Rami Schandall does a lot of things! In addition to teaching yoga and meditation, she works with fabric, ceramics, painting, photography, sound and words. I talked to Rami about her inquiry- and constraint-based way of working, her brush with "visual burnout" and how her many disciplines "dance" together.

You can see examples of Rami's work (and so much more) on her website.

Have you ever heard of Leo Kofler? He was an Austrian-born singing teacher (1837-1908), who spent most of his career in the United States. His ideas were later taken up in Germany. You may hear the story that he cured himself of tuberculosis by singing. Spoiler alert: he didn't. Tuberculosis cannot be cured by singing. But he created some beneficial breathing exercises, and we can learn a lot by looking at the way he (and others) thought about breathing, back in his day.

You can find his entire book online at the Wellcome Collection.

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Kate Gies's wonderful (and devastating) memoir, It Must Be Beautiful To Be Finished shows that the mainstream medical profession has a lot to answer for when it comes to deciding which bodies are "attractive," which ones need "fixing," and how all that should take place.

But there's another powerful thread running through this book -- and that should make those of us in the wellness world take a good, hard look at underlying ideas, as well. I provide some historical context by discussing book by a pioneer of naturopathy, Louis Kuhne: The Science of Facial Expression.

Please buy Gies's book at your local independent bookseller or take it out of the library.

If you'd like to look at Kuhne's book in depth you can find it here.

And if you'd like to take part in more conversations like this one, please sign up for The Work: Straight Talk on Craft and Method.