I have been excited to prescribe “time in nature” to some of my patients.   And I’m finding people are generally receptive to such a simple solution.  Like many naturopathic treatments, there is some effort involved and new habits to be formed.  But the payoff is real and measurable, and a good reminder that the answers to our health concerns aren’t always in pill-form.

What do Taylor Swift, that guy whose best attempt at romance was to send you a picture of his junk, and bell hooks have in common? Well, if we managed to look past the catchy lyrics, the nauseating brocabulary, and the penetrating eloquence, we’d see that they all just want to be happy. But what is happiness, anyway?

Now that the days are as dark and cold as Justin Trudeau’s soul, it’s pretty normal to be feeling kind of down. And while Netflix and brooding Spotify playlists are awesome, they’re not usually enough to carry us all the way to April. The good news is, therapy nerds have wrestled for a long time with the question of how to address the winter blues, and we’ve come up with a few solid suggestions.

As 2016 draws to a close and it becomes more and more apparent that Ashton Kutcher isn’t going to jump out and tell us this whole year has just been a really elaborate episode of Punk’d, now seems like a good time to talk about grief.

As a therapist, I’ve learned two universal rules: 1) living according to other people’s standards will make you miserable, and 2) trying to find lasting happiness by making only external changes doesn’t work. If you’ve been preoccupied with losing weight, you might want to consider whether your motivation comes from either a desire to live up to external standards or a belief that changing your outside will make you feel better on the inside. If it does, it might be time to try a different path to happiness.