An orientation to thinking clearly about health

Why health feels so confusing

The health stuff is super confusing. Allopathy fails us, and most forms of “holistic” medicine are overly complicated and expensive. In many cases, neither provides lasting resolution of health issues, and both promote fear.

Both frameworks have wrong underlying principles.

The Allopathy spiral

Allopathy has no soul at its foundation. It involves warring, poisoning, and mutilating in order to control symptoms, manage brokenness, and murder invisible enemies.

Many of us were let down by allopathy, through frequent drugs, surgeries, and chasing symptom suppression. Every intervention causes a new set of problems and it never ends.

We follow all the rules and guidelines that the experts gave us, and we still feel like crap.

We end up spiraling in this framework.

Maybe we learned in the last few years how the medical system really doesn’t have our best interest in mind. So what is there to believe now? Who can we trust for accurate information?

The Holistic spiral

Some of us learn about “alternative” or “holistic” medicine. In many cases the holistic world also stays in the war and fear mindsets, and keeps the permanent curses. Most of that replaces drugs with supplements and herbs, but it still requires belief in brokenness and enemies.

Now you have to do all these expensive tests and take all these different pills. You have to fight your candida and other microbes. You have some latent Epstein-Barre virus that you can’t ever get rid of. Or you’re doomed with an MTHFR defect so you have to do boatloads of detoxes.

And there’s plenty of crap to buy, from devices, to pills, to cleanses, and so on. Not to mention tons of online influencers with conflicting info and even more things to sell. They’ll scare you with all the toxins and traumas and things that are out to kill you, and then sell you the solutions.

You can end up stuck where you’re “doing everything right” according to some painfully boring and rigid protocol that an influencer invented. Yet you’re not resolving your health stuff, and you live in fear of deviating from the protocol, while also wondering why it’s not working for you.

Cool, now we’re spiraling in a new framework.

What if…

Maybe the explanations are wrong? Maybe we’re all very unique and need really personalized support? Maybe health can be simple? Maybe more is possible and we don’t need to accept doom and fear stories? Maybe we’re actually resilient?

What if you don’t have a permanent curse?

What if you’re not at war with yourself?

What if the symptoms and microbes are supportive?

What if you don’t have to micro-manage your body?

What if sick people don’t make well people sick?

What if many of the labels, tests, and explanations are just flat out unproven, nonsensical, or useless?

If the frameworks and experts are wrong, then what can we rely on? How do we discern?

How I got here, and why I teach this

Hi, I’m David Barbarisi, a former depressed software engineer turned Terrain health nerd and educator.

When I was born, I was given a diagnosis of pyknosysostosis, claimed to be caused by a “rare genetic defect.” Growing up I had physical symptoms including frequent bone fractures from doing pretty normal things. This experience led to me making up all kinds of stories and holding beliefs about the bad luck and brokenness I was facing. This thinking influenced multiple areas of my life to the point where I felt very limited, and I eventually sank into depression and coping in order to get by in life.

I would usually have doctor’s visits where they would tell me something was wrong, then they would do an intervention, and I wouldn’t notice much of an improvement. So I became very reluctant to engage with the medical system as an adult.

After finding the right kinds of support I made some lifestyle changes, got off an antidepressant, and greatly improved my quality of life.

As I made changes that were the opposite of what I’d been told to do, and life improved significantly, I got really curious. What else is possible? What else can this body do? What other things don’t make sense?

I went exploring holistic medicine, which seemed a lot better than allopathy, but shared a lot of the same patterns.

Within the past few years I’ve been learning about the Terrain Paradigm of health, which I would say is a totally different philosophy, in which we’re not at war with microbes, parasites, or our bodies.

I’ve also developed my critical thinking and discernment skills, as I seem to have a certain way of thinking about things. I have a curious mind with a healthy skepticism and I enjoy poking holes in ideas. I’m willing to unlearn and learn again, over and over.

I’m excited to help others sort through the mess of health info and synthesize my years of rabbit hole research and experience with health into a practical, usable way of thinking. I want others to feel empowered enough that they can discern on their own, without needing to outsource so much to experts.

My work is for people who want clearer thinking, fewer contradictions, and a more grounded relationship with their bodies and lives.

This program is a distillation of how I now understand health, adaptation, and responsibility.

How the program works

This is a six-week guided program with live weekly classes and recordings.

We meet live Wednesdays at 1:00pm EST, from March 4 to April 8. Each session runs for about 60 minutes. All sessions will be recorded, so live attendance is optional.

In each session I’ll introduce concepts, walk through examples, and guide discussion and questions. The emphasis is on understanding how health stories form, where they break down, and how thinking differently changes what we do.

The program is not about memorizing information or following instructions. It’s about learning how to think more clearly about health.

Alongside the live sessions, there are simple, optional integration practices. These are invitations to observe your own life and body more carefully, try small changes, and notice what happens. The goal is to let lived experience interact with the ideas we’re discussing, rather than keeping everything abstract.

There will also be a community space where you can share questions, observations, and patterns you’re noticing. I’ll participate there, respond to themes that come up, and occasionally add voice notes or extra material when something is worth expanding on.

You can engage at whatever level makes sense for you. You can attend live, watch the recordings, participate in discussion, or mostly observe. The program works best when you’re curious and willing to notice what’s actually happening in your own life, but there’s no pressure to perform or keep up.

This is a space for orienting, questioning, and making sense of health in a more coherent way, not for fixing yourself or being told what to believe.

What this program gives you

This program is not a treatment or a fix. It’s an orientation to something more foundational.

By the end of the six weeks, you’ll have:

• A clearer understanding of how health labels, diagnoses, and stories turn into identity, and how that identity shapes what feels possible
• Exposure to health outcomes that don’t fit dominant medical models, and a better sense of what those mismatches reveal
• A solid orientation to the Terrain Paradigm, giving you a way to think about symptoms, microbes, and adaptation without fear or blame
• Less reflexive fear around getting “sick,” and more context for understanding what your body may be doing when symptoms appear
• Stronger discernment skills so you can evaluate health claims, tests, and advice without outsourcing your judgment
• A more grounded relationship with your body, based on observation and understanding rather than control and micromanagement

Many people leave feeling less broken, less cursed, and less at war with themselves, even if their circumstances haven’t magically changed.

This won’t be for everyone

It’s also not for you if you love your diagnosis so much that you want to marry it.

This isn’t a space for treatment, medical advice, or emotional arguments.

It’s an invitation to understand health differently, so you can stop outsourcing your judgment and start making choices with more clarity.

What we’ll explore over six weeks

Over six weeks, we’ll explore the following themes.

Why these belong together

These themes are all large topics that could each be their own program. I’m intentionally bringing them together because they interlock.

Unlearning old health stories creates space. Discernment helps you evaluate what replaces them. The Terrain Paradigm offers a way of organizing health that becomes usable once those other pieces are in place.

Learning something new often requires loosening ideas that no longer fit lived experience. This program is designed to support that process without asking you to trade one rigid framework for another.

Applying the ideas in real life

Be a scientist with your health. Make observations in your life, then try simple changes and notice the results. Keep making changes and observing.

Be a detective with your health. Notice the symptoms and body responses in your life and ask, why is this experience happening this way? What does it mean? What is it trying to tell me? How am I adapting here?

Throughout the program I’ll give you some practices and experiments so you can integrate the concepts into your real life. You can bring your observations back to class and we can see how they might fit into the concepts we’re talking about.

A new framework or belief system is pretty useless if you can’t actually apply it or if reality disagrees.

After the program, you can keep self-experimenting and reframing your observations and results. You’ll be able to avoid endless research spirals because you’re taking action and you’re determining what “works” and doesn’t work for you, in your own context.

With your newly developed principles, discernment framework, and the Terrain Paradigm, you can reason about your health choices and take educated and empowered actions. You’ll still ask people with experience for support, but you won’t be super dependent on gurus, influencers, or practitioners.

Optional 1:1 support

If you want additional support, there’s an optional 1:1 add-on.

These calls are educational and orienting. They’re not therapy or emotional processing.

We’ll focus on applying the framework, making sense of what you’re noticing, and thinking more clearly about next steps in your own context.

There are a limited number of spots available.

Frequently Asked Questions

Choosing clarity over noise

Health doesn’t have to be this confusing.

If you’re tired of the noise in the health space and you’re open-minded, curious, and interested in understanding health in a clearer, less fear-driven way, this program may be a good fit.

The six-week program runs from March 4 to April 8.