Matt Blackburn (@mattblackburn) is the founder of Mitolife, a wellness brand rooted in mitochondrial health and his CLF Protocol — a framework that looks at aging through the lens of cellular stress and energy.

I first came across Matt’s work years ago, and have since come to admire his willingness to (publicly) change his mind — a quality that feels increasingly rare in the health space today.

On his podcast, Mitolife Radio, he’s tracked many of these changes, revisiting earlier positions while exploring topics like iron overload, high-dose melatonin, and the neuroprotective benefits of tobacco. His approach aligns closely with the Health Gossip ethos, viewing health not as a variable to optimize, but as the practice of tending to your life as a whole and iterating as needed.

You can find more of Matt’s work on Instagram and his website.

Subscribe now

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy means using resilience instead of avoidance. You can be in an electric vehicle without getting a headache, and can go into big cities without feeling sick immediately from all of the electromagnetic radiation. Supplementing the right vitamins and minerals in the right amounts and forms — on top of a balanced diet, including animals and plants — creates this resilient state.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

My current lifestyle includes a healthy blend of technology use and nature immersion. Being 100% off-grid creates a unique challenge when juggling two or more wood stoves in the winter and operating heavy machinery to clear snow or downed trees. Living by myself in a cabin in the woods has given me rugged resilience and a sort of initiation into manhood that I didn't receive in my younger years.

Read more

is an herbalist and the author of Naturally (2025), a beginner-friendly guide to herbalism and beyond.

I’ve found Rachelle’s approach to living — and, by extension, health — to be truly refreshing, an example of how, today, living “alternatively” doesn’t necessarily mean living in rebellion, but living in truth. As she wrote in a recent post, “When we’re brave enough to act according to our convictions, I believe, we end up resembling our truest selves.” She continues:

“What I want to see more of in the world…is an example of how to live differently. How to leave a life, for more life; how to leave a marriage, when nothing exactly is wrong. How to change radically and honestly, despite every pressure not to do so.”

You can find more of Rachelle on Substack and Instagram.

Subscribe now

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

I have come to know the deepest state of health as one that requires, and results from, our living the lives we are meant to live. Meaning that no amount of biohacking can compete with existential misalignment.

To me, health is a state of aliveness — body, mind, and spirit.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Beachside-jungle, pleasure-seeking, surf-addicted flowing — which could not be more different from the lifestyle I maintained until about two years ago.

I’ve been studying health my whole life, which means I know how to push my body (and brain) to the limit. I did that, working essentially nonstop from the time I was barely an adult. Through my move to New York (no money, no friends, no job, etc.), and many wild years in the fashion industry, through building my own businesses (herbal product lines, herbal cafe-apothecary, a private practice, classes and workshops, endless amounts of content…), and writing my book (Naturally). Then, suddenly, I stopped.

Read more

Today’s guest is the one and only , the writer, actress, and director perhaps best known for HBO’s Girls (2012-2017). Critics-a-many have called her “the voice of her generation”; more recently, friend of the letter, Courtney, dubbed her the “patron saint of Substack.” Her second memoir, Famesick, is out now.

Subscribe now

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Growing up in the height of the diet-obsessed 90s and early 2000s — Snackwells cookie commercials on TV, my mother and her friends all drinking a confounding daily powder called Ultraclear, which tasted like a vanilla-infused crayon, speedwalking for their lives — I didn’t realize it, but I thought that being healthy meant being thin. I started eating Lean Cuisine with my grandmother when I was eight, and I wanted to have twig-like arms swimming in my thermal, delicate ankles sticking out of my Pumas. Soon, jeans got tighter and tank tops got smaller and puberty came and my body started to change, which coincided with a spike in profound, fight-or-flight anxiety and painful periods (which, I was told, were just a fact of female life, like deciding whether or not to get an underage belly button ring from the place that also made fake IDs, or having a man expose himself to you on the subway).

Looking back, I can put together the emergence of my chronic health conditions like a detective going into a fugue state of newspaper clippings and red string. But at the time, it felt like everyone else was moving around in a body that made sense, could do its job, and mine was always glitching.

Read more

John Doe (@pain___house) is a poet from Michigan and the author of Autumn in the Pain House (2024). He lives on the West Coast.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

I’ve been blessed with consistently good physical health throughout my life. To me, health has always referred to mental health and sobriety. I’m often very ill mentally, I have been addicted to almost everything. I’m healthy when I’m living a life in line with an Alcoholics Anonymous program and the DBT principles set forth by Marsha Linehan.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I recently relocated to the West Coast from Michigan. Besides one very troubled year in New York when I was 19, this is my first time leaving my home state. I feel very inspired here. The landscape is dramatic and my lifestyle includes a lot of driving. This is by design, I detest public transportation. Spending time alone in cars is, in my opinion, the closest we get to whatever happens before birth or after death.

Moving here has been one of many changes I’ve made since releasing my first book of poetry in Fall 2024. Another change has been semi-departing from Twitter. For people who are familiar with my writing or Twitter, this is a big change! I posted non-stop every day for almost two years while living an underemployed, celibate, cortisol-fueled life.

Now I have a wagey job that aligns with some of my interests. My drive to work includes a long bridge soaring over a portion of the Pacific Ocean. I have a girlfriend. I don’t know if I can live this ‘dopamine detox health chungus’ lifestyle forever, I would probably get bored, but I’m really enjoying how things are right now.

Read more

is an indie product developer and beauty brand strategist. Obsessive Into the Gloss readers — which I assume many of you were — may remember her from her days at Glossier, which she helped launch alongside Emily Weiss. You can read more about her health and beauty escapades on Self Involved.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Health is the feeling of freedom and ease in mind, body, and spirit.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

The past year has been a bit weird because my mom got diagnosed with glioblastoma last June and I moved back home to Buffalo temporarily. I’m still in the in-between space of my “real life” in NY and then posting up in my childhood bedroom. It’s been a really expansive experience and an unsolicited test of my own resiliency. My world quite literally got turned upside down.

Because I had already been very dialed in on my own health when this happened, I doubled down in Buffalo as a way to stay sane. I do best with routine, so really the only thing that shifts when I’m not sleeping in my own bed is my diet. I’m a much better eater in New York than I am in Buffalo, the junk food capital of the world. Otherwise, I stick with my morning supplement/injectables routine, found an amazing Pilates studio in Buffalo that’s randomly owned by my childhood ballet teacher (a sign from the universe), maintain my twice daily meditation schedule, keep in close touch with my group chats, and ultimately it has been really nice to be with my family.

I stopped drinking last May because I was testing out some new protocols and wanted to eliminate any variables. It was meant to be temporary, but I just never picked it back up. It’s been kind of a blessing in disguise. I didn’t necessarily drink a ton before, but I noticed that as I got older, I wouldn’t have a physical hangover the next day but an emotional one — morbidly depressed, totally anxious about every little thing. If I had been drinking last summer under all that stress, I would’ve totally lost it.

Read more

is the author of ten books, including Leave Society (2021) and Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change (2018). You can find more of his recent writing on The Paris Review, Granta, and his Substack, Tao Lin.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Daily poop. Experiencing nature. Feeling peaceful. Reading books that reduce fear, like The Truth About Contagion and Life After Life. Caring for and loving something — hard with humans, can use pets.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Working on my writing while caring for my cats and detoxing my liver and learning.

How do you start and end your days?

Start: exercise and meditation. End: talking to myself, my spirit guides, and my soul about my day and my upcoming dreams.

Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?

I had chronic nosebleeds as a child. A doctor scalded the inside of my nostril to try to stop them. It didn’t work. From then on, I engaged with mainstream medicine many more times due to lung collapses, chronic pain, and other acute and chronic issues. Each time, my trust in it decreased. By my mid-thirties or so, I’d lost all interest in conventional medicine. I haven’t been to a dentist or a doctor since 2015 or so. I believe the body’s best healer is itself. I’ve been working on a book titled Self Heal since 2022. I put it on hold in 2024 because I had insomnia, chronic pain, and eczema. I’ve had these since my twenties but they were getting worse in 2024 and I was confused.

Read more

is a health and wellness writer + content creator, with a focus on bioenergetics and ancestral beauty rituals. Her medicinal makeup brand, Fauna (seed oil and synthetic-free, and made with edible ingredients), will be launching soon.

Subscribe now

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy means so much more than just “not being sick.” Being healthy is about your having enough energy to feel amazing, sharp, excited, inspired and motivated for life. For your cells to have the energy to function optimally — they are the building blocks of every organ in our body! And our metabolism is how our body creates energy, it's controlled by our thyroid, and is the root of all health.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I live a very non-toxic, holistic, and “crunchy” lifestyle. I have chickens for eggs, I make all of their food from scratch, mill my own flour, bake sourdough, make cheese…I'm obsessed with nourishing through nutrient dense and ancestral foods. It's very Weston A. Price x Ray Peat! Infused with the rituals of ancient princesses, which happens to align very much with what they teach.

How do you start and end your days?

I am obsessed with the morning and night routines of ancient princesses. There is a lot to pull from that is now scientifically backed to improve your sleep and health, while feeling incredible and nourishing.

In the evenings after making dinner, I always make sure to turn off all the regular lights, and turn on only incandescent, red light, or candle light. I use blue light-blocking glasses if I'm on a screen. I charge my phone in the bathroom; it's close enough to hear the alarm, but far enough I don't use it before bed or in the mornings. Plus, it makes me get out of bed to shut it off! I love hot baths, herbal oils, beeswax candles, and mulberry silk sheets.

The morning is *very* specific.

Read more

is a writer in New York City and the author of some of Substack’s most beloved pieces, including “Everyone is numbing out” and this guide to your 20s. She is currently working on her first novel.

Subscribe now

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Treating myself with respect: body, mind, soul.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Work and joy. When it comes to my health, I am focused exclusively on the fundamentals: strength training a few times a week at home, cooking almost all of my meals, sleep, walking, writing, reading, socializing, prayer. I played the “margin game” quite a bit in my twenties — you know, debating the merits of one serum or supplement over another — but getting the big things done is far more deserving of my time and energy, and so much more important. If I can do those things even somewhat consistently, I feel great.

Generally, I am trying to be more present in my day-to-day life, to give myself permission to be happy and to go slower than is comfortable. I am trying to find joy in female embodiment, which has, surprisingly, been easier for me as a new mother than it was before I had a child. I grew my son inside my body, delivered him through my body, and nourished him with my body. How can I needlessly criticize myself, punish myself? It is a crime. So I am trying to shift my perspective, and see exercise, healthy diet, hydration, etc., not as “stuff to be done,” but ways to respect myself.

There’s this mistaken idea, that I fully believed as a college athlete and pre-baby, that in order for something to be “healthy” it must involve a lot of pain or suffering — the more the better. I realize now how misguided this is. Yes, it’s good to push through a tough workout, for instance, but I notice that when I am warm and kind with myself — meaning I feed myself nourishing foods (good food tastes delicious), take warm baths, do fewer reps with better form, and do not pick at my flaws in the mirror — my whole being responds.

Read more

Kiki (@kikimancy) is a health researcher with a current focus on the Primal Diet, lymph + fascia work, and electromagnetic frequency awareness. In 2022, she hosted the Slow Beauty Immersion — a month-long private community event for women, dedicated to daily health, wellness and beauty rituals. If you’d like to be notified of similar events, join the waitlist here.

Subscribe now

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Having enough energy to be creative — whether on an individual spiritual level or in the biological sense of being able to birth healthy babies — and be in service to others (giving from overflow).

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I swing wildly between traveling and being a homebody. I lived abroad as a “digital nomad” for years and returned to the US late 2024. I am now something of a “digital homebody,” working on various marketing/media projects, homemaking, and hobbies.

Health wise, my lifestyle is suboptimal (by my own standards anyway, everyone who knows me in real life thinks I’m a health nut). I really just need to figure out how to not be tied to my computer all day. That’s my current biggest obstacle. I have big plans for 2026 to change that.

How do you start and end your days?

Wake up and pray first thing.

I take my CIAS vial out of its magnetic charging station and keep it on me throughout the day. The CIAS is an invention of Canadian naturopath Dr. Tim Goyetche. It converts EMF radiation (from devices, dirty electricity, WiFi, 5G etc) into cellular energy. Its benefits are particularly noticeable to me in hectic indoor public spaces like malls or airports, which I previously always found draining.

Next, I rinse my face, brush my teeth — lately with my homemade toothpaste,1 but I also love NOBS. After brushing my teeth, I splash my face, neck, hands and legs with blessed water, made according to the method shared in Ngolo Tesla’s latest book.

Blessed water changed my life. I mentioned earlier that I returned to the US in 2024 after years living abroad in Indonesia. Even though I moved a lot my whole life and spent my childhood split between the US and Japan, returning to the US, especially post-plandemic, was a culture shock I was genuinely not expecting. There were also several back-to-back challenges outside of my control, beyond the culture shock, and the stress took a huge toll on me health-wise. Honestly, by the end of 2025, I was the most drained and stressed out I’d been in years.

Read more

(@the.raw.sol) is a women’s health and nutrition coach with a focus on herbalism and aligning with our true design. She’s also the founder of Gordita Skincare, a line of tallow-based products that she formulates and makes by hand.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Health, to me, is about coherence. It is harmony between the body, the soul, the environment, and God. It is a deep sense of alignment, where life feels divinely ordered.

Coherence comes from a raw intimacy with life: being in it deeply, tasting it fully, suffering honestly when suffering is present, and then choosing to create from those experiences. When we fall out of coherence, the body often communicates through symptoms what needs our attention. We can slip out of coherence quite easily in our modern, disordered living conditions, and I think we often have to live quite intentionally to return to alignment.

I personally feel healthiest when I’m living close to nature and close to God. This is when my default state becomes faith, even when the world feels saturated in fear. I notice more synchronicities, playfulness, whimsy, and desire to live. I feel a stronger desire to engage with life instead of bracing against it. I see health as the capacity to stay present through pain and discomfort. It’s about having the energy to do what I love, and the ability to be present with the people I love, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually.

It’s essential to care for physical health, but I think it is very important not to obsess over it. It’s meant to support your life without taking it over. There is a fine line between strengthening and honoring the body God gave us, and worshipping it. The body is something to tend to with reverence. Health is something to steward.

Read more

(@petajean_) is a mother, author, investor, and the creator of Body Luxury — both a European wellness philosophy and the title of her latest book, out now.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

When I think of the word “health” I think of the old food pyramid or outdated government advice. The world has “health” all topsy turvy. We’re taught to suppress our symptoms and “fight” illness. People go to the doctor for a five-minute consult and the symptom is treated in isolation without connecting the dots between the person’s psyche, their lives, their emotional burdens. I understand health differently. Symptoms are our bodies adapting and resolving. So, I don’t believe health is a total absence of symptoms.

For me, true vitality is living with vibrancy and energy most of the time, and not freaking out when the body needs to rest, or when a symptom is trying to tell us something. It’s knowing that our bodies are designed for life, and have inbuilt mechanisms to always restore life. I believe this faith and connection with the way we were created is important for health.

I always ask, what comes first, the vibrant body or the vibrant life? Our life, our minds, our emotional patterns — they are just as important to our vitality as what we eat and how we move.

In sum, being vital is having the internal resources to live how you are called to live, to create without exhaustion, to be there for the people we love, and to be well enough to notice beauty.

There’s that old proverb, “When you have your health you have 1000 dreams, when you don’t have your health, you only have one.”

Read more

Chloé Happe (@bronzeageshawty) is a writer living in New Mexico. Her first novel, Desolation E-Girl, will be out on Not a Cult Press later this year.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Curating your physical environment, relationships, and habits in such a way that allows you to naturally flow into a relaxed, vital, Love-is-all-encompassing version of myself. To “be healthy” means that I am living in complete alignment with my own Truth.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I live in the high desert of New Mexico, where I have discovered is the optimal geography and environment for physical, spiritual, and mental health. I am living seven thousand feet above sea level. High-elevation living contributes to a highly-elevated way of being in the world, and highly-elevated love for yourself and others. I am currently an unemployed writer working on my first book so my lifestyle is pretty relaxed. My days are centered around my close friendships, creative projects, driving my Land Cruiser down the vast desert highways, and spending time in solitude. I milk a herd of goats at sunrise once a week. Every practice I engage in intentionally contributes to a low-cortisol lifestyle.

Read more

Lee Tilghman (@leefromamerica) was one of the OG wellness influencers of the 2010s, widely credited with bringing trends like smoothie bowls and charcoal water into the mainstream. After stepping away from the industry, she went on to write If You Don’t Like This, I Will Die (2025), a memoir charting the darker side of the influencer economy. You can find more of her writing on .

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Putting yourself first.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Ritualistic, intuitive, energetic, courageous.

How do you start and end your days?

I start my day by getting up around 6:00 and laying in bed with just my thoughts until 6:30. Then I go up and make coffee while my fiancé sleeps in. I enjoy a few moments of stillness in the living room which are vital for my day. I light incense or palo santo then whip out my journal and fill 1-3 pages with everything I’m thinking, feeling, and fearing. It’s a brain dump. Most often it’s just light record keeping, like what we’re doing that weekend and what I have on the docket for the day. But I love it and it keeps my head on straight.

Then, I lace up my shoes and go on a long walk with my dog Samson. We walk by the water for anywhere from 30-90 minutes, depending on the day. 4 days a week, I’ll keep exercising after that, either strength, cardio, pilates, or sculpt. Then I am at my desk or filming content by 9:30/10. I break for lunch around 1:00, leftovers or a big tuna salad. Keep it simple. Then I keep working until 5 or 6, which is when I try to log off and work on dinner. Sometimes I’ll work more after dinner, and I try not to, but that’s just how it is right now.

I’m in bed or the bath by 9:30. I love to read, do a red light face mask, or a little face massage / lymphatic drainage before bed. I love climbing into bed and talking about my day with my fiancé. It’s such a silly time of day, the liminal night. We’re both the silliest then.

Read more

Autumn Christian (@teachrobotslove) is the author of Girl Like A Bomb (Clash Books) and The Crooked God Machine. She writes the Substack, Teach Robots Love.

Subscribe now

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

I don’t care about being healthy. I care about being beautiful. It just turns out they are, in almost every instance, the same thing. If I could become more attractive by eating pizza, smoking cigarettes, and sinking down into the center of my couch, I’d do it. It just turns out that aspiring toward health is the way to accomplish this. We value beauty because beauty is a signifier of a creature full of life.

Read more

Maya (@arsalendi) is an herbalist and scholar of beauty, nourishment, and esoterica. Her work draws from both Eastern and Western traditions, integrating herbal medicine, functional nutrition, and psycho-spiritual practices to treat the body as a deeply interconnected whole. You can learn more about her practice, and book a 1:1 session, here.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Ease and consistency in the little things.

Helping people with nutrition and esoterica has made me fairly non-consumerist about health. I don’t hate gadgets, supplements, or protocols. All of this can be useful; I just don’t think most people’s lives change because they one day found the perfect device or went on a luxe wellness retreat.

I am more invested in the microcosm of living and in arcane knowledge that has stood the test of time. Things as simple as walking under the sun, embracing slumber, feeding the senses and spirit…all of these are rituals and channels toward calmness. I think devotion to these little things creates the perfect substrate for vitality to sprout.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

My life is a mix of deep research and creative indulgence. Some days I’m translating medieval medical charms and pharmacopoeias, or interviewing people about dreams and religious experiences. Other days I’m making beauty regimens or grocery lists for clients. All of this is rewarding, but also very screen-based and physically stagnating.

So, I dance. Salsa is my fixation right now. It is one of the most reliable ways I’ve found to re-enter my body and to melt away tension. A static body is a dead body, and I want to live.

Read more

Erla Sól (@erla__sol) is a healing arts practitioner and herbalist working within the systems of traditional Japanese Reiki, somatic breathwork therapy, flower essences, and women’s bodywork. She runs the healing community, Soul Sanctuary.

Erla's HG playlist

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

True health is experiencing a lightness of being that feels both buoyant and rooted, with the capacity to be kind and compassionate to oneself and all beings. The healthiest people are thoughtful, present, and attuned to the people around them and their ecosystem. Vital beings have a capacity for noticing and creating beauty, sustaining intimacy, and connecting with inner wisdom.

My path is living according to the way of my natural energy, honoring the energy available to me in any given moment and taking appropriate action from that awareness. This is the best way to cultivate long lasting healthy energy flow. We create the conditions for vitality when we allow ourselves to move in accordance with the patterns of our own inner nature, the seasonal rhythms, and the movement of celestial bodies.

On a practical level, this means if I’m feeling clear and active, I keep it moving. If I’m feeling emotionally dense and lethargic, I lean into that and allow myself to slow down and expend my energy wisely. Health comes from the awareness that we are fully vulnerable to the energies of the cosmos and nature at all times.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Upward spiral but down and in, deep into the body. Each week feels like a new cycle, bringing deeper layers of growth, awareness, and connection. My life right now is centered around being social, building community, and nurturing my friendships. I build my schedule around when I can connect with daylight, move my body, and the time I can spend with loved ones. I have crafted a lifestyle where I can devote myself to tending to my vessel to be of service from a place of lightness and connection with myself, nature, and spirit.

How do you start and end your days?

Living in one of the coldest and darkest places in the world, I’ve learned to love the constant turn of extremes in external conditions and lean into long flowing rituals to keep my energy warm and my spirit shining. The cyclical movement from beaming twenty-four hour sunlight to complete withdrawal into darkness means auditing my routines and habits regularly to ensure they align with the seasons and my inner realm. I try my best to not hold on to things I think I “should” be doing and rather trust my own body cues as they are constantly changing with the light.

In this season, I rise in complete darkness and light candles in the bedroom and enjoy the warmth. I move into the living room to light candles there and drink an overnight infusion of lymphatic herbs with lemon. I rinse my face with warm water, face massage, braid my hair with oils, and tongue scrape. I sit on the couch for an hour to read, study, and journal as I sip the herbs. If I’m in a period of cleansing and integration, I’ll fast for the first part of the day sipping warm lemon water with Hawaiian black salt, cayenne pepper, and raw honey. Then I make breakfast and coffee, often listening to positive programming or tending to work tasks. Once I feel nourished and awake, I may choose to meditate, stretch, head out for a brisk walk on the beach, or go to the gym for infrared hot yoga, circuit training, or a mat Pilates class.

After movement and stretching I dry brush, sauna, steam bathe, swim a few laps in the salt pool, and soak in the hot tub. After showering I do a full body gua sha and cupping regimen with lymphatic wild herbal oils which feels invigorating and nurturing to my nervous system. I try to keep my womb (and my entire body for that matter) warm at all times, especially during this time of year.

Daily movement is and always has been an incredibly important foundation for my wellbeing. I grew up as an athlete, dancing, swimming, and running. I have an inner fire that needs to burn freely and my mother knew early on to cultivate this in me, for which I am incredibly grateful. I’ve tried just about everything to find that I feel vibrant and whole when I incorporate a variety of movement styles into my week, but always coming back to my yoga practice and intuitive stretching as often as possible. The time spent on the floor just listening to my body and giving what needs unwinding extra tending is where my highest healing emerges.

Read more

Dr. Natazia zu Stolberg (@dr.nataziazustolberg) is an acupuncturist and herbalist with a focus on conditions commonly overlooked by conventional Western medicine, including hormonal imbalances and irregular periods. She’s also the creator of the internet’s favorite digestive tea, DOCTOR STOLBERG Rest + Digest.

For January, DOCTOR STOLBERG introduces THE RE-SET: two daily cups of her Rest + Digest tea, paired with a limited-run booklet of practices Dr. Stolberg loves and recommends to her patients. Grab yours here before they sell out!

Shop Natazia's favorites

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

To me, health is about feeling a sense of ease.

It’s waking up feeling energized, being able to move your body however you want without feeling held back. It’s enjoying an indulgent meal and trusting that your body will bounce back the next day because your digestion is strong.

Ultimately, health is the ability to live your life without constantly thinking about your health because you’ve built a solid foundation and resilience through consistent habits.

Read more

Sean Thor Conroe (@seanthorconroe) is the author of Fuccboi (2022) and host of 1storypod, a literary podcast with past guests including Sheila Heti, Stephanie LaCava, and Tao Lin. He made a brief cameo in the audio recording of our Tea Party event last spring.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy, above all, for me, means cultivating your spiritual health. As in, the well-being or vigor of your spirit. This means a quiet knowing about what exactly you’re meant to be doing, locking in and doing it, not avoiding your destiny, not distracting yourself with the wrong things. Believing in your mission even or especially if no one else understands why you must.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Solitary and monastic, borderline anchoritic.

I start my days with water and coffee and loose, additive-free tobacco. I put on the eight-cup coffee maker and pour myself a large vessel of water, straight from the tap since where I live, on a mountain, we have clean, cold spring water. Then I roll a cig and sip my water, and once the coffee’s ready, I sit in my fold-out chair or pace on my covered porch and slowly drink my coffee and smoke my tobacco, trying to stay off my phone, though I often fail.

Most of all I like to be still and not respond to anything or anyone or look at social media. I try to pick up where I left off the day before, with what I’m reading or thinking about. I look at the things I wrote down by hand the day before while I drink my coffee and water, smoking on my porch. At some point, I move inside and switch to a nicotine pouch so I don’t have to get up to smoke. I work on what I’ve been working on, either at my desk in my office or at my kitchen counter or, lately, at this standing desk contraption I’ve set up in my office since I messed up my back sleeping on it weird traveling last month. It’s better now but I still like working standing at my stand-up desk contraption.

After about four hours, I make eggs on toast or oatmeal with grass-fed butter and maple syrup, or a smoothie in my Nutribullet with a banana, berries, peanut butter, spinach, celery, ginger if I have it, and water, and eat and drink that. Then I walk to the lake in the middle of the forest I live at the edge of, it’s about a five to ten minute walk. I walk there and sit on a little bench at the edge of the lake and listen for bears or deer for five to ten minutes, and then walk back to my house.

Read more

Iruka Maria Toro (@iruka_maria_toro) is an artist, herbalist, and bodyworker born and raised in Borikén. No matter the form (collaged Medicine Bodies, flower essences) or modality (Craniosacral therapy, Ayurvedic massage), there’s a sense of cosmic, divine play that permeates her work. You can book a divination reading with her here.

Subscribe now

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Health to me means a bright radiant life force that shines through my eyes and the way I move through the world. The way I make people feel is a reflection of my health. I feel healthy when I am light on my feet, light in my heart, and am easily moved by the creative ideas and visions on my path. Gratitude is health. Health means having an openness and willingness to flow, change, rest, joy, and love, despite whatever might be happening around me. Health is being my authentic self.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

My lifestyle is in motion. I am learning to move around more gracefully, and find rest where I can. I am envisioning and building a new future for myself.

How do you start and end your days?

Right now, I am traveling a lot and adapting to where I am. I either walk to the local market and get a giant green juice with parsley, celery, spinach, lime, ginger, and pineapple, or I make a big cacao at home in my VitaMix with about 700 powdered herbs in it. I start out with liquids, medicine, and movement. I like to light an incense — these days, Hawaiian Sandalwood — and play some soft music in the kitchen as my consciousness comes online. I have a tiny long-haired chihuahua and when I am not on the road, he sits on my lap when I am drinking my juices and elixirs. We arrange flowers and listen to Meredith Monk, and Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru.

I have been doing a sweet guided Anapana meditation in the morning that I found on YouTube. It's a recording of the voice of S.N. Goenka which makes it feel really special.

I am an herbalist, bodyworker, and artist. My art practice is what holds all of my visions and interests together.

I spend a lot of my day working on ideas and projects. Researching. My library of books and apothecary full of plants are my pride and joy. I have been on a month-long journey through mountains in South America and am full of ideas for artworks and new formulas. I am spending much of my time writing them down and making plans/drawings. I am dreaming of very site-specific works and documenting them over time.

Lately, I have been going to a tiny bodega in this mountain town I am in. It has imported health foods and I am making these nori wraps full of fermented veggies, fresh organic avocados, raw olive oil. Sometimes quinoa, sea salt, jalapeños, and microgreens. Before this journey, I was watching a lot of videos of Dr Sebi’s children talking about his legacy. I started craving raw fresh foods despite it being a bit of an Ayurvedic cardinal sin to consume them this season.

Tea and ritual are a big part of my day. While in South America I have been trying out all the local warm drinks. Emoliente with Ayrampo seeds is my current favorite. Often I will walk across town for a combination of tea and socializing with a friend for a couple of hours. A real luxury. Today, it was my new herbalist friend who is also traveling solo. We talk about her plans to have an herbal conference in her home country.

Evenings are a combination of a warm, hippie, macrobiotic-babe kind of meal and a long, slow walk through the cornfields and mountains where I am staying. My bed has a huge window overlooking the land and I am able to fall asleep while looking at the stars. I have been focusing more on my dreams. These have been really beautiful days for dreaming and drawing. Lots of sheets of paper, bundled up in soft fabrics, and getting thoughts down until I pass out. Jasmine is blooming and there are flowers all around my pillow and tucked into my hair.

Read more

Shelby Hamilton (@meowshelbs2) is an artist and former fashion blogger/model. You may remember her as Meow Shelbs.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being honest about who you are and where you’re at — struggles and all. Having no filter between you and your experience of life, so no drugs. Touching grass. Sunbathing. Moonbathing. Exploring your unconscious. Going to therapy. Sleep hygiene. Kissing. High alkaline water. Asking for help. Accepting reality. Flushing out toxins. Crying when I need to cry. Having a sense of what is right and what is wrong. Organic foods and materials. Being gentle with myself. Being in tune with the natural rhythms of my cycle and my body. Keeping my hair a little greasy instead of washing it right away. Clean bed sheets. Not over-exerting myself. Cleansing your doors of perception. Telling myself, “I love you.”

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Terra incognita. Transformative. Gentle. Repetitive. Painful at times. Structured. Working on building a solid, confident base for myself — internally and externally. Eye-opening. Humbling. Anti-inflammatory. Quietly revolutionary. And genuinely quiet. I like silence whenever I get the chance. Pilgrimage. Therapeutic. Alchemical. Honest. Rehabilitating. Nourishing. Orphan/hero’s journey. Psychological composting.

How do you start and end your days?

Start: Wake before my alarm that’s there for “just in case.” Lie there for a moment. I don’t have an alarm set on my days off. Take my phone off airplane mode and check it briefly. I try not to check it, but I think most days I do. Shakti mat for at least 10 minutes.

Drink about 700 mL of room-temperature water from a glass water bottle.

Shower. Brush my hair. Spray organic rose hydrosol face mist (bought in bulk and decanted) on my face. Massage oil blends I make myself with organic ingredients like camellia oil and blue tansy oil on my face, neck, arms, and legs. Apply Noosa Basics Coconut & Vanilla deodorant. Zinc sunscreen on my face. Get dressed. Head to the kitchen and make breakfast.

At the moment, breakfast is two or three fried eggs in butter with salt and pepper — really runny yolks. I like to eat them with a spoon and mostly with my hands. I basically eat the same thing every day with varying spices or condiments, depending on what my weekly or monthly fixation is. At the moment it’s extra butter on top of the eggs and lots of chili flakes. I don’t need coffee. If I’m working that day, I make lunch to take with me. At the moment I am fixated on making banana pancakes for my midday snack. I dissolve a 1/4 teaspoon of Superfeast Tremella powder in a cup of hot water and drink that. I take one Superfeast Ashwagandha and one reishi supplement. I was taking milk thistle as a supplement for a month or so, but I just threw all of them out because apparently you don’t need them, and they can contain estrogen. I try to sit outside or lie down on the floor and do “constructive rest” pose for my psoas for 10, 20, or 30 minutes depending on how much time I have before I walk or catch the bus to work.

Read more