David Taylor

Career Story: 

My wife, Lana Holstein (from the same residency class as me), and I hung out our shingle in Flagstaff in 1979, after a 4-month trip around the world right after graduation funded by our in residency moonlighting in Show Low. We practiced pretty much the full range of family medicine there for 15 years, including OB for the first 6 or so. But we got a little restless and were looking for new opportunities. I got turned on to the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education and enrolled in a lengthy training at the same time Lana got an offer to do women's health at Canyon Ranch back in Tucson, so we sold our practice (to later residency graduate Warren Perkins, who had been practicing on the Navajo reservation for years), and I got a job in Urgent Care, first at St. Mary's, then at TMC. I opened a side practice of Feldenkrais once I'd finished the 4-year training, and taught classes at Fitcenter, a local gym for seniors. When TMC reorganized its ER staffing contract, I left urgent care and joined Jon Larson, another residency classmate turned physiatrist, at the HealthSouth hospital where he was (and still is) medical director, essentially becoming a hospitalist at this acute rehab facility. Meanwhile I had begun supporting Lana in a new venture of ours at Canyon Ranch, doing workshops for couples to enhance their sexual relationships. We wrote a book about it together, Your Long Erotic Weekend, that was published in 2003. When her work moved to Miraval Resort in Catalina in 2004 to pursue a sexuality practice full time, the Oprah Winfrey Show found out somehow about our workshop, sent crews out to film one, and we became sudden celebrities in demand. I quit my hospitalist job and went full-time at Miraval doing our sex workshops (and a bit of Feldenkrais too), and we had a great run there for 5 years until the Great Recession hit the luxury resort industry and we got laid off. We're sort of semi-retired now, but still doing some workshops on our own, and playing with some ideas on how to reach a broader range of couples.

Favorite Recreational Activity: 

I've been playing tennis with the same guy almost every Saturday for ten or twelve years. We go skiing for a week every year in Park City. And I thought I'd never say this, but I've actually taken up golf just this year.

Favorite Memory from Residency: 

The first monsoon rain of my internship year, just a few days after it started: everyone at UMC stopped what they were doing to go watch and smell the rain.

Personal Story: 

We have 2 adopted children, now aged 25 and 29, and one 5 year old grandson.