Welcome to The Feel Good Life! Start Here

About this newsletter, where to start, Green Prescriptions, and a free Stress-Buster course (plus ebook!) for you. Plus the bigger purpose behind this all: The Feel Good Foundation.

Welcome to The Feel Good Life! A newsletter about health, prevention, empathy, and hope. I’m Dr. Mariana M.D. and I’m here to teach you how to not go to the doctor. Get started by checking my easy, medically-guided course on managing stress and daily habits, right here.

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A Quick Intro

‘It’s time.’

That’s the phrase written on an image I had created seven years ago, when the vision of a project called Feel Good came to me. It’s been around eight years in the making, brewing slowly, one experiment after the next, with some rests in between to recover, reassess and build new plans.

And now here we are!

It seems to me that the rise of Substack has been a godsend to independent writers like me. Let’s face it: creating work is not easy. It takes us to our deepest place, to find our core message that will speak through us. And this is rarely a quick process. It can take days, months, even years of deep emotional dives, a lot of consistency, a ton of hard work, and a willingness to show up up for our craft until the magic happens.

With all this said, I’m happily (if cautiously) choosing to take this big step and draw from my creative well in a new way. This time, it feels different. Is it maturity? Wisdom? Fear? Probably a bit of all three. But what’s certain now is that everything feels. Just. Right.

And that’s when you just know - it’s time.

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‘So Mariana, What’s This Newsletter About?’

Mainly about health. But not in a complex, over-technical way.

It’s about all things health, physical and emotional; about life and its elaborate, beautiful range of feelings. It’s about prevention and the ways in which you can prevent for the future. Also about empathy and hope - two of the most impactful values, yet also somehow the most disregarded by medical practices at times.

After working in Palliative Care for most of my career, I quickly learned two things:

1. Physical health means autonomy, confidence, and independence. The earliest we can start preventing for the future, the better life quality we will enjoy.

2. Talking about feelings makes many people uncomfortable. And guess what? Emotions impact physical health. There is so much taboo around it, but I want to believe that, as a society, we’re ready to cut through this toxic trait, and allow feelings to become part of our daily lives.

I’m here ready to do my part - via my writing and this newsletter. I promise you fun, practical, and jargon-free writing.

Basically:

It’s important to note that all knowledge that I share here is (and will always be) science-based. Any topics on the ‘Maybe’ category will be presented through a curiosity-based approach—as a way to bring expanded knowledge, and not necessarily as a medical recommendation. With these topics I aim to offer a space where we can explore and learn together, nurture rich and thoughtful conversations, always from a place of curiosity and respect.

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Who Is This Newsletter For?

I want this newsletter to be fully inclusive. It is for anyone wanting to improve their physical and mental health, while feeling hopeful for their wellbeing.

This is for anyone looking for awareness and empathy in health, for a safe space to learn from, to be heard and feel seen, for a place where medical doesn't mean boring, troubling or puzzling.

Also, I want it to be for all my hardworking, utterly exhausted healthcare colleagues out there in the world—who won’t receive the support they deserve from overworked, under-funded systems that are close to collapse.

This is for anyone who's tired of the healthcare system - whether patients or professionals - unsure where to turn to for professional health guidance and support.

If you’re ready to embrace a self-care journey, boost your health, change your habits, enjoy your body, and be surrounded by a like-minded community, then The Feel Good Life is your place!

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How Will It Work?

I will be writing pieces regularly, which will go out somewhere between weekly and biweekly while I get the hang of this terrific newslettering-on-Substack thing. Starting January 2025, I will be publishing on weekly basis consistently—as I have big plans into our 2nd year. Stick around!

All main content is free. I believe in health as a universal right, and everyone should have access to health education. Through this newsletter, I want to abide by it.

Paid subscribers will get some extra goodies, including:

1. The 1st Feel Good ebook: ‘Don’t Stress It!’ - A medically-guided ebook to help you manage stress and enjoy your life, by yours truly. (Available Now!—> Here)

2. Audio versions of the newsletters (Starting January 2025)

3. Access to The Green Prescription Club

4. One 1:1 Session (Yearly & Founding Members)

5. Special Features & Events announced in advance

Both free and paid tiers will be helping me build this ambitious vision that has been brewing inside me since 2015. (Read below)

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Where To Start?

Check out my most popular posts:

• Stressed and Tense? Unlock Your Body With This 60-Second Routine

• Don’t Stress It! Let’s Begin - A Free Stress Management Course

• Sex Became The Painful Routine of Being a Girlfriend - A Personal Essay, Facts & Resources on Sexual Pain

• Change Is In The Air - A Deep Dive After 6 Months of Therapy and Its Impact on This Newsletter

I have created some useful health guides too. As I said, I want health, medicine (and life) to be easy for you:

• The Sleep Guide

• The Men’s Health Guide

• The Anxiety Guide

• The Water Guide: Part 1 and Part 2

More of these health guides will be coming as we go.

I’ll also be recommending great people to follow, useful articles and wise advice I find here and elsewhere on the web. These are links aimed to help you understand health and life-related topics for your own improvement.

You can find it all in the Resources page.

And if you’re wondering ‘wait, who is this Mariana again?’, you can read the About section or check my Linkedin profile to learn more. :)

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Two important things:

1. A Free Course to Help You Tackle Stress (With Its New eBook Version!)

I’ve made the first course for you! (The first of many I have planned). And it’s about stress.

Why? Because chronic, grinding stress has been normalised as a state of being we all have to endure and suffer from - and is often seen as a requirement for success in the modern world.

However, stress is about as far from trivial as it’s possible to get. 

It’s a health-wrecker. 

And it’s a bomb detonated in the middle of your future. 

So this course is all about disarming it, carefully and steadily, step by step.

There are 8 lessons in this course - all of them filled with easy, detailed and actionable learning. I will be delivering them weekly so that you can go through them in your own time - and after they’re all published, I’ll be announcing some exciting next steps for this whole topic.

You can access the course now! The first lesson is right here.

Also, I’ve turned the course into an ebook! I understand sometimes it’s easier for many people to read books quietly at their own pace, rather than accessing separate lessons on a platform. Which is why I decided to offer this new option. You can access the lessons for free here on Substack (link shared above), or you can get the ebook exclusive for paid subscribers. Now available! Right here. ;)

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2. Community: The Green Prescription Club

The Green Prescription Club is a space where we all connect around a Nature-based activity as prescribed by a healthcare provider (yours truly), encouraging positive lifestyle changes and wellbeing practices. This is a preventative public service, as a call to reinforce health and good lifestyle habits for all community members.

This is accessible to paid subscribers.

As your doctor, I’ll not only give you a prescription, but I’m also taking part in this journey with you every month.

In this club we will talk, share, create, and explore ideas once a month after accomplishing each month’s prescribed activity, over a Zoom group call.

This is really important. In The Green Prescription Club, you take control of your health goals while having a proper accountability group to support you. You can also take the mic in our monthly calls and bring up something valuable for everyone to discuss together, to create more awareness and empathy where it’s needed.

Are you ready to improve your lifestyle and take action?

Then Join The Green Prescription Club now! :)

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I Have Big Plans For This Newsletter

In short: I’m building this newsletter into my full time job. After 18 years working as a GP (general practitioner, aka. Doctor), I’m ready to offer something bigger than I ever have before. 2025 will see an expansion of this work, both online and offline. Exciting!

Going forward in this Feel Good space, you can expect to see:

• More Courses

• Q&A Sessions

• Interviews

• Personal Essays & Behind The Scenes

• 1:1 Consultations* (This is so anyone who wants it can have access to more private and personalised health guidance.)

• And impromptu activities as we go, both online and offline. Woot!

And finally….*drum roll please!*

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The Feel Good Foundation

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Your support (both as a free or paid subscriber) will help me build a greater project going further:

A Costa Rican-based non-profit organisation aimed to create health education programs to be seeded both locally and internationally, as well as burnout prevention programs for my fellow healthcare workers around the world.

The Feel Good Foundation aims to become a social tool granting universal access to health education, and giving a much needed boost to preventive education for better public health worldwide.

Why am I doing all this? Mainly for two reasons:

1. Call me crazy, but I want to be the doctor teaching you how not to go to the doctor. The more health issues can be prevented, the better. Doctors have little time to teach patients. Patients only go to the doctor when something’s wrong. But what if we could change this mindset? Going to the doctor to prevent. Becoming an active participant in your health. To me, that’s the dream!

2. I’ve had my own share of mental health issues as a doctor, and because burnout changed the direction of my career, I want to step up and do my part for every healthcare staff hurting silently from the claws of burnout at any point of their professional lives.

Help me build this larger vision. By joining as a subscriber, you’ll be contributing to develop this larger cause for the benefit of all. If you want to help further, considering upgrading to a paid subscription or doing a donation to the foundation. This is a lifetime legacy we’re creating, and I’d love you to be part of the process.

Thank you so much!

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And That’s A Wrap!

Thank you for being here! I hope this newsletter will inspire you to make the changes you’re looking for. I know this will improve your health and life in meaningful ways.

So, with much joy and a green light, let’s go!

See you next time,
Dr. Mariana

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Image credits: Pixabay