The Medicine We Need Now

We are living through a time of enormous personal and collective change. Most of us are chronically jammed in fight, flight, or freeze, moving through our days with nervous systems stretched thin. And as U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy reminds us, the antidote isn’t found in isolation — it’s in Social Prescription: deepening relationships, serving our communities, and rebuilding the threads of belonging that make us human.

This is the true medicine of our time. Nature is one of its most accessible entry points.

A Stanford study shows that you can walk through nature deeply stuck in rumination — the mental looping that feeds depression — or you can re-learn (creating new neural pathways) by practicing slowing down to notice beauty, and open to the aliveness within and all around you. That shift is the essence of biophilia: remembering that we are designed to feel connected to the living world.

My own daily walks to my favorite beach have become a lifeline. Each visit is a practice in simply noticing: the huge winter waves, the surprising mix of shells and critters washing ashore, the smells of the tide, the negative ions and fresh sea air that hover over these unseasonably warm coastal days. The contrast of cool sand beneath me and warm sun on my skin works like a reset button.

My nature mandalas have also become an anchoring ritual — a way the land helps settle me down. And each time I leave, I pick up trash as a quiet thank you to the place that cares for me. Mavericks is one of my soul’s homes, and lately it feels like medicine. I’m hoping to obtain a permit so I can bring people here to experience the beauty and the practices that have been so healing for me.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Halbert L. Dunn’s distinctions between health (a state of sick or not), wellness (the things we do to support health), and well-being — the felt sense of aliveness, connection, and vitality. That’s biophilia again: the experience of feeling fully alive in relationship with the living world.

Maverick's Mandala

My workshops and retreats are all designed to help people access their own version of that aliveness. And the small-group connection points we cultivate are a huge part of the medicine. We are forgetting that to thrive, we must feel connected — to ourselves, to each other, and to the land beneath our feet.

Look around you.Make a change in your community.Volunteer. Tend to your relationships. Build belonging.

If we want to thrive during immense change, we need to focus more regularly on restoration and recovery from daily stress. This will benefit not only the quality of our lives, but will directly impact the people we care about most and help keep our planet alive too. Come out to Hidden Villa this winter and practice forest therapy with me or bring your team for. a day retreat and we will work out all of the tech stress that has landed in your body.