Full Capacity Living… Where the Conversation Begins… There’s a question I ask every client in our first meeting together. I ask about spirituality. And I ask it as wide open as I know how, because the word means something different to almost everyone who hears it. For some people, spirituality is the feeling of standing at the edge of the ocean or under a canopy of old trees and sensing, unmistakably, that they are part of something larger than themselves. For others, it’s the rhythm and…

Full Capacity Living… “You’d never know I exercise as much as I do” That’s what a client of mine used to say. She came to me with weight gain, mood swings, poor sleep, and a general flatness about life. She was doing everything “right” — eating healthy (even when her family teased her for it, especially for skipping the wine), and pushing through intense cardio nearly every day. And still gaining weight. Still snapping at people she loved. Still feeling like she wasn’t handling life the way…

Full Capacity Living… Rowing on Lake Erie…6/29/26 There’s growing buzz around microdosing psilocybin and for good reason. Researchers are finding that sub-perceptual doses can interrupt the brain’s default mode network, the system responsible for the looping, self-referential thoughts that keep us stuck in who we think we are. When that network quiets, even briefly, something opens. We see ourselves differently. New possibilities emerge. The stories we’ve been telling about our own limits…

Full Capacity Living… Friends hiking in Sedona, Az. We’re More Connected Than Ever — And More Lonely On the quiet medicine of small, unhurried moments Last week, my friend took me to lunch for my birthday. We don’t do this often enough, and as we sat across from each other — no phones, no rushing to the next thing — it brought back a conversation we’d had just a few weeks earlier when I dropped something off at her house and ended up staying to chat for nearly an hour. Both times, we left…

Full Capacity Living… What’s Really in Your Sunscreen? How to Protect Your Skin and Your Health This Summer Tuesday Wellness Edition • Summer 2025 Summer is here and so is the annual ritual of reaching for sunscreen before a day in the sun. Protecting your skin from UV damage is genuinely important. But here’s a question most of us have never asked: Is the sunscreen you’re slathering on every day actually safe? The answer, according to growing scientific evidence and years of research by…

Full Capacity Living… You Didn’t Do This to Yourself A note on blame, body trust, and the way we talk about healing If you’ve ever sat across from a practitioner in the world of functional or lifestyle medicine — or spent time reading about gut health, autoimmune conditions, migraines, or chronic illness — you may have walked away with a quiet, uncomfortable feeling underneath all the hopeful information. A feeling that sounds something like: If I had just eaten better, managed my stress,…

Full Capacity Living… Full Capacity Living Your Air Fryer Guide — Healthy, Simple & Delicious Week of May 26, 2026 This week we’re dedicating the entire newsletter to one of the most versatile tools in a healthy kitchen: the air fryer. We’ll walk through what you actually need to know about safety (including whether parchment paper is a good idea — spoiler: it is), share some of our favorite things to toss in the basket, and feature a reader-tested recipe that works beautifully in the air…

Full Capacity Living… Women’s health · Perimenopause/Menopause The Body That Forgot How to Rest On weight, hormones, and what we’ve been taught to ignore You’re eating well. You’re lifting weights. You’ve cut back on the long cardio sessions. Your labs look reasonable. And yet your body keeps holding on, or gaining. If this sounds familiar, the missing piece probably isn’t what you’re doing. It’s what your nervous system still believes about the world. Why the math stops working…

Full Capacity Living… ROOT & RISETUESDAY LETTER — MAY 2026 The Quiet Work of Coming Home to Yourself On rediscovering who you were before the world told you who to be—and the deeper layer of healing I’m beginning to share, including the thoughtful use of plant medicine. __________________ A subtle restlessness lives in so many of us these days—a sense of unfinished change. It’s not always loud or obvious. Often, it’s a quiet, persistent feeling that something isn’t quite aligned. Maybe life…

Small consistent practices within your day make a significant difference to how your body handles daily stressors.

Full Capacity Living… You’ve Been Eating Vegetables. But Are You Getting Their Nutrients? Full Capacity Living | Tuesday Edition It turns out, I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. My grocery cart has always been loaded with vegetables and fresh fruit — berries, greens, radishes, even kohlrabi. I thought I had the produce aisle figured out. Then I read Eating on the Wild Side by Jo Robinson, and while I was already a fan of the basics, it was the subtleties that shifted things for me….

Discover eco-friendly lawn care tips, natural pest control strategies, and the surprising benefits of dandelions—while reducing your family’s exposure

Full Capacity Living… A favorite mural in a tunnel leading to the Pacific Ocean..Crystal Cove My work in health and wellness started as a medical speech-language pathologist, I’ve spent decades listening—not just to what people say, but how they say it. The patterns, the tone, the underlying meaning. And what I’ve come to understand, combining my work as a therapist and functional medicine is this: Language doesn’t just reflect how we think—it shapes how our body functions. The Conversation…

Full Capacity Living… Early morning owl at Chapin Forest What Your Brain Has Been Trying to Tell You About Sleep Yesterday morning on my hike, I came across a magnificent owl—alert, steady, completely in its element. It struck me how often we borrow the term “night owl” to describe ourselves… without ever questioning whether it’s actually true. Because here’s the reality I see every day in my work: Many of us aren’t natural night owls.We’re just running on a wired, overstimulated brain that…

Why do I feel better on vacation and how to recreate that at home…

Why Smart, Disciplined People Lose Their Best Habits Under Pressure…and how this connects with competitive rowing.

Electrolytes: Helpful Tool or Overhyped Habit? How to discern the need…

Kindness and a super seed nut butter recipe…

Full Capacity Living… This started with a conversation about stale air with my niece… And the potential for mold in our homes. About how tightly we seal our homes all winter — insulation, weather stripping, closed windows for months — and what that means for the air we’re breathing every day. That curiosity led me to research a Nordic practice. In Sweden it’s called vädra, and in Germany Stosslüften, or “shock ventilation.” Even in the middle of winter, they open doors and windows on…

Full Capacity Living… Best of friends hiking Cathedral Rock, Sedona AZ Cathedral Rock hike, Sedona AZ We often think health is about discipline. What we eat. How we move. When we sleep. But one of the strongest predictors of long-term health outcomes isn’t found in a supplement cabinet or workout plan. It’s connection. Research continues to show that social connection significantly impacts longevity, cardiovascular health, immune function, and mental wellbeing. Chronic loneliness has been…