SELF-CARE
Practices for tending to body, mind, and spirit.
Over the years, I have encountered practices that have helped me become quieter, more centered, more present, or simply better able to meet the day before me.
Some came through my years in healthcare. Others through family, spiritual practice, teachers, friends, books, or simple experimentation. A few became lasting parts of my life.
I share them here not as prescriptions or promises, but as invitations to explore practices that have been meaningful to me.
Self-care does not always require another appointment, another purchase, or another person. Sometimes it begins with something as simple as sitting quietly, breathing, walking among trees—or holding one’s own hand.
Explore Self-Care Practices
Jin Shin Jyutsu
The art of self-care through the hands
Meditation & Breath
Practices for stillness, awareness, and presence
Walking & Nature
Returning to something that has always been there.
Movement
Remaining engaged with life through the body.
Sound & Music
Exploring how sound can influence stillness, attention, emotion, and consciousness.
A Practice, Not a Prescription
Everything shared on this page comes from my own journey—practices I have experienced, explored, learned from others, or incorporated into my life.
Some have scientific research associated with them. Others belong more fully to the realms of personal experience, spirituality, contemplation, or tradition. I believe there is value in being clear about the difference.
I offer these resources not as prescriptions for how anyone else should live, nor as substitutes for appropriate medical or mental health care, but as invitations to curiosity.
Take what is useful. Explore what interests you. Question what deserves questioning. Leave behind what does not serve you.
And perhaps, along the way, discover a practice of your own.
Self-care is not about escaping our lives. It is about caring for ourselves well enough to remain fully present within them.
Jin Shin Jyutsu
An art of self-care I learned to carry with me.
How It Entered My Life
My introduction to Jin Shin Jyutsu came in an unexpected and rather beautiful way—not through a class, a book, or my years working in healthcare, but through family.
During a Thanksgiving gathering at our home, I noticed my father-in-law sitting with my youngest daughter and showing her a simple practice using her own hands and fingers. He was a Vietnam veteran and had been introduced to Jin Shin Jyutsu through the Veterans Affairs healthcare system in San Francisco as part of his approach to managing PTSD.
What struck me was the simplicity of it. There was no equipment, no complicated ritual, and nothing to purchase. It was something he had learned that he could carry with him wherever he went—and there he was, quietly passing it along to his granddaughter.
That moment became my own introduction to an art that would eventually find its way into my personal meditation practice, my family, and even my work with colleagues in healthcare.
From Family to Practice
What began as curiosity eventually became personal experience. My wife, one of my daughters, and I each had opportunities to experience Jin Shin Jyutsu through the work of a practitioner and friend, Jane Pritchard, in Santa Rosa, California.
Yet one of the things that has remained most meaningful to me about Jin Shin Jyutsu is that aspects of the art can also be practiced as self-care. The simple finger holds were particularly appealing. They required no special setting or equipment—only a few quiet moments and my own hands.
Over time, I began incorporating the finger holds into my seated meditation practice. Rather than thinking of the two as separate practices, they became complementary parts of the same quiet space: sitting, breathing, becoming present, and gently holding each finger in turn.
It is a practice I continue to this day. Its value to me is found partly in that simplicity. Wherever my hands are, the practice is available to me.
From Personal Practice to the Hospital
Years later, Jin Shin Jyutsu crossed another part of my life—my work in healthcare.
While working at Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center, I facilitated a meditation group through the hospital’s Spiritual Care Services. I had the opportunity to collaborate with Donna Lamke, a nurse, researcher, and Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioner, to introduce elements of the practice to fellow staff members.
What made that experience particularly meaningful was that Jin Shin Jyutsu was not simply being discussed as an interesting wellness practice. Colleagues at the medical center were studying its use as a self-care practice among nurses and examining measurable outcomes related to stress, physical and emotional well-being, and caring efficacy.
What the Research Found
My personal experience with Jin Shin Jyutsu is just that—personal experience. What gives this part of my story another dimension is that colleagues at Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center also studied the practice in a formal research setting.
In a 2014 study published in the Journal of Holistic Nursing, Donna Lamke, Anita Catlin, and Michelle Mason-Chadd examined Jin Shin Jyutsu self-care among nurses. Twenty participants received three two-hour self-care training sessions and agreed to practice daily. The researchers reported statistically significant improvements in several measures, including calmness, gratitude, motivation, pain, stress, and caring efficacy.
It was a small study, so I don’t present it as proof that Jin Shin Jyutsu treats disease or as a substitute for medical care. Rather, I find it encouraging that a simple practice I had experienced personally was also worthy of thoughtful scientific inquiry—and that the results suggested potential benefits deserving further study.
A Simple Practice: Holding the Fingers
One of the aspects of Jin Shin Jyutsu that has remained with me is also one of the simplest: gently holding the fingers.
In Jin Shin Jyutsu self-care, the fingers are associated with different attitudes or emotional states. The practice does not require force or manipulation. One simply wraps the fingers of one hand gently around a finger of the opposite hand, rests there for a time, and then moves to another finger.
I often incorporate the finger holds into seated meditation. For me, the practice provides something wonderfully tangible: while the mind becomes quiet and the breath settles, the hands have somewhere to rest and something intentional to do.
Learn the finger-hold practice →
The self-care practices shared here reflect my personal experience and are offered for education and exploration. They are not intended to diagnose or treat medical or mental health conditions or to replace appropriate professional care.
Meditation & Breath
Learning to become still enough to notice what is already here.
Learning to Be Still
Meditation and breathwork did not enter my life through a single teacher or tradition. Over the years, I have learned from practitioners, spiritual teachers, books, guided practices, and my own experience of simply sitting quietly and paying attention.
What has remained with me is not one particular method as much as an understanding: sometimes changing how I meet a moment begins with something as simple as noticing my breath.
Meditation has gradually become less about trying to make my mind quiet and more about creating enough stillness to observe what is happening within me without immediately needing to change it.
You Are Not “Bad” at Meditation
One of the things I have heard most often when speaking with people about meditation is some version of:
“I tried meditation, but I wasn’t any good at it. I couldn’t quiet my mind.”
If that has been your experience, there is something important to understand: having thoughts during meditation does not mean you are doing it wrong.
Thoughts arise. Sounds interrupt us. Our bodies become uncomfortable. We suddenly remember something we need to do. We replay a conversation from yesterday or begin planning tomorrow. This is part of being human—and part of the practice.
The practice is not necessarily to prevent a thought from appearing. It is to notice that the thought has appeared without needing to follow it.
Acknowledge it. Don’t judge yourself for having it. Don’t attach yourself to it. And gently return your attention to your breath, mantra, or whatever you have chosen as the focus of your meditation.
An image that can be helpful is to imagine yourself sitting beside a stream. When a thought arises, place it gently upon a leaf and watch the current carry it downstream. Another thought may arrive moments later. That’s okay. Give that one a leaf too.
The same can be true of the world around you. A dog barks. A door closes. A car passes outside. Rather than allowing irritation at the interruption to become the new focus of your meditation, notice the sound—perhaps even smile at it—and allow it to pass.
Meditation is not a contest to see who can think the least. The returning is part of the practice.
And sometimes you may return to your breath a hundred times. That’s not a hundred failures. It’s a hundred moments of awareness.
You do not have to become good at meditation before you meditate. Meditation is the practice.
Teachers Along the Way
Some of my understanding of meditation has come through teachers and practitioners who helped make the practice approachable rather than mysterious.
One resource I have appreciated is the work of Dr. Edward Viljoen, whose teachings have been part of my spiritual journey through the Center for Spiritual Living Santa Rosa. His writing on meditation offers another doorway for someone interested in developing a practice of their own.
Explore Dr. Edward Viljoen’s work →
Visit Stepping Stones Books & Gifts →
Explore meditation at CSL Santa Rosa →
A Practice I Use Today
My meditation practice has continued to evolve. One practice I have incorporated is Isha Kriya, offered by Sadhguru and the Isha Foundation.
Part of the practice uses the inward contemplation, “I am not the body; I am not even the mind.” For me, those words provide an opportunity to loosen, even briefly, the identification with the constant activity of body and thought and simply become the observer.
I do not see this as requiring anyone to adopt a particular belief system. I share it because it is one of the practices that has found a meaningful place in my own journey.
Experience the official guided Isha Kriya →
The self-care practices shared here reflect my personal experience and are offered for education and exploration. They are not intended to diagnose or treat medical or mental health conditions or to replace appropriate professional care.
Walking & Nature
Returning to something that has always been there.
Nature as Medicine
Of all the self-care practices I have encountered over the years, entering into nature may be the one that has always come most naturally to me.
My current therapist, herself a veteran, has helped me greatly along my journey. Among the practices she has encouraged is a wonderfully simple prescription: enter into nature at least once each week.
It may be one of the easiest therapeutic assignments I have ever been given—not because I always make the time for it, but because when I do, I rarely need convincing that I belong there.
Nature has long provided me with a place for healing, perspective, healthy escape, and reconnection. Sometimes that means walking among trees. Sometimes it means sitting quietly. Sometimes it means simply stepping outside long enough to remember that the world is much larger than whatever happens to be occupying my mind.
Bare Feet and an Early Connection
Long before I had words such as meditation, mindfulness, spirituality, or self-care, I had nature.
As a child, some of my earliest experiences of connection to something greater than myself came outdoors—often with bare feet against the earth. I could not have explained it then, but I sensed a presence, a power, or perhaps simply a belonging that I experienced differently in nature than I did anywhere else.
Over time, I came to understand that connection through different spiritual languages. I sometimes think of the earth as Earth Mother, and of that larger presence as Source or Spirit. The words have changed and evolved throughout my life. The experience beneath them has remained remarkably familiar.
Nature connects me with Spirit outside of myself while somehow helping me rediscover the Spirit within myself.
A Vision Quest and a Course Correction
As a young man, that relationship with nature became the setting for one of the most important spiritual experiences of my life.
I participated in a Vision Quest in Death Valley through Rites of Passage in Novato, California. Alone within the immensity and stark beauty of that landscape, I experienced what I would later understand as a profound spiritual awakening—and a course correction in my journey.
There are experiences that resist being reduced to explanation. What happened there mattered less because I could prove or define it than because of what it asked of me afterward: to look differently at my life, my direction, my relationship with Spirit, and the person I was becoming.
Nature was not merely the backdrop to that experience. In many ways, it was part of the teacher.
The Practice Can Be Simple
A meaningful encounter with nature does not require a journey into the desert or a dramatic spiritual experience.
It can begin by walking outside.
Find a trail. Sit beneath a tree. Walk barefoot through the grass when it is safe to do so. Listen for birds before reaching for your phone. Notice the temperature of the air against your skin. Watch the movement of leaves. Look at the sky long enough to actually see it.
You do not have to accomplish anything while you are there.
For me, that may be part of nature’s medicine: I don’t always go into nature to find something. Sometimes I go there to remember something.
Perhaps self-care sometimes means returning to the places where we remember that we are not separate from the world we are trying so hard to navigate.
Movement
Remaining engaged with life through the body.
The Body Was Made to Move
Movement has been part of my life in many different forms. Sometimes it has been exercise. Sometimes work. Sometimes recreation. Sometimes rehabilitation. And sometimes it has simply been putting one foot in front of the other when remaining still would have been easier.
Over the years, I have come to think of movement less as something I do to achieve a particular appearance and more as one of the ways I care for the body that carries me through this life.
Strength, flexibility, balance, endurance, and mobility all change as we move through the years. Caring for them is not an attempt to deny aging. For me, it is an effort to remain as capable of participating in life as I reasonably can.
I want to continue walking trails, traveling, playing, exploring, getting down on the ground and back up again, embracing the people I love, and saying yes when life offers me another adventure.
Movement Is More Than Exercise
Self-care through movement does not have to begin in a gym.
It can be a walk around the neighborhood, stretching after waking, working in the garden, dancing in the kitchen, swimming, practicing yoga, riding a bicycle, playing with a child or grandchild, or choosing the stairs when our bodies allow it.
There are seasons when movement can be vigorous and challenging, and seasons when movement may mean rehabilitation, adaptation, or simply doing a little more than we could yesterday.
The measure does not always have to be speed, distance, weight, calories, or repetitions. Sometimes the more meaningful question is simply:
Did I give my body an opportunity to move today?
Finding Movement That Belongs to You
The best form of movement may be the one you will actually return to.
If you dislike running, you do not need to become a runner. If a gym makes you miserable, perhaps your movement belongs outdoors. If vigorous exercise is not appropriate for you, gentle stretching, walking, balance work, chair movement, physical therapy exercises, or other adapted forms of activity may be more meaningful.
Start where your body actually is—not where it once was, where you wish it were, or where someone else’s body happens to be.
Find something appropriate for you. Begin gently. Pay attention. Adapt when necessary. And whenever possible, find some joy in moving simply because you still can.
Movement is not punishment for the body we have. It is one way of caring for the body that carries us.
Moving With Purpose
I have also found that movement becomes more meaningful for me when there is a goal attached to it—especially when that goal reaches beyond my own health.
Fundraising walks, challenges, and other community events give me something to work toward. Having a date on the calendar and a commitment I’ve made helps keep me accountable and gives all those individual walks, workouts, and training days a larger purpose.
Even better, sometimes the benefit extends to people I may never meet. I can challenge myself physically while raising awareness or support for someone else. There is something deeply satisfying about knowing that an activity undertaken for my own well-being can simultaneously contribute something positive to my community.
Veteran-related causes are particularly meaningful to me, and they tend to be the events and fundraisers I am most drawn toward supporting. They connect movement with service, remembrance, community, and a sense of shared responsibility.
But movement doesn’t always need a cause beyond joy.
Sometimes the goal can simply be to do something difficult because it sounds like fun—to get muddy, climb over something, crawl under something else, laugh at yourself, and discover whether your body can still answer when you ask it to do something a little ridiculous.
That’s part of why I enjoy challenges such as Tough Mudder. I have given myself a personal goal of completing one every five years of my life for as long as I am reasonably able.
The event itself may last only a few hours, but the goal gives purpose to many ordinary days beforehand. It gives me something on the horizon to move toward.
Sometimes taking care of ourselves becomes easier when the reason for moving isn’t only ourselves.
Sound & Music
Exploring how sound can influence stillness, attention, emotion, and consciousness.
Discovering Sound as More Than Music
Music has always had the ability to affect how I feel, but over time I became interested in something beyond simply listening to music I enjoyed: the intentional use of sound as part of meditation, relaxation, sleep, and exploration of consciousness.
That curiosity introduced me to binaural beats, guided sound meditations, sound baths, and the work of people who have spent decades exploring the relationship between sound and states of consciousness.
Some of these practices have become useful parts of my own self-care. I have listened to sound recordings while meditating, reading, relaxing, and falling asleep. Sometimes the benefit for me is simply that the sound provides my attention somewhere gentle to rest.
Robert Monroe & the Exploration of Consciousness
One important figure in my exploration has been Robert Monroe, whose experiments with sound and consciousness eventually led to the creation of the Monroe Institute and the audio technology associated with Hemi-Sync.
One of the principles behind binaural beats is surprisingly simple. Different tones are presented separately to the left and right ears. The auditory system perceives the difference between those frequencies as an additional rhythmic beat. Because the effect depends upon the brain comparing the signals arriving at each ear, traditional binaural recordings are generally experienced through stereo headphones.
Monroe’s work helped popularize the use of carefully designed audio experiences for exploring relaxation, meditation, sleep, attention, and altered states of awareness. That intersection between subjective experience and scientific curiosity is one of the things that originally interested me.
Exploring Brainwave States
Through these practices I also became interested in the language of brainwave activity—delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma—and the different states of consciousness with which these patterns are commonly associated.
I have experimented with binaural-beat recordings designed around different frequency ranges, particularly as aids for meditation, focused reading, relaxation, and sleep.
I don’t experience those labels as magic switches that automatically put the brain into a prescribed state. Rather, I regard them as another interesting tool for exploring how sound may influence attention and subjective experience.
Most importantly, I know what my own experience has been: certain recordings help me settle more easily into meditation or allow my attention to relax when I am preparing for sleep.
What the Research Suggests About Binaural Beats
My interest in binaural beats began experientially, but researchers have also investigated their potential effects.
Studies have explored binaural auditory stimulation in relation to anxiety, mood, cognition, sleep, attention, and other psychological and physiological outcomes. Reviews of the research suggest promising possibilities in some areas, but study methods, frequencies, listening durations, populations, and outcomes vary considerably.
For that reason, I think the most responsible way to approach binaural beats is with curiosity rather than certainty. They are an interesting and accessible self-care tool that some people—including me—find useful, while the science continues to develop.
Guided Meditations & the Vast Online Library
Today, experimenting with sound meditation requires little more than a phone and a pair of headphones. YouTube and other audio platforms contain an enormous library of guided meditations, nature sounds, binaural recordings, ambient music, chants, singing bowls, and other soundscapes.
That accessibility is wonderful, but I approach the claims attached to some recordings with caution. Titles promising that a particular frequency will “heal” an organ, cure a disease, permanently change the brain, or produce some guaranteed outcome often go well beyond what scientific evidence supports.
I prefer to choose recordings based on what I am actually seeking—perhaps relaxation, meditation, focused reading, or sleep—and then pay attention to my own experience.
The Experience of a Sound Bath
Recorded sound is one experience. Being physically present for a professionally facilitated sound bath can be quite another.
I have found sound baths deeply enjoyable. Lying or sitting quietly while singing bowls, gongs, chimes, and other resonant instruments create layers of sound allows listening to become almost physical. You don’t merely follow a melody; you experience sound appearing, expanding, vibrating, fading, and being replaced by silence.
Research into singing bowls and related sound interventions is still developing. Earlier reviews found intriguing results but emphasized the small number and methodological limitations of available studies. More recent reviews include a substantially larger body of clinical research and report potential benefits involving anxiety, mood, sleep and some physiological measures, while still identifying considerable variation among studies.
I don’t need a sound bath to promise me a cure in order to value the experience. Sometimes lying quietly, listening deeply, and allowing someone else to create the environment for stillness is enough.
And Sometimes, Silence
Exploring sound has also taught me something about its opposite.
Silence matters.
Our lives are filled with televisions, phones, notifications, news, podcasts, traffic, conversation, music, and information constantly competing for our attention.
Sometimes the most restorative soundscape I can choose is no manufactured sound at all—just breath, birds, rain, wind through trees, footsteps on a trail, or whatever sounds already inhabit the place where I am.
Sound can help carry me inward. Silence sometimes reminds me that I am already there.
Self-care sometimes means choosing what we allow into our attention—and learning when to listen.
Ask Me for Help Building Your Morning
How we begin our mornings can influence how we meet the rest of our day.
If you’d like to create a morning routine that works for your actual life, I’m happy to help you build one.
There’s no program to join, no app to download, no subscription and nothing I’m trying to sell you. This is simply an offer to help you think through a realistic morning routine informed by established principles of sleep, circadian rhythm, light, movement, nutrition, attention and habit formation.
What I Need From You
Send me an email and tell me:
1. Your morning timeline
What time do you usually wake up, and what time do you need to be fully functioning, working, caring for someone or out the door?
2. Your automatic morning habit
What’s something you already do almost every morning without thinking about it? Maybe you make coffee, let the dog out, brush your teeth, take medication or shower.
This gives us an existing habit that we may be able to use as an anchor for something new.
3. What you want from your mornings
Would you like more calm? More energy? Better focus? Less rushing? More time for reflection or movement?
You don’t have to choose only one. Tell me what matters most to you.
4. How much time you realistically have
Ten minutes? Twenty? Forty-five? An hour?
There’s no correct answer. A ten-minute routine you actually practice is more valuable than an elaborate sixty-minute routine you don’t.
Or Just Give Me Three Things
If all of that feels like too much, simply tell me:
What time do you wake up?
How much time do you have?
What would you most like to change about your mornings?
That’s enough to get the conversation started.
I’ll help you put together a simple starting routine tailored to your schedule, priorities and circumstances. You can try it, tell me what works and what doesn’t, and we can adjust it from there.
No gimmick. No app. No subscription.
Just a conversation.
Ready to Begin?
Send me an email with the information above, and we’ll start there.