I would like to share a remarkable story of a patient I met this past week who I will call ‘Mary.’ Mary is a 71 year old female who came to my clinic with respiratory symptoms, mainly shortness of breath, coughing and wheezing. This is frequently how my patients present since, as a respirologist, I […]

In last week’s blog I talked about how the majority of human beings are asleep to who they truly are and how we need to wake up to our true nature beyond physical form, thought, emotion, life story, relationships, roles and career. I explained how these are simply aspects of who we are which provide […]

We live in a world which is more disconnected than ever. Despite advancing technology, such as the internet, social media and smart phones, which are meant to bring us together, we feel lonelier than ever. Facebook friends and likes have replaced close personal friendships, we prefer to swipe right or left instead of mustering up […]

If what you think I’m talking about is waking up from your morning sleep then you need to read this. The truth is that the majority of human beings on the planet are asleep all of the time, even when they appear to be awake. What do I mean by being asleep and the call […]

Experience is a word which I have become interested in lately. What does the word ‘experience’ truly mean? When most people ponder this word they think of their day to day activities and tasks. In addition, most people categorize their experiences into neutral, negative and positive. Let me explain. For most people, going to work is […]

Mornings! Few of us look forward to them and most of us dread them. In most cases, mornings signify the start of an endless list of tasks and errands which often begin with a mad rush to get out your front door and get to work on time through traffic chaos and end with running […]

This is a follow-up to my last article on a recent weekend workshop I attended with legendary author, speaker and spiritual teacher Neale Donald Walsch. It was Neale who taught me one of the most important lessons of my life. You see, we all face change, challenge and adversity in many different forms, whether they […]

Several months ago, I travelled to Montreal to speak at the 44th international conference of the International Institute of Integral Human Sciences. This is an organization whose mission is to unite science and spirituality. My topic was ‘Embracing the Unknown,’ but that’s not what I want to talk about. As part of this conference, I […]

In my last article I discussed the problem of urban violence in America which is also increasing in incidence in Canada. I linked this rise in urban violence to unresolved past emotional traumas and the subconscious blocks they cause.  The fact is that we all suffer from emotional trauma, no matter how minor we may […]

A few months ago there were two deadly shootings in the United States, in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. I was actually in Ohio, not too far from Dayton, when these took place. These types of shootings, although isolated incidents, seem to be on the rise. Along with these incidents the gun control rhetoric […]

A patient, I have looked after for many years, made me reflect deeply recently. Without breaching privacy, all I will say is that he is a male, who I will call Peter, with chronic regional pain syndrome which started after a traumatic injury he suffered 9 years ago. He recovered from the traumatic injury, with multiple surgeries, but […]

My journey to becoming a physician has not been an easy one but it has been more than rewarding. I could not have easily said this through the sleepless nights studying for final exams, bearing the drudgery of seeing patient after endless patient on a night on call as a resident or the countless tasks […]

In my last article I discussed the importance of forming a health attachment with your children and how it is crucial for their brain development. I also discussed how this role has been lost in our modern, busy, technologically enhanced lives. We need to continue to nurture our connection with our children despite how complex our lives […]

A few months ago I attended a talk and workshop, in Toronto, by Canadian author Dr. Gabor Mate who is a family physician from Vancouver, BC, who has worked with the most disenfranchised populations in Vancouver. He has written several best-selling books, including In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, which is about his experiences with treating addiction […]

Breathing is the most important function of life. Unfortunately, it is also the first function that we tend to neglect the most. The purpose of breathing is to delivery oxygen from the atmosphere to air sacs in our lungs to be absorbed through the air sac cell membranes into tiny blood vessels called capillaries. From […]

Let’s face it. Life is difficult. It is like riding the waves of the ocean. One day it is smooth sailing and the next day it can be a stormy, tumultuous ride. It does not matter how famous you are, how rich you are or how intelligent you are, everyone faces problems. The problem with problems […]

If you live long enough you will be faced with a major decision. What career to go into? Where to live? Who to spend your life with? These major decisions often cause tremendous stress because there is often not a clear path to making the right decision. Even when we commit to a decision we […]

Everyday we are faced with countless decisions to make. A lot of these are minor such as what am I going to make my family for dinner tonight. We often have to deal with major decisions such as should I leave my job to start a business or should I leave my current relationship. If […]

In the last few articles I’ve introduced the concept of following the road less travelled. I’ve already discussed using our emotions as our guide as to whether we are living our lives by default or on purpose. I also discussed the importance of meaning and how having a deeper meaning to what we are pursuing […]

In my last article I introduced the notion of following the road less travelled. I discussed the importance of our emotions and how they can lead us to the deeper truth of why we feel the way we feel. We can use our emotions to discover whether we are living in alignment with the true […]

Life should be a glorious adventure. For too many people it is routine and mundane. Many people just go through the same routine on a daily basis which may include going to work, doing the groceries and other errands, if you have children, shuttling them from school to activities to homework before getting them to […]

Over the last few weeks I’ve been discussing getting into the flow. I started out by defining what I mean by getting into the flow and highlighting the various levels of flow which are inner flow, physiologic flow and body flow. You can find these articles are the following link. This week I’d like to […]

In the last few blog posts I have introduced the concept of flow and how being in the flow is the optimal state we can be in. I introduced the concept of inner flow and physiologic flow and how to support our physiologic flow through nutrition and creative visualization. Today I’d like to discuss movement […]

In the last several articles I’ve discussed the concept of physiologic flow and how every aspect of our physiology depends on flow. In the last article I discussed how to optimize our physiologic flow through nutrition. This week I’d like to discuss the use of creative visualization to optimize physiologic flow. Creative visualization is the […]

In the last few blog posts I have introduced the concept of flow and how it is a state of optimal functioning in our lives. I started to discuss physiologic flow and how all of our body’s physiologic processes depend on flow. You can catch up on that last blog at this link. Today I’d […]

In my last post I introduced the concept of inner flow and how it involves going beyond our thoughts and emotions to the deeper essence of who we are which is our consciousness. This week I’d like to discuss the next level of flow which is physiologic flow. What is physiologic flow? If we look […]

There has been a lot of publicity on the subject of flow in recent years but many of you may not be familiar with this concept. What does it mean to be in the flow? This can be best explained using an analogy that most of you will be familiar with. Have you ever heard […]

Life is a funny thing. We are born into this world and immediately expectations are thrust upon us, which may or may not be fulfilled. We are expected to talk and walk by a certain age, play sports and music, excel in one or more activities, do well in school, get into a good university […]

Last week we discussed the the importance of defining ‘your powerful why,’ which is the deeper meaning and a higher mission to your life. This provides a strong incentive to quit any bad habits that will prevent you from fulfilling your greater reason for being here on the planet. However, this is only the beginning. […]

Last week I introduced the concept of habit change and how habits are lodged in the subconscious mind, which determines 95% of our behaviour. This is why motivation and willpower are not effective because these modalities work on the conscious mind which only determines 5% of our behaviour. This week I’d like to discuss how […]

Today I’d like to discuss one of the most important determinants of our success in life: our habits. Our habits are crucial to all aspects of our lives including our health, our relationships, our careers, our finances and any other area you can imagine.  If you look at just one of these areas, for example […]

The truth is that I often feel uncertainty and confusion about the most important areas of my life including my relationships, my career, my financial status and my goals. I may look accomplished on the outside but there is so much more that I desire to be and to do before I die. As a […]

We are well into the new year and many of you have set resolutions and goals for the new year. This is a very common ritual after the holidays after all the parties, gatherings and holiday revelry. We tend to reflect on the prior year to see what we have accomplished, where we fell short […]

Happiness. We all seek it but do we truly understand it! Do we know what it is its and how to get it? It seems like are our world becomes more and more complex there is an increased focus on being happy but few know how to achieve it. We end up chasing all sorts […]

The new year is now upon us and people’s thoughts turn towards what they want to accomplish this year. They may take stock of the previous year, assess what went right and what went wrong and what changes they need to make to get to where they want to go. Studies show that the vast […]

Christmas is now upon us and no matter what you may be doing today, whether it is spending time with family and friends or spending time in quiet contemplation, whether you achieved most of your goals for the year or barely got off the ground, whether you are thriving or barely surviving I wanted to […]

One of the most important aspects of our lives is our relationships. Everything we desire including love, friendship, happiness, well-being and wealth depends on our relationships. If we are to enhance the quality of our relationships then we must cultivate the most important skill there is: the art of listening. In our modern society where […]

The holiday season is a busy time for most mainly in preparation. There are gifts to buy, food to prepare, parties to plan and attend, meeting work deadlines before the year ends, taking stock of what we accomplished in the prior year and where we fell short in order to start preparing for the upcoming […]

  As a critical care physician I am often asked to intervene in a patient’s clinical course when things go awry. Usually these patients have been dealing with chronic illness for a number of years and have an acute deterioration which lands them in the hospital. They may deteriorate further and go into severe breathing […]

Last week marked the annual Thanksgiving holiday for Americans which is the beginning of the holiday season. This is an exciting time for many people as they prepare to entertain their families and friends, purchase gifts for their children, decorate their homes and get caught up in the magic of the season. It can also […]

Life is truly a beautiful mystery. Do we really have an understanding of how life truly works? For example, look at the human body. We may think that science has an understanding of physiology from the organ system to the molecular level. When you think about it, there is so little we know about ourselves. […]

Our life situations have become chaotic. There is so much vying for our attention at any given moment from our partners, children, extended families, friends, bosses, work colleagues, email, social media, our smart phones, daily chores, meal planning, clothes shopping, entertainment, vacation planning and the myriad of other things that occupy our time. I’m surprised […]

Childhood is a time of wonder and discovery. However, it can also be a time of overwhelm. As a father of three children I know the pressures that children go through with increasing demands on their time from school, extracurricular activities and parental expectations. This does not take into account the many distractions that vie […]

The word truth conjures up many ideas and images including honesty, integrity and authenticity. Truth is usually discussed in the context of our relationships with others in which honesty of communication is usually valued above all else. However, truth is about more than our relationship to others. The word truth points us to the essence […]

In my last blog post I discussed the power of choice and how we are constantly making choices in every moment of our life. I mentioned that many people make choices which are not necessarily in their best interest. This week I’d like to discuss a process for making more empowered choices. The fact is […]

  Choice. It is something that we engage in every moment of our lives. From the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep that night, we are constantly making choices. These could be simple choices such as what clothes we are going to wear and what route we are going to […]

  Nutrition is a very popular and complex subject these days and the weight loss industry capitalizes on this through promoting various diets. There are numerous diets that we are told will help us lose weight and improve our overall health. These include the low carbohydrate diet, gluten free diet, paleo diet, vegan diet, ketogenic […]

The transition from summer to fall is truly a beautiful time of year. I love seeing the change of seasons as the trees start changing colour from green to orange and red, the weather starts getting cooler, birds start migrating south and mammals start preparing for the coming winter. The transition was, traditionally, a time […]

There has been a lot written about success over many centuries with much more focus on this in the last several decades. We are striving to become smarter, stronger, faster, healthier, wealthier and more accomplished. We want to be more connected with others with more meaningful and fulfilling relationships. With so much information on achieving […]

  In my last blog post I discussed the types of fear that we deal with. I distinguished actual fear from psychological fear with actual fear being a real threat to our wellbeing such as confronting an armed attacker. I also discussed that psychological fears are those fears that are not a real physical threats […]

In my last post, I asked the question of why do we fear and where our fears arise from. I discussed how most of our fears are conditioned in early childhood and can affect us throughout our adult lives. Now let’s distinguish the types of fear that we can experience. I make a distinction between […]

Fear is one of the most common and complicated emotions that we can experience. We all experience this in some way or form in our early childhood and throughout our lives. So what is fear? Fear is a learned response which becomes programmed in early childhood, meaning that it is something that we are not […]

  Life is chaotic. There are increasing demands on our attention and time. There’s work deadlines, meetings, email, responding to texts, social media, car maintenance, doing groceries, children’s activities, going to the gym, making dinner, your kids’ homework, staying in touch with family and friends and planning vacations to name a few. This does not […]

    One of the things I look forward to in the summer is all the exciting movies that are released of all genres. There is nothing more enjoyable than enjoying a great movie on a hot summer night. I recently saw ‘Mission Impossible: Fallout’ and I must say that it is one of the […]

I’ve been a practicing physician for 13 years which does not include the 6 years of residency training to become a pulmonary and critical care physician. However, my intellectual journey began long before I entered medical school back in my early childhood. I was a curious explorer and wanted to know as much about the […]

  In my last blog post I discussed that life always hangs in a delicate balance. We experience seeming opposites in our relative experience in this world as part of that balance. The truth is that we are not our life stories or the thoughts and emotions that they generate. Who we are is far […]

Life is a continual interplay of opposites. This is evident both on a personal level as well as a global level as we look at the world around us. Whether it is light and dark, compassion and hate, joy and grief, win and loss, elation and despair, life always hangs in a delicate balance. Just […]

Life is full of challenges which can often lead to setbacks. Whether its in your health, your relationships, your career or finances, sooner or later you are bound to hit a pothole on the road of life. This is unavoidable and inevitable. It does not matter what obstacle you face but what matters is how […]

  In my last two articles I started to discuss the path to emotional mastery. I discussed how to deal with negative emotions which arise from negative thinking and how to manage those that arise from what we experience on a daily basis. In this article I’d like to discuss emotional blocks. We first have […]

In my last blog post I started to discuss the fascinating topic of emotional mastery. Here is the link to that article in case you missed it. The fact is that we all have emotions but most of us feel like we’re at the mercy of our feelings. This is because few of us have […]

This marks the beginning of a new blog post series on mastering your emotions. Emotions are one of the most misunderstood aspects of human existence. We all experience them but few of us know how to manage them effectively to the point that we often appear to be victims of our emotions. In order to get […]

  One of the most difficult events in the human experience, besides the death of a loved one, is the end of a relationship. This is an all too common occurrence on a global scale as statistics tell us that the divorce rate is close to 50%. This does not take into account the countless […]

If you have lived in this world long enough then you realize that, at times, our personal relationships can deteriorate into something more than just a simple disagreement. They can progress into serious conflict and a major rift and things can snowball downhill quickly from there. The divorce rate of 50% is a testament to […]

In the last several posts I have discussed the importance of cultivating your relationship to yourself as the first step towards elevating all of your relationships with others. I discussed doing this through stillness and I also explained how the purpose of all of our relationships is for our consciousness to express its true nature […]

In my last blog I discussed the importance of cultivating your relationship with yourself and how to do this through practicing stillness. This week I’d like to discuss why this is important for all of your external relationships. The fact is that most relationships are plagued by conflict and stress. All you have to do […]

  In my last blog I introduced the topic of relationship and discussed all the various relationships we have including our romantic relationships, family and friends, work colleagues, people we encounter in our daily routine and also our relationship to nature and the universe. I started to discuss the most important relationship which is the […]

This week I’d like to discuss the importance of something that is a part of all of our lives and that is relationships. Now when I say this you are probably conjuring up images of your current or past romantic partner and what experience you had with him or her. This is, however, a very […]

In the last several posts I have discussed the importance of setting the intention to overcome depression which must be tied to a greater meaning or higher calling. I have also discussed the importance of optimal nutrition and movement in healing depression. I’ve also discussed how to release emotional blocks. In this post, I’d like […]

In the last several posts I have discussed the importance of setting the intention to overcome depression which must be tied to a greater meaning or higher calling. I have also discussed the importance of optimal nutrition and movement in healing depression. This week I’d like to talk about the role of our emotions. Most […]

In the last several posts I’ve discussed the importance of setting an intention to heal from depression which must be tied to a greater meaning or higher calling for your life. I’ve also discussed how we must optimize our nutrition to eliminate inflammatory foods and only eat the highest quality foods for our health and […]

In the last post, I started discussing the effective management of depression which starts with intention. I discussed that in order to set an intention to heal from depression, one must have a greater meaning to their life and answer a higher calling because we are all here for a reason. Most of us live […]

In my last blog I started to discuss the growing global epidemic of depression. I discussed modern medicine’s approach to treating depression which is to prescribe a pharmaceutical agent whose goal is to affect the brain’s neurochemistry. I discussed how this is a misguided approach to treating depression because it does not address the multifactorial […]

Depression. It is a condition that we have been hearing about more and more in recent years and there is not a single person I know who does not know someone who suffers from it. It is one of the most common conditions in modern times and is one of the biggest causes of workplace […]

Do negative emotions affect your health?  Conditions such as depression and anxiety have been shown to affect how we manage and treat our other chronic conditions but, even if one does not suffer from these conditions, unresolved emotions can pave the way for chronic diseases to manifest.  These unresolved emotions include grief, anger, jealousy, hatred, […]

This week I’d like to discuss challenges in our lives. We all grow up with certain expectations based on how we’re influenced early in our lives by our parents, our teachers, our peers and society at large. Most people expect to establish a successful career and find someone with whom to have a close personal relationship with […]