THE RECIPE FOR WELLNESS
DR. MARC COHEN
JUNE 2025
Microplastics in Human Brain
The average human brain contains 7mg!
CODE Health
Innovative Formulas
Wellness Pioneers
Join the cast of sHEALed
Daryl Gioffre
Your gut is under attack
Peer Review Revolution
From misinformation to integrity
LATEST STORIES
Wellness is not rocket science. Wellness is simple and requires getting basic things right. The recipe for wellness, along with its ingredients, is laid out in the following poem:
The Recipe for Wellness
Bathe in beautiful water
Prepare delicious food
Make the most of every breath
Dance through every mood
Tend the soil beneath your feet
Embrace sunshine from above
Share your gifts with all the world
Fill your life with love
#professorial poetry
Let’s break this down and go through each of the ingredients and why they are so important.
ADVERTISEMENT
.jpg)
Bathe in beautiful water
Adequate hydration is essential to sustain life, and the flow of water through and over our bodies is vital to regulate body temperature and flush away metabolic waste and environmental contaminants. Bathing in ‘Beautiful Water’ goes beyond hydration or cleansing and implies immersion in water that is filtered to remove toxic contaminants, structured to reduce scale and improve absorbability, balanced in terms of minerals and pH, blessed with positive intention, and free flowing to reduce stagnation.
Bathing in beautiful water supports the microbiome of your gut and skin, preserves the natural oils that protect your skin and hair, and prevents inhalation of chlorine and volatile disinfectant by-products. This requires either the use of a ‘Beautiful Water’ or similar whole-house filter, or access to a pristine, natural water source. Getting this basic thing right enables other things to go right by themselves, while getting this wrong makes everything else more difficult.
Prepare delicious food
Preparing delicious food means that, in addition to eating delicious food, you are also involved in the journey from concept to consumption. This may include hunting, gathering, sowing, growing, breeding, raising, harvesting, butchering, preserving, processing, cooking, presenting, and sharing food. Being involved in your own food preparation makes it more likely your produce will be Seasonal, Local, Organic, and Whole (SLOW) and your animal products will be well-sourced.
Preparing food that’s 'delicious' also means it’s more likely to contain complex, sweet, salty, spicy, sour, bitter, and umami flavours, along with diverse creamy, crunchy, chewy, crispy, and crumbly textures. This diversity may involve different preparation techniques based on traditional cuisines and include different leaves, roots, flowers, fruits, fungi, and animal products that contribute unique nutrients and sensory experiences. Preparing delicious food is also an act of service that channels positive intention, mindfulness, and gratitude into nourishment for yourself and others.
Adequate hydration is essential to sustain life.
The flow of water over our bodies flushes metabolic waste.
Make the most of every breath
Respiration is a biological necessity, and breath lies at the intersection of the central and autonomic nervous systems and forms a conscious link between mind and body. Making the most of every breath means aligning your physical and emotional states and being as present as possible in every moment. This optimises your capacity to direct energy without wasted effort and provides a gateway to vitality and presence by aligning your inner thoughts with your outer words and deeds.
Making the most of every breath also includes exploring the full range of breath and engaging in singing, laughing, panting, peaceful, and mindful breathing, and not wasting breath on trivial, futile, or hurtful conversations. It also means breathing in nature and participating in the elemental exchange between the plant and animal Kingdoms in places where fresh air and nature dominate, thus transforming the simple act of breathing into a profound wellness practice.
Dance through every mood
All life is a product of energy, frequency, and vibration, and moods are simply transient emotions that fluctuate like waves in response to energy in motion. Whether you are conscious of it or not, every move you make is a dance move because your movements and posture naturally reflect your inner emotional state. Dancing through every mood, therefore, means embracing emotional shifts with grace and fluidity, rather than trying to resist, suppress, or dwell on them.
Dancing through every mood also involves consciously flowing with life’s ups and downs, knowing that emotions such as fear, anger, and grief can easily give way to love, forgiveness, and gratitude. It also means using physical movement to process emotions and channel energy constructively, whether through dance, exercise, or other creative expression. Honouring your moods as valid yet transient experiences encourages their physical expression and transformation and cultivates emotional resilience that supports wellbeing.
.jpg)
ADVERTISEMENT
Our top picks
Dr. Steve Gundry
Health through gut wellness
MHI
The myths around testosterone
Weber Medical
Multi-wavelength light therapy
Dr. Todd Ovakaitys
Why you should save the umbilical cord
ADVERTISEMENT
Tend the soil beneath your feet
The soil beneath our feet is teeming with microbes that are the planet’s greatest reservoir of genetic diversity and the ultimate source of our food. Direct contact with the soil exposes us to microbes that have a beneficial impact on our gut microbiome and positively influence our food cravings, weight, and mood, while walking barefoot on the earth literally grounds us energetically by connecting us to the earth’s boundless source of free electrons.
Tending the soil beneath our feet includes practices such as composting, sustainable gardening, and ecological stewardship that involve avoiding toxic pesticides, reducing landfill, and managing water use. These practices nurture the environment that sustains us, closes the loop on the food cycle, and connects us to place. They also ground us metaphorically and cultivate stability in our lives by fostering gratitude and a sense of belonging and purpose that creates fertile ground for personal and planetary wellness.
Embrace sunshine from above
Sunshine nourishes the mind and body in profound ways and ultimately supplies the energy that sustains all life on earth. Embracing sunshine from above encourages spending time in nature and intentionally basking in natural full-spectrum sunlight. This uplifts the spirit, combats seasonal affective disorder, and fosters a sense of warmth and vitality. It also stimulates the skin to produce vitamin D, a vital nutrient and hormone that supports physical and mental health by enhancing bone health, immune function, and mood regulation.
Embracing sunshine also requires you to tune into safe exposure levels and to align yourself with the seasons and the daily rhythms of life by allowing the different qualities of light at sunrise and sunset to regulate your circadian rhythms and enhance your sleep quality. Embracing sunshine from above also serves as a metaphor for embracing openness, optimism, and joy, and promoting wellness by radiating positivity, hope, and vitality.
Dr. Marc Cohen
Sunshine nourishes the mind and body in profound ways.
Share your gifts with all the world
Everyone possesses unique gifts that may include talents, skills, ideas, or vulnerabilities that enrich both giver and receiver when shared. Sharing your gifts requires you to first identify and acknowledge your calling and invest in its development. This naturally builds self-esteem and generates gratitude, purpose, and appreciation for what you have, rather than focusing on what you lack. Generating value also elicits positive feedback, which further boosts self-esteem and creates ripples of positive impact that spread across the world in unpredictable ways.
It is said that illness is about ‘I’, whereas wellness is about ‘we’. Sharing your gifts with the world helps shift your focus from “I” to “we” by directing your attention towards service to others. This leads to a virtuous spiral as it encourages empathy, reduces social isolation, and inspires reciprocal generosity that strengthens social bonds and builds antifragile communities where individuals are valued, and wellness can flourish.
Fill your life with love
If the currency of wellness is connection, then love is the connecting force that supports wellbeing across the generations and counters the entropy within closed systems. Love is essential for healthy development and is a profound source of joy that imbues life with purpose and meaning. Love supports both mental and physical well-being and has the power to combat stress, anxiety, and feelings of loneliness, and improve immunity, quality of life, and overall longevity. Love also helps navigate life’s challenges with grace by cultivating empathy, emotional intelligence, and supportive interpersonal relationships.
Living a life filled with love means every interaction with yourself, others, and with nature is an opportunity to manifest love in action. This naturally promotes acts of kindness, forges intimate connections, and leads to a life rich in purpose, joy, and meaningful relationships. This then builds a legacy of love that echoes through the well-being of future generations.
Dr. Marc Cohen is a medical doctor, university professor, author, poet, entrepreneur, wellness trailblazer, and perpetual student of life who embodies the role of a bridge-builder, connecting ancient wisdom with modern science, academia with industry, and individual well-being with global health. Dr Marc believes wellness can be just as contagious as illness and aims to co-create a culture of wellness that infects the world with good health. You can find him at www.drmarc.co.
