was a net positive contribution to my health. What was causing this disconnect?  

I have the same feeling toward the morning walk ritual I’ve started. Twice a week I meet a friend at an ungodly time and we walk together. Sometimes, we run errands or end up at the grocery store and carry our groceries homes. Despite our frequent jokes that we have officially become our mothers, this ritual of waking up, bathing our cells with sunlight while moving our bodies is already providing huge benefits. Yet, this walk is by no means glamorous in the glitzy world of wellness and pales in comparison to something hardcore and photogenic like the latest bootcamp class.

In a city that makes large profits by generating ever new “wellness status symbols,” simple tried-and-true healthy living seems passé and maybe even a little lazy. Novel, slightly inaccessible trends that make for sparkly Instagram feeds often require isolating one tiny aspect of well-being and repackaging it to seem special. With each new variation we wonder if this is the magic bullet we’re seeking. Think green juices, the latest fitness trend,be it Barre or SoulCycle, or meditating at a fancy loft space filled with dazzling crystals and fashion It girls. Admittedly I love and have participated in all of these things, but I invite us also to remember that health can exist in subtle ways that fit into our lives in more natural and less flashy ways.

I propose that cultivating true health might begin more simply and slowly then we’re often told. Maybe you begin cooking delicious recipes based on wisdom from old culinary traditions rather than from the latest health fads. And yes, maybe kale will even slip into the recipe without you noticing. Or, perhaps rather than trying the latest powder or potion to optimize your health, you could commit to something basic, profound, and unsexy like shutting off your iPhone and getting more sleep. Nonetheless, these fun, sexy wellness fads may have a place in it all; may they exist more like a dessert, something that’s inspiring and nice to have but not essential to the success of the nourishing meal.

What are some ways you cultivate health that you may have dismissed or undervalued in the current climate of flashy wellness trends?

3 Life Changing Habits

This season I’m going to suggest you upgrade your spring cleaning regimen. I am not one to diminish the power of a de-cluttering session to create massive shifts in your well-being. Anyone who has ever dumped the entire contents of their closet on the floor and given garbage bags of clothes away knows this power intimately. But what I am going to suggest is that this spring you go one layer deeper. This season, while you spring clean, also focus on intentionally reorganizing your living space into a microenvironment that subtly shifts your behavior so you can achieve your health goals with ease and sustainability. Yes, I basically want your environment to trick you into being a healthy, happy person.

As a health coach, I am fascinated by human behavior and what facilitates lasting, behavior change. Almost every patient I’ve worked with has a genuine desire to be healthy and happy and also, seems to have about the same five health goals. They even know what they need to do to achieve those goals. Yet, only a fraction of them seem to be able to create the change they desire despite being motivated, intelligent people with lots of integrity. What gives?

No, I have not come to the conclusion that we are all just lazy and dishonest. As we learn more about human behavior, it appears we outsource a lot of our decision-making and behavior cues to external factors, rendering a large percentage of our decision making unconscious. Our brains seem to get decision fatigue rather quickly, so in order to save our brainpower for the really vital decisions, we form neural networks that ingrain daily decisions into habits that occur mostly on autopilot. Hence, willpower, while a nice idea, ends up being overrated and largely unreliable.

Habits are made up of a cue—routine and reward. Traditionally, we emphasize going straight to changing the routine with less emphasis on reworking the cue or replacing the reward. Without getting overly technical, a lot of exciting research is emerging that shows a lot of our behavior cues are housed in our external environment. It appears when we change our environment, we change our behavior with relative ease (For more information check out the recent NPR article on heroin addiction and Vietnam soldiers.) You can harness this phenomenon in your own home to achieve some of the most common and evasive health goals.

Here are my top three tips in order to make your home one big, health-inducing cue!

1. Create a designated meditation area in your home
The desire to sustain a regular meditation practice is one of the most common health goals people come to me with. In our fast paced world, it is increasingly vital to actively pursue relaxation and contemplation to cultivate healthy brains, nervous systems, and hearts (both physically and emotionally). In the health sphere, meditation continues to crop up as the latest panacea for our physical, mental, and esoteric ailments. How can our environments support building a sustainable meditation practice?
My number one tip is designating a location in your home as your meditation area (or corner or window). Start by pondering what kind of environment will seduce you into sitting down to practice. Don’t worry too much about size here. Placing a candle in a windowsill or the corner of a room counts. Put things that you love and that inspire you there. Keep it fresh and updated. Then meditate every day for about a month in that spot (even if just three minutes). By the end of this time period, you should have the start of a strong meditation habit with the help of this physical cue!

2. Hide your devices
These days, reducing screen time is something many of us strive to do. Despite acknowledging that our increase in screen time contributes to feelings of isolation and disconnection, many still feel powerless over our usage. While the rampant, nearly constant use of technology may feel inevitable and out of our control, we benefit enormously when we bring an element of conscious choice back to our tech habits. This allows us to make empowered decisions about how we’d like to engage with technology so it fosters intimacy and connection, rather than detracts from it.

To get a hold of your technological addictions, I recommend implementing a digital sunset at least one hour before you’d like to go to bed. To structure this ritual within your home environment, the concept of out of sight, out of mind is vital. Most of us don’t have that much control over our addiction to technology and need a physical barrier in order to not be lured back in. Designate a “hiding” spot for your devices. For phones, iPods and iPads, I suggest having a designated drawer or basket you put them in. For TVs and computers, cover them with a blanket. Next, pick a digital sunset time each day and stick to it.   To make this easier, I recommend linking this ritual to something you already do each day (this powerful technique is known as habit stacking). For example, shut down and hide your devices right after dinner or right before you brush your teeth. For extra credit, hide your devices when you eat as well.

Finally, focus on consciously replacing the “reward” you get from engaging with your beloved devices with something that feels like a worthy replacement. Perhaps this is your time to pursue something creative. Maybe it’s when you get to connect more deeply with your partner, read the stack of novels you’ve been meaning to get to, or a chance to get really into taking bubble baths. If nothing else, this habit will do wonders for your sleep as the light of screens impact our circadian rhythms by suppressing the release of the sleep promoting hormone melatonin.

3. Don’t bring unhealthy food into your home. If you do, hide it
This may seem a little extreme but if you are serious about changing your diet, this massively increases your odds of success. We encounter plenty of unhealthy food temptations in our daily lives operating in the birthplace of SAD, the notoriously awful and embarrassing Standard American Diet. If your home is a clean food zone, you will likely reach some semblance of balance. When healthy food is what’s most readily available and easily accessible, you’ll eat healthy foods. Seems like kind of a no-brainer but we often forget to harness this fact.  For example, when Google changed up their cafeteria so water and healthy beverages were at eye level and soda stored below—soda consumption dropped by 7 percent and water consumption increased by 47 percent. In other words, the default, easy choice is generally what we pick, so work this to your advantage!

Let’s come back to reward replacement.   If you have developed a habit of coming home and eating Ben and Jerry’s every night to activate your pleasure centers after a long day, make sure you are replacing it with a reasonable substitute that lights up the reward center at least a little bit. If I you try to go from eating Ben and Jerry’s every night to just drinking water, you better believe you’re going to find yourself at the nearest bodega buying more ice cream. Replacement of the reward is key as you build healthier habits because no one responds well to having something taken away without a decent replacement (including our brains!). You may be wondering, WTF could replace Ben and Jerry’s? Good question. Answer: Nothing! But you might try something like dark chocolate (70 percent or above for less sugar and more antioxidants), chocolate mousse made with bananas or tofu, coconut milk ice cream or fresh fruit.

5 Stress Busting Tips for a Happier, Saner Freelance Life

Many people transition into freelancing hoping for a calmer lifestyle without necessarily anticipating the host of new stressors freelancers commonly face: the feast and famine style of work, financial stresses, tough clients and social isolation.

Not surprisingly, anxiety and stress are some of the most common concerns we see at the Freelancers Medical, and it can be incredibly taxing on your health and mental wellbeing. If you’re not quite ready to take up a serious meditation practice or go on a permanent vacation, where can a stressed out freelancer turn?

Here are some our top stress busters:

1. Stop stressin’ about your stress!

HUH? Watch this TED talk for all the details. If you are too busy to spend 15 minutes watching, here’s the take away:

While we’re all likely very familiar (and slightly nauseated) with hearing all the vast benefits associated with positive thinking and reframing, this theory takes it a step further, postulating that your relationship with the stress in your life determines whether or not it negatively impacts you on a physiological level.

Or in slightly different words, we know that stress is a contributing factor to most major chronic illnesses but its impact stress has on your body may depend more on the way you frame it than the amount you experience in your life.

The take away? Accept that stress is always going to be a part of your life and rather than demonize it or fear it, make stress your friend. Think of it as a vitalizing force that allows you to get the most from life and energizes your body to take on the task at hand. This one simple reframe may save you from a host of stress related illnesses.

2. Go hang out with your friends

The stress response is inextricably linked to your survival instinct, thus stress can trigger some freaky thoughts about our mortality and make us feel pretty damn vulnerable. If you use stress as motivation to reach out for social connection and support rather than isolate, this can serve as a protective factor for some of chronic stresses scarier health outcomes.

Bottom line: When we use stress as motivation to reach out to others for support and nurture our social connections, stressful times won’t negatively impact your health as much. Knowing this, make an effort to use your stress as an excuse to connect with others rather than hiding away in a cave until it passes.

3. Set Boundaries

Blurred Lines doesn’t just refer to the slightly misogynistic song of the summer, it also aptly describes one of biggest challenges freelancers face.

Many freelancers lack the traditional office hours and physical office space that inherently provide some clear boundaries between work and the rest of existence. Without these, lines can get a little blurry. This can lead to chronic stress as it may feel as if you’re never fully working and never fully relaxing. This is incredibly taxing on the nervous system, which needs moments of full relaxation and play in order to function best.* Because of this it’s necessary to come up with your own working set of boundaries that helps you truly switch out of work mode, for at least a little time every day.*

This may look like setting “work hours” or having areas in your home that are “work free zones”. At the very least schedule some down time and force yourself to stick to it. For some, this may look like scheduling a coffee date with a friend and sticking to it as if it’s an important work meeting. For others, this may mean catching up on a couple of episodes of Scandal. If you need extra motivation, remember that some of the world’s greatest geniuses had their best ideas when they weren’t working. See true down time as a mandatory part of your overall productivity plan.

4. Hug a tree

The stress reducing powers of Gaia are fairly astonishing. Turns out we humans have evolved to function most optimally when we spend parts of our existence outside. We’ve all probably had the experience of the soothing effects of a hike in the woods or a trip to your favorite local park, but the evidence is in, nature rocks!

Don’t fear, urban dwellers, even just looking out a window at a tree has been shown to improve health and stress levels. As it turns out being in nature has a restorative effect on our brains and our ability to focus, as well as lowering our heart rates and increasing our immune function. If you can’t spend extended time out of the concrete jungle, make sure you are frequently visiting your local park or being mindful of all the amazing, resilient trees and plants growing along the sidewalk as you trek around the city. For more details on why nature is amazing and relaxing click here.

5. Make your exhale longer than your inhale -- repeat a few times each day

Your yogi friends are on to something…the breath truly is your greatest tool to managing your stress and anxiety.

Yet, it’s not always realistic that you’ll spend 30 minutes in the lotus position each day (if you do, serious props), but never fear, eliciting the relaxation response is simple. You can trick your stressed out body and mind into believing you are a Zen master by simply making your exhale longer than your inhale. This cues the beloved parasympathetic response (“rest and digest”), which automatically lowers your stress hormones, leaving you feeling calmer.

Even just three breaths will make a difference. I recommend making your exhale twice as long as your inhale. For example, inhale for the count of 2, pause, exhale for the count of 4. If you prefer a deeper breath, try inhaling for 4, noticing the pause, then exhaling for 8. Do this for a few breaths and reclaim your sense of calm as many times as you need to each day.

Post image source here.

Why Your Belly Needs Bacteria

Originally posted for the Freelancer's Union Blog. 

 

What if I told you that within the freelance population, a larger, unseen community exists?

While you can’t network with this community, they may play a vital role in supporting a healthy freelance lifestyle. I’m talking about the microbiome, made up of the trillions of microorganisms that coexist within us.

The concept of trillions of microorganisms living on and in us, contributing to things like metabolism, mood and GI health is fascinating if not a little creepy. These organisms reside on any surface of the body exposed to the outside world (think the GI and urogenital tract, nasal and lung passages and the skin). With our cellular composition coming in it at 10:1, microbial to human, it also makes you question the commonly held notion of “self” but I’ll save that for another, more esoteric post.

I’ve been following the research on the microbiome with growing excitement. Promising studies connecting a suboptimal microbiome to illnesses like rheumatoid arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome, eczema and even anxiety continue to emerge. There’s even some pretty good evidence that antibiotics impact on our flora may be a key contributor to the obesity epidemic. While the research is fascinating, it’s still nascent and I’m waiting for a reputable scientific body to release practical guidelines on how to optimize my composition of bugs for glowing health and a calm, happy mood. While waiting for the research to unfold, I’m going to hedge my bets on the following as some low risk ways to cultivate a healthy microbial ecosystem:

• Avoid the standard American diet. It appears a high fat, high sugar and low fiber diets negatively impact your microbiome.
• Eat fiber and prebiotics. Prebiotics are basically the food (non-digestible carbs) that the good bacteria in your GI tract eat and need to thrive. Read: eat vegetables and foods like whole grains, banana, onions, garlic, honey, artichokes and asparagus which seem to be some of the best sources of prebiotics.
• Be delivered vaginally and breast-fed. OK OK, obviously out of your control and as someone who doesn’t find pre-deterministic notions regarding health outcomes particularly empowering, I wouldn’t fret much if you were delivered via C-section. But, if your mom had a vaginal birth it appears you might have a head start in the microbiome game. Same with breast milk, which has key microbes for immune development that you may miss out with just formula.
• Take a probiotic supplement or better yet incorporate fermented foods into your diet like sauerkraut, kimchi and live-culture dairy products like yogurt (no added sugar) and kefir. As the research on probiotics and supplementation in general is mixed and the supplement industry under-regulated, I like to lean towards food sources instead. Get your mason jars ready, folks! Fermentation may be your new best friend.
• Only take antibiotics when necessary and if you do, dose yourself with probiotics after. This is a nice chart on when to avoid antibiotics. Not all medical providers follow this yet so it’s good to information to have in order to know if you’re being prescribed something unnecessarily.
• Avoid the overuse of antibacterial soaps and cleansers. These can strip your skin of good bacteria. If you want to learn more about the burgeoning research on this and its implications for the future of the beauty industry , read this marathon of an article.

All this microbiome research has inspired me to combine my love of cooking, health and the microbiome, so I’m diving into my first fermentation project (failed attempts at making kombucha aside). Stay tuned for part 2: Adventures with sauerkraut. If you like Portlandia, I’m sure you’ll enjoy mocking this upcoming post….