“You choose one of two pains: The pain of suppressing who you are to gain acceptance, or the pain of rejection that comes with being who you truly are.” Gabor Mate [he said it more eloquently than that]

Spring is blossoming again with wild flowers on the hills. The pond outside the yurt is blooming with lillipads standing up straight with dignity towards the sun.

The goats roam freely on the hill after Destry built the gate.

People are out again, hosting events, and filling out the parks.

Speaking of which, here are some spring gumptionizing events!

- If you are in the Bay Area, check out the Spring Naga Party where the gigantic sea serpent at Golden Gate Park comes alive again with a fun party on May 9th at 4pm.

- I also attended a magnificent performance of Arabic and Hebrew makam songs performed by the band The Qadim Ensemble. Get on their list here to learn about their concerts. So great!

- Also, our Season 3 Premiere episode goes live on April 21st at 6.30pm pacific on Youtube. Join our online watch party and tell us live how you find it!

Ok now here is where I am this spring.

This is the sixth spring that visits me on this wild 10 year journey of becoming a full-time writer, live closer to nature, and have calmer more supportive relationships.

Some highlights of where I am this season in my strangely fulfilling journey:

• I just submitted the third rewrite and manuscript for my novel Rafiki (6 years and 8 drafts in the making now) to a new set of publishers and competitions. My brain only expects rejections now and it has stopped waiting for anything else. I’ve finally curbed the manic part of my brain. It now gets all its dopamine from the sheer act of doing work and submitting it is the prize.
  Submit and keep writing.

• Season 3 of the podcast is out. I am back on the socials (check us out here on Youtube, spotify or apple podcasts or find us in the cesspool of instagram here). I prepared six months worth of long form interviews, essays and reels. Not getting much likes or noticed really, and I have come to terms with that. Post and carry on.

• The Human Dash company has had its best quarter yet. More revenue, new awesome people coming in to help out, and finding better models to build this out in a way that makes sense to me. I tack to so many people that need my services and don’t sign up, or potential investors that don’t get it or want try to convince me to be an AI company. I honestly don’t care.
  Pitch and move on.

That is how spring is looking like, and it is not that I have mastered the art of not giving a fuck. Not at all.

It is just that the fucks I give are now more subtle.

Small things > Big Things.
Fewer Friends > Everyone I meet.
Clients and Readers I have > Ones I have lost.

Surgical fucks.
That is how I keep going now.

Creativity is Treacherous

I have come to realize that Creativity, just like sexuality and martial arts, is an act of becoming more of who I am.

It involves grappling with myself, claiming my deepest desires, and facing all of my insecurities, all at once.

It involves being rejected…all the time.

I know that it does not sound appealing.

And it shouldn’t be.

If I look at that whole ten year vision as though it were one year, then 2026 is looking like the Spring of that decade.

Here is a quick recap of how it has been going so far if you are new here:

• 2020 - 2023 Fall: Just like a school year, my ten year vision started in its Fall season. I was living in Cairo then. I started writing a novel, recorded the first podcast episode, and got a grant to run my first health program. I moved back to SF in 2022, and by the end of that year I was divorced, and my consulting contract had all dried up. By mid 2023, the Bay Area had slashed my liquid savings and my company was facing bankruptcy.

• 2023- 2026 Winter: The last 3 years felt like an eternity, as I crawled my way out of financial treachery, found home and community all over again, and experienced a massive shift in who my friends are and who I hang out with. All the while, I kept on writing, and kept on doing the podcast, and somehow, kept growing The Human Dash to what it is today.

By doing these things I have chosen the pain of knowing of myself. And that path won’t necessarily lead to money, fame or glory.

What it does lead to is contentment.

I can tell you that.

I also can tell you that all paths will lead to death.

So how do you want to live now?

Knowing that how you live is also how you die.

Do you want to die striving and hiding?

Or do you want to die with a straight spine, facing the sun just like the lilliepads of spring?

If you are working on a creative product you’d or are hosting an event in the Bay Area that you think aligns with what I care about send me an email and I’ll promote it!

Also If you like my writing… it takes a lot of coffee to make it!

Buy me a monthly cappuccino here to support it and get access to the archive and health and creativity worksheets that I will release along the podcast.

Buy me a monthly cappuccino

We have been working diligently to produce the third season of The Human Recovery Lab (previously the Gumpcast), and it is finally here!

I’ll share more on the crazy journey of creating this next week, but today I invite you to watch our trailer here on youtube and subscribe there to get notified (spotify and apple podcast links below).

This season we’re adding video essays on emotional regulation, habit change, and data-driven health, and we are exploring the unexpected ways high performers are reclaiming their power, from psychedelics and martial arts to navigating tech-induced burnout.

These interviews have been recorded with a live audience, and a live musical performance lead by the Turkish multi-instrumentalist — Volkan Eren alongside percussion by Marc Wagenseil.

In Search of Gumption reader special:

I will post the essays and interviews here as they come out, but in addition to the regular free content, all paid subscribers will get science-backed worksheets and detailed show notes to help you make the absoute most of this content.

Additionally, you will get a printed form of my book The Human Way: A trauma-based guide for health and longevity in a world obsessed by optimization once it is out!

Subscribe now

Listen on Spotify:

Or on Apple Podcasts:

Or Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thehumanrecoverylab

Instead of twelve hours of screen time, my days were filled with sun, warm Indian Ocean air, simple coastal seafood, and the smiling faces of the Swahili and Giriama people.
(Most of all — I did not hear the letters A or I once on my whole trip!)

Before I left I was feeling quite off for several weeks
→ I frequently woke up with night sweats at 3 am.
→ I would then proceed to beat myself up with ruminating thoughts about life.
→ My C-reactive protein — a marker of inflammation — had climbed to 1.4 (an optimal level is closer to 0.1–0.2).

It took about five days for my sleep to return to normal after I landed.
And a week for my mood to follow suit.

I love going there.

Kenya restores my gumption.

I come back feeling like my cup is full.

As I discussed before in various essays, gumption is not an infinite resource. When you have it, you have to protect it. Otherwise it leaks!
And when it leaks, you have less capacity to solve your problems, less ability to maintain your health, and less grit to pursue big dreams.

If, like me, you live in America right now then…you have to understand this.
While I love and believe in this country, America is full of gumption vampires. Act accordingly! Protect thy gumption!

The more I live from a place of gumption — and the less fear I have about money, success, and fame — the more I realize something: the future belongs to those who understand emotional regulation.

That’s the entire premise behind the Human Dash coaching programs.

Health is so easy if we live in the right environment surrounded by the right people, and it is incredibly hard if we don’t.

Inflammation is a normal response to abnormal, maladaptive conditions.

Here’s something many people in health won’t tell you about stress and inflammation.
Not because we are lying to you,
but because we forget.

If you’re facing continuous stress — fast-paced jobs, heartbreak, major life changes — inflammation may be exactly what your body needs to be doing.

The research shows that:

• High-pressure, fast-paced jobs with low autonomy are associated with increased stress and ill health)

• Job insecurity or fear of job loss can instigate disease, even after accounting for stress-related behaviors such as smoking, drinking, and eating.

• Poverty, political displacement, and racism constitute uncontrollable factors that cause disease and can’t be addressed by “working harder”.¹

These are all biological triggers, not personal failures. Sometimes you have to leave the environment you’re in to let your body heal.

If you follow enough longevity podcasts, you’ll start to believe inflammation is simply a personal optimization problem — something to fix in you, not in your environment.

Do enough workouts. Take enough cold plunges. Optimize your sleep.

One day you’ll be strong and rich like them.

As I said, we forget.
We forget what we are optimizing for.

But this whole ‘change the world by changing yourself’ bullshit was for the 80s and 90s — back when we had time to rewind a cassette tape with a pencil.

Remember that?

In today’s fast paced currr-aziness, we barely have time to take a shit without sending a text or an email. The world will change you. It will change your thoughts, and your thoughts will change your biology.

Nowadays it happens faster than you can say ‘Tiktok’ or ‘AI’!

The way it does, is via inflammation. More on the science of that in a second.

In the last decade, inflammation has topped our “Biology We Hate” chart. It has far surpassed many of our all time top features such as Carbohydrates, Cholesterol, Gluten, and good’ ol Dairy (may they all rip).

Now Inflammation is public enemy number #1 (along with its evil terrorist cytokines).

Meanwhile, actual criminals rule the world.

Look, I don’t want to dampen your mood, but…

The wars, the genocides, the human-made climate disasters, the racial bias exaggerated now by AI, the extraction of resources from other countries, the terrorizing of local citizens, and the maddening uncertainty of jobs, stocks and when the strait of Hormuz will be shut, all continue.

Never mind that we are setting up the world ablaze, alongside our own institutions.

No. No. You are just inflamed because you are not doing enough saunas and breathwork.

That is the problem!

You are the problem.

Indeed

• Medicine blames inflammation for most of our chronic diseases.

• Therapeutic companies are rushing to halt immune system responses within our bodies.

• Doctors prescribe steroids and aspirins to reduce its impact on the body, and

• Wellness & longevity gurus swear by saunas, fasting, supplements and sleep hygiene techniques that will reduce it.

But top researchers on Stress and the Cortisol Awakening Response now know that: Inflammation is a normal response to abnormal, maladaptive conditions.

Stanford neuroscientist and primatologist, Robert Sapolsky puts it bluntly (and best):

“...the more disastrous a stressor is, the worse it is to believe you had some control over the outcome because you are inevitably led to think about how much better things would have turned out if only you had done something more.” (Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers p404)

“The built environment is designed, intentionally or not, to cause depression, cognitive decline, dementia, and other illnesses - all mediated by inflammatory cytokines.” says renowned political economist and New York Times bestselling author , teamed up with the physician and explores this idea in her bookInflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.

Studies also show how Climate change events such as fires, air quality, and temp rises impact our bodies

also writes a great deal about reclaiming our bodies as part of social and justice movements in The Politics of Trauma.

“What we tend to think of as individual traumas... are not so individual when we look at the numbers and the social conditions in which they are happening”

Inflammation is a result of a thought process (usually triggered by our environment)

One month ago, in Part 1 of Inflammation Nation, I shared with you the story of a client that got to a suicidal point after an argument with an ex triggered her. We realized later she had a lot of unaddressed thyroid inflammation.

So let’s break down how her environment might have aggravated that.

How exactly does our environment translate into inflammation inside the body?

A well studied field of medicine called Psychoneuroendocrine Immunology (PNEI for short) has risen over the last decade, with research that uncovers how Triggers → Thoughts → Hormones → Disease, via the inflammatory response.

Which means that what my client from Part 1 was experiencing was the following:

• External Work and Relationship Pressures→ Triggered deep childhood fears. (Psycho-)

• These old deep fears then → activated her Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems (Neuro-)

• That Nervous system awakening → released stress hormones and inflammatory molecules. (Endocrine-)

• And these hormones then prioritize a state of fight and flight → depressed the less urgent proteins needed to regulate immune function (immunology!).

• and the release of cytokines → further drove her towards depression and suicidal ideation (More Psycho- again)

  

But How can we control our thoughts when our national policy is driving the Inflammation?

Attempting to heal oneself with therapy, medications, or even spiritual practices while experiencing external factors can (and will) backfire.

If the source of inflammation is external then you have to escape it first before you heal

→ Talk to others, start organizing with others experiencing the same
→ observe your environment, and if none of that is available then
→ plan an escape from the relationship, the job, the toxic boss first.
→ Or learn how to stand up for yourself.

Do not try to solve systemic issues with Meditation and Yoga. This comes later.

Once you are out of the environment that is wearing you down long enough, you can try out all the science-backed tools to reduce inflammation and return your body to a healthy state.

I called her and she picked up.

“Hey. How is it going?” I asked.

“Omar, I am in deep trouble. I have been contemplating suicide for the past two hours and I am considering taking action, and I don’t know what to do…” her voice trailed away “I need help, it is so painful..I want it to stop”.

If you're having thoughts of self-harm or suicide: call, text 988, or start a live chat with Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. It's free and confidential. You'll reach someone who is trained to listen and support you.

When a nervous system catches fire

She was weeping, and I…was wondering if I was a little over my skis here. It was sounding like more of a call she needed to have with her emergency psychiatrist, not her functional medicine coach.

However, I knew this person’s medical, family, and psychological history. I knew that she had a rough upbringing and a history of trauma and physical abuse that we had explored during the program.

I also had two years worth of lab tests and knew that her inflammatory markers were higher than her baseline.

And it was no surprise that she was inflamed, because it had been an extraordinarily stressful time for her. She had gone through a divorce when we first met, and a year later changed jobs, then six months ago moved to a new home, and her body was catching up with all these changes showing a lot of inflammation in the bloodwork and she reported many body aches.

This is all helpful information post crisis, and I felt responsible to show up for her. I just wanted to make sure she got the medical attention she needed.

“What is going on?” I asked.

“I went and visited my ex-husband, I wanted to apologize, and instead he did not let me into his house because his girlfriend was there and I felt so humiliated. I just want to fix it, I just want to apologize and fix it…” she trailed off to more crying. “Or I just want to end this pain…”

You can’t save anyone, I always remind myself in this job.

“I see.” I said. “What are you hoping to get right now?”

“I don’t know..I don’t know…it is so painful…” she said
…and then the network cut off!

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I pressed the pedal harder to get to the location faster.
It took 15 minutes to get there, and I called her immediately, but she did not pick up.

Shit!

I sent her messages on all the different platforms we were connected on. No response.

I called her again.

Nothing.

Fuck!

Corrosive thoughts dripped down my body like acid rain.

What if she did something to herself? I should have just parked on the side after the bridge? How selfish of me to get into the meeting rather than give her my full attention. What if she hurts herself? Would it be my fault? Will my insurance cover me? I fucked up! This is the end of my career! I needed to call 911 immediately and send them to her house!

Obsessive. Corrosive. Thoughts.

I was the inflamed one now.

Emotional Contagion

“Omar, you look like a royal mess!” the person I had the meeting with lovingly told me, as she placed a glass of water on the table in front of me. I told her what was happening, and after I failed to get a hold of my client, we started our meeting.

I checked my phone obsessively over and over again, until my colleague stopped our discussion (during which I had not listened to a single word. I was too busy doing the important work of imagining the worst possible scenario my client might be experiencing).

My colleague stopped talking, turned off her laptop, looked me in the eye, put a hand on my shoulder and said:

“Ok listen to me. When your client reach out, did you do your part and show up for her?”

“I don’t know if I did enough” I said.

“Well I see that you called her, you are making yourself available even when you weren’t, and at this point she has to show up for herself now. She is responsible for herself as well. You know where your role ends and where hers begins.” She said.

She was reminding me of what I always try to remind myself of, and keep forgetting. It is one thing to tell ourselves something, and another to be witnessed by another human that helps us zoom out of our myopic brains.

I relaxed.

While I was still worried about my client, that worry was now separated from my neurosis of beating myself up for someone else’s experience. I could now tap into my own deeper well of compassion for both myself and my client without over-identifying with her.

“Perhaps instead of worrying you should send her a text asking her what she needs?” my colleague asked.
Her words were balm to my nervous system.

That is when it hit me: I am trying to please my client, and therefore I am losing my own sense of regulation, rather than being a grounded presence for her. I am frying my own nervous system, as a result of interacting with hers. That is what I teach my clients, and yet I am such a lousy student myself! This stuff is not easy in practice.

I texted the client again “Please let me know that you are ok, and if you would like to get on the phone.”

After a couple of hours she replied back “I checked myself into the Stanford ER, I will let you know as soon as I am out.”

I was back to feeling like myself again, and went about my day, still curious and wondering how she is, but not blended with her reality, and no longer seeking a sense of validation from her.

I had inflamed my own system, in response to hers, and that is extremely common in all medical provision jobs.

Inflammation can spread virally that way.

“I just want it to stop”

Six hours passed before I heard back from my client that she had left the ER and was back home

She texted back saying that the physician found that the Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) was extremely high due to her being off her thyroid medications for a while. They attributed that to the severe mood swings she had resulting in that moment of suicidal ideation.

While the hormonal component offered a clue, there was still much more to be uncovered in the story. I was better prepared this time by studying her records and reminding myself of the mental model we had scoped together.

We each have our own version of this.

She finally had sometime to rest, and so did I.

We spoke two days later

She started by sharing what she had been through the past few days, and how the original trigger was when a coworker of hers calling her “rude” after she was voicing a concern that resulted in backlash.

I asked her what had come up after that challenging interaction at work.

She said, “It reminded me of everything my son and my ex have said to me over the years—that I’m rude, that my tone is condescending. It hurts every time. Not just because of what they say, but because I don’t think that’s who I am. People assume it’s my personality, but they don’t see my intention. And then I get defensive, and it spirals.”

She had reached out to her ex to apologize, she told me. “I wrote to him, but I think he misunderstood the way I said things. I was trying to take accountability, but I also wanted to be honest that he played a part too. That didn’t go well. So I drove to his house. I thought maybe face-to-face it would be better. But he didn’t want to talk. His girlfriend was there. He told me to leave.”

I asked what happened next.

“I got in my car and drove to the cemetery near his house,” she said. “I go there sometimes when I’m overwhelmed. I parked, and I just broke down. I couldn’t stop crying. The pain was unbearable. And all I could think was, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’”

I gently asked what that part of her—the one that wanted to end everything—wanted in that moment.

“It just wanted the pain to stop,” she said. “That’s it. Not to hurt anyone. Just to stop the pain.”

“And what would have eased the pain?” I asked.

“A call,” she said without hesitation. “Just a call from him saying, ‘I hear you.’ Even if he didn’t forgive me. Even if he said ‘but…’ after. I just wanted to be heard.”

I invited her to go back to that version of herself in the car—to be with her—and asked what she noticed.

“She’s drowning,” she said. “It’s not just about the breakup. It’s about years of not being heard. And she doesn’t know any other way to be noticed except to break down.”

I asked her what this part believed would happen if she wasn’t heard.

“She’d disappear,” she said. “She’d always be alone. The pain would just swallow her whole.”

“And what’s your relationship to her right now?” I asked.

“I’m not judging her,” she said. “Not today. I get why she’s there. I just wish she didn’t feel she had to go so far just to be seen.”

“If you could tell her something now, what would it be?” I asked.

“That I see her,” she said. “That I’m here. She doesn’t have to yell or scream anymore. I’ll listen.”

I asked her if she could use her hands to touch her chest to calm herself down, and if that suicidal part of her could receive that.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “For the first time, she’s calming down. I put my hand on my heart like we did before. And I felt something soften.”

We sat in that space for a moment, and then I asked, “Does this feeling—this fear of not being heard—remind you of something earlier in your life?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I can’t remember a specific moment, but it’s always been there. I grew up in a family that doesn’t do emotions. If you show vulnerability, you get yelled at. No comfort. No soothing. Just yelling. I think I learned to cry louder, to demand attention, just to be noticed.”

“And how did people respond?”

“With punishment,” she said. “I got smacked a lot for yelling or being too much. So I learned two things: one, people won’t hear me unless I’m loud. Two, being loud makes them hurt me. That contradiction has stayed with me.”

I asked if we could go to the child version of her for a moment. “Where is she now?”

“She’s in our old house,” she said. “There are people around, but no one’s paying attention to her. She feels invisible.”

“Is she aware of your presence now?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “She sees me.”

“And how would she like you to be with her?”

“Gently. Just being there is enough. Maybe holding her. Not saying much.”

I encouraged her to offer that.

“I’m with her now,” she said. “I just put my hand on her shoulder in my mind. She looks at me like she wants to believe I’ll stay.”

“Can you let her know you’re here for her?” I asked. “That she doesn’t have to scream to be seen anymore. That she has you.”

“She’s calming down again,” she said. “I think she believes me.”

“That’s beautiful,” I said. “If there’s one message she needed to hear most from you today, what would it be?”

“That she makes sense,” she said. “That her feelings make sense. And that I will not punish her for having them.”

We sat in silence for a moment, holding space for that truth to land.

Next week (Part 2/2), we’ll cover:

• Why inflammation isn’t the enemy

• How to measure it and the difference between internal vs external causes

• What actually lowers it (and what’s wellness bs)

• How to tell when you need medical care vs when you need to leave what’s inflaming you

If you are looking to try more effective ways of building habits that last, try out this free assessment to learn how you can meet yourself where you are at.

If you’ve been carrying stress for too long, and looking to start off the new year fresh, I hope today’s piece reminds you that sometimes feeling better begins with a change in environment.

Today the healing Mongolian yurt turns 1 year old, and I would like to celebrate its very meaningful life so far by sharing the story with you as we go into year two.

And if you’re wanting to shake off this year and begin fresh, I put together a winter “Back on Track” offering you can explore here. This is designed to help you let go of what is holding you back, and start off with this year with clarity.

Green grass is growing again on the farm, awakened by November rain.

The chickens wander further these days, daring to roam now that the howling summer coyotes are gone. I’m watching all of this from the window we installed in the yurt exactly one year ago.

As I sit here typing, with my toes wrapped in winter wool socks, and my soul drenched in Thanksgiving hygge1, one truth has never felt more obvious:

It really is the environment that creates our health.

I didn’t build the yurt just as a place for healing—I built it as a prototype for a future where health is environmental, relational, and deeply human.

Health can be much more simple (and even fun) when done with the right people in the right places. That’s what we’re building at The Human Dash: a new way of accessing insight by simplifying health, not complicating it.

For the last twelve months, this Mongolian yurt on an organic farm at Point San Pablo Harbor has quietly become one of the most effective “tools” I’ve ever used to help people heal from the most stressful periods of their lives. Not just because of what we do inside it… but also because of how it feels to be here.

While the program itself uses evidence-based psychotherapy models, behavioral health techniques, and data analytics, the yurt itself is already a very restorative container to be in.

And with every person who walks in — burned out, overwhelmed, lonely, anxious, or carrying a silently heavy life — the same thing happens: Their nervous system drops out of “performance mode”.

No movement, breathwork, yoga, or meditation required.

To be honest, I knew the yurt would be restorative, but I didn’t expect it to witness:

• 24 1-on-1 healing sessions

• 12 facilitated circles

• 2 day retreats

• 2 birthdays

• 1 remembrance gathering

Clients love it! Many of them have opted to do the whole program here.

Be the first to know about new yurt events, tea circles, and retreats..

🍵 Join our 2026 yurt circles

How I Got Here, you ask? Let’s see…

Only one year ago, I lived here.
I came to the harbor not as a coach or practitioner — but as someone who needed a safe place to collapse and rebuild.

It was a dark time.

I was on the heels of a divorce. My consulting clients had terminated their contracts with the inflation of ’22. The company was in such trouble that I couldn’t afford rent anymore.

My health practice was just beginning to attract clients, and I chose to accept change. I chose to keep going. That choice brought me to the harbor after a year of living nomadically out of my car.

As a result, I lived on a bus and later a boat.
The Wifi was horrible, but my gumption remained high.

During that time, I got to know Rob, Yaella, and Daryl—the people who transformed Point San Pablo Harbor from a neglected stretch of coastline into a hidden gem of the Bay Area.

What they built here was extraordinary:

• a thriving waterfront restaurant

• multiple beautiful event spaces for weddings and concerts

• an organic farm feeding residents weekly produce

I had been studying longevity and functional medicine since I left medicine, and I carried with me a set of simple habits I could anchor into anywhere.

While working on the farm and living on a houseboat, I spent my days researching work-related stress — Sapolsky, Gabor Maté, Judson Brewer — and quietly realized something:

The harbor was already giving people what all these scientists were trying to explain.

A longing for simpler times.
Times without notifications.
Times when work was more humane.
Times when our bodies felt more alive.

People would arrive from the city and immediately soften.

Everyone that came and visited me was always in a state of awe and wonder.

The panoramic Bay views, the gigantic crocodile sculpture, the gramophone, the art — everything invited adults to become like children again.
And the children became more like the animals, with all their maaa-aaas, baaaaahs, bucks, clucks, crows, and ribbet-ribbets.

The land relaxed people instantly.
Their nervous systems responded before their minds did.

And that was the moment the idea took shape:

What if we combined the healing power of this land with the inner-work approach of The Human Dash? What if people could experience this level of regulation intentionally?

What if we built a healing yurt?

Let’s build a healing yurt!

Over four days, Rob and I took the Mongolian beast apart: we removed the cloth and wool-skin insulation, washed the cover, sawed a window into the wall, and put it all back together—finishing with a fresh new floor.

Thanks to that window, the yurt now holds both a cool summer breeze and a lush green winter view.
Winning.

Rob’s only condition for renting it to me was that I take full responsibility for everything except the structure itself. That meant the furniture, the heat source, the power supply, the upkeep, and all the winter maintenance.

With a little help from my friends (and Facebook Marketplace), the yurt came together between Thanksgiving and Christmas!

Healing doesn’t start with discipline. It starts with environment.

You don’t change by forcing your mind into new habits. That forceful attitude is what got you in trouble in the first place.

You change by placing your body in places where it feels safe to open. As Rick Rubin said “To express what you were afraid to express”.

• When that happens, your nervous system softens.

• Your defenses loosen.

• Your stress patterns become visible — and workable.

• The parts of you that have been bracing for years finally unclench.

The yurt taught me that.

That is what the Yurt continues to teach me about human health.
That is why it is more than a structure.
It’s a prototype for the future of health.

A place where nature, coaching, and nervous system science meet.
A living experiment in what happens when we design spaces for human wellbeing.

And next year, I want more people to experience it — not just read about it.

So if you are in the Bay Area: Check out the following offers
This movement is just beginning.
And I’d love for you to be part of it.

A year ago I came here to begin again. I hope this place gives you the same permission. Below are some opportunities for that.

I- The Back on Track Consultation (Holiday Offering)

A simple, powerful reset for people who want their health — and their life — to feel different in 2025. It’s called the Back on Track Consultation, and it includes:

🔬 53-Biomarker Deep Health Assessment of how Stress is impacting your body and what to do about it

A full analysis of your metabolic, hormonal, stress, and inflammation markers across four domains — with personalized feedback on strengths and vulnerabilities.
(Value: $250)

🌿 90-Minute Healing Session in the Yurt

A somatic + IFS session designed to unwind shame, stress patterns, and the internal tensions driving burnout.
(Value: $350)

📚 Free Access to My New Course + Group Coaching

You’ll receive the full Human Way course + next year’s group coaching series when they launch.
(Value: $250)

Total value: $850
Your cost: $450

And if you discover you’re a good fit for the full Human Dash program,
your $450 can be applied toward it. This is a powerful reset for anyone who wants clarity, calm, and direction heading into the new year.

Book Your Spot

II- Want to Create Something Together?

If you’ve been curious about the yurt — want a tour, want to host something, or want to co-create an event here — send me a message.

Some of my favorite gatherings have come from someone saying,
“What if we…?”

Bring your ideas.

III- Stay Connected — Free Tea Circles Return in 2026

Next year, we’ll be hosting open and free tea circles at the harbor — spaces for rest, conversation, and community.

Subscribe here to stay connected and:

• join our first-Saturdays open hours

• be notified about free events

• hear when the next tea circle opens

• follow the unfolding story of this place

The only reason I’m living my life this way is because my brain has dis-ease.
I am tortured by my own volition—a perturbation of thought that numbs my sense of danger, curbs my desire for comfort, and pushes me toward desires just out of reach.

It’s a lack of contentment with the status quo.
A haunting desire to change the world.
And to be surrounded by those who feel the same way.

Like the Greek tragedy of Tantalus, I’m eternally damned to live in an orchard that never satisfies and to walk through a clear river that never quenches my thirst.

It’s not because I want more.
It’s because I want different.

I can’t help but write. What else can I really do?
Money, love, cars, jobs, friends, food—none of it matters in the long run.

There’s no sugar-coating it: entrepreneurship and writing are mad activities.
And I’m a madman for pursuing both.

These are my ways of finding belonging in a world I never felt part of. Maybe there will be bliss one day, but I no longer expect it.

I don’t write for glory.
I don’t run a company because I’m the best at anything.

No.

I do these things because I would sink into my own dark web of thoughts if I didn’t.

These words I write are pills I swallow to live.
My fiction book Rafiki is my most loyal friend.
Every sentence feels like an injection of life into my veins—an exhale, a lightness.

Every person I work with at The Human Dash gives me another reason to live.
The road I’ve taken may be leading nowhere, but I can still be a sherpa for others who get lost along the way.

It’s not about chasing big ideas or methodical goals.
Both my writing and my business are ways to organize the chaos of my mind—
to offer you something tasty, made from the strange creatures that dwell in the dark recesses of my soul.

Everyone wants to dream big.
Everyone wants to be creative.
Everyone wants to succeed.
But no one wants to admit what it really takes.

The truth is that it takes everything.
Are you ready to give up everything?

“If you’re going to try, go all the way.
You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire.
You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.
It’s the only good fight there is.”
— Charles Bukowski

If you’ve been here reading my essays over the past four years, you’ve had a first-person view of what these dreams have cost me.
The more steps I take forward, the more sacrifices I make, and the more people I lose.

I wish I could tell you it’s all worth it.
I can’t.

I’ve tried to present my life here exactly as it is. You’ve been with me on this journey for gumption.
And today, I need to tell you—it’s actually not worth it.

If you can live a life of comfort wrapped in money, religion, parties, or politics—then by all means…do it.
The world is full of lies about success.

Don’t be a writer.
Don’t quit your job.
Don’t leave your marriage.
Don’t start a business.

Unless you have to.
Unless you must.
Unless it would kill you not to.

Then fine—go all the way.
Become the writer, the comedian, the painter, the founder.
Expose yourself to the harshness of life.
Take the leap.

But only if you can’t help it.
Only if doing it is its own reward.

Don’t expect much from the world except the quiet dignity of knowing that you have honored yourself.

Do it if dignity matters more than comfort.
If good conversations matter more than your bank account.
If you’re okay dying for it.

And while you’re at it…

Don’t fake happiness.
Don’t force a smile.
Don’t try to resonate.

Just do it—and keep doing it.
Until your last breath.

Take the free Human Dash Assessment — uncover where you’re stuck (burnout, isolation, or self-judgment), what habits you’re ready for, and how to break through.

Isolation, internal emotional bleeding, and..ughh…impotence.

I hated depression with a deep passion.
If only I can surgically excise it from my brain, then I’d finally be the person I want to become.

I tried to cauterize it with Prozac. It was a definite meh.
Then I tried to amplify it with psychedelics and it was more of a “whoa”. Like whoa — my brain could do that?

Whoa — my brain actually has the capacity to:

• Connect with others

• Express love

• Dream and Hope

• Accept me

Then through Internal Family Systems therapy, I realized that the hater is not I.
Not me.
Not my Self.

The hater of depression was simply an anxious hologram of me. A me that was driven by only a handful of my values.

A string of thoughts in my head. “Careful. Careful man! Sadness is coming. It’ll destroy us. Run. Run. Lift. Meditate. Quick. Smoke! Sugar! Porn! Keep it away. Anything! Ahhhh!”

“For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break”
A Ritual to Read to Each Other By William E. Stafford

And the more that version of me hated depression, the more depression came back knocking on my door more frequently.

He would usually come in at night after everyone is asleep, and especially if I’m all alone in its shadows.

Driven by my anxiety, I would not welcome depression when it came by to snuggle with us. We would not serve it tea or make it feel too welcome, although nothing we did could kick depression out.

And the more it came back, the more my anxious part developed its deep and visceral hate for it.

Until one day I exhausted my poor brain in that eternal battle. It gave in.

A shut down of my governance system.
A withdrawal of my immune system.
A collapse of my mental fortitude.

The death and despair of Omar Shaker.

And when anxiety was finally in his deep slumber, I heard the voice of depression for the first time…

“What the fuck are you doing man?” Depression said.

I was startled, of course! I didn’t think depression could speak. I stood aghast.

He gently continued “Hey I don’t mean to scare you.”

Stumped, I took a few steps back.

“Stop running. Come sit with me.”

I knew he was right. I had tried everything: No matter how many books I read, movies I watched, videos I scrolled, or joints I’ve smoked…he came back.

And I surrendered to the fact that I was alone with him. Just me and this dark chrome fog.

“Man…I’m here to tell you that you’re doing great and that the anxiety of the world is draining you.” He said.

I started talking to him, albeit with defensiveness. “I know that already! Everyone knows that. What the fuck do you want me to do?”

“I want you to die.” Depression said.

“What! You maniac! You want us to kill ourselves?”

Depression laughed. “Who said kill?”

“You just did!” I said

“That is the language of anxiety not me. I don’t want you to kill yourself. I just want you to let go of the life that is no longer serving you. A respawn. A new start. That is what you need.” He said.

“Why would I do that? Look at the life we’ve built. Look at the beautiful things we have! Why would I ever leave all of that? I just want to go back to enjoying life.”

“That’s how anxiety tricked you. Look at him now in his comatose slur. Wasted after long years of him tormenting you. Pushing you to work harder. Sending you on one pursuit of extravagance after the other. Aching you. Twisting you. Dimming you. Riddling you with obsessive thoughts.”

I watched anxiety collapsed on the floor with saliva drooling from his open clueless mouth. Depression had a fair point.

He continued with a smile. “Look don’t get me wrong anxiety has helped you a lot and has been really important to get you here, but if he hadn’t worked himself to death, you wouldn’t be with me here today.”

“So what do you want me to do?” I asked.

”It is a process of re-vision. If you let me, I’d like us to review your past actions, carefully introspect your recent memories, and help you craft a new vision that serves you better.” Depression said.

“That sounds horrible. I just want to go back to enjoying my life” I said.

“Your past life is no longer there. If you keep resisting my process, then you won’t find a new one either. You’ll just stay stuck here. Take this chance while anxiety is not running the show.”

Annoyed, I said: “How long will it take?”

“As long as it takes.”

“Ughh…stop talking in mysteries. What do you need from me?”

“I need you to shut the door and turn off the lights and ask for help from those who love you. That’s the first step”

“but I don’t want anyone to know Im weak….”

“Ok then I’ll need more time to do my work. Just minimize disruptions and stay away from these damn screens so that I can work in peace.“

And so I did. I rested, and depression worked on my nervous system for a few months that first time we met.

It cut cords, rewired neurons, and soldered broken circuits. In a few days I started to breathe again. In a few weeks I could walk outside again. In a few months I was able to think and feel again.

I was healed, but so was my anxiety who rose from its slumber.

“Hey! What the fuck have we been doing?” Anxiety said “Get us out of here! We have work to do! Our future is lost! Oh look at the dark mist of depression above our heads! Why are we so close to it?! We need to go to a psychiatrist! We need to exercise more! Bring me burger, man! Ahhhhh! Get me out of here! Get this sadness away from me! ”

I smiled, picked anxiety up with my pointer and thumb, and tucked him in my front pocket.

I finally opened the door again. The sun shone into my eyes.

One foot in front of the other, I took my first few steps into world again. Not quite dead, nor reborn, but certainly aware of my existence, and the fickle nature of life.

I looked back at the dark majestic hue of depression swirling about my head. He knew what I was saying without needing to utter the words.

Thank you.

I now realize that depression is not the darkness, but the flickering candle that guides me through it.

Depression didn’t want to kill me.
It wanted to kill the version of me that wouldn’t stop running.

Thank you for reminding me of who I am.
Thank you for knocking on my door.
Thank you for listening.

And Thank YOU for reading.

If this story speaks to you — if you’ve been battling your own anxious hologram — you don’t have to do it alone.

👉 Take the free Human Dash Assessment to see where you might be stuck (burnout, isolation, or self-judgment), and discover the habits and inner work that can help you break through.

👉 Or, if you’re ready to rebuild your health and purpose from the ground up, apply for The Human Dash 3-Month Program — a structured path to recover from burnout while still pursuing your dreams.

Your healing starts with learning how to talk to yourself differently — and you don’t have to wait for another shutdown to begin.

Could anxiety be the threshold to freedom?

Could the current medical establishment — with its mandate to eradicate the “disorder” of anxiety — be eroding our collective willpower?

Today I offer you a new way of seeing anxiety, not as an enemy, but as an important step towards freedom and higher levels of consciousness.

We’ll cover this topic in three small bursts today:
1- Contentment: A Reflection.
2- The Dizziness of Anxiety
3- Freedom of Choice

And for those of you who feel intrigued by today’s gumption booster, I’ll leave you with a further reading and watching list in the footnotes!

Driving? You can listen to this episode on substack.

For those of you interested in new data-driven ways to recover your health after a hard time, check The Human Dash team’s new The Dash Monthly!

Get The Dash Monthly Here

1- Contentment

Ahoy! Life has been bursting at supersonic speed these days, and I am hosting another Humans Being Together event at the farm on Oct 19th. Catch your Early Goat Tickets!

As the last sun-rays of summer slice through the fall fog, I dare say I feel content. Somehow all the losses over the past two years, have naturally cornered me into a beautiful existence. A life that I could not have expected to build, had I spent decades planning for it.

The more I commit to my vision, the more my vision commits to me.

”…the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.” Goethe

The gumption juices are flowing, and the sails of creativity are open.
Everything I desired only five years ago, is now a part of my life: The ability to work on my writing projects, a beautiful stable home that does not drain me financially, allowing me to work on a company that fills me with purpose, and supportive friendships who fill me up with joy.

Technically I should just be content. Right?
I feel quite free.

Truth is, I still find myself doom-scrolling, and reverting to bad habits. I see myself in the third person doing things that will harm me. I still feel sad and depressed every now and then. It would be a blatant lie to say otherwise.

I’m grateful for the sadness. I’m grateful for the anxiety.
Yes — truly. And today I want to show you why — through the lens of Kierkegaard.

Science is finally catching up to his philosophy. It’s not about avoiding anxiety or depression — it’s about learning to move through them.

Even when anxiety shows up in unhealthy ways, I’ve come to see it as a guide. A push toward a better version of my life.

It is urging me to take action.

Within taking action is my freedom.

“Boldness has genius…in it.”
Goethe

2- The Dizziness of Anxiety

It has been Six years now.
Six years since I have been tethered to a normal life with a salary.
Six years that I have been climbing this mountain and crawling on the edge of my abilities.

There were nights where I slept freezing in my car, times when I could not afford rent or groceries, and a moment where I faced bankruptcy. These moments rocked the foundations of my reality, and I quickly realized my capacity for contingency. There is also no way I could have made it here on my own without the help, kindness and grace of others.

I am still climbing up the mountain chasing my freedom, and the closer I get, the more anxiety I experience. Sometimes I look out onto the vista and go “damn the view is great up here! So glad I am on this path’“, and then there are other times, when I just feel so dizzy and disheartened that…

jumping off the cliff seems like an equally valid choice.

When I felt anxious before an exam during medical school, my father (also once a medical student himself pushing through anxiety) would say: “Only those who prepared well…feel stressed.” Meaning that, if I wasn’t anxious, then I wasn’t ready.

That brings me to today’s main quote by Kierkegaard which echoed that advice my father gave me a long time ago:

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
Kierkegaard

He discusses anxiety not as something to avoid, but as something that we encounter on the way to freedom. Anxiety is not a side-effect. It is a by-product of living a life that is aligned with who you are.

Let’s be honest — existential philosophers can be dull to read. And often, they’re useless when it comes to daily life.

However, in moments where certainty dissolves into the boiling broth of life, when shit hits the fan, when the world lets you down, when the meaning you constructed around others shatter… Kierkegaard is your trusted best friend, and his ideas could be the light that leads you back home to yourself.

For Kierkegaard, and most existentialist philosophers that followed in his path, freedom lies in the human’s subjective ability to make choices.

But here is a big catch…making a decision and choosing something is —by definition— life altering. So when we realize that we have a choice to make, anxiety kicks in. That knowledge can be paralyzing.

In today’s world, more and more people have choices taken away from them by war, oppression of thought, and disease. However, fmri and pscyhology studies both confirm the idea that different humans (even identical twins) have variable responses to stressful times.

So from that lens, anxiety is not a disorder. It is a normal response to our maladapted world. Anxiety is an indication that a choice has to happen. If we don’t take action we remain stuck. Our bodies frail. Our dignity fades.

If we do make a choice however, then we are on the way to…

3- Freedom

Healthier decisions can become weightless when it comes to how we live our lives. Modern research in science and stress shows us that self-determination is a critical component of healthy cognitive functioning.

Anxiety is a natural feature of our brains. We have circuitry running through the oldest parts of our neurological wiring, comparing experience to memory, and alerting us about dangers, constantly, via the nerves that run down our spines.

The disorder is not anxiety. The disorder is our tragic inability to understand its purpose. Every human being with a functional central nervous system, experiences anxiety on a moment-by-moment basis.

The difference is that some of us understand its purpose in our lives.
When we understand anxiety in the context of our own vision, we start being able to make better choices. As Goethe said: Then providence moves too.

Anxiety isn’t a malfunction. It’s a signal.
And if you listen closely — not reactively, not fearfully — it might just be pointing to the very thing you’re here to do next.

Additional Watching and Reading from Today’s Gumption

📚 Books

• The Concept of Anxiety by Søren Kierkegaard
  Kierkegaard’s foundational (and boring) exploration of anxiety as the condition for human freedom. Heavy but essential for the philosophically inclined.

• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
  A timeless account of suffering, choice, and the will to meaning — drawn from Frankl’s time in Nazi concentration camps.

• The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts
  A beautifully written reminder that anxiety stems not from life, but from our refusal to live in the present.

• The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté
  Maté deconstructs how Western society misunderstands anxiety and trauma — and offers a vision for holistic healing.

• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
  A punchy, no-fluff guide to overcoming internal resistance — and turning fear into creative power.

📺 YouTube Videos

• Why Kierkegaard Thinks Anxiety is Good For You — Wise Crack
  Hilarious, short and digestible primer explaining Kierkegaard’s core ideas, and how they show up in modern society.

• Miyamoto Musashi: The Japanese Philosopher Who Solved Overthinking — by The Pursuit of Wonder
  

• Alan Watts – The illusion of control
  One of Watts’ best talks on insecurity, fear, and the illusion of control.

🎬 Movies

• Inside Out 2 (2024)
  Pixar’s sequel dives into the emotional chaos of adolescence — introducing Anxiety as a key character. It beautifully illustrates how anxiety, while overwhelming, plays a crucial role in growing up and finding your voice.

• Into the Wild (2007)
  A young man abandons society in search of freedom — and finds both liberation and existential dread. A visceral look at the cost of radical autonomy.

• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
  A quiet man trapped by fear and routine breaks free into the unknown — a feel-good ode to courage and inner transformation.

• A Beautiful Mind (2001)
  A portrayal of living with mental complexity and learning to trust oneself despite chaos — a story of inner freedom.

• Ikiru (1952, Akira Kurosawa)
  A bureaucrat faces his mortality and realizes he’s never truly lived. A quiet, powerful journey into purpose, anxiety, and the courage to act.

Esther Perel famously asked that question to longevity expert Peter Attia, who reflects on this in the very last chapter of his book “Outlive”.

After 300 pages of VO2 optimization, metabolic regulation, and sleep hacking, Peter vulnerably puts himself in the patient seat and discussed his psychological and emotional struggles. The last chapter is where he finally tackles emotional health.

He shares the story of his child being admitted to the ER and him being too busy on a trip to come back home.

The guilt and shame of this moment forced Peter to reconsider his priorities in life.

Turns out there is more to it than your HDL and testosterone levels.

The title of his book says it all: “Outlive”. It denotes that longevity is a sports competition. Not surprisingly, many of the people pushing the current zeitgeist of “health and longevity” are previous athletes themselves.

I wrote about this before about how we bite into this longevity sandwich a bit too hard, and many of us non-athletes end up injuring ourselves or losing motivation completely.

So today I ask what if longevity was not about living long…but living well? And what does that really mean?

“So do you know David Sinclair and Brian Johnson? Do you think we’ll be able to reverse aging?”

I was coming out of a 10 day silent retreat (where the whole point was to practice non-attachment). The first conversation I had after we broke the silence, was with a Bengali startup founder who had recently found himself in Silicon Valley.

Once he knew about my work in holistic health and wellness, his eyes lit up and he asked me the question above.

“No.” I said. “I don’t think we need to reverse aging really. ”

“But what if someone gave you a pill that extends your life by 50 years, would you take it? Wouldn’t you live for 150?”

“No, I probably wouldn’t take it.”

“But why not? Why wouldn’t you”

“How old are you now?” I asked.

“ I’m 28.” he said.

“Do you feel content right now?” I asked.

“Yes. But then I can be even more content.” he said. “If I can extend my life then I can build more, see more and travel more.”

I wanted to shake the guy and ask him if he had learned anything at all during the 10 day retreat! However, I was still in the loving kindness afterglow of the retreat and so instead I took a less personal approach:

“At the current rate, who knows if our planet will event make it that far?”

“Then I’ll go to Mars!” he said.

The guy was triggering, mainly because my views on longevity and progress were very similar when I first moved to San Francisco, and sought to assimilate in the high-tech digital health craze.

Today, I no longer believe that health is about how long we live, but is about having a life that is so healthy, that I’d still be content if I died tomorrow.

Only five years ago however, I probably would have nodded at my friend fervently, and divulged a bunch of the stemcell-powered, neuro-enhanced, and organ-regenrating brave new data-driven world of human longevity.

Why are we so afraid of death?

When the world shut down in 2020, I started collecting data and planning my mornings meticulously in the name of longevity.

I was super into it, and it really informed a lot of the philosophy of my program. I wanted to heal my dysregulated metabolic system after years of consulting glory (i.e. drinking, eating out, and weekly jetlag).

I became engrossed in health and longevity podcasts featuring experts like Andrew Huberman, Peter Attia, and Tim Ferris, inspiring me to experiment further.

Suddenly, an endless list of protocols, routines, and habits dictated by science surrounded me. With newfound time, I created exhaustive to-do lists.

Long morning routines, HIIT workouts, hot yoga.
Paleo, keto, intermittent fasting, water fasting.
Magnesium, iron, electrolytes, macros, micros...
Hot saunas, cold showers, meditation.
Pushups, pull-ups, planks.
Men’s and women’s circles.
Immune boosters, psychedelics, nootropics, breathwork.
Morning sunshine, wearables, sleep tracking, biohacking...

Anything anyone recommended, I tried.

After multiple cycles of overwhelm, I found the right balance of eating, movement, relationships, relaxation, and sleep that helped me recover emotionally and physically. Within a year, my labs normalized, my mood stabilized, and my back felt strong again.

However, I noticed a certain struggle with compulsive behaviors. Cannabis. Sugar. I kept as many of those out of the house, but whenever I reintroduced them socially, my addictive behaviors would come flooding.

More cannabis meant more munchies, more sugar, and worsening HbA1c.

There was something that felt off, but I thought I was doing everything right.

That’s when I started studying addiction through books like ‘Chasing the Scream’ and Gabor Maté’s ‘In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts’. Those two books put forth the resounding truth about addiction: It was not the chemical that was the problem—it was my trauma.

Hindsight is 20:20

Around this time, I discovered the profound healing power of psychedelics. I had previously enjoyed LSD and MDMA in party settings, but deep journeys with ayahuasca, psilocybin, and mescaline revealed subconscious wounds I didn’t know I carried.

I confronted my shame around societal judgments and realized I had spent years running from my cultural roots. Healing, I saw, lay in reconnecting with them. These insights came to me as memories that cropped to the top of my consciousness during these psychedelic trips.

My earliest memory of anxiety dates back to age seven—long before I understood epigenetics or intergenerational trauma. I told my mother, “I feel like something is chasing me, and I have to keep running.” She held me and said I was too young to feel that way.

Too young to feel that way. I thought.

Was that how adulthood felt like?

Anxiety and Addiction as Avoidance

Sure enough, anxiety followed me into adolescence. My high school fostered peacocking, bullying, and one-upmanship. Social outings filled me with dread—my mind consumed by thoughts of not being interesting enough, cool enough, or fashionable enough. That’s when I picked up smoking. I hated it at first, but like beer, it became a social staple. Through college and medical school, stress transformed into obsessive thoughts about grades, patients, work, and validation.

I started feeling much better. Armed with knowledge about my past, along with therapy, I unshackled the hold addiction had in my life. However, I started noticing that even when I was not smoking, there was still some sort of pull towards compulsive behaviors. If it wasn’t marijuana, it would be sugar cravings, late night work, too much coffee or even hitting the gym more than was necessary.

I began wondering: were therapy and psychedelics just more short-lived solutions? It felt like there was an invisible force that kept me stuck in a loop. That was when I read It Didn’t Start with You by Mark Wolyn, and the puzzle pieces clicked into place.

It started with Grandma

In the same year Wolyn’s book came out, my grandmother passed away after a long battle with dementia. She had been a strict disciplinarian—so much so that my grandfather called her The Government, a nickname we all laughed at.

One day after dinner, during my time back in Egypt, I went for a walk with mom and we opened up to each other. I told her about my recent struggles with anxiety, and felt more open to talking to her about my depression, having hidden it from her for ten whole years at that point.

“You know, it is funny you say that. I also felt an anxiety since I was a young, and I never understood where it came from.” She said. “I mean, there was nothing happening in my life to cause that. I had a pretty good life, so I brushed it off.”

I explained intergeneration trauma and what I was reading these days, then I said: “Tell me everything about Grandma. What was her life like?”

Mom’s answer was an unexpected twist about grandma that I knew nothing about, and would change my life forever.

Beneath my grandma’s apparent mental strength lay a deep-seated fear of loss. At two years old, she had lost her father, leaving her family in financial ruin. Women could not easily get jobs, and her childhood became one of scarcity. She could not experience the toys, gifts, clothes and trips her older sisters spoke about. That trauma shaped her every action. Only two years old, my grandma witnessed her mother’s mourning.

Fast forward 70 years. I remember her locking doors obsessively, always reminding us how many ways a thief could enter the house. She had prayers for every scenario, including getting in a car or riding an elevator. She would call each one of us every night to make sure we were ok. Eating in her kitchen meant sautéed vegetables, lean roasted chicken, and chamomile tea. Grandma was very particular about her behaviors. She made green smoothies before they were cool. The Government was afraid of death, and she spent every living moment avoiding it.

As her case deteriorated over the last 5 years of her life, she could barely recognize us. We could barely recognize her, too. As any caretaker of an Alzheimer’s or dementia patient knows all too well, these neurodegenerative diseases are detrimental for both the patient and the family.

The silver lining of grandma’s fate was that dementia protected her from the biggest fear of her life. She was in a blissful coma when grandpa finally passed.

She was successful in that way. She avoided the inevitable death of the man she loved the most.

Outliving vs. Living Well

However, one truth remained, she had never faced her fear.

That fear of death.

Her anxiety, passed down epigenetically, explained my mother’s mysterious nervousness, and sometimes irrational Germophobia—a quirk we had always joked about. My struggles, I realized, were not just mine. They were part of a generational legacy.

This revelation reshaped my relationship with anxiety. No longer a personal failing, it became a marker of my lineage.

It was no longer something to control, but something to understand and integrate. I realized most of my struggles, up to that point, had revolved around running away from death.

That was what I described to my mother at 7 years old when I told her I was running away from something. I was running away from the death of my great-grandfather, and the trauma of my grandmother, who did not have the resources to handle it back then.

And now that I think of it, the medical education I received was all about prolonging life and avoiding death, regardless of what that meant to the person and to society. Last week, I wrote about the death of my patient and how I was running away from that on my secret trips to Alexandria.

The death of my career as a doctor was why I hid away from society during my depression. The layoff and the death of my consulting career pushed me to travel away from San Francisco where I associated with that job.

In the same vein, I started seeing how a lot of the longevity experiments, despite how much benefit I got from them, were still an attempt to avoid the brutal fact of death.

I began reconstructing my life through writing—novels, short stories, health essays, journaling. I lived in Egypt’s Sinai, Kenya’s Lamu Island, and Mexico’s Oaxaca, where my perception of human health shifted.

A Better, more Human Way

Longevity isn’t about adding years to your life. It’s about learning how to live fully right now.

That’s exactly what we practice inside The Human Dash — where ambitious professionals recover from burnout, build sustainable health habits, and reconnect to themselves.

Here’s what’s included:

• Six 1:1 coaching sessions (75–90 minutes) to uncover and resolve your health blocks

• Comprehensive biomarker analysis so you can measure real progress and understand what habits you need.

• Personalized habit architecture that makes healthy routines actually stick

• Research-backed strategies tailored to your unique health needs

• Accountability structure so change lasts

• Access to group membership, retreats, and your personal health dashboard

We’re opening 15 new spots at locked-down founder rates until Oct 1st.
After that, pricing will increase as we expand the program.

Apply Now

It hurt.

It hurt a lot.

It hurt in my lower back.

It hurt between my shoulder blades.

It hurt just like when other kids rejected me on the playground.

Substack lets you remove the notifications of people who “disable their emails”, but I personally challenge myself to keep that notification on. I want to experience the rejections, just like I experience your affirming replies and likes.

It’s like a vaccine: A small inert pathogen today helps me be stronger against the scary plague of tomorrow.

I experience a ton of daily rejections as I go through my writing and coaching journey.

Each one bites a little.

This one fucking stung though.

The person didn’t leave because of my last blog post (at least I don’t think so). This came on the heels of a series of life-altering events that deeply impacted them.

They entered into a period of grief and (while I wished to be at the forefront of their support system), the reality was that they asked me for space.

I had supported this person for over two years—personally and professionally. I had put so much care toward their wellbeing, because in addition to being hired to support them... I cared about them deeply.

The support was mutual and generous between us.

That person praised my coaching, my writing, our “compatibility.” As a result, we found ourselves in a grey zone.

Not quite friends.
Not quite strangers.
Not quite client and coach.

And so it hurt because I wasn’t part of that decision.
I didn’t get to be there for them.
I felt ousted from a castle I had helped protect.

That part of me that just wanted to be there for them struggled to NOT make this about ME…

I tried not to make it personal…

but it fucking was!

Why?

Because I—just like you—want to be loved.
I want my gifts to be appreciated.
I want to feel grounded in my relationships.

So, these unsubscribes and mini rejections sometimes hurt just like my divorce or a gnarly breakup.

I felt foolish for putting myself in a vulnerable position. To have let my boundaries get so loose.

A few weeks ago I wrote about yielding versus collapsing.

This week, I ask myself:
How can I practice what I preach?
How can I not collapse beneath the weight of a relationship crumbling?
How can I tend to my own wounds, instead of rushing to fix someone else’s?
How can I not take on more than what’s mine?

But it is confusing…

How can someone praise me one day and want nothing to do with me the next?

And then I ask myself:

A solid list of people comes to mind.
People I intend to make amends with.

Because a part of me still struggles to accept that relationships can just end, or that people you care for can just walk out without explanation.
That no matter how loyal, present, or loving you were—you may never get closure.

I grew up believing in reciprocal, regulated relationships built on trust. My closest friendships allow for confrontation.

I care deeply. Is it wild to expect that back?

Here’s what I’m realizing:
We suffocate emotions.
We build projections.
And we ghost, block, unsubscribe, or delete each other instead of sitting in discomfort together.

What do I hold onto, so I don’t become cynical?

There is a grinch inside of me.

He hates Christmas, large gatherings, Ecstatic dance and fake smiles.
He believes that people are full of ill will and hatred.
He knows that people say things to get things.
He wants to write a sequel to the famous book “How to win friends and influence people”, and call it “How to Lose Friends and Grieve people.”

He thinks that John Lennon was wrong.
That we need more than love.
That people can’t handle love.
I am sorry they shot you for it, my guy.

“there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day
and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love”
Charles Bukowski — The Genius of the Crowd

Coming back to my damn Self Again

This whole situation feels like a growing pain—for me as a writer, a coach, and a facilitator.

Today it’s handling unsubscribes and program dropouts.
Tomorrow it might be criticism or public backlash.
Maybe one day, someone will threaten my life for writing something they dislike.

The question isn’t if I’ll get hurt.
It’s: How do I want to live, knowing the hurt will come?

Do I stay small?
Love small?
Dream small?

Or do I rise from each one like a fucking phoenix—and…
Keep writing,
Keep growing,
Keep showing up
in the most loving way I know how to?

Leave a comment

🧘‍♂️ A Practice: Tonglen (Taking and Sending)

When the pain feels unbearable—when you’ve been abandoned, ghosted, or cast out—there is a practice that can help soften the sharp edges of grief without bypassing it.

Tonglen is a Tibetan meditation that means “giving and taking.”

You breathe in the pain—your own and others’—and breathe out relief, love, and spaciousness.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Breathe in the sting of rejection, the ache in your back, the tightening in your chest. Imagine all those who are hurting in the same way right now.

2. Breathe out comfort. Send ease, warmth, and love—to yourself first, and then to them.

3. Continue breathing this way. Inhale suffering, exhale compassion.
   Not to fix, but to be with.

It’s not about transcending pain.
It’s about becoming big enough to hold it—and remain loving anyway.

If you've lost someone you loved, and you're trying not to collapse—I'm right there with you. Let’s keep practicing. Let’s keep staying human.

Most people come to me when they are experiencing a loss, and are ready to turn things around.

Want to go deeper with me?
🌀 Host a healing retreat for your team or community on our farm in the Bay Area — just reply to this email to start the conversation.
💬 Apply for our 1-on-1 health coaching program — choose in-person sessions in SF or Richmond. .
📲 Get invited to events & new essays — [Join our WhatsApp group]
🧭 Try out the free Human Dash Assessment — uncover where you're stuck (burnout, isolation, or self-judgment), what habits you're ready for, and how to break through.

In the fog, we can work on and on and on.
In the sun, we soften. We get playful—or just too tired to stare at a screen all day.

As David Whyte wrote: “The antidote to exhaustion is not rest. It’s wholeheartedness.”

Last July, as some of you may recall, I was writing from Point San Pablo Harbor and farm. I was living on a bus and had spent my whole summer caretaking for plants and animals.

Richmond is blessed with that same summer shine that San Rafael has. The sun rose at 5.30 am, and turned my big metallic bus into a human toaster. Burnt and bothered, I’d step off the bus, cursing my life.

However, within a few seconds, the whispering winds and beautiful views of the wide open bay would fix my mood — Immediately.

No meditation needed.

Every morning at 9 am, I’d take out the goats and walk them up the hill, naturally getting a free cardio workout. Then I’d walk into the organic farm to water our plant beds and listen to an audiobook by Robert Sapolsky or Gabor Mate or on the impact of work-related stress on the human condition.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how each human is not much different from a seed in soil, or to take it further, a cell in an interstitial fluid. I noted the amount of factors that it took for a seed to grow into a zucchini, or a potato, or an arugula bunch.

In addition to the basics (sun, water and wind), we had to protect it from mould, birds and other predators via nets, enrich the soil with goat manure (aka my strength workout), and finally, be on the lookout for new pests that arise with all sorts of new diseases.

I built fences, dug ditches, and wrestled with the dissident goats. Farm work is tough and endless.

Reflecting on the Soil we Live In

We all understand this fundamental rule about how plants can only be as healthy as their soil, but then why do we all expect a human working or living in a toxic environment to be healthy on their own?

I’ll tell you why.

For years, I masked my yearning for sunshine with drugs, work, and travel. The wellness industry thrives on this disconnection—selling us our lives back from the corporations we sold them to. I call this the Russian doll of capitalism. Every time you think you’ve reached the end of mindless consumption, another doll is waiting inside.

There is no better market for wellness products than an overachieving population in a toxic system, with Vitamin D deficiency.

Living in nature unearthed a memory I had buried for 12 years: It was the day that I lost my first patient in the surgical Trauma ER in Cairo.

There were five of us trying to resuscitate a patient who had fallen off a tractor at a construction site. He was in his early twenties and his family members sat on the floor of the crowded and dirty waiting room of our public hospital.

Despite our efforts, he didn’t make it.

I walked outside, removed my white coat, and sank into a red plastic chair at a curbside coffee shop. The hospital served one of Cairo’s poorest, most chaotic districts. I ordered a double Turkish espresso, lit a cigarette, and exhaled relief. Watching the endless flow of people leaving the metro station, navigating the marketplace, and flooding into the hospital, I saw a tunnel of lost souls seeking a cure. My job was to heal them, yet I felt utterly lost. I was an imposter to health. A poser in a white coat.

I lit another cigarette and noticed a group of women in black gathering outside the morgue—the “Kiosk of Death,” as we called it. They sat on the curb and began their macabre chorus of wailing, a custom in Egypt’s poorer funerals. Their screams filled my mind, drowning out everything else. Was this the mother of the patient I lost today?

Possessed, I downed my coffee, threw the cigarette, got in my car, and drove with no destination. A bridge, a desert highway, and two hours later, I was in Alexandria, drinking beer by the Mediterranean.

That evening, I drove back home just in time for dinner with my parents.

“How was your day?”

“Good. And you?”

I repeated this ritual for months, finding solace in the drive, the beer, and the sea. Sometimes I screamed in the car. It felt good. Screaming was an excellent supplement to Prozac. No one knew about my secret ritual. I kept showing up at the hospital, doing the bare minimum.

I had reached a point where I had to escape the physical environment I was in.

Hospitals, schools, and jails all look the same—square rooms, fluorescent lights, hard floors. Designed for control, not recovery.

We lack spaces.

Third spaces. Healing spaces. Human spaces.

That memory is why I left Egypt—and medicine—behind.
I became an immigrant instead of staying numb.
I chose displacement over collapse.

Welcome to the Healing Yurt

Today, twelve years later, I write to you from one of my two Bay Area locations for The Human Dash health program. I sit in a Mongolian yurt designed for healing. The furry carpet beneath me hugs my body as I lie on the ground. In a world that constantly demands more, resting here feels like my greatest accomplishment. Recovery is my greatest act of rebellion.

Bright red poles hold up the roof, decorated with intricate artwork, hand-painted by a Mongolian tribe. Sunlight trickles through a skylight, casting gentle shadows through a macrame basket of purple vines. The scent of eucalyptus from the tree outside blends with the earthy aroma of compost from our organic farm. A propane heater hums, warming the yurt with its neon-orange glow.

I built this space to heal myself and to offer my clients something missing in health coaching—a connection to land and nature. As I lie here, a rooster crows in the distance, a hawk soars above, and through the window, I catch sight of a goat grazing, its square eyes meeting mine.

It smiles.

This yurt is not in a remote jungle retreat or an exclusive wellness center in Central America. It stands right here in the Bay Area, just 35 minutes from San Francisco—where entrepreneurs pitch to VC firms, tech workers are pulled back into offices with little notice, engineers work overtime in fear of layoffs, the unhoused sleep in cardboard boxes, and making plans requires a Google Calendar invite two weeks in advance.

And yet, here in Point San Pablo Harbor and its surrounding organic farm in Richmond, California, I find a unique reality. Here, people have time to stop and chat. Here, I feel safe leaving my car unlocked.

A rolling green hill slopes toward the historic harbor, where colorful floating homes rest on calm waters. My intention for this book is to create a guided experience from this space. I offer you a structured approach to wellbeing, integrating science-backed inner work, lifestyle changes, and clinical data to help you recover yourself from the pressures of the world.

So, welcome to my healing yurt.

If you're in the Bay Area, come by. Bring your story.

The goats and I will be waiting.

👣 Want to go deeper?

🌀 Host a healing retreat for your team or community — just reply to this email to start the conversation.
💬 Join our 1-on-1 health coaching program — choose in-person sessions in SF or Richmond. .
📲 Get invited to events & new essays — [Join our WhatsApp group]
🧭 Take the free Human Dash Assessment — uncover where you're stuck (burnout, isolation, or self-judgment), what habits you're ready for, and how to break through.

Kenyan Arabica coffee from Trader Joe’s.
I brew it in a French press and work on my book. These days I’m busy rewriting my novel (Rafiki) to prepare it for….whatever is next.

Daily rejections from editors for my nonfiction book The Human Way.
Some days, the rejections break my spirit. Other days I throw my fist in the air and say:

“I’ll show you motherfuckers! You’ll regret rejecting Omar Shaker!”

Most days, though, I just sigh. And go for a walk. Or drink more coffee.

There’s deep trauma work for immigrant leaders in the yurt at Point San Pablo Harbor and at my SF clinic. Biomarker analysis. Virtual coaching. A growing team behind The Human Dash — which now covers my cost of living. (Try the assessment in the link if you're curious. Please refer people who need support while going through a life transition.)

Long, generous dinners and chats with Pilar, whom I live with. We joke that I’m her adopted son — but truly, I haven’t felt this kind of kinship and belonging since I left my family’s home in Cairo.

I miss my family.
I miss Egypt.
I miss Lamu Island in Kenya.

I miss simple places in the world where the zeitgeist is food and love — not AI, blockchain, or even Burning Man.

I am still crying for Palestine.

How Did I Get Here?

If you’ve been here from the beginning, you know I started this blog to share my work of fiction — the Rafiki Series. Many of you read the early chapters, rooted in that magical Kenyan island. This month, I’m finalizing my seventh draft and third rewrite.

Overtime I started writing more health-related stuff on inner work. In Omar Shaker’s head — it is all the same.

As a health coach, I hold space for others. I have to be scientific. Stoic.
But when I write fiction, my characters hold space for me — to be messy, manic, and un-contained. Writing Rafiki has been the most healing thing I’ve ever done.

My obsession with writing opened me to the world. I became a better listener. A better observer.
A more interested (and therefore interesting) human.

Then, as you saw, my identity began to fracture.

Divorce.
Destitution.
Dissolution.
Death of the old me.

Dun-Dun-Duuuun!

A Split in My Self

Looking at my projects and identities, it sometimes feels like I’m being crushed under a giant boulder:
The company.
The two books.
The podcast.
This blog — with its ever-changing names and identities.

I experimented wildly here over the past 4 years:
Poems about heartbreak.
Podcast interviews.
Health essays and clinical research, as a functional medicine practitioner and trauma worker.

But as I diversified… your engagement plummeted.

Ergo, I started chasing metrics.
Likes. Subscribers. Open rates. Conversion.

I began to wonder: Was I even reaching you anymore?
Was writing here still worth the effort?

In some ways, writing a novel is easier than writing a blog post — because the novel stays behind closed doors. But a post like this? It’s exposed. It’s judged.

I’ve tortured myself over how to keep finding my voice — not just to self-express, but to bring energy to everything I’m building.

Branding can be a bitch, but it forces me to keep asking myself…

Who the Hell Am I?

Do I write here as…

• The thriller fiction author, obsessed with post-colonial Kenya, drug wars, tribal Giriama, the USS Missouri, and Muslim identity in diaspora?

• Omar Shaker, MD, the health coach who writes about biomarkers, longevity, and burnout in Silicon Valley?

• The podcast host, sharing stories about what keeps us going through heartbreak, migration, or collapse?

Every time I sit down to write, I meet all of these personas. They’re loud. They argue.
They all want to be heard.

“I always thought being a writer is like being a beaver. The beaver’s teeth itch, so it gnaws trees to keep the itch away. For me, it’s not my teeth. It’s my consciousness. Writing is how I quiet it down.”

Renown Playwright David Mamet

My Confession

To be honest:
Sometimes I wish I would die rather than figure this all out.

It’s that haunting. That exhausting.

“How about we just die?” the beaver inside whispers.
“None of this makes sense. None of it is working. Can we stop now?”

This voice has been with me for a long time.

Why are we so scared of death anyway?

These days, I just want to cry.

And maybe that’s okay.
Maybe it’s normal to want to cry a little…
To want to die a little…
To be shown who we are in the face of great pain.

A client of mine — an AI leader at a major tech company — recently said:

“If I stop or rest, I’m afraid my career would die.”

That’s when I realized:
The part of me that wants to die...
just wants me to rest.

So I did.
I let the company take a backseat. Gave all my energy to clients, and the novel rewrite project.
I stopped writing here.
I drank coffee. I climbed the oak tree. I cooked dinner with Pilar. I organized events.

I turned to my fictional characters to heal me, and to my real friends to celebrate me. Stopping to celebrate my journey changed me from someone trying to get somewhere, to someone who recognizes that he has already arrived.

Being witnessed by people I love in a raw and unprocessed way reminded me of why I ever started writing here.

Finding Unity

This Substack isn’t my storefront.

It’s my messy fucking kitchen.
Today, I return to that.
Welcome. Can I get you some leftover shakshouka? Maybe some roasted walnuts? How about this half-open bottle of wine?

This blog is the only place where I try to humanize myself as I experience life.

It’s where all the parts of me — the doctor, the immigrant, the artist, the failed husband, the grieving boy — come to meet.

Announcements & What’s Next

📍 This blog is returning to its original name: In Search of Gumption. Rejoice my OG reader.
Here, I’ll write reflections, personal updates, and behind-the-scenes moments from all my endeavors — fiction, health, travel, healing. You get all of me.

📕 My fiction novel will be released under a pen name: Maori Zakaria.
Not a secret — just a brand decision. Maori Zakaria will live on TikTok, where I’ll share the Rafiki writing process, my research trips to Kenya, and character explorations.Why Tiktok? Its because this is a story about coming of age and I want to reach a younger audience with it.

👨🏽‍⚕️ Omar Shaker, MD will be the face of The Human Recovery Lab —
my new platform for interviews, science-backed essays, and health coaching rooted in trauma-informed longevity. This will live on my official website/blog, LinkedIn, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

But here, in this messy kitchen, it’ll just be me.

If you wish, hit that reply button and let me know how life has been for you.

If you’re writing here on Substack, I’d love to know what your publication is about.

Say hi and tell me about it and your writing journey.

Let’s build and write together.

Omar

It’s like blaming a sailor for not speeding up while the wind howls against them and the current drags the other way.

Pushing ourselves harder under those conditions isn’t just unkind—it’s unwise. High-intensity exercise when the system is already overloaded often leads to injury, more stress, and worse sleep.

Some of us may feel that way int he current political climate as well.

Before we talk about doing more, we need to pause—and ask: What’s actually going on below the surface?

What do we need to less of?

Let’s examine the triad of stress, sleep, and movement—and how our inner narratives can keep us trapped in a cycle that harms more than it heals.

Exercise, Stress, and Sleep: The Triad That Keeps You Afloat

Exercise, stress, and sleep are like three fingers pulling on the same rubber band. If you stretch one too far in any direction without relaxing the others, the band snaps.

Take burnout or a rough breakup, for example. You're under emotional stress, and your sleep is suffering. If you pile on high-intensity workouts during this period, you might get a dopamine boost—but at the cost of spiking your cortisol, raising sympathetic nervous system activity, and further delaying your recovery and repair¹.

Balance is key. When sleep is poor and stress is high, gentle movement, such as brisk walks or neck muscle stretches (see the Habits section), is far more supportive than pushing into HIIT or heavy lifting.

The Sailing Metaphor

Imagine your body like a sailboat. At any given time, three elements determine your direction and speed:

• Wind = Stress: It’s the external condition you feel most clearly in your daily life. It determines how fast you can realistically go.

• Ocean Current = Sleep: Less visible but profoundly influential. Like sleep, it often operates outside of your awareness, yet silently governs your capacity for energy and resilience². Even elite athletes prioritize recovery. Ask them their secret beyond talent and training, and they’ll say: sleep, massage, and nervous system care³.

• Sail = Exercise: The one thing you can control. You can choose to open up, tighten, or even add sails—if the conditions allow.

The Role of Data & Wearables in Understanding the Conditions

Modern wearables like Garmin, Fitbit, and Oura use "readiness scores" to guide exertion. Although many of these algorithms are notorious for being inaccurate, you can create your own navigation system by measuring the metrics underneath them which are:

• Heart Rate Variability (HRV): A measure of how well your autonomic nervous system is adapting to stress. Low HRV = high stress load⁴.

• Sleep Data: Including total sleep, REM, and deep sleep cycles.

• Recovery Biomarkers: Lab tests like C-reactive protein (CRP), Homocysteine, and Urine Cortisol are strong indicators of systemic stress and inflammation⁵.

We’ll cover these in detail in the data portion of the book. Subjective metrics such as self-compassion scores and burnout indices add crucial psychological context.

When sleep is adequate, stress is low, and compassion is high, your system is aligned. These are the ideal conditions for high-performance exercise. You can open up your sails and brace the open seas!

When the Boat Won’t Move

Many clients come to me feeling guilty for not exercising “enough.” But often they’re sleeping poorly, feeling overwhelmed, and experiencing internal stress. Expecting yourself to push through that is like blaming a sailor for not speeding up when the wind is against them and the current is pushing the wrong way.

This is where discernment matters more than discipline.

Learn to distinguish between external stressors and internal blocks like self-judgment, shame, or perfectionism. Telling yourself you’re lazy won't help. Listening to what your body actually needs will.

Exercising hard when your system is already under strain often leads to injury, which reduces movement, increases stress, and disrupts sleep—creating a vicious loop.

This is why we must ask: What is the real cost of overexertion under stress?

As Hippocrates reminds us in medicine: "First, do no harm." Yet our culture encourages us to override our limits in the name of productivity and aesthetics.

Research shows that exercising during periods of high stress and poor sleep can worsen inflammation, increase injury risk, and impair immune function⁶.

Before trying to “optimize” anything, ask yourself what’s driving the stress in the first place. You may not need to train harder—you may need to rest more deeply.

Because sometimes the best move isn’t to push forward. It’s to adjust the sails.

Ready to stop blaming yourself and start navigating with clarity?

If you’ve been pushing through stress and poor sleep wondering why your workouts aren’t helping — it’s time to pause and reassess.

Take the free Human Dash Health Assessment to understand how stress, sleep, and movement are interacting in your life — and get personalized insights to help you realign.

👉 Get the assessment here

The Human Recovery Lab blog + podcast is made possible by individual supporters. As a thank you, paid subscribers get all the research links to dive deeper, have their work promoted with us, and get printed versions of my books on trauma, health and clinical data.

If you like these posts, please consider supporting us!

Read more

As I continue to monitor the Middle East, watch wars being dramatized theatrically, and see the current administration continue to play with people’s lives like marionettes, I keep coming back to the question of: What is the appropriate response to this?

Is there some point of balance between fighting and not caring? Between demonstrating and not reading the news? Between being militant my views, and avoiding talking about politics completely? Between being enraged by the events and completely apathetic and frozen?

There has to be something…I thought.

As I prepared for a session with a client I found it — Yielding versus Collapsing.

But first…A few updates.

Dear reader,

I have been thinking of you. How have you been? I missed you. Please reply to this email telling me about what has been alive for you and what is a challenge you are currently struggling with?

I’ll start…I have been giving all my writing energy to complete my book which is now titled The Human Way: A trauma-informed guide for longevity in a world obsessed by optimization.

I could not find the way to continue writing here as well my head was in completing it.

Yes! It is complete! I have submitted it to several agents and applied for some competitions, but for all of you wonderful paid members and supporters — I will be releasing the whole book in the form a weekly chapter + weekly exercises on that intersection between trauma, habits and data-driven health .

Subscribe now

Speaking of which — we have produced Season 3 (fucking finally…I know…phew), and I can’t wait to launch it both here and on spotify, apple podcasts and youtube starting July. Stay tuned for that as well.

In the meantime, if you are in SF, I have been facilitating many different types of small intimate gatherings while we break from the podcast — come join us for meditations every first Monday in SF, half day retreats at the Yurt in the East Bay, and political discussions. Join the whatsapp group if you haven’t.

Lastly, I have been working hard on The Human Dash, assembling a team of coaches to offer next level health support to those going through hard times while supporting the many. Set up sometime with me or send this link to someone who might need it.

Yielding not Collapsing

The more I coach people helping them rewrite the stories of their traumas by reclaiming their health, and the more I write about it the more I realize how words create worlds.

The words that we use day to day inform our past, present and future. The more you see it, the more you will start understanding it. Politicians are afraid of words because they know how powerful they can be.

Now let’s examine the following two words: Yielding vs Collapsing

Yielding

Notice how the following definitions of Yield — whether it is about a land or profit yield, or the idea of giving in to something, or giving way for someone in traffic, is always an active verb. To yeild is to make a decision to give way to something, it is an effortless way of being active.

• produce or provide (a natural, agricultural, or industrial product).

• give way to arguments, demands, or pressure.

• cease to argue about.

• give way under force or pressure.

Interestingly, we have been using this word less and less and it is trending downwards.

Collapsing:

Collapse on the other hand is passive in all its forms. It is a flaccid state of being, one where one is unconscious or out of their power, rather than an active form of allowing — as in yielding. The former is choosing to give way, the latter is about losing your power of choice.

• fall down or in - (of a person) fall down and become unconscious, typically through illness or injury.

• fail suddenly and completely.

• fold or be folded to fit into a small space.

Apparently, that is a word that we have been quite fond of recently, and more so than ever before.

Why Yield rather than Resist?

You’ve heard of the term what you resist persists, right? Well I am coining the phrase: You are only healed when you yield. Yielding is a generative action.

Let’s say you are reading the news and something is throwing off all your triggers.

You can resist it by saying: I hate politician x or y, or by rallying or calling your friend and telling them “Hey can you believe that country X or person Y did this thing or that thing?”

What happens there is that it starts taking up more space in your brain. If it is a coworker that did something that bugged you earlier, you can still be thinking about it at home, with your partner, or in your bed.

Perhaps you are getting yourself worked up by it even when it no longer exists.

That means you are putting your energy into it and at some point, and at some point…you will not have any of it left!

That leads to collapse.

How to not Collapse

Try this out. Lay down on the floor, with your hands toward the ceiling and let your body take the shape of the ground beneath you.

Let your navel naturally touch the ground. Notice how the lower back doesn’t touch the ground.

That position is yielding. Notice the tone of your muscles. Notice how the Earth is supporting you, effortlessly.

Think about how long you could possible stay in this position. Probably for a very long time, right?

Now push your belly downwards so that your lower back is also flush with the ground.

That is pushing. Notice the difference between pushing and yielding, both active, but one is natural and the other is pushing against the natural position.

How long can you stay in this pushing position? How does it feel to have these extra muscles contracted?

Now let go of all the tone in your muscles completely, and let your legs, body and arms completely fall to the Earth and become flaccid. Perhaps falling to a fetal position, or feeling your neck and head fall to one side.

That is collapsing.

So as you experience something that pushes you boundaries/ comfort levels next time, try to play with those three positions.

• What does it look like to yield to a piece of news or a coworkers behavior?

• What does it look like to push against it? Is the energy of pushing needed?

• What it look like to collapse underneath it? What else is lost in your life when you collapse?

Why our society needs to Yield more

When traffic is crossing your path, we tend to yield to people regardless of their color, race, or views. So why do we not do so for those who come at us with different political views?

As we polarize more and more, and conflate reality with our echo chambers, it is critical to realize the difference between those three positions. It seems to me that we are doing a lot of pushing, and therefore more of us are collapsing.

But what would it look like to yield to each other in those times?

How would it feel to stand your ground without crashing into your toxic boss, your angry partner, or your deluded political friend?

Share

Next week I will start promoting The Human Way and sharing samples!

Much love.

Yield more, collapse less.

Omar

🗓 Sunday, May 18th @ 1 pm
📍 Point San Pablo Harbor, Richmond, CA

You’ve heard me talk about the farm and all its magic. Last year, I was a lost soul at Point San Pablo Harbor trying to find my ground — this year I am sharing the magic with 35 people who are hungry for a deeper kind of wellbeing events.

Humans Being Together is a practice field for connection, resilience, and healing. It is a place for us to recover our strength, together.

I am honored to be featuring my teacher and mentor Staci Haines as our session leader. Staci is the author of The Politics of Trauma and a longtime teacher at the Strozzi Institute of Somatics. With 30 years of experience in politicized somatics and embodied leadership, she brings depth, clarity, and compassion to her work.

Grab 1 of the last 10 tix!

Her course and book have been instrumental in my growth. Listen to my podcast episode with her here.

She’ll be followed by a sound healing from the very talented Adriana Cerundolo. This will be an absolute treat for those who join us!

Here’s what she’ll be sharing:

"In a world where many of us feel disconnected and overwhelmed, I'll be sharing insights from my 30 years of work with politicized somatics and embodied leadership, exploring how we can connect to our longings and align these with our practices and relationships. We'll explore 'just' resilience and why healing from trauma is relevant for most of us – especially in these times."

Also included in the gathering:

• A group practice session with Staci

• A transformative sound journey with Adriana Cerundolo!

• A field of connection, movement, conversation, and real presence

I’d love to have you there.

Let’s do this together!

Interested in Bay Area events but can’t join us? Sign up for updates

Today’s topic, ‘Over-identification’, is about how we keep ourselves stuck in loops of poor health and low creativity, because of these boundaries that we’ve either inherited or drew around our own selves once upon a time.

Over-identification sounds like:

“I am not a creative person”

“I have no time for exercise” or “I don’t need sleep”

“I am a liberal, or I am pro-Palestinian, or a Zionist or an American.”

“ I am an ADHD, or a depressed person, or I am not good enough”

All of these statements may be true for someone, but they are never the whole truth of a human being.

They are just boxes…Over-identification is when we stereotype our own selves, and get stuck in cycles of depression, anxiety and sadness because of it.

Just like stereotyping others, this impacts our relationships.

However — Most of us are rewarded for living in ‘the box’ and for staying withIN the village. To create and live a healthy life requires leaving the village and walking up the cold snowy mountain on your own. It is a dangerous act, and society only rewards you if and when you get to the top. Many never make it, and their stories become reasons to not innovate, not create, not try out something new.

But that is not for you my dear gumptioneer, you have not come this far to remain stuck in old identities.

You are here because you want to color outside of the lines.

So let’s get this party started!

Today we’ll cover Over-identification

1. What is it?

2. The perils of it for our mental health

3. How to measure it

4. How we can get over it.

Thanks for voting for today’s topic last time! I am loving the dialogue between us. Be sure to vote for the next topic on today’s poll at the bottom 👇

I - WTF is Over-identification?

If our mad need for Validation is a snake that whispers insecurities into our ears, then over-identificaiton is the venom it releases into our veins.

i.e. Our need forValidation is Why we fall into anxiety and depression, while over-identificaiton is the How.

Over-identification is a form of sluggishness as the poet Miguel Di Unamuno once said in his poem “Throw yourself like seed”

“Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.”

If you’ve been here with me for a while, you’ve seen me shift and mould my identity from a doctor to a fiction writer and podcast host, to a health coach and entrepreneur. Less gloriously, you’ve seen me go through a divorce, fight off bankruptcy, become a dog sitter, an uber driver and a farmer as I worked through my shit to be the person I am today.

I am all of these, and none of them!

Today I look back on the last four years of writing here, and see how one key tool has allowed me to survive thus far and stay on my path: a fluid sense of identity mixed in with a solid sense of purpose.

Four examples of Over-identification

#1 My depression in medical school

In medical school, I felt so isolated and depressed. My girlfriend at the time would try to bring me out of my slumber but it was so hard for me to get out of it. I would tell her:

“I just have chronic clinical depression — I am not meant to be social.”

or “I am an introvert, I just need my alone time.”

The result was that I spent a good two years in an isolated state of mind that lead to a stickier depression and was only able to get out of it once I decided to “Shake off the sadness and recover my spirit”!

#2 My ADHD friend who doesn’t want to read about dealing with ADHD because he is ADHD

I was catching up with a dear friend of mine last night over dinner, and one of his updates was that he recently realized that he has ADHD.

I pointed him towards resources such as Gabor Mate’s Scattered Minds, Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, Dopamine Nation by Anne Lembke, and Driven to Distraction by Edward Hallowell.

“You see, the problem with ADHD is that it’s hard to read books...” he said as we dug into our Middle Eastern dinner.

This friend is a really smart one and I am sure he’ll figure out his way, but such is the case with many ADHD people who create a whole identity and self or overmedicate rather than deal with the underlying issues of this condition.

A condition, by definition, is a temporary state of being, not a whole person’s identity.

Instead of reading about how to get out of it, he tried to convince me that I myself am ADHD and that most of our close friends are as well. For the record, he is probably right. However, we are ultimately not defined by the diagnosis, but by how we address it.

#3 The American friend who got too far down the Palestine rabbit hole without talking to Jews

Another dear friend of mine called me in a panic recently. “I feel like my whole life is a lie — I need to talk to you about my relationship to the Palestine Israel situation.”

This friend had built a whole persona that was pro Palestinian, having learned about the horrors of Gaza and the West Bank, of the Israeli occupation, and she had become a vociferous activist. Let’s just say her activism puts me to shame as an Arab myself.

Recently, she spoke to an American Jewish person, who shocked her system with the idea of how Jewish people have been brutally murdered, about how the Palestinians rejected peace terms over the years, and all the other stories that Jewish people grow up with.

“I am so confused, I feel like my whole life is a lie. I feel like I might have hurt a lot of people by shutting down one side of the narrative. I feel ashamed.”

That shame is a hallmark of overidentification starting to be cured.

All I told her was “Welcome to the Middle East, sister.”

#4 A client of mine who can’t see beyond her previous marriage

I got a text message two weeks ago from one of The Human Dash Members — “I need help!”. I called her immediately and she told me about how she visited her ex-husband and that drove her over the edge into a dark place. “I have been contemplating suicide for the past 2 hours. I don’t know what to do.”

We call that in the Internal Family Systems world a “Firefighter”, it happens when we have ignored a part of our psyche for so long (sure to over-identification with another) and suddenly that old part comes online.

All I could do was listen patiently, and help her start realizing the incredible amount of strength I know she has, but was nto accessible to her in that moment.

She is thankfully in a much better place now.

II - The Perils of Over-identification

Let’s be clear, without a sense identity we have no anchor, no roots in the earth, no string that ties us to the heavens. Without identity, we float adrift in the dark winds. Sometimes we need a diagnosis to help us wake up to who we are, but if our whole identity is stuck in a single box, then we may also not be able to overcome it.

That is why it is critical to understand this: To over-identify is to blend with something. When two colors blend with each other, they lose their original identities, and that is what happens when we are depressed or anxious.

Both anxiety and depression are a state of over-identification with parts of who we are. We end up thinking of ourselves as “a failure” or “a depressed person” or “a diabetic” or even “an artist" or “a doctor” or “a mother”…but the truth is that those are parts of us, and embracing them as such is the path towards a peaceful life.

Understanding The Default Mode Network

Remember how counting sheep helped you sleep when you felt anxious as a kid?

The reason why this works is because that focus helps you pop out of what we call the Default Mode Network (DMN). It is also why meditation, mindfulness and psychedelics all help with depression and anxiety.

The DMN is one of the greatest discoveries in neuroscience over the past two decades, helping us understand 1 depression, PTSD and ADHD on a much deeper level. It is a group of brain areas that together keep us in a reflective, daydreamy, and ruminative state.

While this state is helpful for our evolution, an increased function of DMN activity has been clearly shown to correlate with depression.

• Self Reflection is a beautiful thing, until it is a closed loop short circuit of your brain!

• Boundaries are important, until they isolate you from anyone that is different from you!

We need identity, we need our egos to protect us from harms way. We need our default mode network to remind us of the past, keep us moving forward without overthinking, but this is only to the extent by which it helps us to survive.

If you are interested in thriving, and going beyond the survival brain, then you need to challenge yourself to go beyond that.

The point is not to destroy the ego, but to give the rest of your psyche a chance to be expressed alongside it.

When we mistake a single aspect of our identity with our whole being, when we are entangled with an aspect of who we are , in a way that consumes us and makes us co-ruminate with others (because of our mad need for validation) then we then over-identify and we become more prone to:

• Worsening mental health issues

• Self-harm

• Entrenched trauma

• Unsatisfying Relationships

• Being manipulated by identity politics & the news.

Regain your health, confidence, and creativity, with data on your side. Try out the Human Dash Assessment and see if the program is for you!

Get The Full Human Dash Assessment

III- How to measure Overidentification

One of my identities is that of a data analyst. I help my clients measure their levels of self-compassion which is made up of Kristen Neff PhD’s well researched six measures of self-compassion which are: Mindfulness, Over-identification, isolation, common humanity, self-kindness and self -criticism.

The amount of research2 in this field is growing exponentially and I believe it is the next evolution of therapy and the reason I measure it is because it is the North Star of how I see whether the program is helping someone or not.

Rank your answer to the following from 1-5 being with 1 being Almost Never & 5 being Almost Always

• When I’m feeling down I tend to obsess and fixate on everything that’s wrong

• When I fail at something important to me I become consumed by feelings of inadequacy.

• When something upsets me I get carried away with my feelings.

• When something painful happens I tend to blow the incident out of proportion

Add all the numbers from your answers and divide by 4.

The higher the number, the more you over-identify.

IV- Getting Over Over-identification

By relating to our ADHD, our depression or our anxieties in a new way, we can break free of the grip of over-identification on us.

They are not who we are, but visitors coming to show us the way. “Treat each guest honorably” as Rumi says — but also, don’t confuse a guest for your own self! That would drive you mad.

Things to try out:

1- Talk about the parts of you:

Instead of calling yourself a depressed person, try to start referring to it as “the depressed" part of you. Give it a funny emo name. Make it into a character. When I work with clients I create AI generated images of these parts alongside fully fleshed prompts to connect with these parts so that one can see how they are different from the part.

This is called unblending.

2- Get a diverse diet of news, media, and ideas that challenge you

Another way to intellectually un-blend is to talk to others who have different ideas that yours. Tread carefully here, just like my friend who felt like “her whole life was a lie”, you need to chosoe the people who can challenge you but with a common grounds. If the other person is over-identified as well, then you will not be able to have a productive conversation.

You need media, news, and people that have an intersection point which you can start relating to from. For example — I can relate to Jewish people through the experience of migration which is a big part of their story. Once connection is established, we can then push on each others narratives if both sides are willing to listen.

3- Mindfulness and Somatic Training

The answer lies in reducing the default mode network activity. When we focus on a certain task or the present moment (like counting sheep, working on a task, certain types of meditation, or with psychedelics), we engage the lateral part of our Prefrontal cortex which deactivates that default network, reducing the symptoms of depression.

A meditation teacher once taught me this in far simpler terms - she said “Meditation is when your mind and your body are doing the same thing.” So the next time you find your thoughts spiraling you into anxiety, driving you towards madness, direct your brain to feel your body’s sensations and you will start anchoring yourself the safety of your own body.

That is what my meditation teach meant by “body and mind doing the same thing”. If you find yourself spiraling in the abyss of the default mode network of your mind, then try one of the following techniques:

• If you are driving, focus on the tactile sensations of your steering wheel.

• If you are walking, focus your brain on the muscles of your feet and the texture of the ground.

• If you are cooking, focus on the knife as it slices through the juicy tomato or the impact it makes with the cutting board.

This way your brain can realize that despite its thoughts, your body is actually safe and functional in these moments.

I teach many of these tools into a comprehensive 3 month program with skills building , trauma work, habit change and your own custom dashboard to measure all of your progress with labs and validated surveys.

Find out more about the program.

Join us on May 18th for Humans Being Together with Staci Haines and Adriana Cerundolo if you are in the Bay Area!

What a timely choice! (Check the bottom of today’s essay to vote for my next deep dive topic and find more resources).

Also, welcome to all of you new subscribers! Glad to have you here, where I write essays about recovering our human health and spirit with science and common sense.

So let’s jump right into it.

Do you know that warm, fuzzy feeling of being in a concert, stadium, rave, or a political demonstration?

That is the dopamine of being validated. We feel less crazy, less alone, less like fuck-ups, for a brief period.

It is also how the ones who need it the most end up ruling us, especially now, with algorithms that validate us and show us a false image of a validating world.

Those who have not addressed their core needs will become hijacked into an anxious state. Those who do will be able to sustain this wave of change and make it to the other side while staying healthy.

But what if there was a way we could give back to ourselves that feeling we seek and stop chasing money, accolades, and our boss’s validation?

What if we could swap the madness dopamine for the certainty of serotonin?

I know this is possible. Life is a much bigger game on the other side of that. And we can’t access that better place without going back into the past, and asking - what is driving that need for validation?

Where does our need for validation come from?

Like you, someone bullied me once upon a time. Long before I was this confident, this strong, this capable, someone stole my watch, kicked me in the balls, and made fun of me.

Before I was successful, I had spent many hours hearing my parents lecture me about the perils of failing in this world. To them, good grades were the way out of misery, and being a “good boy” who followed the rules was their first step towards nirvana.

I excelled in school, spent hours with books reading my social anxiety away, graduated from medical school with flying colors, and had a six-figure salary at 25 years old.

As I grew older, what was once a guttural fear of middle school playground violence, or an emotional yearning for parental love, had become a very civil Yes sir to my boss or to a healthcare industry that was crushing me, sucking my gumption dry.

And then my body started breaking down.

It said No. Oh fuck no!

Depression, back pain, and pre-diabetes.

Once it did, I had to account for all the “Yeses”.

That accounting.

That accountability to myself.

It changed everything.

I found a new compass, one that was internal, albeit less socially palatable. Following this newly acquired internal GPS brings me to my life today - one where the material possessions have all washed away, and forced me to realize my true worth.

My self-worth runs in an elemental layer underneath the degrees, the bank accounts, and the number of followers. It carries me beyond who I know, what my school grades are, and what everyone thinks.

It straightens my back, boosts my metabolism, and nourishes my soul and purpose.

Many people who validated me before don’t seem to like it when I experience life that fully. That is the tradeoff, I lost a lot of people. It threatens them. Our whole society is running on that validation.

However, I also realized that one does not need a million friends.

You need one good one, maybe two, three if you’re lucky.

All the others are waves that come and go in the unforgiving sea of relationships powered by our need for validation.

Maybe I’m just getting old.

But I like it.

And myself.

A lot.

What my clients teach me

The more I work with immigrants who have achieved everything we are told to yearn for (the house, the children, the cars, the Bay Area home), the more I see how this need for validation pushes us to do unnatural things.

People tell me a lot of their stories now that are all too familiar on the webinar series I currently run: A pharmacist that skips lunch while working with patients, a tech HR leader sees pictures of others in their jobs and feels like she isn’t as good, and an engineer keeps denying the truth of what he wants to please his boss in the face of layoffs.

It is easy to judge them (or judge ourselves) when we observe such strange behaviors..

However, when I ask them about the underlying needs, their answers usually sound like:

• I needed to feel secure

• I needed to feel safe

• I needed to feel needed.

• I needed to feel seen.

These are very human needs. We all have them.

As immigrants, especially those of us coming from collectivist backgrounds, we often leave home with a longing - a desire to receive validation from our community, family, or friends.

A client from India recently told me that the trauma work we did was about “unraveling the layers of the onion” that he had accumulated over his years in Silicon Valley.

That reminded me of a story shared by Tara Brach about the golden Buddha covered in clay. As the story goes, a group of thieves heard that there was a Buddha statue made out of gold in a temple. They broke into the temple to steal it, but ended up finding a worthless clay statue in its place. Frustrated, they left the scene and blamed their sources.

The story reveals in the end how the temple caretaker had outsmarted them: the Buddha statue was indeed made of gold, but the caretaker covered it with clay to make it seem worthless.

You have the golden Buddha inside of you, we all do.

But something happens along the way and creates a layer of clay that we then have to remember how to uncover.

While we learn to persevere and overcome our insecurities, something gets left behind.

And boy, do we need to address the madness of validation right now

An Unaddressed Need for Validation Begets Violence

Today, at 37, I look at a world of “good boys and girls” who work their assess off, pay taxes on time, own their homes, do their HIIT exercises, and floss their teeth, and yet find themselves unable to enjoy the lives they have created.

Even worse, find themselves bedridden with cancer, heart disease or a crippling anxiety at the ages of 40, 50 or 60.

I have had to lose everything that supported my narcissistic image to realize that beneath an innocent need for validation, lurks a neurotic nature: One that propagates violence, bullies, and delusional narratives.

On a small scale, the need for validation generates envy, isolation, and discomfort.

On a systemic scale, it generates fascism, genocide, and war.

Elon Musk was beaten up as a child, Trump grew up with a cold and distant mother, and Hillary Clinton had a mom who scolded her for crying after being bullied by children. It’s true, look it up! We vote for the most traumatized.

These are the popular examples.

However, our lives are filled with people who were bullied when they were young, and end up being toxic bosses or partners. This violence is in our politics, and our work environments, and it is in our language.

We live in a culture of violence, brewing under a veil of victimhood, and that whole complex is one of the heads of a Medusa that lives inside of us with all of her unmet needs. She tries to satisfy them through validation from others.

Mainly under the guise of work.

Some examples of how we identify with violence through language at work are:

• “Crushing” the deadline.

• Running the “campaign”.

• “Targeting” your audience.

• Being a straight “shooter”.

Do you see how violence and our need to be validated intertwine with business and marketing terms?

Some may say that violence exists in our bones, is a part of our legacy, and was a historical imperative to bring humanity to its techno-orgasmic existence.

But the way I see it, our violence is a matter of unaddressed validation.

Validation that we could not give ourselves, and therefore, we demanded it of the world.

And that is how we are controlled.

That is how we turn against each other.

That is how we forget our dreams, hobbies, and visions.

As identity politics continue to separate us, there has never been a better time to reclaim our prefrontal cortex from the news and the fangs of “influencers” who prey on our old wounds and replace our need for validation with meaningless products, courses, and…headlines.

The Science of Validation (and neurosis):

The future belongs to those who can overcome anxiety. I firmly believe that.

First: The Neurology: Pre-frontal-what-now?

Please refer to Exhibit A - your brain:

That red area in the center of your brain is one we share with animals and is one of the oldest parts of a mammalian brain. It’s called the Limbic system, and one of its roles is detecting threats based on memories and emotions.

When it does, it activates the brain stem (the bottom red area) that connects it to all the functions of your human body (heart, lungs, nerves, hormones).

This works really well for animals: You may remember my goats. When they see a coyote, the limbic system tells them to run, and they activate the fight or flight mode and escape.

It is great, except in today’s world, we activate it all the time.

Enter your Prefrontal Cortex (the green part), responsible for rationality, personality, and other cognitive functions. This part is a more recent feature of humans. It gives us the edge to create systems and build the world that we live in.

It is a double-edged sword because it can also give false messages to the limbic system. If it is hijacked by a news headline, or the feeling of being “an imposter,” then it translates something we read into “DANGER”!

It then activates the limbic system, and there we go again, putting our nervous machinery into action!

However, there is a way out of this, and the pre-frontal cortex is also our way out of this, if instead of Danger we use it to direct our body to calm us the F down (see below!).

Second: The Psychology of yearning for validation

I had the pleasure of meeting a popular author and psychiatrist named Dr. Mark Goulston, who taught me about the syndrome of disavowed yearning.

• Disavow: To deny responsibility for or connection with something.

• Yearning: A strong feeling of wanting something.

“They often come from parents where their dad was too busy with his job or career and their mother lacked warmth. Often these were not bad parents. The dad was worried about earning a living and so was focused more on his boss or his customers and clients than his family. The mom came from a mother who also lacked warmth (it was often a condition passed on for generations).”

From Dr. Goulston’s Huff Post column

So what can we do about all that jazz?

1- Make your prefrontal cortex work for you, not against you

The next time you recognize yourself worrying about something you have no control over, use that beautiful rational prefrontal cortex of yours to engage your body and sensations instead of your fear response. Feel your muscles, breathe, hold yourself, remind yourself that you are ok right now, do something that gives you more resilience, even if the future is looking dim. Avoid over-identification with the fear.

2- Measure Stress and Inflammation in your body

If you are wondering how stressed you are and whether that somatic healing stuff is working at all, or just more BS wellness stuff, then get some labs done (especially C-Reactive Protein, Homocysteine, and Urine Cortisol). A wearable can also be a useful tool to measure Heart Rate Variability and Resting Heart Rate. More on all that in a future essay.

3- Face your Fears. Heal Your Wounds

Easier said than done, but you don’t need a lifetime of therapy either. Look up an IFS or Compassionate Inquiry, or Somatic Experiencing practitioner, and start understanding the root need for validation in your system. Change the narrative. Build a new future!

If you are an immigrant working in the STEM field, you can measure your over-identification levels, get me to order you wholesale labs, get IFS coaching, AND join a group of other people doing that work together.

Get Support

I sometimes wonder why we look up to rich billionaires and their health-crazed routines and yet shrug away the deep trauma work that would make this world a better place. Trauma work is much harder than a PRP shot or downing a supplement, but perhaps there is space for both in this world.

Gabor’s invitation is clear: Genes don’t define our outcomes, and hacks are short-lived. The science points toward emotional roots for physical ailments, driven by stress responses and informed by the memories and traumas that we carry.

As an ex-physician now doing trauma and healing work, his books have offered me both inspiration and a refuge.About a month ago, I decided to go see the man talk. I travelled to San Diego to learn Compassionate Inquiry in a wonderful 4 hour event organized by TCCHE.

Today, I share 7 quick takeaways from his workshop.

After you go through them, choose the one you find most intriguing in the vote below! I’ll dig more into the winning topic and bring you all the research I can find for it!

Look for the vote below.

Announcements and Gratitude Zone:

• The kickoff session for my online workshop series, “The STEM Immigrant’s Health Playbook,” was wonderful. I’m blown away by the engagement. Thanks to everyone who showed up! Join us for the next one on Emotional Regulation on March 20th @ 6 pm PST. Save your spot! 3 more workshops left!

• Are you in the Bay Area and interested in data-driven health coaching with a deep inner work component for anxiety/depression? Let’s connect and see if we are a good fit

• Thank you to all the paid members who make this effort possible. If you enjoy these emails, please consider supporting the channel.

• The podcast season 3 sessions are also coming out very soon! Look out for our email about the premiere!

7 things I learned from Gabor Mate

You know how you sometimes go to watch a rockstar you like, and he turns out to be an asshole? Well, that is gladly NOT the case. Gabor is the real deal, as far as I can observe.

After seeing him answer questions, patiently whisper into people’s ears outside the hall, and the amount of reverence he has to human beings despite all his fame and success (not to mention his incredible writing)- I can say that this man offers me a North Star for my career.

His patience and openness are much needed in today’s world.

Here are some takeaways from his 4 hour seminar

Don’t forget to vote for the most intriguing topic below!

🧐 #1 Health is a quest for the truth.

Something happens along the way to teach us that it’s dangerous to express the truth. Suppression is our way of sacrificing authenticity for validation and attachment. The less we express our emotions, the more we become prone to stress-related diseases. Healing = Authenticity

🍻#2 To quit an addictive behavior, start by asking: What is right about the addiction?

How is it helping me? What am I getting out of it? You’ll find that at the core of it, you’re trying to get a very human unmet need such as relief from pain, safety, or more control/agency. That shows you where the healing needs to start.

🙊 #3 Depression and ADHD are just normal responses

Vincent Felipe’s Ace studies with Kaiser show that what we call abnormal conditions such as Depression, autoimmune diseases, ADHD, and others, are just really ‘normal responses to abnormal societal conditions.’

💔#4 Our need for validation starts when our parent looks away

As children, when our parents feel bad or break eye contact with us after a behavior, we internalize that as “I am not good enough”. That leads us to chase validation from the world.

🤫 #5 We have to recover our ability to ask for help

We are all born with the ability to ask for help, but something happens along the way to stop us from doing that.

🤰#6 Prevention starts in Prenatal visits

When moms are stressed, children are stressed.

🧬 #7 There is a sensitivity gene

ADHD and Schizophrenia are not genetic diseases. They are a factor of the environment. However, being sensitive IS a genetic trait, and yet we see it as a weakness.

So glad that this work is in the world, and the thousands of people thirsty for a new way of being are clear from his own success.

]

If you’ve learned anything from Gabor Mate that helped you on your journey, drop it in the comments 👇

Coming back from a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat—arguably the best way to escape the chaos of the past three weeks—I was met with your thoughtful comments and suggestions on my last poll. They truly filled my heart with joy.

Thank you.

Catching up on global headlines, I found myself wondering if I should do a quick U-turn and go back to being a monk for 4 years.

(By the way you could listen to these essays and take me with you on a drive or walk by downloading the Substack app)

Join The Nothing Revolution

So I’ve been doing more nothing, keeping the meditation alive day and night, going to the gym, working like mad on my book which I will share a snippet of with you today, and now doing health mentoring work that I love. Life is beautiful. I am immersed in it.Yet, I keep falling into a dark spiral. While there is always more I can do to tend to my own wounds, the heaviness I feel is not related to my circumstances.

The heaviness is in the world. The heat is rising. The suffering is exponential. America has beef with all its neighbors and most of its allies. Israel is on a six front war, with Egypt and Jordan getting weary of these antics. Everyone is adjusting, and even the best of us realize that we are hanging by a thread.

There is a harshness to the soil of humanity right now.

It feels dry af, man.

I isolate, I search for weed, or porn, or sugar, or Instagram, or anything to numb the painful existence.

So today, I explore with you

1. where we are in terms of collective health

2. what our potential could be in this new Maga-death era we’ve entered, and

3. what the two things that keep me from despair are.

In the meantime, I am hosting a four-part free online health workshop series every other Thursday, starting March 6th at 6pm PST.

I will cover:

• The new scientific health paradox about 1st and 2nd gen immigrants who work in science, tech or engineering fields.

• How to navigate a toxic environment and how it impacts your health

• How to excavate identity through intergenerational trauma techniques.

• How trauma relates to health behaviors and habits and how to break the cycle

• How to measure health to have meaningful comparisons with your own baseline rather than comparing to others.

• Conversations, Exercises and Demonstrations!

Please share this with that friend of yours that isolates rather than asks for help. This information saves the lives of many.

Register to get the recordings as well, or even better, join us and be part of the discussion!

The New Health Playbook Workshop Series

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Ok now let’s get into todays topic.

Where was I?

Oh yes…

I was saying that we are entering…

A Strange Sick Techno World

The trumpets play a sad song, bids farewell to good ol’ corporate oligarchy (the devil you know, and love to hate).
They welcome a new era of billionaire oligarchy (the devil you thought you knew). As Yanis Varoufakis puts it, “Capitalism is dead, and what we have now, Technofeudalism, is way worse”. His 2-year-old book is eerily on the nose.

I can’t comment on RFK’s plan for health just yet, although access to alternative medicine, healthier food, and more non-biased scientific studies all make perfect sense. Believing it however…is a big fucking pill to swallow!

He did eat that McDonald’s Happy Meal on Air Force One after all, so even if RFK Jr’s intentions are as great as he says they are, it will certainly be an uphill battle for him. #justsaying

Jokes aside, the President’s love for highly processed foods is not the only obstacle. If HHS follows suite with DOGE (and the President’s overall policy preferences on cutting costs on services), then we may be talking about a much darker healthcare reality where people are not just very sick, but they can’t access their meds or doctors either.

Let’s hope for more yoga and meditation yes, but also more affordable and universal coverage because that is still what most people need.

Some may say, why not believe in him? He may not know Jackshit about healthcare, but how much worse can it get?

To these people I say, Touche!

Indeed, the new Health and Human Services Head is up against a long sad history of terrible policies that have caused much suffering to the American people.

Let’s discuss that today, and take a pulse check of where we are when it comes to our collective health in America.

The following is an excerpt from the book I’m currently researching and writing a proposal for under the current title: Healthy Humans Sick Society.

For any other thoughts on the title or the excerpt below, please reply to this email or leave a comment and start a discussion about it.

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How the Industrial Revolution Century Shaped our Health

Over the last century, the Western world has engineered an exciting yet strange new reality. While we have inherited a world of magnificent marvels, it is also laden with buried burdens. We live in an era of technological comfort, yet we lack the fundamental rhythms of human health.

We have to ask ourselves:

• Why are anxiety, addiction, and depression at an all-time high?

• Why are more people burning out and quitting their jobs more than ever before?

• How have we become so isolated?

• Why are family relationships so fractured by politics?

• How have metabolic diseases become our biggest predators?

• Why are more children committing suicide now than at any other time before?

• Why are our bodies rebelling against us with autoimmune diseases?

Even more puzzling—why are we getting sicker in an age where we have all the tools to remain healthy? Perhaps the question is no longer: ‘How can we cure cancer?’ but rather: ‘Why is cancer more prevalent than ever before?’

My friend Paul asked a beautiful question after caretaking for a family member that had Non-Hodkin’s lymphoma:

"Is it just a coincidence that, in an age where we are obsessed with ‘Growth’ , the defining disease of our time—cancer—is a pathological, unchecked growth of cells that spirals out of control?”.

Powerful question.

Here are some more:

🔥 Is it also a coincidence that inflammation is now the biggest culprit behind chronic diseases, just as our climate heats up and employees burn out?

📊 Is it possible that our bodies serve as dashboards, reflecting the dysfunctions of our society?

⚠️ Could our bodies be warning us about what our minds refuse to acknowledge?

The current evidence says yes, the mind and the body are two sides to the same coin, and if they are disconnected by distractions then we start developing diseases.

A majority of these diseases are spiraling out of our internal and generational anxieties and work-related stress.

These “Jobs” Politicians Talk About, Suck…

In 2021, a decade after I left medicine, 334,000 physicians and other clinicians left the workforce due to retirement, burnout, and pandemic-related stress. This is not just a medical personnel issue or a COVID-related problem—it’s a societal crisis. You and I are not alone in our struggles with modern ailments largely propagated by stress and stress-related diseases.

While our parents might argue that work has always been stressful, the modern work experience is a completely different ballgame. According to McKinsey’s 2023 report, 51% of the global workforce is either barely managing, drowning in, or overwhelmed by work demands. That is more than half of all jobs in the world!

Gallup’s 2022 survey revealed that 17% of the U.S. workforce is actively disengaged, and this trend is rising. Industries most affected by severe mental health issues include government, transportation, technology, healthcare, higher education, law, and finance.

According to a 2023 survey by Mason Frank and Salesforce, the tech industry has a burnout rate of 44% among full-time employees, with 42% considering quitting their jobs!

Think about that for a second: The people running our governments, the doctors meant to heal us, the tech engineers holding some of the most coveted jobs, the drivers and pilots ensuring our safety, the visionary entrepreneurs we idolize, and the legal professionals who are supposed to protect us—are all deeply suffering.

Check that. They are dying. Although the media is focused on the CEO that got murdered, 19 other CEOs died on the job in 2024, many in their 40s.

What is happening? Why are we generating all these diseases in an era where we have unprecedented resources to prevent them?

Then there is the ‘Wellness’ Illusion, sold for an additional $5.7Tn dollars

Instead of addressing these pressing questions, society offers us quick fixes: a pill for obesity, a smoothie for IBS, a yoga retreat for those lingering feelings of angst. The $5.7 trillion wellness industry convinces us that we feel this way because we are not doing enough push-ups, drinking enough probiotics, or sweating in enough saunas.

Both healthcare and wellness industries have become bottomless wells of expensive “to-dos,” propagated by a narrative that convinces us we must navigate this world alone. These industries thrive on the same thought patterns that keep us trapped in cycles of stress and sickness. What we fail to realize is that our trauma turns into beliefs, those beliefs turn into thoughts, which turn into behaviors, which solidify into habits, and ultimately manifest as diseases and poor health outcomes.

The 2024 survey by the American Psychiatric Association found that 43% of

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Knowing myself I have probably beat myself up about many marketing decisions I made last year and a lot of costly business mistakes.

As I return to you with (hopefully) a fresh mind tomorrow, I need your help on how best to serve since there are so many more of you here now since I did my last poll.

Thank you! If you have any feedback, any constructive criticism about what is working or what isn’t. If you would love to see more of something I stopped doing or have me do less of something I am doing, I welcome your thoughts!

I write for you, so I appreciate you telling me how this blog can best serve you

Thank you so much

Omar