Please enjoy the hundreds of articles that Dr. Borten has written over the past 20+ years. There’s something for everyone, including explorations of spirituality, learning from the natural world, exercise and stretching, nutrition, psychology, posture, breathing, pain management, Eastern medicine and philosophy, and much more.
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Since it seems unlikely at this point that I will achieve stardom as a professional athlete, I’ve been weighing the pros and cons of other avenues to fame. So far, I’ve ruled out supervillain, porn star, politician, and jockey. One option that seems promising, however,…
January 31st is the Chinese New Year and the beginning of the Year of the Wood Horse. In case you’ve already given up on your resolutions, you get another chance in a few days. Compared to the Year of the Water Snake we’re leaving behind,…
Most people’s health goals could be simplified to something like: a long life and the good health to enjoy it. And long life we have. The biggest-ever jump in life expectancy, which occurred from around the mid 1800s to the mid 1900s, can be mostly…
In the tropical forests of East Asia (and now Central America) grows an intensely aromatic spice in a small green pod. Let’s see if you can guess what it is. It is a key ingredient in chai and Indian cuisine. It’s used in baking in…
This is a time of year when the dream of world peace comes up more than usual. Maybe, despite the ever growing array of plastic gift options and people stabbing each other to be first in the door to Walmart on Black Friday, we still…
In parts one and two of this series (click on the links to read them), I introduced a way of understanding foods, herbs, and drugs based on how herbs are defined in sophisticated systems of herbal medicine. One end of the spectrum represents substances that are…
In Part One of this article, I introduced a system for understanding foods, herbs, and drugs based loosely on the way certain systems of herbal medicine classify herbs. In short, at one end of the spectrum are substances that are completely benign to virtually all…
Ahh, it’s that time of year again! Thanksgiving under our belts and Christmas are right around the bend, joyous time spent with family, and (hopefully) snow is in the air and presents and love abound! One thing that we don’t always look forward to this…
When my wife was a teenager, her stepmother one day advised her that if she didn’t have anything nice to say to someone, she could instead try saying, thank you. Not long thereafter, my wife directed some teenage angst at her stepmom, who got red…
One of the goals of my work is to find ways to educate people about health in really basic, intuitive ways that they’ll never forget. When I’m teaching about how we’re affected by the stuff we put into our bodies, I like to go over…
(Originally published as a newsletter for The Dragontree Holistic Day Spa) Rather than give you a nice cohesive report on a single health topic, I decided this month to write a bit about a number of different trendy foods. If you’re a foodie, a…
(Originally published as a newsletter for The Dragontree Holistic Day Spa) There is an understated yellow flower called Taraxacum – AKA dandelion – which can be found nearly everywhere in the world – Asia, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, North and South America, and southern Africa….
(Originally published as a four part series for The Dragontree Holistic Day Spa) Part One For the great majority of human history, most people cooked all of their own food and they always knew exactly what was in it. Then, in the twentieth century, our…
As Daoists in ancient China carefully observed the natural world, they came to identify five major energies, called the Five Elements, which preside over all the tangible and intangible facets of our lives. They saw that the substances and dynamics that exist in nature also…
(This was originally a series of ten articles written for Imbue Pain Relief Patch) There is a saying about aging in Chinese Medicine: “Yang to yang and yin to yin.” To understand this, you must first know that the terms yin and yang have many…
This time of year is always very exciting and busy. If you are a student you are taking notes and cramming for final exams. Parents are finalizing family vacations, play dates and group sports for their children and themselves. And everyone else is getting bombarded…
Calendula is one of the most astringent herbs for the skin, despite it being low in tannins. This makes it gentle, yet extremely effective to combat skin ailments, from minor scrapes and cuts, to rashes, burns, and chapped, dry, cracked and irritated skin. Calendula…
Oh, Imbue. How I love thee. Let me count the ways. Last September I started playing ice hockey again. It had been about 12 years since I’d played and I wasn’t sure if I remembered how to skate or how well my body was going to take it. I…
With the onset of a few warms days, it looks like summer is inching closer and closer. One of my favorite products for warm summer days is the Cucumber Spirulina Masque by Livia. It feels great especially on hot days because of its cooling properties…