The Comfort Crisis

Unlock the evolutionary mind and body benefits of engaging with nature, leaning into boredom, and taking on hard physical challenges.

In this bold call to action that blends the latest in health science with adventure writing, health and outdoors journalist Michael Easter investigates how our soft, temperature-controlled, overfed, under-challenged lives are actually killing us, and argues that only by becoming comfortable with discomfort can we become mentally sharper, physically harder, and spiritually sounder.

Easter's exploration takes him around the world to interview many of today's leading scientists and rewilding experts. He travels to an Icelandic genetic lab that has uncovered a gene that makes us harder to kill, the mystical country of Bhutan to study what death can teach us about happiness, a secret location where Special Forces soldiers are teaming up with Mayo Clinic researchers, and the remote Alaskan backcountry on a demanding thirty-three-day bowhunting expedition and nature cleanse in one of the last wild lands on Earth. Along the way he uncovers what he calls a rewilding prescription: a framework for embracing discomfort both in nature and within ourselves that will dramatically improve our health and happiness and help us rediscover what it means to be human. Following this plan will lead to better life satisfaction and increased creativity, and will lessen anxiety and burnout.

Break out of your comfort zone and explore the wild within yourself.