Your mental health doesn't stop at your neck

Something about modern mental health has never made sense to me.

We talk about the mind as though it's floating separately from the rest of the human being.

But your brain is attached to a body.

And that body is affected by light, sleep, movement, food, stress, relationships, environment and about a thousand other things.

If you're sleeping five hours a night...

barely seeing daylight...

sitting indoors all day...

eating badly...

constantly checking your phone...

lonely...

stressed...

and doing something you hate for 40 hours a week...

you can't separate those things from how you feel.

This doesn't mean every mental health problem can be fixed by going for a walk and eating some eggs.

Of course not.

It means I think we need to look at the whole system.

That's increasingly how I think about mental health.

And it's why my interests have expanded beyond psychedelics into metabolism, circadian biology, exercise, mindfulness, purpose, community and behaviour change.

Psychedelics are still fascinating to me.

But they're one tool in a much bigger toolbox.

The goal isn't to spend your life trying to escape your normal state of consciousness.

It's to build a life you actually want to be conscious for.

Jack