Seeing as this newsletter is called PERFECT HUNGER (although that name goes far beyond food), and because I’ve been talking a lot lately about consistency, simplicity, and staying the course, I thought I’d talk about what I eat.

If you’ve been here a while, nothing I’m about to share will be new or surprising—I’m expanding on things I’ve shared before. But since I realize there are always new folks arriving, and since I truly do consider food such a vital aspect of health and well-being, here’s a snapshot:

Meals are some of my favorite times of the day. I eat around the same time, slowly without rushing, and prefer to eat in silence while reading something light and non-stressful.

I thrive on substantial meals and rarely snack, focusing on feeling genuinely satiated at mealtimes by including enough protein and fat. Eating this way gives me sustained energy, no cravings for refined carbs or sugar, and a stable, relaxed relationship with food. My weight and metabolic health have remained steady for over a decade without needing to strategize, restrict, or constantly work on it.

As much as I enjoy eating, I’ve never been much of a cook and prefer simple meals made from minimal, high-quality ingredients. “Cooking” for me currently looks like assembling bowls: white rice, smoked or raw salmon, eggs, occasionally chicken, avocado, mushrooms sautéed in olive oil or grassfed butter, a raw carrot or two as an appetizer, spoonfuls of tahini and full-fat Greek yogurt, generous sea salt, thinly sliced hot red peppers in fish sauce. Not all at once, specifics may vary, but that’s the general idea.

I still eat sugar, mostly from whole food sources including all kinds of local fruit (mangos are my absolute favorite) and coconut water straight from the shell. Breakfast is local orange juice squeezed right in front of me plus a hot drink made with 100 percent cocoa, grassfed butter, and raw goat milk. After dinner, I’ll have a couple pieces of very dark chocolate.

After many years of experimentation, I’ve come to truly love eating this way. When I first transitioned to a predominantly paleo-primal diet years ago, that wasn’t my experience at all. Back then, I was physiologically and mentally hooked on processed foods, refined carbs, and sugar. It took time and commitment to break that cycle, but now I feel free. I can eat anything I want. I simply prefer—and feel much better eating—simple, whole foods.

My diet mostly consists of “single-ingredient” or “minimal-ingredient” foods: meat, fish, seafood, eggs, vegetables, fruit, healthy fats (e.g., butter, ghee, olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, and fat-rich foods like avocados), nuts and seeds in small amounts, natural herbs and spices, sea salt, and plain, high-fat dairy.

I’ve been eating this way for well over a decade now, but the details shift depending on context. To quote from my Guide to Transformative Eating:

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, we have an entire modality called yang sheng fa. While this is often translated as “dietetics,” a more literal (and accurate) translation is “nourishing life principles,” which includes regular adjustments to meet our changing needs, goals, and health conditions. It even addresses factors such as where we live and the changing seasons.

But regardless of whether we take a Chinese Medicine perspective, our needs, goals, and circumstances are always changing.

My diet looks different living in Thailand’s tropical climate than it did in wintery British Columbia or Nova Scotia. It also looks different at 51, during a time of life when my primary exercise is yoga (with a substantial strength component) and walking, compared to when I was doing CrossFit in my thirties. My diet changes when I sense I’m coming down with a cold versus when I’m perfectly healthy. It also varies during different phases of my menstrual cycle, especially during my period.

Throughout these changes, the basics stay the same (whole foods, an emphasis on protein, minimal carbs and sugar, no snacking), but the details shift as needed. For example, during my period or if I start feeling unusually cold, foggy-headed, blurry-eyed, or fatigued, I might add red meat or organ meat.* Otherwise, living in a tropical climate where red meat isn’t a large part of the local diet, I eat it rarely. During fall and winter in Nova Scotia, I ate locally raised, grass-fed beef several times a week, purchased from Farmer Ralph down the road.

Because my innate signaling system is pretty dialed in after more than a decade of eating this way, I’m able to make these adjustments intuitively. I never could’ve done this back when I was addicted to sugar, carbs, processed foods, and disordered eating and exercise. Intuitive eating required first reaching a new baseline.

*This year is something of an exception when it comes to red meat. I’m participating in a year-long program blending A Course in Miracles, Jñāna yoga, and ancient Egyptian mysticism that includes specific dietary and lifestyle parameters: no red meat or pork, no caffeine or other stimulants, no alcohol or other drugs (recreational or pharmaceutical), and very little sugar. I’m breaking the rules with chocolate.

A little more context for today’s snapshot: I ate a sometimes vegan, sometimes vegetarian diet for about a decade before shifting to a whole food paleo-primal diet in 2012. Rice has only recently found its way back into my bowl after many years of eating mostly grain-free. My eating guide talks more about how to make these sorts of choices on your own path, but here’s the short version for me:

• When it comes to my heart, I struggle to eat animals. When it comes to my physical and mental health, I’ve found that both suffer in significant ways when animals are not at least a small part of my diet. The older I get, the more this is true for me.

• When it comes to food choices generally, I view my own as a question of tradeoffs—not “good” or “bad.” As physical beings, there are consequences to how we eat. To the extent that we do have choice, we each get to decide which consequences are worth it to us personally—and what feels “worth it” changes over time. Eating rice comes with tradeoffs for me (increased water retention and dips in energy if I overdo it), but I’m okay with that. Certain other foods come with consequences that, at this point in my life, feel too expensive. I’m too attached to how good I feel without them.

I do think, in all of this, it’s important not to shy away from noticing how different foods make us feel—both in the moment and afterwards. Changing how I ate changed the trajectory of my health and my life, and as a Chinese Medicine doctor, I’ve seen it do the same for others.

With that, I’ll leave you with what’s nourishing me and what I’m hungry for—and I’d love to hear yours in the comments.

WHAT’S NOURISHING ME

Friendship. I have this thing where, with my closest, most beloved friends in the world—who all live thousands of miles away—I think about them all the time but go far too long without reaching out. It just feels like there’s so much to say, and so much love mixed with the pain of distance, and I don’t even know where to begin. But I’m trying to get over that, and the other day emailed my dear friend Jen.

We met in our twenties, when we were both in master’s programs at Georgetown and then ended up living across the hall from each other in a rent-controlled boarding house situation. We later studied together at the American University in Cairo as part of a year-long intensive Arabic fellowship. A few years after that, I quit my job in D.C., came to visit Jen in her tiny apartment in a sha’abi neighborhood in Cairo, then cancelled my return and moved in.

I still remember sitting on the floor of that flat, sipping local coffee ground with cardamom, eating taameya and gibna bayda from stalls down the street, doubling over with laughter. I last saw Jen in person a year before leaving Canada, when she came to visit me in Nova Scotia. And I last saw her online two Sundays ago—her in Cairo, me in Mae Rim—when one email turned into a video call. God, I love her so much.

WHAT I’M HUNGRY FOR

See above. More and more and more of that. And for hugging Jen so tightly.

I’d love to hear yours.

Part of what excites me about writing these letters is hearing about your lives—what’s supporting you, what you’re wanting more of in the days and weeks ahead.

With that in mind, I’d love to hear:

• What’s nourishing your body, mind, spirit?

• What are you hungry for?

• What foods do you consistently feel your best eating?

Leave a comment

If this resonated, a heart ❤️ helps these letters find their way.

Thank you, with love,
Dana

If you’re returning to the basics and wanting something steady to stay with, paid subscribers receive my Guide to Transformative Eating (you can preview it here).

A paid subscription also includes full access to the TCM Deep Dives series, where we most recently looked at the Chinese Medicine organs and the seven emotions.

Subscribe now

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These past five weeks, as we’ve moved through the emotions associated with the zang organs, a few threads have been woven throughout:

In Chinese Medicine, emotions are movements of Qi. Each emotion reflects a particular quality and direction of being. They are natural responses to the external world. When healthy, they arise, express, and transform—we feel, respond, adapt, and move on.

The five emotions corresponding to the zang are not pathological in themselves. They become pathological when excessive, mismatched to circumstance, or prolonged and unable to resolve. When emotion surpasses the body’s capacity to attune and adapt, imbalance arises.

Each emotion exists along a range. There isn’t a clean line between “healthy” and “unhealthy.” What matters is movement, proportion, and timing.

When we’re talking about the five emotions covered so far—nu 怒, xi 喜, si 思, bei 悲, and kong 恐—all this is true. But the two emotions we’re ending with today—you 忧 and jing 惊—are an exception.

Because while these two emotions are still movements of Qi, and they still exist along a range of expression, Chinese Medicine considers them inherently unhealthy. Which really just means they are always something to bring into balance—balance being dynamic, not a fixed endpoint.

They are also intimately connected to what Chinese Medicine calls pre-Heaven and post-Heaven.

On a biological level, pre-Heaven (xian Tian 先天) includes our genetics, but it’s much more than that. It encompasses the Yuan Yin and Yuan Yang (original Yin and original Yang), which enter the developing life through the Ling 灵—the mysterious, generative dimension from which everything emerges and takes form.

Whatever your own beliefs or however you frame the details, the key point is that we are born with certain constitutional reserves—that’s our pre-Heaven (xian Tian 先天). They are then shaped, strengthened, or worn down by what happens after birth in the post-Heaven (hou Tian 后天). What happens to us—and how we live—influences how we experience life.

Which is to say, nature and nurture, genetics and epigenetics, our own experiences and those of our ancestors, all play out through our body-mind-spirit and our emotional patterns.

We explored this dynamic in more depth when we looked at the Kidneys:

You 忧

One way of understanding you 忧 is as an extension of grief and overthinking. It is closely related to the Lung, Spleen, and sum total of our post-Heaven—what happens to us, and what we think and do, after birth.

Often translated as “oppression,” you 忧 speaks to despair, suppression of innate aspirations, and lack of Yang—everything that inspires, moves, and animates.

Think: being trapped in a windowless room where the walls close in and there’s no light or air. Where breathing, thinking, or doing anything at all feels difficult.

Read more

The current TCM Deep Dives series is nearly complete, with the final post coming this Friday. I have two topics in mind for what’s next and would love to get your feedback.

Over the past several months, we’ve explored the Chinese Medicine organs and are now making our way through the seven emotions, with a focus on bringing these teachings into everyday life.

What I’m considering next:

• Chinese Medicine superfoods: a look at foods that have been used in Chinese Medicine and yang sheng fa 养生法 (nourishing life principles) for thousands of years—many of which have recently been “discovered” by wellness influencers and biohackers. Think honey, raw milk, organ meats, bone broth, gelatin, tremella, goji berries, egg yolks, ginger, and more. We’d explore what Chinese Medicine has to say about these foods, who they tend to help, and when they may not be the right fit.

• TCM beauty treatments: a look at holistic approaches to beauty that support not only skin and hair, but overall health and vitality. We’d explore things you can do yourself, such as gua sha, qi gong, acupressure, teas, and yang sheng fa practices—as well as therapies you might seek from a practitioner, such as herbal medicine, acupuncture, facial acupuncture, tui na, and cupping.

Do either of those interest you? Or is there another TCM topic you’re eager to know more about?

I’m excited about the rich, intertextual resource that’s emerging from the last two series, but I’ve also had the thought that superfoods and beauty might be a little “lighter” and easier to engage with. That said, I know some of you have expressed how much you prefer the current depth, and I’m open to staying the course—or lightening things up a little.

If you have thoughts, let me know in the comments.

Meanwhile, in the Thai countryside, the neighborhood has been a bit noisy this week. Turns out our village is building some sort of community gathering space in what had been an empty, overgrown lot next door. Thankfully, it seems the three very old spirit houses that sit on the property are staying (two are large enough to fit people). Fingers crossed, they won’t cut down the huge, beautiful tree at the lot’s center. I love looking at both the spirit houses and the tree from my bedroom window.

Nature always seems to prevail in any case—all the faster in rainy season, with daily downpours interspersed with stretches of sun and everything wild and green and growing. It’s almost as though people carved out space for themselves—for us—in the jungle and wildness, but slowly, persistently, the jungle and wildness keep pushing back. I feel it in the legions of lizards dashing across our walls and the calls of the tokay gecko bellowing from our rafters. In the baby scorpion we found on the floor of Randy’s office, its tiny tail furling and unfurling. In the spider the size of my face we discovered under the stairs one evening, dead still and watching. In the vines that creep towards our porch from every direction, then twist themselves up the railings and beams and hurl themselves onto the roof.

Our landlords are always at it—chopping, pruning, fighting back the vines and the jungle. But the jungle always comes back.

I love it.

Every day, whether I’m standing in our backyard or riding on the back of Randy’s motorbike, gazing at more types of palm trees than I knew existed and the forested mountains surrounding us, I’m reminded how much I love the land here. Its beauty. Its generosity. Its resilience.

With that, I’ll leave you with what’s nourishing me and what I’m hungry for—and I’d love to hear yours in the comments.

WHAT’S NOURISHING ME

All the fruit! I rarely eat fruit unless it’s fresh and local, so it was never a year-round staple for me in Canada (though I sure loved farmers’ market berries come summer). Thailand, on the other hand, is a tropical fruit extravaganza. It’s growing everywhere we look here in the countryside and piled high in markets and grocery stores. Our landlords (who live next door) regularly bring over bananas.

Pictured below: three types of mango, papaya, guava, dragon fruit, and avocado. I’m also partial to noi na (น้อยหน่า), known in English as custard apple. Its exterior is covered with rough, knobby scales, but inside is white, subtly sweet, and custard-like.

WHAT I’M HUNGRY FOR

A big body of water. Although we have split-unit air conditioners in our bedrooms and offices, the house is easily above 90°F (32°C) downstairs and above 100°F (38°C) upstairs from early afternoon on. Quick cold showers help tremendously, but I sure would love to jump into a lake, river, or ocean. Still, I do appreciate not needing a hot yoga studio. All yoga is hot yoga here.

I’d love to hear yours.

Part of what excites me about writing these letters is hearing about your lives—what’s supporting you, what you’re wanting more of in the days and weeks ahead.

With that in mind, I’d love to hear:

• What’s nourishing your body, mind, spirit?

• What are you hungry for?

• What fruits are you enjoying right now?

Leave a comment

If this resonated, a heart ❤️ helps these letters find their way.

Thank you, with love,
Dana

If you’re returning to the basics and wanting something steady to stay with, paid subscribers receive my Guide to Transformative Eating (you can preview it here).

A paid subscription also includes full access to the TCM Deep Dives series, where we most recently looked at fear and anxiety. Next, we turn towards depression and trauma.

Subscribe now

upgrade for access to the guide

I believe with my whole heart that our body is a gift, our home, our ally. I also believe that our deepest essence wants to move towards wellness and wholeness. By listening to and caring for our body, we support this movement and invite greater ease and well-being.

And it doesn’t always feel that way.

Perhaps you want to stop thinking about food, your body, and what you eat all day, every day, to the point where your happiness feels hijacked by your own mind. Perhaps you crave freedom from bingeing or restricting but are still struggling in silence, as I once was. Perhaps you’re seeking relief from a chronic health condition and feel overwhelmed by all the advice out there. Perhaps you want to shift your body composition or lose weight without fighting yourself—yes, even in perimenopause or menopause, even without medications.

As a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine since 2012, a practicing Buddhist and yogi for more than two decades, and someone who’s sober from alcohol and in full recovery from eating disorders, I want to tell you three things:

• Shifting unhelpful patterns related to food is challenging—and deeply freeing.

• Changing these patterns is possible.

• This work impacts far more than what’s on our plate; it benefits our physical health, mental health, spiritual practice, experience of aging, relationships, creativity, and all the ways we show up in the world—for ourselves and for others.

If you feel entangled in unhelpful patterns around food and eating, please know you’re not alone. And if you’re exploring ways to find peace and feel good in your body again, this guide is for you.

First, let’s envision the destination:

You feel rested upon waking and experience sustained, even energy throughout the day. You get sick less often and, when you do get sick, recover more quickly. Symptoms that you long considered “genetic,” or “just part of aging,” or “completely beyond your control” begin to lessen—maybe even vanish entirely.

As the clamor of “food noise” quiets, your mind becomes calmer, clearer, and more alive. You experience a completely different sort of settling than the disconnect, dulling, and deadening that happens with numbing.

You become more connected to your body’s innate intelligence and inner knowing. You also gain a skill, practice, and way of perceiving and responding that will apply to every area of your life and which no one can take away from you.

And… you still get to love food! You still get to look forward to and enjoy your meals. In fact, you’ll probably enjoy them more, because you’ve made a few shifts that help you feel good not just while eating, but afterwards.

You’ve become a present, responsive, loving caretaker of your body. Your body feels more like home and more like a refuge.

Whatever destination feels most deeply supportive for you, I encourage you to take a moment, close your eyes, and imagine it. Imagine, most of all, what it might feel like—in your body, your mind, your spirit, and in everyday life.

This vision and possibility is why you are here. The more you revisit, remember, and feel into it, the more likely you are to bring it to life.

Below you’ll find a complete guide to eating to feel better, including:

• a small dose of tough love around physical caretaking—as in, to genuinely support our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being, we must tend to our home: our physical body

• 9 actionable practices to help you feel better (including what and how to eat)

• 7 internal practices to help you change your relationship with food in an integrated way (rather than relying on willpower or “food rules”)

• an exercise to just get started, even if you’re not ready to overhaul everything

• resources to support you in going deeper on topics like unhelpful eating patterns, bingeing and restricting, sugar addiction, food noise, and the science behind the practices and principles in this guide (plus links to my favorite cookbooks and recipe sources)

• guiding principles to offer more nuance and room for personalization, so you can make the practices in this guide your own

Disclaimer: While I am a licensed Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, this guide is educational and not a substitute for individualized medical care. I cannot provide personal medical or dietary advice without a full clinical intake and informed consent.

Before we begin: To support you in moving towards your destination, I recommend creating a daily remembrance practice—one in which you make space for the vision you have for yourself. Perhaps writing a few cues on a post-it, or revisiting your vision in a moment of silence before eating… or while brewing and sipping a cup of tea… or before meditating… or while moving your body. Try a few approaches and find one you can return to. Even if you stop reading here, this practice will serve you.

How to take care of our bodies (and how this relates to food noise and health)

The worse we feel in our body, the more tempting it is to disconnect from it. And once we’re disconnected, it becomes easier to do more of what hurts us. This pattern fuels “food noise,” those persistent, intrusive thoughts about food and eating. It also takes a toll on both our physical health and mental well-being.

Our minds want to keep consuming information—spinning stories, justifications, explanations, and plans. But the truth is simple: we are physical, embodied beings. To support our health and well-being, we have to tend to our body and its needs. We can’t think, plan, or read our way out of where we are now.

This is especially true when we’re talking about food and eating—the very means by which we continuously nurture, regenerate, and repair our cells and ourselves.

9 actionable practices to help you feel better

Let’s begin with a shortlist of practices that I’ve personally found transformative and have recommended to diverse patients with great results.

These shifts can go a long way in helping you feel better—in body and mind:

Read more

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Dearest Reader,

This month’s link-up winds its way through holistic beauty, health without hype, and faith. An eclectic curation, perhaps. But it reflects what’s been on my mind lately.

Throughout, I’ll weave in the personal—my thoughts and what this looks like in my own life—as we explore:

• a holistic beauty holiday featuring Traditional Korean Medicine

• how consuming excess sugar and processed seed oils impacts our skin

• what skin tags reveal about metabolic health

• Manuka honey and regular honey as skincare and medicine (when Manuka is worth it, when it’s not, how to choose your honey)

• a non-hype-y take on how much protein you need (enough, probably not as much as some people say)

• a deep dive into raw milk (history, access, health benefits, safety)

• how to shut out the noise, dial in the basics, and actually improve your health

• faith, prayer, and blessings threaded through everyday life

• relationship advice from two celibate monks (truly so good!)

If you’re getting this in your email inbox, you’ll need to click through to read the whole thing.

Let’s start with holistic beauty

HOLISTIC BEAUTY TREATMENTS IN SEOUL.

I don’t typically click on bridal glow-up content, but this was an exception. In the lead-up to her Korean wedding, indulged in a deeply enviable holistic beauty holiday in Seoul. What I loved is that every treatment not only left her glowing on the outside, but also supported overall health and vitality. We’re talking: ear seeds, Traditional Korean massage, golki massage, meridian massage, electroacupuncture, and Traditional Korean Medicine.

Some of the treatments described are extremely familiar to me as a TCM doctor, since TKM has deep roots in Traditional Chinese Medicine. That said, I’m now especially eager/a little scared to try golki. Seoul is a six-hour flight from Bangkok, so a field trip is a real possibility.

Although this is a paid post, includes a portion above the paywall (including a description of golki massage). I also happen to have four paid subscriptions to give away; if you’d like one, please let me know in the comments; first come, first served. I’ve mentioned before; it’s an excellent resource for natural fiber clothing guides and writing on sustainable fashion, lifestyle, and culture.

“Each appointment, I picked a different type of treatment. Sometimes there were curved ceramic tools, other times it would be all manual. The week of my wedding, I booked the ‘bridal massage’ and they squeezed the shit oranges out of my armpits. It was the most excruciating thing out of everything I did!” —

By the way, if you’re into holistic skincare and beauty, including more technical conversations, you might like the Biohacking Beauty Podcast. I used to listen to it regularly, and while my podcast listening has kind of fallen by the wayside this year, I have it bookmarked in case I ever feel tempted to try a procedure like laser on my face in the future.

One of my key takeaways from previous listening is that a lot of popular procedures might make you look better in the short term, but actually accelerate skin aging over time. They also feature conversations about gut health and the skin, the impact of blue light from our screens (not good!), how posture and lymph flow reshape your face, and why sleep is the best skincare.

Here’s a good one to get you started, on “the link between metabolic flexibility and youthful skin, why being ‘stuck’ as a sugar burner accelerates aging, and how insulin resistance silently damages your collagen, nitric oxide levels, and mitochondrial health, long before it shows up in labs.”

Also covered: skin tags as a sign of high insulin and insulin resistance; how snacking and grazing all day contribute to insulin resistance; how excess sugar, processed carbohydrates, and processed seed oils contribute to inflammation, damage skin, and speed up skin aging (including wrinkles, thinning, and loss of elasticity); a nuanced take on smart sun exposure.

(For an accessible approach to eating in a way that addresses all of these issues, see The PERFECT HUNGER™ Guide to Transformative Eating. If you’d like to read more about the science in book form, I have some reads here; you might start with The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson and The Calorie Myth by Jonathan Bailor.)1

The founders do have a skincare line, but I haven’t tried it; I’m there for the holistic, nuanced, science-heavy takes—along with the cautions about popular procedures and skepticism about whatever topical quick fixes are trending.

However, when it comes to topicals that aren’t merely skin deep...

HONEY, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT MANUKA.

I apply honey to my face at least once a week, usually more. Sometimes it’s for a spot treatment (especially in the days before my period); more often, it’s as a moistening, nourishing, gently exfoliating mask that I put on as part of my morning routine and wash off before lunch.

I just use local Thai honey, and it works great! But whenever I’m in Mae Rim’s fancy grocery store and see the pricey Manuka, I always wonder whether I’m missing out. Turns out the answer is not necessarily. Bee and honey expert broke it down for me in her reply to my question in the comments:

“For moisturizing and nourishing, your local honey is honestly doing the job. Raw honey is naturally humectant and full of enzymes regardless of variety. Where manuka starts to pull ahead for skin is blemishes, because the MGO content gives it more stable antibacterial activity than regular honey.

That said, if you can get your hands on propolis, that’s actually my top pick for blemishes. It’s antimicrobial AND anti-inflammatory, so it works on the spot while calming redness at the same time. A little goes a long way! ” —

(I’ve praised Carly’s company Beekeeper’s Naturals before. I used her propolis spray, bee pollen, and super honey regularly when living in British Columbia.)

In addition to sorting through fact and fiction around Manuka in the above article, she outlines what you should look for in your honey: raw rather than pasteurized, the darker the better.

I’ll also share this article on the Manuka-obsessed side of the spectrum, so you can see how much some people spend on honey products... when, honestly, I’m happy with the inexpensive local honey I’m already using. (WSJ gift link; you’ll need to minimize the subscribe box to view)

Speaking of food as medicine

Back in Canada, when I had access to Carly’s propolis spray, it was my go-to whenever I felt the slightest hint of coming down with something in my throat—and most of the time, that “something” never materialized. Here in Thailand, I’ll use a spoonful of honey—which is considered an herb in Chinese Medicine. Some of its actions include moistening the Lung, stopping cough, soothing the throat, and fending off external pathogens (modern research now confirms what traditional medicine has known for thousands of years).

Amidst all the raw milk discourse happening lately, it might interest you to know that raw milks from various animals are also included in the Chinese Medicine materia medica and traditions of yang sheng fa (lifestyle and dietetics). The qualities and actions differ slightly depending on the animal, but in general, milk is regarded as a nourishing and moistening tonic.

Similar to honey, raw milk can be deeply useful in certain cases, in appropriate amounts (whereas too much of either could potentially contribute to what TCM calls “dampness”; more on that in this Spleen deep dive).

Meanwhile, from a more modern perspective…

RAW MILK (THE POST): WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT DOES, HOW TO BUY, HOW TO START.

’s primer on raw milk is excellent. I learned so much reading it, including about raw milk’s nutritional benefits (and benefits for skin and hair), but also the history and current situation of raw milk versus pasteurized milk in the United States (plus some notes on Canada and Europe).

Sami truly covers everything you need to know in his typical entertaining yet deeply knowledgeable and nuanced approach, including its phenomenal nutrient profile and essentials for safety (e.g., needs to be grass-fed, needs to be intended for raw milk consumption—milk from industrial farms in America is produced under conditions that absolutely require pasteurization). The article is paywalled, but Sami placed an extremely generous portion above the paywall, including the parts on safety.

Since raw goat milk has become part of my morning routine as of late, I especially appreciated this part: “Raw goat milk—maybe the healthiest food on the planet; Peat-style final boss… if it was up to me my diet would be 60% RGM.” As I told Sami in the comments: “Even without knowing the details, I just knew it felt different - and now my whole body craves it.”

HOW TO NEVER GET ANXIOUS ABOUT HEALTH AGAIN.

I also wanted to include this one from Sami because it feels like an important companion to the sorts of detailed and highly specific resources I share in these link-ups. As I say over and over in this newsletter and outline in my eating guide, you do not have to overcomplicate health to feel better and get noticeable, sustainable results.

Rather than simply tell you to step away from the YouTube videos, Sami offers a solution to the noise and overwhelm around wellness: choose one or two primary sources (he lists some great ones, including Mark Sisson, whose approach aligns with my guide). Focus on the boring basics. Stay consistent. You’ll get healthier and feel less anxious.

“Though it doesn’t feel like it if you watch all of these videos, when you have the right mind-set, health is a series of fun experiments. When you experiment right—with some research, and safely—you can arrive into an infinite number of normal, healthy, accessible and easy ways to get healthy/in shape.” —

Related: I appreciate Dr. ’s take on protein consumption and diet individualization more generally in his conversation with Gwyneth Paltrow. The key takeaway: you should not feel like you’re force-feeding yourself anything, protein included. This very much aligns with my personal experience. I find getting a generous handful or two of protein at each meal essential for satiation and sustained energy. I do not force myself to get more protein than feels natural or supplement with bars, shakes, or powders.

Beyond food and the physical

Simplicity, consistency, and figuring out what supports us holistically isn’t limited to food or the physical.

As writes in the introduction to his new series on faith: “I think the ordinary things, done faithfully, in the same soil, over time — that is where roots happen.”

This unfolds both within and in relationship. So, if you too are practicing in these realms, I’ll leave you with two reads I’ve long treasured and something fun and new:

• To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings and Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue (on blessings as a way of life, and soul friends as vital to life)

• Relationship advice from two celibate monks: Ajahns Kovilo and Nisabho share true gems here, including giving before consuming—and doing it from your knots, not from where it’s easiest; bringing creativity into your practice lest it become grey and tedious; and noticing and letting go of ill will throughout the day. Otherwise, a low hum of ill will might be running in the background without you even realizing it.

This is what’s been capturing my attention lately. I hope you take from it what you most need.

If you feel like sharing, I’d love to hear:

• What are you reading or listening to right now?

• What ordinary practice has been supporting you lately?

Leave a comment

With so much love,
Dana

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When I quit drinking in early 2020, the first, most immediate thing to rise into awareness was just how much dread and fear I felt every evening. Not fear of not drinking—fear of everything else.

For years, I’d been using wine with dinner to cover over that fear. (Problem is, I’d predictably wake in the night with ten times the fear and anxiety—alcohol, without question, made my fear worse.)

People have trouble quitting alcohol for all kinds of reasons—boredom, social consequences, physical dependence, and more. But the dread I felt as evening approached was the challenge for me.

If I excavate my earliest memories, there are logical reasons for this dread and its timing. But by then, those reasons had become incidental to the feeling of fear itself.

Because even if there wasn’t a reason I could think of, on any particular evening, there was a ravenous worm inside my mind that would keep searching and searching until it latched onto something. And trust, it would always latch onto something.

What I slowly began to realize was that the object of fear mattered less than the movement of fear itself.

In Chinese Medicine, emotions are movements of Qi. Circumstances can set that movement in motion. But once fear takes hold, it can begin generating its own momentum. The mind starts searching. Thoughts and reasons will follow.

What’s happening here

Fear, dread, and deeper existential fear tied to survival are all part of kong 恐, the emotion corresponding to the Kidneys.

The character itself contains the Heart 心, reflecting the close relationship between fear, the mind, and even the bodily sensations that can accompany it—such as the feeling of heart palpitations.

Part of fear is healthy and closely related to instinct. In these moments, the mind becomes focused and alert. The senses open and Qi moves downward, grounding the body and preparing it to respond. In this way, fear can be protective. It helps us recognize danger and keep ourselves or loved ones safe.

But fear can also become excessive or chronic. When this happens, the movement of Qi changes. Rather than descending in a way that stabilizes and readies the system, Qi may sink or collapse (xian 陷).

Read more

Over the years, in the online wellosphere, I’ve watched as morning routines became a thing, then became increasingly elaborate, then became so involved they weren’t really a morning routine anymore—more like a half-day production.

And then, as often happens online, the pendulum swung back again. In certain circles these days, morning routines are deeply uncool: proudly unbothered and vaguely destructive is the aesthetic. Meanwhile, on the other side, we find increasingly extensive and expensive peptide and biohack stacks, with endless ways of outsourcing health and intuition to products and gadgets.

But you know what’s held steady? Through more than a decade of morning routine and anti-morning-routine trends? Since long before we started performing all this on the internet?

My morning routine.

I’m a firm believer that what you do in the morning flows into the entire day. Over and over again, I’ve seen and experienced this in my own life.

As you know, I also place tremendous faith in simplicity and consistency. I have a deep affinity for paring things back to their essentials, doing the next thing, doing it again, and staying the course.

When it comes to morning routines and most other areas of life, this includes two components. The first is what you might expect: declaring non-negotiables, showing up, sticking with practices even when you don’t feel like it. The second is being receptive and intuitive enough to let routines and habits evolve over time.

It can be a tricky balance, especially if you struggle with consistency long term. Our inner stories can be oh so convincing. But for me, most changes happen slowly and organically, woven into the rhythm of life. It’s only when I look back across the years that I see how much the trajectory has shifted.

Anyway, I was thinking about this recently because I was asked (for a still-unpublished interview in another publication) to describe how I start my day. And it got me reflecting on how little details are different now than they were two years ago, one year ago, or even six months ago… while other aspects have been with me for more than two decades. Every morning, day after day.

In case you’re looking for inspiration—or, like me, simply like getting a glimpse into other people’s routines—I thought I’d share a peek into my mornings, along with some of the ways they’ve changed and stayed the same over time.

(By the way, this is NOT to say you need a morning routine or that it has to look anything like mine. If you have babies or young kids, especially, I imagine your mornings look entirely different! But if you do have a morning routine—or even just one or two practices that feel nourishing, energizing, or essential—I’d love to hear in the comments.)

Asked to describe how I start my day, here’s what I said:

I usually wake around dawn. Between tropical birds, village roosters, and my cats, there’s no sleeping in.

First thing, I splash water on my face and do oil pulling while making my bed, reading a chapter of the Tao Te Ching, and writing a line or two in my journal: the date, my sobriety year (6), and an invocation or prayer. I then brush my teeth, head downstairs to feed the cats, take a few sips of water, and step outside—where our temple cat Tucker greets me like it’s Christmas morning all over again.

On our wraparound porch, breathing in the fresh air as dark turns to dawn, I do the Five Tibetan Rites (an ancient movement, breath, and longevity practice), along with some sit-ups and pushups. I then sit in meditation for a few minutes before heading back inside to take a quick cold shower, put castor oil and sometimes honey on my face, and make a hot drink.

Since January 1, I’ve been off coffee and caffeinated tea as part of a year-long study blending A Course in Miracles, Jñāna yoga, and ancient Egyptian mysticism. Most mornings I drink mint tea or a simple cocoa drink made with boiling water, local raw goat milk, grassfed butter, a sprinkle of sea salt, and two heaping tablespoons of 100 percent cocoa powder. I’ll often drink that alongside fresh orange juice while reading the ACIM text and lesson of the day. (Chocolate does contain a small amount of caffeine—this is the one exception I’m making. Don’t tell my ACIM teacher!)

When that’s done, I open my laptop, check email, and begin work. I’ll often do gua sha at some point while reading online.

And while some parts of that routine are new, others have been with me for decades. Here are a few examples of how my mornings have evolved over time:

• Waking early has been consistent for decades. These days, instead of alarms, I wake to tropical birds and village roosters.

• Oil pulling is one of the newest additions. I started a few months ago after putting it off for years. Now, I really miss it if I skip it.

• I’ve gone in and out of reading the Tao Te Ching for more than two decades. My copy was xeroxed at a small copy shop in Thailand and given to me by a spiritual teacher turned lover turned unhinged ex when I lived here in my twenties.

• Writing in my journal began in 2017 during the dark Winter of Divorce. Originally, it was an evening gratitude practice. Around the time I got sober, I made it a morning ritual instead—adding my day count, now a year count. Over the past five years, it’s become increasingly magical and mystical. I think of it less as journaling and more as casting spells on my life—setting intentions, asking for protection, and inviting in all manner of compassionate, loving assistance and guidance.

• The movement portion of my mornings has remained steady. I’ve been doing the Five Tibetan Rites every morning without fail since around 2016. Sit-ups and pushups have been with me much longer—probably since the first time I lived in Thailand in my late twenties.

• Cold showers have been part of the routine for years. I mixed it up while living in interior British Columbia, plunging into a glacier-fed lake every morning no matter the season or weather. (I do go through phases of warm showers, too.)

• Washing my face with just water followed by oil of some sort has been part of my mornings for decades—previously coconut oil, currently castor oil, sometimes honey as a face mask or spot treatment.

• The hot drink has stayed. The drink itself has changed. After giving up coffee and caffeinated tea on January 1, I was a good sport about mint and ginger tea for a while—they’re fine—before finally saying fuck it and switching to 100 percent dark cocoa powder. I’ve been playing with the specifics, but I reached peak morning beverage a few weeks ago when I discovered the wonders of local raw goat milk. I honestly prefer my new morning drink to coffee.

The other night, laughing with Randy, I said: “The edgiest thing I do these days is drink hot chocolate.”

• Caring for cats has also remained a constant. They’ve played an unreasonably large role in my life for more than fifteen years. Tucker, however—our adopted temple cat—is a much newer addition to the rhythms of daily life. Lately, he’s been staying over for slumber parties—making for even earlier mornings.

• Morning meditation is new. I’ve meditated every evening for years, but the morning sit began January 1 because it’s required for the ACIM program I’m doing and aligns with the Theravada Buddhism certificate program I started this year. The ACIM reading itself is new as well. I do it every morning—no exceptions—but I’m doubtful I’ll continue once the year-long program ends and I reach the end of the book. Morning meditation, though, is a keeper.

Looking across decades of mornings, I can see that while the details have changed, a few essential ingredients form a through-line:

• water and cleansing

• a simple skincare ritual

• movement

• silence and solitude

• prayer, invocation, devotion

• a hot drink savoured slowly

And alongside those, a few broader patterns:

• part of it takes place outside

• no tech until I open my laptop

• everything is low-cost or free

All told, the first act of my morning—before the hot drink and laptop, if I’m taking my time—takes about an hour. And Randy has his own breath and movement routine before coffee.

Sometimes, passing each other on the stairs or porch, one of us will joke: “I still have so much to do before I can sit down with my chocolate/coffee!”

But that doesn’t stop either of us from doing it, same as we’ve both been doing for decades. It really does make a difference.

Throughout the rest of the day, I’m far more likely to feel calmer and steadier, more grounded and focused. I tend to make better choices and just feel better. And when I feel better, everything goes more smoothly.

With that, I’ll leave you with what’s nourishing me and what I’m hungry for—and I’d love to hear yours in the comments.

WHAT’S NOURISHING ME

STORM. I have a somewhat unusual, possibly off-brand thing to share this week: a video by GENER8ION starring Yung Lean. Heads up that it includes drug use, bullying, and young male chaos and catharsis.

While I don’t want to live in that world, I found the video mesmerizing—especially the final few minutes and where the arc lands. (If you watch it, definitely watch all the way through.)

I knew nothing about Swedish rapper Yung Lean before this, but afterward I looked him up and learned more about his life, experiences with mental health and addiction, and current sobriety.

The music and video won’t be for everyone, but I found beauty in it. Reflecting on that afterward, I realized I increasingly see beauty in many different expressions of the human condition without immediately moralizing or rushing towards resolution. I’m not sure I could have done that a few years ago—especially in early sobriety.

WHAT I’M HUNGRY FOR

Nuance. Something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is how often, in many circles, “nuance” and difference are only accepted as an abstraction. Meanwhile, people are running a mostly unconscious, always-on program in the background assessing whether “you’re one of us” or “you’re one of them.”

I’m hungry for spaces beyond invisible us/them checklists, where nuance and inclusion are actually real.

I’d love to hear yours.

Part of what excites me about writing these letters is hearing about your lives—what’s supporting you, what you’re wanting more of in the days and weeks ahead.

With that in mind, I’d love to hear:

• What’s nourishing your body, mind, spirit?

• What are you hungry for?

• How do you start your day?

Leave a comment

If this resonated, a heart ❤️ helps these letters find their way.

Thank you, with love,
Dana

If you’re returning to the basics and wanting something steady to stay with, paid subscribers receive my Guide to Transformative Eating (you can preview it here).

A paid subscription also includes full access to the TCM Deep Dives series, where we’re currently exploring the seven emotions in Chinese Medicine. We most recently looked at worry and grief. Next, we turn towards fear and anxiety.

Subscribe now

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I recently came across a line in the metaphysical text A Course in Miracles that said:

“We will not let ourselves be sad today. For if we do, we fail to take the part that is essential to God’s plan, as well as to our vision. Sadness is the sign that you would play another part, instead of what has been assigned to you by God.”1

My immediate reaction was something along the lines of: WTAF.

When I brought this to my weekly ACIM group, my teacher helped place the passage in a broader spiritual context. And intellectually, through his framing, I could understand what the text was pointing towards.

But something in me still resisted.

Partly because, at a fundamental level, I see beauty in the human condition. So long as we’re here in this body, living this human life, I don’t see sadness as something we need to transcend.

What’s more, I don’t experience sadness as separate from God, Love, the Divine, or whatever name we give the Great Mystery.

Quite the opposite, really. In my own life, sadness and grief have often deepened my experience of love and connection. Walls come down. The heart opens and softens. Love finds fuller expression.

And, putting on my TCM hat for this series, grief in itself is not pathological. Grief—like all emotions—is simply a movement of Qi.

But not all movement is fast or immediate.

In Chinese Medicine, grief is an adaptive pause.

Something has changed or been lost. For a time, we pause and register this loss in body-mind-spirit. When the process unfolds naturally, grief gradually gives way to acceptance.

Grief, sadness, melancholy, and sorrow are all part of bei 悲, the emotion corresponding to the Lung.

Bei 悲 is part of being human. We feel it, express it, let it move through us. When we instead numb, suppress, or hold onto grief too tightly, imbalance arises. Grief begins to stagnate. Acceptance feels out of reach.

What’s happening here

From a certain perspective, bei 悲 can be understood as a kind of “no.” The lower part of the character contains the heart, xin 心. The upper part contains fei ⾮, meaning “not” or “non.” It depicts two forms turned back-to-back—something that once stood together now separated—positioned above the heart.

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Heart-sourced congrats to for winning this month’s $100 Bookshop giveaway! A reminder that there’s a chance to win each month as part of the Link-Up series.

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Dearest Reader,

Last Thursday evening after yoga practice, I was lying in my infrared sauna blanket, eyes closed, listening to an episode of The Tim Ferriss Show about ways people had simplified their lives. My thoughts drifted and I was only half paying attention until…

Around minute 17, at the start of “conscious leadership disruptor” Diana Chapman’s segment, one line jolted me:

“Simple happens when your inner and outer worlds are in agreement.”

I think the line hit me so hard because I’ve been realizing how much energy I spend negotiating between what feels true internally and what feels safe externally.

And I think that’s also part of why the themes of simplicity and consistency, then quiet and solitude, have been so alive for me lately. Simplicity in terms of possessions, routines, and daily life, yes. But also simplicity in a deeper sense. The simplicity that comes with less hypervigilance and risk assessment. Less code switching and fragmentation. Less back-and-forth between versions of self.

Truthfully, much of what followed in the podcast made me glaze over. It felt like a distraction from that essential point I wanted to linger with longer. After a few more minutes, I turned it off and spent the rest of my sauna time 1) savoring the silence, and 2) contemplating that one line—how right it felt, where I’m already living it, where I’m wanting to hurtle myself into it more fully, madly, completely.

The funny thing is, I rarely listen to The Tim Ferriss Show—so the fact that I happened to tune into this latest episode on a complete whim, and that line jumped out at me that evening, would soon feel especially auspicious. But I didn’t know that yet. I just knew that when I emerged from my sauna blanket, dripping with sweat and trying not to fuck up my laptop keyboard, the line felt important enough to email myself.

Cut to the next morning. I was up earlier than usual, around 5:30 am, to give myself space for an unrushed movement practice and meditation outside, an unrushed cup of hot cocoa with local raw goat’s milk, and a quiet moment to gather myself before my session with .

I’ve spoken about Maria here before. We know each other through sober community connections. She’s a former pharmaceutical industry scientist turned organizational leader turned astrologer, hypnotist, podcaster, psychic medium, herbalist, and writer. It’s hard for me to sum up our sessions because they feel intuitively and spiritually guided rather than following a particular framework. But if you’re looking for a wise, tapped-in guide whose messages feel sourced from pure Love, I wholeheartedly recommend Maria.

In this particular session, I brought some angst that’s been gnawing at me and that, honestly, relates to how I show up in this newsletter.

I’ve always been honest and real with what I share here. But I’ve also tended to shrink parts of myself and my life for fear of rejection—in the form of lower engagement, fewer hearts, unsubscribes, being cancelled, who knows. My life and choices don’t all fit within acceptable narratives. Since 2020 especially, I’ve learned painful lessons about what is and isn’t allowed in some online circles.

And for a long stretch, I worked with an amazing editor who I know helped protect me. But some of that protection—which is on me, my choices—involved extra softening and omission and trying to make myself relatable and unassailable. Because I’m not working with an editor currently, and because on some level I just can’t take shrinking anymore, a lot more of me has been coming through. And even more wants to come through.

I want my inner and outer worlds to be in agreement.

Even if it costs me subscribers, my bestseller badge, approval, belonging—all of it.

And what’s complicated is that I know for a fact that my readership spans exceptionally diverse beliefs and ways of living. This means the world. And I personally read, respect, and love people whose beliefs and ways of living differ dramatically from my own. But I also know that different parts of me run counter to different groups, and I’m not sure there’s a single group that aligns with me fully—which is totally fine. It’s just that, in my lived experience, this has too often looked like rejecting the whole of me because of one part of me.

That’s the space I brought into my session with Maria last Friday morning. What came through felt almost uncanny because I hadn’t mentioned the podcast line—or anything remotely similar. And yet, she immediately began speaking into the exact tension I’d been turning over the night before.

Where is my inner self negotiating with my outer self? Where am I exhausting myself trying to manage reception, perception, and belonging? Where am I endlessly recalibrating what’s safe to reveal?

And then, from there:

What if, rather than making those calculations over and over and over again, I made more global decisions around where and how I show up? Around how much of myself to let through?

Knowing there will always be risk. Knowing some people will absolutely reject me. And knowing that every global decision brings more simplicity and serenity.

She literally said at one point:

“It’s like coming to that alignment of your internal self and your external self in advance in as many categories as possible to prevent that exhaustion.”

Rather than every piece of writing becoming: should I share this or shouldn’t I? How will people react? How should I adjust myself? Oh fuck, what did I do?

All those stories and negotiations that slowly erode alignment with my fullest expression of self—an expression that, by the way, will always be changing for as long as I’m breathing.

Hearing Maria articulate this felt like relief. I responded with something along the lines of: “I love that. Because it’s like I only need to decide once, and then surrender the rest. However it’s received is not up to me.”

And she reminded me that even the global decisions aren’t final. I can revisit them monthly, seasonally, whenever I need. I’m free at any moment to reassess, change my mind, rewrite the decisions. But making them creates a container to get used to the bumps and reactions that come with being more fully seen. (Maria thinks this will become less wearing on my psyche over time, and I’m inclined to agree.)

She also said:

“In that way, you’re bringing your inner and outer self closer together so you will always feel like you fit in. Because there’s no negotiation. Either you find belonging—and that goes both ways—or you don’t, and that is for the best. Because it will be true.”

Because it will be true.

Another realization that came through is that much of my tension around all this is rooted in wanting to be of service. And Maria reflected that when we make ourselves overly broad or generic or even so-called relatable, people may see our work as just part of the endless parade of things moving past them online. But when we really put ourselves out there—trusting that our message won’t be for everyone but will be for someone—there’s a possibility for something much deeper to happen.

As Maria put it: “Our gift is for someone—or many people—to receive. And when they receive it, it will be deeply received, as opposed to just scanned.”

YES.

What we ended with was this: as long as I come from my heart, it’ll all be okay.

And the truth is, despite all my internal angst, I do come from my heart. The heart of my “global decision” is something I’ve already been practicing.

I run my writing—specifically, what I ultimately publish—through a few filters. (By the way, I endeavor to apply these filters to anything I write—newsletters, Substack notes, comments, emails, you name it. Also to anything I say or do, online and off. Which is not to say I always succeed—but I find having a clear compass helps me show up more beautifully more often.)

First, what I call my “Gil filter.” As I’ve mentioned countless times in this space, Gil Fronsdal has been my primary spiritual and ethical teacher for twenty-plus years. And I see tremendous value in asking myself: What would Gil think if he read this? Or even: Would I feel ashamed if Gil read this?

I don’t relate to any other teachers or figures like this. But this is the level of faith and trust I have in Gil’s teachings and in the path of practice I’m on with him—now in a more formal way through the Certificate of Theravada Buddhist Studies.

My second filter aligns with the first. It’s asking: how will I feel about what I’ve published when I sit down to meditate tonight?

That answer alone reveals almost everything I need to know. (I’ve written more about this daily inventory here.)

And my third filter aligns with both of those and my wider path of practice: Is this true? Does it create division? Does it come from my heart?

To be clear: something could pass through all three of those filters and still be rejected or triggering or even enraging to some people reading it. Honestly, that’s pretty much guaranteed! But this is the essence of the global decisions I’ve already made… and am working to embody more fully.

I’m still thinking through and feeling into what this means in practice—and I always will be. It’s an unended process. But even naming it—even realizing I’m reaching for more and more places to rest from the tug-of-war between my inner and outer worlds—brings a feeling of rightness.

Not in the sense of right or wrong.

In the sense of: yes. Yes. This feels very right in my mind, my body, my heart.

For now, I’ll leave you with what’s nourishing me and what I’m hungry for—and I’d love to hear yours in the comments.

WHAT’S NOURISHING ME

Thai grammar. I feel like I mention Thai studies all the time in these letters, but language learning nourishes me in so many ways. There’s the actual practice of sitting outside in the mornings with my notebooks—especially now, with everything so alive and green during rainy season. There’s the mental project of working through grammar rules, then applying them in writing. There’s how it pulls me out of thought loops and helps me climb out of the internet.

It’s also a reminder of the tremendous gifts that come from living in—and truly opening to—a place other than where I grew up. Beyond the obvious aspiration of fluency, learning another language opens into another worldview and new way of thinking. It expands and enriches my perspective. It even makes me smile to myself when I think about how the people in my everyday life here don’t know or care what’s happening on Substack or in English-language discourse online.

Laughter. We have what we call a “fuck-you lizard”—technically a tokay gecko—living in our living room. (I’ve mentioned this roommate briefly before, but I don’t think I mentioned that the sound she makes is an extremely loud “Fuck you! Fuck you!”)

This particular one’s torso, not including the tail, is bigger than my forearm. Every night, when we go upstairs to bed, she emerges and starts yelling “Fuck you!” at the top of her little lizard lungs. The funniest part is that on the rare occasions we actually spot her, she freezes and goes completely silent. Then the minute we head upstairs again: “Fuck you! Fuck you!” As you can imagine, she adds extra laughter to our evenings.

WHAT I’M HUNGRY FOR

Parts of our old life in Chiang Mai. Randy and I were talking the other day about how, despite preferring life in the countryside, and being truly awed and overjoyed by the lush green surrounding us and the view of the mountains, we miss parts of our old life in Chiang Mai. Things like walking to the market each evening, saying hello to the alley and street cats along our route, chatting with our regular juice and food vendors, getting that daily, in-person interaction as part of a bustling community. Thankfully, Chiang Mai is still only a short drive away. And though our interactions are fewer here in Mae Rim, they’re dependably lovely.

I’d love to hear yours.

Part of what excites me about writing these letters is hearing about your lives—what’s supporting you, what you’re wanting more of in the days and weeks ahead.

With that in mind, I’d love to hear:

• What’s nourishing your body, mind, spirit?

• What are you hungry for?

• Do you run what you write or say through some kind of inner compass?

• What one decision could you make to simplify your life, bringing your inner and outer worlds into closer agreement?

Leave a comment

If this resonated, a heart ❤️ helps these letters find their way.

Thank you, with love,
Dana

If you’re returning to the basics and wanting something steady to stay with, paid subscribers receive my Guide to Transformative Eating (you can preview it here).

A paid subscription also includes full access to the TCM Deep Dives series, where we’re currently exploring the seven emotions in Chinese Medicine. Most recently: worry and overthinking. Next, we turn towards sadness and grief.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Two decades ago in Chiang Mai, during my very first Chinese Medicine treatment, Dr. Wang placed three fingers on my wrist, felt my pulse for a long moment, then looked up at me and said, “Thinking too much. Thinking too much.”

At the time, I laughed nervously.

But he was right.

In Chinese Medicine, “thinking too much” is part of si 思, the emotion corresponding to the Spleen.

Often translated as contemplation or rumination, si 思 is the movement of thought. At its healthiest, it’s like our inner librarian—taking in new information and cross-referencing it with memory, linking present perception with past experience, forming useful connections.

Out of balance, thought becomes stuck and stagnant—circling around the same loops until reflection becomes distorted. It shapes how we experience life, see ourselves, and interface with the world.

This can take many forms: replaying conversations long after they’ve ended, endlessly preparing or planning, compulsively scanning for what might go wrong, spiraling into anxiety or worry, hypervigilance and compulsive patterns, or consuming so much content that we can no longer digest or remember it, while still ravenously reaching for more.

Over time, thought becomes increasingly claustrophobic and rigid. Rather than helping us perceive clearly and respond to life, the mind starts folding in on itself. “Thinking too much” takes a toll on the whole body.

What’s happening here

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Quick reminder: two days remain to enter the $100 Bookshop.org gift card giveaway in the May Link-Up. *If you live somewhere Bookshop.org doesn’t deliver, you can still enter. If you win, I’ll send $100 via PayPal instead.

If you’re looking for something a bit more practical today, the May Link-Up also includes some thoughts on movement, strength training, body composition, and the approach I take in my own body and life.

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Dearest Reader,

The comments on my last letter—the one where I professed my deep faith in simplicity and consistency, my enduring love for paring things back to their essentials and staying the course—were truly so beautiful.

A few of your shares made me tear up.

There’s just something about hearing about the everyday rituals and practices people return to—about imagining those deeply human, exquisitely intimate moments. Being online so much of the time, consuming so much “content,” I think that’s what I’m trying (often failing) to reach for.

It’s like, I want to peer through this screen and into the quiet, lived moments of lives. I want to get a glimpse of what’s most ordinary, and in that ordinary, sense the beating of another heart. A heart, for all our differences, that’s much like my own.

Anyway, one of those comments spoke to something that’s so essential to all of this for me—and so essential to how I understand and practice simplicity and consistency—that I can’t believe I didn’t think to mention it.

Tami wrote, “To me, simple includes calm and quiet and gentle.”

Yes, yes. Quiet, in particular, feels like air to me.

It’s where I find calm and find God. It’s where I have the best chance of hearing and knowing what matters most. It’s where I can best understand the impact of my choices around food, movement, spiritual practice, being in relationship, everything, everything, everything.

Quiet is where I exhale and inhale the universe.

Quiet is a place that I hunger for and that I go out of my way to create the conditions for—both in my external surroundings, and inside my own head.

Practically speaking, this means choosing to live in the countryside rather than the city (I consider nature sounds part of the quiet, not noise). It means living in a way where my partner and I each have our personal spaces. It means weaving solitude throughout my day: when I do my morning movement practice and meditation outdoors as the sun is rising, when I do my writing and Thai language studies outside while sipping hot chocolate, when I savor my meals slowly while reading something calming or uplifting, when I practice yoga in the late afternoon before dinner, when I practice meditation each night before bed.

It’s not always comfortable or easy to claim this. Not everyone in my life has understood or agreed with me claiming it.

But existing in the modern world as we do—bombarded by the cacophony and machines of too muchness, by endless input and stimulation, by the pressure to fill every silence—and refusing most modern means of soothing and numbing…

Silence and solitude are medicine.

Having access to them impacts not only me, but how I show up for absolutely everyone and everything else. I genuinely don’t understand how people manage our current existence without it.

And of course, much of the noise in my life is inside my own head. And despite my years of practice, despite all the discipline born of devotion I throw at this, I’ve still got it.

It’s gotten better, though, with time. And most importantly, perhaps, I know what makes it better. And a big part of that is—to circle back around—simplicity and consistency.

I hold my daily practices as sacrosanct. I don’t multitask. I don’t watch TV. I’m off social media except Substack. I limit my newsletter subscriptions. I limit my herbs and supplements. I limit my choices. I choose not to drown myself in consumption and noise.

Don’t get me wrong—I can absolutely relate to the pull to add more. Just the other day I was poring through a woman’s write-up of her extensive, expensive morning, afternoon, and evening peptide stacks and biohacks with rapt fascination. All of the excitement, the promise, the hope in the form of a tablet or needle or gadget.

It’s seductive. It’s tempting. It’s energetically deafening.

The body-mind-spirit can only hear and process so much. And that “so much” opens to a vaster expanse than we can even imagine. But if we’re always adding, adding, adding. If we’re always grasping and fixing and numbing and covering over, well.

It leaves me exhausted and scattered.

And to be clear: there’s no “right or wrong” in any of this—truly, to each their own. But my default is to spend long stretches in silence and solitude, to listen deeply, to choose what feels lighter, freer, more spacious. To make space for spirit.

And when I get sidetracked (because I absolutely get sidetracked), quiet is what brings things back into focus. It’s what brings me back to what matters most—including what I already have in my life, remembering to savor each drop, and what I want to attract, invoke, create more of.

Because here’s a little secret I’ve discovered: when I get quiet and still, when I truly appreciate the beauty and miracles that surround me and feel into what I actually want—not by adding more, but by making more space—there’s power in that.

It’s an energy. It’s magnetic. It moves me towards Love.

This all relates directly to cultivating a more perfect hunger, by the way. It also relates to the upcoming TCM Deep Dives edition on worry and finding freedom from thought loops.

For now, I’ll leave you with what’s nourishing me and what I’m hungry for—which is very much part of this process and practice.

WHAT’S NOURISHING ME

Local goat’s milk. I’ve mentioned before how our cats have fallen in love with goat’s milk since we moved to Thailand. Well, I recently started buying a version packaged for people, and it turns out I love it, too. My new morning beverage/breakfast is two heaping Tbs of 100 percent cocoa powder shaken with boiling water, a pat of organic grassfed butter, a sprinkle of sea salt, and a generous splash of this milk. It feels like a long-overdue replacement for the almond milk I’d been using, which, despite being sugar-free, contains the usual gums and preservatives.

Magnificent mangos. We buy local mangos at least once a week—they are everywhere here, especially in season. But one of the fancy grocers near us has brought in some special varieties lately. They come from a farm in our province but have what I believe are Japanese names (megumi, tsuya). They’re two to three times the size of our usual mangos, more orange than yellow, and slightly more expensive. Their sweetness has complex notes to it—almost like a cross between mango, papaya, and coconut. Regular Thai mangos from outdoor markets remain my favorite. Still, it’s been fun to expand my mango horizons.

WHAT I’M HUNGRY FOR

A solo retreat. Speaking of quiet and solitude, I’ve been deeply craving a solo retreat. My last one was just over a year ago, when I spent a week in the sleepy beach town of Cha-am in southern Thailand. The truth is, though, I really, really worry about leaving my cats (one is 15, one is 13, one is probably a year but always getting in trouble). And, yes, I also worry about leaving Randy. It’s silly, I suppose—they can manage just fine without me. But this is something I’ve really struggled with, especially in the last five years. I’m afraid of something happening while I’m away and being unable to get home.

As a compromise, I might try something super local—perhaps someplace rustic in the mountainous jungle nearby. That way, I can indulge in deep silence and solitude for a week while still being able to get home quickly if needed.

I’d love to hear yours.

Part of what excites me about writing these letters is hearing about your lives—what’s supporting you, what you’re wanting more of in the days and weeks ahead.

With that in mind, I’d love to hear:

• What’s nourishing your body, mind, spirit?

• What are you hungry for?

• What’s your relationship to quiet? How do you hear what you most need to hear?

Leave a comment

If this resonated, a heart ❤️ helps these letters find their way.

Thank you, with love,
Dana

If you’re returning to the basics and wanting something steady to stay with, paid subscribers receive my Guide to Transformative Eating (you can preview it here).

A paid subscription also includes full access to the TCM Deep Dives series, where we’re currently inside the seven emotions—most recently, joy. Next, we turn towards worry.

Subscribe now

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Enter to win: Each month, I offer a small thank you to paid subscribers—a chance to win a $100 gift card to Bookshop.org.

If you’re a paid subscriber, simply leave a comment below to be entered. I’ll draw this month’s winner on May 15 at 12:00 a.m. PT. (If Bookshop doesn’t ship to you, I’ll send the amount via PayPal instead.) ❤️

No purchase necessary. To enter without subscribing, email hello AT danaleighlyons DOT com with the subject “May Giveaway” by May 15 at 12:00 a.m. PT.

Dearest Reader,

This month’s link-up is a companion to the last two My Soulful Life letters: the one on buying myself new clothes, and the one on my faith in simplicity and consistency.

The focus is a bit more concentrated than usual, centered around two threads: natural fiber clothing and strength training.

Throughout, I’ll highlight what I think matters most (beyond the hype and urgency). Along the way:

• why “strength training” doesn’t have to look like a gym routine (and what it looks like in my own life)

• two non-hype-y conversations with trainers who actually meet people where they are

• on bulking, body type, and why one-size-fits-all fitness advice doesn’t hold up (including my own experience, which differs from what I hear most)

• a deeper look at clothing materials, sensory sensitivity, and health

• synthetic fabrics, tight activewear, and how they actually interact with the body

• natural fiber clothing, without the overwhelm (where to start, what to prioritize, plus brand round-ups and vintage/thrifting options)

This one’s overflowing with links. You’ll need to click through to read the whole thing.

I hope you’ll take from it what you most need. And a reminder: leaving a comment enters you into this month’s $100 book giveaway. ❤️

upgrade, comment, enter to win

Strength training, kept simple

Online these days, strength training seems to be everywhere. And the message I keep seeing directed at women is: you NEED to be strength training.

To be clear, there is truth in this messaging. It truly is important to tend to the strength of our muscles, and this becomes even more important with age, as we start losing both muscle and bone mass. Plus, building muscle can absolutely help women (or anyone) boost their metabolism and support health overall. That said, a few things stand out to me:

Read more

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The year is 2011. Days are spent studying in a small town tucked between mountains. Nights, snorting cocaine and dancing with the crowd of my dreams.

Making wise choices after a line or two was difficult enough. Add motion, in the form of bodies dancing and music booming, and disastrous decisions were a matter of when.

Still, we kept at it. For hours and hours. For way past the first high. For a parenthesis in time that held exhilaration, wildness, and laughter. For a parenthesis of life that held all I ever wanted, if only I could feel it.1

Our spirits shone bright—too bright—desperate for some elusive state of communion. Clothes came off, outrageousness ensued, more lines were had, and we danced until sunrise spoiled the party.

All the while, as my wildest dreams came true and I watched myself partaking, I was in fact numb. It was all just out of reach.

The highs went fast. Desperation set in. Those nights stretched on forever but could never stretch long enough.

In Chinese Medicine, xi 喜 corresponds to the Heart and encompasses not just joy, but a range of expression.

At its healthiest, joy can be bright or quiet, playful or steady. At its root, it reflects ease in oneself and with others. It also carries a sense of belonging and aliveness—of feeling fully alive.

Out of balance, it may become overstimulation or overexcitement, scattering the spirit and giving way to disconnection and loss of true joy.

What’s happening here

The Heart (xin ⼼) houses the shen 神—the heart-mind-spirit-consciousness and sum total of our mental, emotional, and spiritual life. It shapes awareness, cognition, memory, and the way we experience ourselves and others.

When the Heart is strong and Blood abundant, consciousness is clear, emotions are steady, thinking is sharp, and there’s a sense of coherence. A person feels present in their life, able to connect and respond.

As we saw at the start of our exploration, emotions are movements of Qi. When healthy, they arise, are felt, and move through.

The phase associated with the Heart—and thus joy—is Fire. Fire is expansive and dispersing, moving outward in all directions. It is maximum Yang, when activity reaches its peak.

Xi 喜 reflects this same movement. It opens and connects. It expands outward. In excess, this expansion loosens and scatters. The spirit becomes harder to anchor.

When it over-expands

What we think of as joy in Chinese Medicine falls under xi 喜 but is often paired with le, forming the couplet: xi le 喜乐.

Xi 喜 depicts a drum with a hand beating it. We might translate it as “joy,” “elation,” or “excitement.” In pathology, it leans towards excess states—overexcited, overstimulated, manic.

Le 乐 depicts bells and a drum atop a wooden support. It too can be translated as “joy,” but evokes a sense of inner happiness that comes from connection and unity. Its purest manifestation is one of openness, communion, and belonging. In pathology, it leans towards a deficiency of joy due to disconnect from oneself, others, or a life that holds meaning.

When we have an excess condition of xi, our shen 神 scatters. We trade groundedness, clarity, and presence for chaos. We trade being whole and embodied for moving up and out.

Sometimes, this scattering of self is attractive. We may seek it out through alcohol and other drugs, excess sugar or binge eating, impulsive shopping or gambling, interpersonal drama, reckless behavior, scrolling or gaming, or anything that’s hyper-stimulating.

Over time, we begin to fixate on these experiences and require more and more intensity to achieve the desired effect.

This kind of overstimulation induces what Chinese Medicine calls Heart vexation (xin fan 心烦, which can take the form of anxiety). It exerts a progressively destructive toll on body-mind-spirit. The high is insatiable and unsustainable. Fan 烦 depicts a person with their head on fire.

In this state, the Heart has difficulty organizing the spirit because everything revolves around attaining and communing with the sought-after experience. The drive is one of more, more, more. The spirit shines blindingly bright but is frantic and scattered.

At one extreme, this can manifest as manic behavior or a psychotic break. We call this kuang 狂. As the saying goes: what goes up must come down. Kuang ultimately swings into collapse, withdrawal, and deep dark depression. (The withdrawal phase of this cycle is dian 癫).

What gets lost

Overexcitement or “too much joy” also leads to a deficiency of le 乐. When healthy, le speaks to intimacy and belonging. When deficient, there’s a lack of inner joy and contentedness.

Once the immediate hit, high, or burst of excitement or euphoria is over, we’re left feeling empty, lonely, deflated. This eventually leads us to seek out another hit or high—despite knowing it always leads back to the same empty place.

Hooked on stimulation and lacking connection, we begin to filter everything through that next fix. The mind and attention become attuned to our drug of choice (whether a substance, behavior, or both). Perception of self and world becomes disconnected from our body and from anything that’s not stimulating enough for our desensitized senses. Natural joy and simple pleasures no longer register—now feeling boring, flat, non-existent.

Chasing after becomes everything: a past experience, something better, something that might finally satisfy or even allow us to feel. Normal is no longer enough. Even the drug of choice is no longer enough.

There is only perpetual seeking of the next best thing or some imagined ideal. Even if we plan, carry through, and get “that thing,” it can’t compare to what we hoped and imagined. Rather than appreciate what’s real and true, we become tethered to a promise that can never be kept.

In the process, we deplete and lose touch with deep inner joy and our capacity for intimacy with others—something very different from bonding over a shared drug of choice.

In an effort to fill a void, soothe a wound, or get a need met, we instead reinforce a painful, predictable cycle. Excess and extreme highs flip into deficiency and extreme lows. Simple, everyday joy feels out of reach.

When it’s in balance

As with all emotions associated with the zang organs, joy does not, by default, have such a bad ending.

When there is healthy, connected joy, Qi is relaxed and expansive but not slack and scattered. It moves freely between interior and exterior, from one heart and shen 神 to another.

As we saw in our discussion of Xin Bao ⼼包, the shen 神 is not fully exposed. Xin Bao is both the Heart’s envoy and its protector.

It not only safeguards the Heart, but allows its light and joy to be known.

Bringing this into your life

So how do we work with this? How do we allow ourselves to let go enough, to open and expand enough, to let in joy and excitement for life—without getting hooked by patterns that might feel attractive in the moment, but ultimately lead us away from deep, steady joy and contentment?

For me, when I’m unsure whether a substance or behavior is unhelpful, even if it brings a momentary high or relief, my answer usually comes into focus through a simple question: is this connecting or disconnecting?

Meaning, if I’m really honest with myself, does doing or consuming this thing leave me feeling more connected to what I truly want and need? Does it make me feel more connected to others in the sense of true intimacy, distinct from bonding over a shared drug of choice? Does it move me closer to joy, love, and belonging, not only while partaking but afterwards?

Something that helps me arrive at an honest answer is a practice I return to each evening.

Alone on the floor of my bedroom, door closed and lights low, I move through gentle stretches, feeling into my body, unwinding the day. As I move, I review the day—not a rehashing, not getting lost in fixations or stories. Just a review. Just noticing. Just paying careful attention to how that review feels in my heart and my body.

What I said and wrote. How I said it and wrote it. The path I walked online and off. My choices with words, food, movement, creation, consumption. What I listened to and read. What loops I found myself in. Where I refused or failed to untangle the knots.

It’s all okay, by the way. These movements of humanness don’t need to be solved. And yet, it can be helpful, I find, to bring honest, exacting awareness to how it all feels in my mind, my heart, my physical being. I ask myself: what was helpful? What left me feeling better, not worse? What feels good now, here in the after?

I also notice what did the opposite—what pulled my body, mind, and relationships into choppier waters. What doesn’t feel good to body-mind-soul.

This practice shows me what I most need to know. It helps me see the difference between what briefly excites or stimulates me and what leaves me feeling more whole, more connected, more joyful.

I believe that the deepest essence of us wants to move towards what brings us true joy. We support this movement by being present enough to know how our choices feel. To know what is deeply and truly connecting.

And, of course, knowing what lights us up and brings us joy that nourishes the Heart and spirit rather than leaving us strung out and untethered isn’t the same thing as doing it.

For this part, something I personally find helpful is simplicity and consistency. Because if we’re hooked on a sort of joy and excess stimulation that’s scattering, wholesome joy and deep inner peace can feel boring at first—even uncomfortable.

It won’t feel that way forever. But we have to offer body-mind-spirit enough time and consistent application of what’s helpful to reset our patterns and how we experience what we do and consume.

What facilitates this is to call forth a conscious, heart-sourced intention to actually enjoy it. To remember that feeling good feels good.

This, to me, is cultivating a more perfect hunger. A hunger for what nourishes us, and for what brings us what we most want.

And what I’ve found is that, with time, I’ve come to take tremendous joy and find deep contentment in simple pleasures again. Unlike the more extreme iterations of joy, these ones are steady, sustaining, and keep growing stronger.

How does xi le 喜乐 show up for you? If something resonated or stirred a question, I’d love to hear in the comments.

Leave a comment

Next, we’ll turn towards worry and thinking. At its healthiest, it can help us arrive at valuable insights. Out of balance, it can tip into thought loops without end.

With love,
Dana

With gratitude, I write from within a lineage of Chinese Medicine that I have been privileged to study through dedicated, masterful teachers. What I share here is shaped by years of study, practice, and transmission within a living tradition. I am especially grateful to my primary teacher in this medicine, 伦华.

Disclaimer: While I am a licensed Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, this newsletter is educational and not a substitute for individualized medical care. I cannot provide personal medical or dietary advice without a full clinical intake and informed consent. If you’d like to explore one-on-one work with me, you can reply to this email or contact me at hello AT danaleighlyons DOT com.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how much of what I’ve “achieved” in my life comes down not to overflowing resources or extraordinary capacity or exceptional brains or hitting some genetic jackpot, but to discipline and simplicity.

To staying with something. To returning, again and again, to the basics. To my capacity to chop wood, carry water. To my deep faith in the power of presence, patience, and time.

I have this affinity for paring things back to their essentials, for doing the next thing, doing it again, and staying the course. I have this because 1) I learned long ago that it steadies fear, especially when circumstances feel out of control, 2) I’ve seen that it works, 3) it feels good.

I put “achieved” in quotes because the word feels loaded and likely misleading. I’m not talking about conventional markers of success—the money, the shiny things, the status and fame I don’t have.

None of the achievements I’m talking about here pay the bills or pay for retirement or bring me financial security. But they have a tremendous impact on how I experience life. They change how I move through it.

And when I look back across the many areas where this applies in my life—movement, food, learning, health, meditation—what’s essential is so simple, so straightforward, so natural. It’s why I’ve been able to stay the course even when there wasn’t much there, materially. Maybe stretches of not having much were the reason.

Over time, it stops being about whatever I set out to do. The studying, the repetition, the practice—they create the conditions. There’s more focus, more calm, more steadiness, yes. But also more strength and self-trust. It carries into places I never set out to change. It touches every part of my life, and my relationships.

Part of why this has been on my mind lately is that I’ve been listening to a few interviews with trainers who took that same idea and applied it to diet, daily movement, and strength training. I found myself admiring how they made change sound and feel so realistic, so accessible, so within reach. I’ll be sharing a couple of those interviews—plus some personal thoughts about strength training—in next week’s link-up. (Needless to say, it has to do with far more than just strength training.)

Recently, I’ve needed to remind myself of this, too—specifically in the context of Thai language learning. Because while I study Thai every day, and have lessons with my teacher twice a week, I’ve been noticing resistance and not-good-enoughness. You should be fluent by now. If you’d prioritized this you’d be fluent by now. Why haven’t you made these studies a true, hours-a-day priority? Thinking those thoughts, I feel pressure and guilt. I resist my studies. I end up spending less time with them.

Ironically, the trigger for this unhelpful self-talk is that my reading has reached a level where my teacher can give me “real” articles like this one. It’s several rungs above my comprehension, but not so far above that I can’t tackle it (with the help of my teacher).

Two years ago, I never could’ve imagined working my way through these assignments. I’m at the part of language learning where knowing more makes you acutely aware of how much you don’t know. And the gap between where you are and what you’re reaching for feels oceanic.

I’ve been here before. With Arabic, with TCM, with yoga, with my own body, with so many things.

And because I’ve been here before, I know what to do: set a timer, put my head down, study, run through the material over and over. Do it day after day, and something will absolutely get in there. That’s just how learning works.

What facilitates this is to make space to actually enjoy it. To remember that it feels good. To picture myself sitting down at my desk or the table outside, hands wrapped around a mug of mint tea or hot chocolate, listening to birdsongs and breathing in the wet tropical air, weaving this practice into my days, with ease and delight, not struggle.

This, to me, is cultivating a more perfect hunger. A hunger for what nourishes us, and for what brings us what we most want.

It makes it far more appealing to actually do the thing. It softens the resistance and the “I’ll start tomorrow.” It changes the whole feeling of it, reminding me I get to do this.

Obviously, I’m not suggesting you go study Thai. But when I think about patients and clients I’ve worked with—how much suffering they were feeling sitting there in the resistance and paralysis and self-imposed should’s—well.

My heart goes out to anyone in that place. And I know our minds are so hard on us, sometimes. If that’s you—in any area of your life—I hope you’ll lean into the spirit of this letter and move towards something steadier and simpler. Something you can return to.

Because what I’ve seen, again and again, is that taking one small step each day—staying with the basics, not overcomplicating things—lands you somewhere entirely different in a week, a month, a decade. The results will take care of themselves. All you need to do is show up for one thing—not something massive, nothing impossible. Just one thing for today. Then do it again tomorrow. Envision yourself enjoying it.

I find myself wanting to share more of my own basics here, too—what I eat, what I drink, how I move, what I put on my skin, what I return to. For now, I’ll leave you with what’s nourishing me and what I’m hungry for.

WHAT’S NOURISHING ME

Fantasy. After finishing the last book I was reading (Easy Beauty: A Memoir by Chloé Cooper Jones, highly recommend), I found myself craving fiction generally and sci-fi and fantasy specifically. On Saturday afternoon, I put work aside and made an impromptu field trip to an English-language bookstore in Chiang Mai. I came home with both books in The Shepherd King Duology by Rachel Gillig, along with a copy of George Orwell’s 1984 (which I think I read in high school but want to revisit). I also picked up The Magic by Rhonda Byrne (I loved The Greatest Secret).1

Thunder: Shortly after returning from the bookstore, an afternoon storm rolled in and we lost power for a while (very common where we live, during the rainy season). Since I couldn’t practice yoga to my usual recording, I savored a self-guided practice in my bedroom, looking out at lush tropical trees through big windows, listening to wind in the leaves and thunder, breathing in the thick smell of rain, working up a deep sweat.

WHAT I’M HUNGRY FOR

Really good water. In an online chat the other day, someone asked about Quinton Isotonic Ampules. I tried them years ago after listening to this podcast and liked them. More significant and sustainable for me, though, was that around the same time I was taking Quinton, I signed up for regular water delivery from local natural springs (I was living on Vancouver Island). This was a game changer. The water tasted amazing—like no water I’d had before. My whole body craved it, and thinking about it, I’m craving it now.

We get water delivery here (the water in our taps is probably not the wisest to drink), and we go through so much Singha bubbly water in glass bottles. But I sure do miss that spring water—having it in a ceramic dispenser on my counter, drinking it from mason jars throughout the day.

I’d love to hear yours.

Part of what excites me about writing these letters is hearing about your lives—what’s supporting you, what you’re wanting more of in the days and weeks ahead.

With that in mind, I’d love to hear:

• What’s nourishing your body, mind, spirit?

• What are you hungry for?

• What basics are you returning to—or what’s one simple thing you know will support you?

Leave a comment

If this resonated, a heart ❤️ helps these letters find their way.

Thank you, with love,
Dana

If you’re returning to the basics and wanting something steady to stay with, paid subscribers receive my Guide to Transformative Eating (you can preview it here).

A paid subscription also includes full access to the TCM Deep Dives series, where we’re currently inside the seven emotions—most recently, anger. Next, we turn towards joy.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

A few weeks ago, I left an online meeting furious and trembling.

I thought I was angry about being dismissed—about something I knew to be true overridden. But the anger didn’t pass, and it didn’t lead anywhere useful. It kept looping, tightening, catching on the same points. I kept trying (and failing) to land somewhere different.

Eventually, it became clear there was more underneath.

In Chinese Medicine, nu 怒 corresponds to the Liver. It encompasses not just anger, but a range of expression—outrage, annoyance, irritability, resentment, and the drive to change what is blocked.

In its healthy form, nu is closely tied to intention. It gives us the energy to respond when something isn’t right—to set boundaries, take action, move forward.

And yet…

The character for nu 怒 contains “slave” over “heart.” When anger or rage consumes the heart, the heart is indeed a slave to it.

What’s happening here

Read more

In early 2025, as part of the “what I’m hungry for” portion of this series, I wrote about how I was hungry for non-frumpy clothes generally and new underwear specifically. Because while I love having a teeny wardrobe—the entirety of which fits in a carry-on—my clothes at that point were literally threadbare.

I’ve also written before about how I can feel blocked around the most ordinary, everyday things. Like, I’ll spend all day creating a five-notebook system for Thai vocab and grammar, no problem, but I can’t seem to overcome my resistance to clothes shopping. (And I’m not talking about building a capsule collection. If I could buy even one shirt or pair of pants without holes, that’d be a win.)

Well, a little over a year later, I’m happy to report: I bought some new clothes. Don’t get too excited—it’s not curated or anything. Just simple basics that I can wear around the house, here in the Thai countryside, day in, day out: men’s boxers and white tank tops in 100 percent cotton, two buttondown shirts in 100 percent linen, and, yes, a few pairs of underwear. I also bought pretty blue and grey bath towels while I was at it.

Some reasons it took me so long: I don’t like shopping and find it overwhelming—too much choice, an extreme aversion to loud noise and bright lights, malls are a kaleidoscope of too muchness, online never quite working out. I genuinely prefer to have few possessions. I like the feeling of lightness, spaciousness, flow, and ease far more than pretty new things. I also have very particular preferences and tastes and refuse to buy anything that isn’t just right. These tastes include how something looks (very simple, usually white, grey, black, or light blue), the material (all natural, such as cotton, linen, wool, or silk), and how something feels on my body (comfortable, loose, like I’m wearing next-to-nothing at all).

But things had gotten so bad with my existing clothing (most of which I bought years ago in Canada) that I was starting to feel not good in it, not like me in it, and, honestly, a little bit of shame around it.

So despite all my resistance, and after over a year of putting it off, I gave myself two full days to shop in Chiang Mai. The first, I wandered through small shops and one of the larger malls and came home with nothing. The second, I moved through another mall, floor by floor, and eventually bought nearly everything at Muji (a Japanese department store) because it ticked all the boxes and was all natural fiber.

I really don’t like the idea, feeling, or energetic effect (yes, I know how this sounds) of synthetic material touching my skin. I don’t even need to know the science or woo of it all—I just know how I personally feel. Still, I’m curious about the why, and am rounding up a few explainers (including ones with natural clothing brands) that I’ll share in next month’s link-up. For now, I’m sitting here in 100 percent cotton boxers, super pleased with my choices.

In other “what I’ve bought lately” news (I’ve purchased more treats in the past month than in the past year, thanks to some birthday money), I discovered an online Thai shop selling herbs and natural remedies and made a few more fun purchases.

I find the basics, tended to with consistency, bring the best, most predictable results: nutrient-dense, simple whole food, good sleep, movement woven throughout my day, time outside each day in sunlight and nature. I take a minimalist approach not just to clothes, but to everything, including skincare and supplements.

Still, I do like experimenting from time to time, so here’s what I got: lion’s mane capsules (I’m a massive mushroom fan and consider them a legit superfood), organic maca powder (a root from the Andes, sometimes called “Peruvian ginseng,” something I’ve moved in and out of over the years and seem to get a subtle but real tonic lift from, plus I love the earthy taste and sprinkle it on my lunch bowl), organic castor oil in a glass bottle (I use this daily on my face, especially around my eyes, and on my eyelashes; I also use it on any places of soreness or injury), and DMSO—which requires a bit more explanation, along with a reminder this isn’t medical advice, just me sharing my personal experience.

I first started learning about DMSO (a natural remedy used for myriad ailments) through ’s newsletter .

I’m hyperflexible by conventional standards, and my daily yoga practice involves some rather extreme backbends. Most of the time this feels fantastic, but once or twice a year something happens (usually in the course of daily life, like lifting something heavy incorrectly) and the facet joints in my lumbar spine become inflamed. When that happens, I back way off my usual movements and shift into what I know helps: switching my daily yoga practice to the 26-2 series here (audio only; I’m linking this for the dialogue with my teacher, but if you’re new, find an in-person class), long walks, sessions in my infrared sauna blanket, acupuncture along the spine and into any knots in the surrounding muscles, and osteopathic adjustments. I also listen extra closely to my body, modifying movements to never go over the edge of what’s therapeutic. My guide is to only do what will leave me feeling better, not worse, the following day, until eventually I’m back to normal.

Discovering the DMSO source here in Thailand overlapped one of those periods, and I thought it might offer an additional layer of support. By the time it got here, though, the flare had mostly resolved, so I can’t say much yet. Still, I’ve been applying it every other day and paying attention.

If you’re curious about DMSO (which is used for all kinds of conditions, not just musculoskeletal), it’s worth doing proper research first—it’s not something to use casually. One thing in particular to know is that it acts as a carrier and can bring substances it comes into contact with—soap, skincare, chemicals on fabrics—into the body, so application needs to follow a very careful, specific procedure. I started with ’s guides, which go into detail around safe sourcing and application.

For now, I’m just noticing what changes and what doesn’t, what my body responds to and what it ignores. And, as is tradition in this series, I’ll leave you with what’s nourishing me and what I’m hungry for.

WHAT’S NOURISHING ME

Herb-infused oil samples. When I ordered a gua sha tool from a Chinese Medicine doctor in Bangkok a while back, she emailed me personally, sending pictures of various (nearly identical) pink heart-shaped stones so I could pick the one I liked best. She also sent me a list of herb-infused oils focused on different conditions and let me choose samples. I only picked three, but she sent those and a bunch more. They’re so cute. I’m loving using them.

WHAT I’M HUNGRY FOR

Faith. In my last letter, I mentioned longing for a particular sort of faith—and not being sure whether I’d find it. But in the readings I’m doing this week from the Majjhima Nikāya (Middle Length Discourses), as part of the Sati Center’s Certificate of Theravada Buddhist Studies, there’s a focus on faith in the sense of saddhā, and the different ways we might understand it. My teacher Gil also gave this talk on faith as part of a freely accessible retreat series, and I love it so much.

In it, he discusses five ways of considering faith. Within our tradition, faith doesn’t mean unconditionally believing some creed that you can’t question. It can be as simple as what you love, or as having a desire—a hunger—for what is wholesome and what brings you peace, including a path of practice.

I’d love to hear yours.

Part of what excites me about writing these letters is hearing about your lives—what’s supporting you, what you’re wanting more of in the days and weeks ahead.

With that in mind, I’d love to hear:

• What’s nourishing your body, mind, spirit?

• What are you hungry for?

• What’s something small you’ve brought into your life recently?

Leave a comment

If this resonated, a heart ❤️ helps these letters find their way.

Thank you, with love,
Dana

Paid subscribers receive my Guide to Transformative Eating (you can preview it here), along with full access to the TCM Deep Dives series.

Right now, we’re inside the seven emotions, and this Friday we turn towards anger.

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If you’re anything like me, sometimes a feeling or thought lingers a little too long.

A conversation you replay hours later, going over what you said and what you didn’t. A low-grade irritation that seeps into your mood and your day. An undercurrent of dread or ambient fear of getting in trouble. A heaviness that’s dark and closed in, so even simple tasks feel like too much.

You might try to make sense of it, get distance from it, or numb it. But it’s nearly impossible to think, avoid, or numb your way out.

In Chinese Medicine, the aim isn’t to solve or override what you’re feeling. Emotions aren’t problems to fix.

They’re part of how we respond to the world. They arise in response to what we experience, help us register it, and—when things are working well—move, transform, and pass.

But they don’t always.

Sometimes they linger. Sometimes they intensify. Sometimes they lose their direction. When that happens, we feel it not just emotionally, but in our body and our relationships.

Chinese Medicine offers a different understanding of this. It looks for patterns—a way of seeing how life moves through you, and how you move through life.

I used to teach Chinese Medicine psychology at the doctoral level—one of my favorite courses. This series is a doorway into that, grounded in your lived experience.

What we mean by “emotions”

In Chinese Medicine, emotions are movements of Qi. Each has a particular direction and quality.

The rush of anger rising to your face. The weight of grief pulling downward. The way worry loops and tightens. The way attention scatters when there’s too much stimulation. The way joy opens and expands your heart.

You know this. You’ve already felt it.

To briefly return to our series on the zang organs (you can find them gathered here): each organ corresponds to an emotion—an expression of Qi related to that organ’s xing 行, or phase, a character that conveys movement.

All emotions are first received by the Heart. From there, the associated zang organ responds: sadness engages the Lung, anger the Liver, and so on. In this way, the Heart oversees the mind and emotions, staying in relationship with all other organs.

The emotions themselves are adaptive and natural. They help you register what’s happening and orient yourself within it. When they move and resolve, they support you.

They become unhelpful when they’re too intense, exceed your capacity to process, persist beyond what’s needed, or no longer fit what’s happening. In those moments, the same emotion that once helped starts working against you.

Each emotion exists along a range. There isn’t a clean line between “healthy” and “unhealthy.” What matters is movement, proportion, and timing.

What we’ll explore

Over the coming weeks, we’ll move through the seven emotions of Chinese Medicine. For each, we’ll look at:

• how it tends to show up in lived experience

• how it moves in the body

• how it supports you in balance

• how it shifts when it lingers, intensifies, or loses its natural direction

• a simple way to begin working with it in your own life

How to follow along

As you read, you don’t need to analyze, diagnose, or figure anything out.

Instead, notice what feels familiar. Notice what patterns or emotional defaults you tend towards. Notice what happens in your body when something arises—and what happens when it doesn’t resolve.

This isn’t about getting rid of what you feel. It’s about seeing more clearly so your responses can begin to shift from that place.

You’ll receive each installment on Fridays, beginning next week with nu 怒, anger. If you’d like full access, you can upgrade your subscription here:

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I’m grateful to share this with you, and I look forward to our conversations.

With love,
Dana

Disclaimer: While I am a licensed Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, this newsletter is educational and not a substitute for individualized medical care. I cannot provide personal medical or dietary advice without a full clinical intake and informed consent. If you’d like to explore one-on-one work with me, you can reply to this email or contact me at hello AT danaleighlyons DOT com.

Paid subscribers receive my Guide to Transformative Eating (you can preview it here), along with full access to the TCM Deep Dives series each Friday.

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Quick reminder: just hours remain to enter the $100 Bookshop.org gift card giveaway in the April Link-Up. *If you live somewhere Bookshop.org doesn’t deliver, you can still enter. If you win, I’ll send $100 via PayPal instead.

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Dearest Reader,

Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year’s festival, is this week. It’s often described as the world’s biggest water fight—and, indeed, people of all ages take to the streets with water guns, hoses, and buckets to drench each other, offering relief during the hottest month of the year.

It’s also a time of religious and ancestral remembrance: sprinkling scented water on Buddha statues, giving alms to monks, honoring elders. Spiritually, the focus is on purification, making merit, and renewal. And socially, it’s a time to put on brightly colored shirts and embrace sanuk สนุก—fun, playfulness, and a collective agreement to not take things too seriously (including yourself).

I love the spirit of Songkran. Being drenched everywhere you go is such a relief on these steamy days before rainy season. I don’t love visiting touristy areas during this time. There’s a palpable difference between Thai people—exceptionally aware of others—tossing water, and groups of drunk tourists who use it as an outlet for something harsher and sometimes mean-spirited.

Thankfully, Randy and I live in a small rural village far removed from the mayhem. And while the music carries late into the night—including from our neighbors next door—the vibe is all sanuk, no frat party.

In many ways, the holiday captures something I love about life here: how the profound and the mundane, organized religion and animist beliefs, reverence and play, life and death, indescribable joy and impossible hardship, are interwoven rather than separate. It feels more real to me, this easy acceptance of wholeness. A lived awareness that more than one thing is true, and life includes all of it.

Plus, the mangos right now are pure bliss.

We have scores of still-green ones hanging from the trees around our house, taunting us. Meanwhile, we’re buying golden yellow ones from the market—just on the edge of too ripe.

I add rough slices to nearly everything. Bowls built the same way, again and again: white rice, smoked or raw salmon, mushrooms sautéed in olive oil, an avocado when we find good ones, spoonfuls of tahini and full-fat Greek yogurt, generous sea salt, an unreasonable amount of blistering hot peppers stirred into fish sauce. Occasionally I’ll swap in roasted chicken from a roadside stand, but for months now my body has wanted fish, so I follow that. I find comfort and joy in eating the same simple foods on repeat.

As I hinted in my last letter, another part of my life is feeling less settled.

This year, I’m in two spiritual programs: a Certificate of Theravada Buddhist Studies, which may eventually lead into a Master of Divinity and possibly chaplaincy, and a group that blends A Course in Miracles with Jñāna yoga and ancient Egyptian mysticism. The Buddhist studies—led by my primary teacher for decades, Gil Fronsdal—feel steady and right, though that program won’t fully begin until fall.

The other group is more complicated.

Some aspects are deeply resonant. Some of the practices are deeply transformative. And some of the text feels mismatched with me personally.

I greatly respect (and genuinely like) the person leading the group, and his explanations and interpretations in our weekly meetings often ease that tension, as does returning to Jñāna yoga and ancient Egyptian mysticism. But the ACIM text itself—its tone, its language, its framing—continues to catch. The deeper we go into the book, the more this feels true.

What’s strange is that, before this year, I’d encountered this work through other teachers and writers I trust and admire—shared in a much softer, even sanitized form. And I find myself wondering how some of those same people read the text in full without questioning parts of it. Or if they did, and just didn’t speak to it. Or if I’m the one who’s off here.

And look, I like to be the good student. I do the reading each morning (we’re on day 105), I show up for the weekly meetings (which go past midnight my time), and I’m following the lifestyle parameters (no alcohol, no caffeine or other stimulants, no recreational or pharmaceutical drugs, no red meat or pork, very little sugar).1 I don’t like to start things without seeing them through to completion. I don’t want to disappoint or frustrate my teachers.

And yet, I realize I’ve become a bit of a turd in the punchbowl of the group dynamic. Because, hey, I’m just asking questions. (And if you’re familiar with ACIM, you know the stock answer to this: you’re projecting, you’re creating, it’s all you. Something I do take seriously.)

So I’ve been sitting with whether to continue through the year—keeping what’s useful and leaving the rest—or to step away. I’ll probably stay. But it feels important, in that staying, to be honest rather than just going along.

Part of what makes this harder is that I feel myself longing for something else. Something that asks for faith, I suppose. Something that has me more comfortable saying the word God instead of the many names I’ve used for the Great Mystery. Something that, truthfully, I may never find.

But this specific text, especially as I go deeper, isn’t quite it. And trying to understand why has led me down some pretty dark Reddit holes.

Through it all, I feel grateful for the exploration and for what is steady. A daily practice that stretches back decades. A clear ethical compass grounded in love and not causing harm. Gil’s teachings. Meditation. Yoga. Deeply insightful conversations with my friend . And the version of Thai spirituality that surrounds me—reminding me that all of this, somehow, belongs.

Sending Thai New Year’s blessings from my heart to yours. And, as is tradition in this series, I’ll leave you with what’s nourishing me and what I’m hungry for.

WHAT’S NOURISHING ME

Clay and bamboo mask. Randy discovered a small shop full of locally made herbal treasures and brought me a cool, tingly, earthy clay mask. I’ve been loving it the week before my period (yes, at 51, if you can believe it). It smells and feels delightfully stimulating and clears the pimple or two that show up like clockwork.

I alternate between the clay and my dependable, beloved standby: pure local honey, used as a mask or spot treatment. Both work well for breakouts. The clay dries; the honey moistens.

WHAT I’M HUNGRY FOR

Rainy season. Like most everyone here, I’m eagerly anticipating the big rains washing everything clean after burning season, the skies clearing, that particular kind of relief and vibrant aliveness that arrives with daily tropical downpours.

I’d love to hear yours.

Part of what excites me about writing these letters is hearing about your lives—what’s supporting you, what you’re wanting more of in the days and weeks ahead.

With that in mind, I’d love to hear:

• What’s nourishing your body, mind, spirit?

• What are you hungry for?

• What are you questioning—or beginning to trust?

Leave a comment

If this resonated, a small heart ❤️ helps these letters find their way.

Thank you, with love,
Dana

Paid subscribers receive my Guide to Transformative Eating in the PERFECT HUNGER welcome email, along with the TCM Deep Dives series.

We begin a new exploration of the seven emotions in Chinese Medicine this Friday.

Subscribe now

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Dearest Reader,

As we brought our six-week series on the zang organs to a close last Friday, a reader asked a beautiful question:

What does Chinese Medicine say about grief surfacing? When the heart opens up and old grief stuffed inside comes tumbling out?

It felt fitting to end here, with this.

I’m sharing my response as a kind of coda to the series, and as a bridge into the next one on the seven emotions, which begins next Friday.

Here’s my response, expanded with a bit more context.

There are different ways I might answer this within TCM, but one involves a zang organ that I didn’t cover directly in this series, which was originally considered together with the Heart zang: Xin Bao ⼼包—the Pericardium.

Xin Bao ⼼包 might be translated as the Heart’s wrapper or envelope.1

Oftentimes, when something painful or difficult happens to us, that layer protecting the Heart becomes stronger and less permeable, almost as a way of saying, “that’s never happening to me again.”

Heartbreak, loss, trauma—the pain of humanness—all can lead us, quite naturally, to build up that wall.

It’s also common for people’s Pericardiums to bump up against each other, wall-to-wall—instead of connecting heart-to-heart.2

But then other things might happen—whether through conscious practices or simply in response to life—that cause that layer to soften or open. When that occurs, we might feel grief that’s been held there, in the Heart, beneath the surface.

As with all emotions, grief in TCM is a movement of Qi. It wants to be felt and move through us. With feeling and movement, it transforms and releases.

I see grief as an expression of love, and as one of the most immediate and fullest ways we open to it. In grief, love rises to the surface of our experience.

Xin Bao ⼼包 is intimately connected to the Heart and is said to share in its functions, yet it also carries a distinct role—first as the Heart’s protector.

As we saw in our exploration of the Heart, the shen 神—the heart-mind-spirit-consciousness—rests there. But neither the Heart nor the shen is fully exposed. They are held and protected.

In the classical texts, the Heart is understood as so vital that it must be shielded from direct invasion. When something that acts against life arises—what we call Xie Qi 邪气—this layer stands in the way, receiving what the Heart itself cannot bear.

Xin Bao is also described as the Heart’s envoy, moving on its behalf and carrying communication between inner and outer, between self and other.

It shapes how we meet the world, and how the world meets us. It influences our capacity for intimacy, connection, and relationship, how open or guarded we are, and how we allow ourselves to be known.

Through this role, it participates in the housing and expression of the shen. It is a place through which the shen ming 神明, the brightness of spirit, enters and exits. It is considered the source of happiness and laughter, joy and elation.

It is also considered a reservoir of Qi in the chest, and reflects the influence of the Ming Men fire we explored in the Kidneys.

A classical image brings this together: we cannot look directly at the sun—the Heart. But its rays, the Xin Bao, illuminate our world. We come to know the Heart, and others, through this illumination.

Xin Bao, then, is not only what protects the Heart, but what allows its light to be known.

Over these past weeks, we’ve traced how life moves through us—through nourishment, breath, essence, and flow—until it is known and lived in the Heart.

With the Xin Bao, we touch the threshold between protection and openness, between holding and feeling.

And it is here that the emotions begin to reveal themselves—through the body, through feeling, through movement. That’s where we’ll continue next Friday.

If something resonated or stirred a question, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to share in the comments.

With love,
Dana

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With gratitude, I write from within a lineage of Chinese Medicine that I have been privileged to study through dedicated, masterful teachers. What I share here is shaped by years of study, practice, and transmission within a living tradition. I am especially grateful to my primary teacher in this medicine, 伦华.

Disclaimer: While I am a licensed Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, this newsletter is educational and not a substitute for individualized medical care. I cannot provide personal medical or dietary advice without a full clinical intake and informed consent. If you’d like to explore one-on-one work with me, you can reply to this email or contact me at hello AT danaleighlyons DOT com.

Subscribe now

I know what joy is because of Kim, my best friend in the era of Cabbage Patch Kids and Care Bears and “V” (the original series) trading cards.

I know what joy is because of waking early on hot summer days, looking out my window at the woods surrounding our house, feeling the surge of excitement as I rode my bike down the street to hers.

We’d spend the day co-creating fantasies, eventually ending up in the above-ground pool at her house or mine, swimming faster and faster around the ten-foot circle until a whirlpool formed, carrying us—my younger sisters and her younger brother—around and around, until we turned and went the other way, pushing together against the current until it changed again. Until we had altered reality.

I know what joy is because of lying on our foam surfboards, covered in lime green and white plastic, catching our breath after rounds of creating, breaking, then creating again, the vortex of water and laughter and chlorine.

I know what joy is because, when we finally climbed out of the pool, shivering and giggling, we’d throw ourselves onto Mickey Mouse beach towels warming in the sun, the grass grown too long beneath them.

I know what joy is because there was no censor, no filter, no pretense. Just forts in the woods, tar bubbles on backcountry roads, and intergalactic battles on bicycles.

I know what the Heart is in Chinese Medicine. As a TCM doctor, I can tell you how it shapes and integrates body-mind-spirit.

But I learned it from Kim long ago.

The organ of aliveness

The Heart (xin 心) belongs to Fire and is paired with the Small Intestine, its Yang partner. One orchestrates. The other discerns. They work in concert.

The Heart is described in the classical texts as the monarch—the ruler of all the zang organs. It holds the office of the imperial command, overseeing not through force, but through clarity.

If the other organs form the architecture of body-mind-spirit, the Heart is what brings that architecture to life.

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