The problem isn’t physical — it’s also social — School is starting up in the northern hemisphere. Fresh books, old friends, maybe some new clothes. Pencils, Chromebooks, markers, loose-leaf paper. And with all of that comes the class that for far too many is synonymous with dread: gym. Physical education, or PE, has been part of education since ancient…

What’s behind your nausea in the passenger seat? “Should I take my medicine now?” my daughter asked before we set off on a 4-hour-long car ride. “Your medicine — oh, right.” I rummaged in the vitamin drawer for the Dramamine. I popped out a tablet and she swallowed it with…

Can we widen research on the health benefits of nature? A few days ago I drove back to my home in the Rocky Mountains from the prairie and farmland of eastern Montana. We’d spent a few days at a rented cabin on American Prairie, a kind of public-private initiative that…

How does perception interact with movement? — When I think of how the mind-body connection works, I reach back to half-remembered high school biology: You want to go somewhere, or stand up, or drink some water. Neurons fire in the brain and send signals down through muscles telling them what to do. Then you do it. My…

Essays on the gifts and discoveries of walking in a new anthology — Walking gives us health, both mental and physical. It reduces depression and improves blood cholesterol. It gives us joy and connection to others. It reminds us that we are free, even when some people try to persuade us we’re not. It shows us who benefits from the world that humans…

Leave the phone behind and go for a walk Several years ago I did something that many of my friends, and my spouse, said was insane: I packed our two very young kids in our family car, pointed west for a 17-day drive from upstate New York to my hometown…

Even the most normal pregnancy can turn deadly A few years ago, I published an essay about the birth of my first child. The headline chosen by the editor was: “When I Wasn’t Paying Attention, My Pregnancy Almost Killed Me,” which pretty much said it all. Up until landing in…

A world built for automobiles is stressful — There’s an intersection in my small Montana town that is an absolute nightmare. It’s where a busy highway crawls into downtown and makes a hard 90-degree bend. All four incoming roads coming into the intersection have a left- and/or right-turn lane. Trying to cross this intersection as a pedestrian or…

How interoception can guide us — The powers of our digital age seem intent on divorcing human experiences of the world from our bodies, or at best hacking into the body to redirect those experiences. But we know so little about embodiment and the mind-body connection. …