The key to unlocking your mental health is finding your dharma — and pursuing it with all your being.

The teachings of Ram Dass, formerly Richard Alpert, have had a profound impact on my life and outlook. While I never had the privilege of meeting him in real life, I sometimes wonder what a conversation over tea might look like. What would I ask him? And how would he answer?

Many people pass in and out of the back of my ambulance with a variety of chief complaints. The 63-year-old male complaining of chest pain or the 81-year-old female with difficulty breathing is such examples. Despite their differences in race, gender, age, or chief complaint, they all share one similar symptom, panic…

It is no secret that healthcare is a challenging profession. Whether in the hospital or prehospital environment, institutions are constantly burdened. Aside from the institution issues such as understaffing and low pay, health care workers bear witness to pain and suffering on a daily basis. As our unit doctor once told us before coming home from deployment, no one comes home the same. Trauma and stress have lasting impacts on the body, and no one is immune. Like many veterans, it seemed while we were serving that our military paid the price for costly management of PTSD, emphasis on the "post," no one seemed attuned to the possibility of "pre managing" or "pre-treating" stress before the incidence. Almost like a stress vaccine…

Ram Dass, the "neurotic, Jewish over-achiever" (in his own words), spent eight months studying with his guru in India—listening, watching him, analyzing, and doing mental and physical practices. He was learning Bhakti Yoga, which essentially can be summarized in one phrase: see God in everyone, love everyone and serve everyone. At its essence, this is what being a paramedic means to me. It took me a long time to find yoga, and it took me even a longer time to find paramedicine; however, now finding and practicing both brings an unprecedented meaning to my life. Can I find God in the people I serve? Can I love those who spit, piss, bleed or vomit on me? Like medicine, yoga is something we practice but never perfect…

Like many undertakings in life, we create expectations based on the stories and images we see and hear. Depending on how vivid and unregulated our imaginations are, those stories and images sometimes take on a life of their own. While this aspect of the human condition often leads to disappointment, these thoughts can, at least in the short term, drive us into action…

As a mask-wearing citizen, I am constantly reminded of the current state of affairs as I don my mask and walk out my front door. Whether you work in health care or not, as a human race, we currently experience heightened stress levels in one way or another. While many pharmaceutical drugs treat the devasting symptoms of COVID-19 (depending on how sick you get), all people have access to a highly beneficial practice that will serve their bodies well, whether or not you find yourself infected. Meditation offers a method of observing the tendencies of the mind and, by doing so, can be an effective treatment for one symptom we all currently share and one which is wildly contagious despite your mask, anxiety…

Our culture is defined by stress and science has proven that stress changes us physiologically over time. Some adaptations to stress can be a good thing, things like larger muscles or some excess weight being lost. However for many, when the stress levels become exceedingly high in a single instance such as the life or death situations faced repeatedly overseas by service men and woman or any first responder, that stress adaptation literally “re-wires” that person's brain…

As a human, it isn't easy to sense the balance of the cosmos in our day-to-day lives. We usually have to ascend to gain perspective to see the miracle that is our existence. The higher we go, both in a physical and cognitive sense, the more the minuscule and mundane fade away, and we finally glimpse the bigger picture. I imagine this is why most people climb mountains; as Conrad Anker once said, "Nobody gets it…we do it for the view". I've always had a lingering notion that the back of an ambulance is like the peak of a mountain overlooking humanity. The view from the captain's chair or CPR seat can be a summit to observe the balance and beauty of nature. On June 24th, life came full circle…

Humans, unlike all other species on our planet, have a unique relationship with pain. In 2019 the CDC estimated that approximately 20% (50 Million) of American adults live with chronic pain. Furthermore, as many know, we face (and have faced for a while) a persistent opioid epidemic in an effort to alleviate the pain. Like any medication (especially opiates), the body builds a tolerance, sometimes requiring greater dosages. While drugs are very effective at reducing the sensation, they do not address the suffering. For many people, their pain is both physical and emotional, and it defines them. As a medical professional, I certainly am not advocating the cessation of opioid use as there are many situations where such drugs prove pretty effective (especially in the prehospital setting)…

Cogito Ergo Sum…nearly 400 years passed since Rene Descartes uttered these words. In the second of his Six Meditations on First Philosophy, even if an all-powerful demon were to try to deceive him into thinking that he exists when he does not, he would have to exist for the devil to deceive him. The idea behind this passage isn't the argue whether or not you exist. The purpose of this passage is to highlight the power of thought. Thoughts often have emotions attached, and depending on those emotions, the action quickly follows. Actions lead to a present moment experience which, as Newton points out in his third law of motion, garners an equal and opposite reaction. The back and forth between thought-action-thought becomes our reality…