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10% Happier with Dan Harris
How To Take Care of Your Body Without Losing Your Mind
00:46:58
Behind the scenes of this year’s Get Fit Sanely series with ace producers Eleanor Vassili and Marissa Schneiderman. Today we’re kicking off the third annual iteration of a very popular series we do, called Get Fit Sanely. It’s all...
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- [00:00]
Eleanor Vasily
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Dan Harris
This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. How we doing Today? We are kicking off the third iteration of a very popular series we do called Get Fit Sanely. It's all about how to take care of your body without losing your mind. This is a dynamic tension that many of us struggle to manage, myself included, which is why I'm so excited about this latest instantiation of the series. This is our most ambitious version of Get Fit Sanely. We are going to be dedicating the entire month of June to the topic. We've got an incredible array of guests, everything from gut health to the importance of rest to how to operationalize the old cliche around listening to your body. In this kickoff episode, I'm going to talk to the two producers who identified, vetted, and booked all of these guests and then helped to prepare me, your curmudgeonly host, for each of the interviews. The producers in question are Marissa Schneiderman and Eleanor Vasily. This is a great conversation. We take you behind the scenes on how we select our guests and and our topics, how this year's episodes built on what we have covered in the past. We get into the personal stories of mine and of Marissa's and Eleanor's when it comes to this issue of fitness. And we're also going to tell you about a really cool new component to Get Fit Sanely that we've never tried before. So we'll get started with Marissa and Eleanor right after this. My friend Vuva, he's an Austrian dude, great guy, is having a huge 50th birthday party on his property in upstate New York. Many, many people are coming. Dozens, maybe scores of people are coming to this party, many of them of my close friends. And many of them are going to be camping. I do not like camping. I'm not going to camp at this party. I am determined to be comfortable, and I've got a small band of fellow party attendees who also do not want to camp. And so we're looking for a house where we can stay that is close to Vuva's house. So I've been on the Airbnb app finding us a house, and I have found us several good candidates. I have sent the links out to my friends and they're vetting them, and we're going to make a decision in the next couple of hours. I tell you all of this because it's an example of why I love Airbnb. And I also want to tell you that if you are going to be traveling yourself, you can obviously check out Airbnb for places to stay, but you can also put your own home on Airbnb and make a little extra cash while you travel. It's kind of like you get paid for going on vacation, which feels like a smart thing to do. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com host imagine you're a business owner who has to rely on a dozen different software programs to run your company, none of which are connected, and each one is more expensive and more complicated than the last. It can be pretty stressful. Now imagine Odoo. Odoo has all the programs you'll ever need and they are all connected on one simple, easy to use platform, giving you peace of mind that your business is always being taken care of from every angle. Odoo has user friendly open source applications for everything. We're talking CRM, accounting, inventory, manufacturing, marketing, HR, and everything in between. Basically, if your business needs it, Odoo's got it. Odoo sounds pretty amazing, right? So stop wasting your time and money on those expensive disconnected platforms and let Odoo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the price. It doesn't get much better than that. So what are you waiting for? Discover how Odoo can take your business to the next level by visiting odoo.com that's o d o o.com odoo modern management made Simple Eleanor Vasily, Marissa Schneiderman, welcome to the show you already work on.
- [04:18]
Marissa Schneiderman
Thank you. Nice to be in the hot seat.
- [04:20]
Dan Harris
Hi Dan, Eleanor, let me start with you. What is Get Fit Sanely and what are we doing here today?
- [04:27]
Eleanor Vasily
We are here to offer a preview of our latest installment of a series that we call Get Fit Sanely. It was the brainchild of our executive producer, now head of content, DJ Kashmir, and he started it a few years ago in 2023. The series is founded on one question, which is essentially how can we take care of our bodies while also maintaining a healthy relationship with our bodies? In other words, how can we take care of our physical health without feeling things like shame or self loathing or negative self comparison? And so each episode that we have features a different guest that we think can best answer that question. Whether it's, you know, fitness experts or athletes or doctors, we have a constant stream of voices that are telling us what to do with our bodies. And I feel like it's really hard to know what voices we should be listening to. So I think that I have a lot of confidence that the series helps on that front by choosing the smartest and most informed and insightful compassionate people as guests.
- [05:33]
Dan Harris
You said that the series is built around one driving question, and I like the way you put it. I also heard Tara, another or one of our colleagues phrase it another way, which is how do you take care of your body without losing your mind? Which is like a great question, especially in this era of optimization. So, as you mentioned, DJ generally produced this in the past. This time, Eleanor, you and Marissa produced it. So Marissa, let me bring you in. Like, as you chose guests, what was your guiding philosophy?
- [06:07]
Marissa Schneiderman
Basically, Eleanor and I were the ones that were selecting all of the guests and putting it together. And we really made sure to find guests that we had a personal connection with, but also would bring benefit to all listeners. And I really believe that in this series there's something for everyone. In the past couple years, we've had a lot of big name guests. I'm just going to name a couple. Longevity expert Dr. Peter Attia, Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidu, mobility experts Kelly and Julia Starrett, which that episode has blown up recently in the past month, which has been really interesting. Also Dharma teacher and friend of show, Kara Lai. She did an amazing episode called can youn Get Fit Without Self Loathing? And something that's really exciting is that she's going to offer companion guided meditations for each episode in the series.
- [06:58]
Dan Harris
Yes. And those guided meditations will be available for subscribers over@danharris.com, and it really does kind of represent a new direction for the show. We've long had this theory that back when we had an app, the show was the lecture and the app was the lab. So you listen to the show and be like, getting a great, inspiring lecture from an amazing professor, and then you'd go over to the app to practice it. And so now we're actually going to try to really follow through on that. And this series is our first step in that direction. Okay. But let's get back to getting fit sanely. Marissa, since I've already got you here, let me ask you, you talked about picking episodes that resonate with your personal interests. What is your relationship to fitness generally?
- [07:47]
Marissa Schneiderman
So I loved producing these episodes, but of course it's complicated. I grew up in Los Angeles, which is arguably the epicenter of toxicity. And what that looks like is growing up with billboards of Angeline and Pamela Anderson just outside my door, praying to God that I had big breasts. When I grew up surrounded by a Lot of plastic surgery and a lot of people like striving for a very specific beauty standard. My mother is also a self described exercise addict. So she had Michelle Obama arms before they were cool. And she's now in her early 70s and she works a full time job, but still manages to go to the gym daily, practice yoga, lift weights and rack up about 20,000 steps a day.
- [08:31]
Dan Harris
Wow.
- [08:31]
Marissa Schneiderman
Yeah, she's pretty impressive. But I also spent a lot of time as a kid sitting at a sweat infused, pungent gym while my mom worked out. So that is very much like in my psyche, in my history. So right now it's estimated that the health and wellness industry racks up about $7 trillion a year. So in terms of these specific episodes, I really wanted to make sure that we found experts in the field who could go beyond the fluff and the snake oil and empower listeners and myself to connect with all aspects of our bodies beyond the quote unquote shape. Eleanor, what about you?
- [09:09]
Eleanor Vasily
Yeah, you know, I was oddly excited to talk about this series, I think just because of the fact that body thoughts have really lived rent free in my mind since I was a little kid. I don't think I'm alone in this, but young me got the message kind of early on that my self worth stemmed from how attractive I was or how desirable I could make myself. Part of that, I think, is just being born in a woman's body. But I definitely know that men have their own version. And I don't think it's necessarily apples to apples. I was also raised in a household that idolized health and fitness. And what I love is that as soon as me and Marissa sat down and started talking about the series and what we wanted to talk about, and we found out almost instantly that we both had fitness fanatics as parents. I was a little weirdo, wandering around the gym at 10 years old, pretending that I knew what I was doing, wondering if the adults knew that I was 10 years old. They definitely did. And I guess for even more context, my mom is what I would call an OG intuitive eater. She's one of those weirdos that doesn't necessarily always eat for joy, but really for subsistence. And my dad is going to be 89 this year and he's an intermittent faster. And if you walk into his living room, the first thing that you see is a punching bag and a wall of weights. And you know, I've got to say that a lot of what they bestowed on me has been really valuable in my life. And it's been a Serious gift of knowledge in a lot of ways, but it's also contributed to some serious hangups. There'd be moments in time when I was a teenager and I would gain a little bit of weight, and I would somehow connect that to a weakness in myself, or I would assume that it said something about my character or my willpower and juxtaposition to that. If I lost weight, people would come up to me and they'd be like, you look incredible. I just think it's kind of fascinating at this point in my life that the reflection of how I felt on the inside, it really didn't line up with how people treated me on the outside and how I felt about myself.
- [11:19]
Marissa Schneiderman
Hear, hear.
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Eleanor Vasily
And then, I guess just to add another layer to that, I feel like I got to a certain age and I realized that half the women that I knew in my life had had an eating disorder at some point, myself included. And the older I get, I feel really thankful that the goal posts have started to shift a little bit now. I'm trying to focus on what makes me feel good, what makes me feel strong, as opposed to making my body more appealing to other people. I still catch myself trying to control how other people see me, in all honesty, but kind of slowly moving away from that into the. The ideal of just me feeling myself. And the last thing I'll say is that realizing that I wasn't alone with body hangups, I think, is the other thing that's been really, really helpful. I think that's why this series has been so successful in a lot of ways. You know, I might have a completely different lived experience than other people, but I think most people have scrutinized their body at some point in their life. And so working on this series has been really great because it's either reinforced some of my goals, or it's offered new skills and perspectives to try out.
- [12:32]
Dan Harris
You said your mom was an OG intuitive eater, and yet what you described about her eating didn't seem to jibe with my understanding of intuitive eating. I just want to get at that a little bit. And just to say for the audience, intuitive eating is a huge theme. And in these Get Fit Sanely episodes and this series writ large and a huge theme in my own life and really is about eating not according to arbitrary diet rules, but eating according to the signals you're getting from your own body. And you said your mom does not eat for joy at all, just for sustenance. Maybe that does fit with intuitive eating, but it just piqued my interest yeah.
- [13:14]
Eleanor Vasily
No, I think that that's a great distinction, to be honest. And I still stand by my description of her. I guess when I say joy, I think she still definitely, definitely gets Joy out of eating. I think it's just not the primary factor that's driving her decisions when she's deciding what to eat. It's more. Ever since I've been a kid, the way that she talked about food. You know, people would ask her, what do you want to have for dinner? And she was like, I have no idea. I don't know what my body's going to be wanting at that moment. And so I think that's more where I was going.
- [13:48]
Dan Harris
Right. So she is really just in tune with what her body wants, as opposed to, oh, I need to measure out a certain amount of protein in order to hit ketosis or whatever it is.
- [13:58]
Eleanor Vasily
Exactly. Dan, I'm curious. I know that you've sat down with DJ and you've had these conversations with him and our listeners before, but what has changed for you since the series has started? And you know what, if anything, are you still wanting help with or.
- [14:14]
Marissa Schneiderman
Dan, feel free to share any parental hangups.
- [14:18]
Dan Harris
Well, my parents actually were also fitness fanatics. My dad was an early runner of marathons before that was much of a thing back in the 70s. I have a really great picture of them in their 30s, after they had gone running together. And you can just see how fit my dad was. You can see these abs. My mom is wearing a shirt, so you can't really tell. And they weren't really focused on the aesthetics of it. I mentioned my dad's abs, but I never heard him talk about that. My understanding and the message they sent to me was that they were exercising. I once heard my mom say, I exercise so I can eat whatever I want. They were exercising because it was something they'd like to do together and with their friends, and they like to be healthy. But it didn't seem toxic to me. The toxic stuff for me really came more from just being part of this culture and realizing, you know, in my first interview with Evelyn Tribble, one of the progenitors of intuitive eating, which. That interview happened right here on the show. I'll drop a link in the show notes. You can really hear me in that interview. Wake up to the kind of intrapersonal psychic violence I had been doing to myself around food and exercise and body image. You know, I think many men would reflexively write this off as a women's issue, but that's. As Evelyn points out, we have Just as many hang ups when it comes to our body, we just call it biohacking. And in that interview, it really woke me up to the fact that I had been spending much of my life as a grown up, especially a grown up on television, really obsessing about how I looked, how much I was exercising, what I ate. That was back in 2020, I think, and that was really the genesis of my interest in this subject, which kind of went on steroids when DJ and I launched this series, Get Fit Sanely. And I have learned a ton through these episodes, just with the caveat that I had a really good foundation going into the episodes. Having worked with Evelyn one on one. After the interview I did with her in 2020, I became a client and we really worked together and still work together. Having said that, I've learned a ton in these episodes. You know, I think about the Carlai episode where she talks about, you know, having gratitude for your body. I still lift a lot of weights, and it's not uncommon for me to look in the mirror after a workout and be like, why? Why do I not look the way I used to look when I. When I lifted weights? But I can pop myself out of that much more quickly and just feel gratitude for the fact that I'm 53, going on 54 pretty soon, and my body's still functioning at a high level. I can work out every day. And that's one thing that I've learned. There was a moment in one of the interviews that we're going to post with Christiana Wolf, who's just a ferociously impressive human being, a physician, a Dharma teacher, a mother, and an ultra marathoner, who also is very balanced about her attitude toward her body. And she said something that really has stuck with me, which is that she likes the feeling of exertion. And I like that feeling. I like to work out. Not always super happy when I'm in the middle of a high intensity interval training sprint on the peloton. But generally speaking, I really like working out and having worked out to such a key part of my day and so tuning into the part that I enjoy and turning down the volume on the useless stuff around trying to achieve a type of body that is in accordance with standards that are pretty arbitrarily set. We talk about getting in shape. Who decides what the shape should be? If you look back over history, there have been various times where larger bodies were considered the ideal, and then other times where that hasn't been the case. And so really through these interviews, attuning to like, what is the bottom line? What matters. What matters is, is my underlying physiology healthy? And when I go to the doctor and get all the tests, the answer is yes. So how much time do I want to waste then on my waistline? A couple of other things from past episodes really stick out to me. You mentioned the Starrettes who are mobility experts and they really talk about walking as an important thing. The whole 10,000 step thing is a bit of an artificial measurement. They say it really aim for around 8,000. But just getting more walking into my day outside of my regular exercise has just been nice. It gets me outside. I like the feeling. I take a lot of my meetings on the phone or if I've got people at the house from our team and we're in a meeting, we'll do it on a walk sometimes. Just one other thing that's coming to mind and we've kind of covered it a little bit. But there was a moment in my conversation with Dr. Peter Attia, who is kind of like the ultimate avatar of optimization and trying to live forever and he works out some crazy amount per week. And even he said the cost of being lean, the cost of trying to really at any age to achieve visible abs or something like that is probably not worth it. I don't remember exactly what he said, but if even Peter Attia has the wisdom to say, yeah, we should all be working out because it's going to help us be happier and healthier and live longer and. And if you're obsessing about looking a certain way, well, that's counterproductive. That was really helpful. I'll just finish by saying there is a term that we talk about a lot in these episodes, orthorexia, which is the unhealthy obsession with being healthy. And I think this is just a line all of us have to walk because it is important to be healthy in a holistic sense. Exercise, sleep, getting enough non sleep, rest, eating in a healthy enough way. All of these aspects of fitness and health are important and you don't want to take it too far. And this is more art than science. But the point of these episodes is we, I think we train you to get better at that art. So I said a lot. Does that all land for you guys?
- [20:48]
Eleanor Vasily
Absolutely. All of that adds up. I think it's interesting I have just started putting all of those things together, even though they're probably things that I've heard since I was a teenager. But it's just all kind of sinking in right now and making sense and I'm grateful that it does add up. Yeah.
- [21:06]
Marissa Schneiderman
And for the listener, we'll link to all of these past episodes in the show notes so you can do a deep dive once you finish listening to our Get Fit Sanely series this June.
- [21:15]
Eleanor Vasily
I guess the one and this is just a teeny question for you, Dan. You're obviously in a good place, and I think the amount of knowledge that's been shared on all the past Get Fit Sanely series has definitely helped. But I'm curious if there are still things that still are challenging for you when it comes to your personal fitness and health.
- [21:35]
Dan Harris
Well, I would say two things. One I've already talked about, which is just continuously staying on top of my mind as it pertains to trying to look a certain way. My wife has pointed out over the past six months, I've gotten involved in a group exercise program which involves a lot of weights. And she said that she's seen a slight uptick in my body dysmorphism as a result. And so just taking her seriously when she says that and really trying to monitor when that's happening and talk to myself the way I would talk to you guys about body image, which is, hey, this is the wrong yardstick. The right yardstick is what's your blood pressure? What's your cholesterol? What's your resting heart rate? The wrong yardstick is how you look in the mirror. And so that's a dynamic tension in my life that I need to stay on top of. The other thing for me, and we don't really hit this that much in this series, but I think of sleep as a big part of fitness and sleep is there are times when it's hard for me. My insomnia can go up in direct correlation to whatever ambient anxiety I might be experiencing in my life. So over the several years where I was breaking up with the app that used to be called 10% happier, that was really, really stressful and I had a lot of insomnia and it can come back episodically, and so I just have to be kind of right on top of it. I know the sleep hygiene rules because I've learned a lot of them right here on this show, and exercise is a big part of that. So yeah, that's another thing I just need to be pretty diligent about.
- [23:14]
Eleanor Vasily
We have a great guest in June's lineup as well who talks a lot about rest. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to sharing some of that episode just to pick.
- [23:21]
Dan Harris
Up what you're saying. So Claudia Hammond is the guest you're referencing. She talks about rest. And rest is related to, but distinct from sleep. And it is, now that you're mentioning it, another area that I'm actively working on. So sleep has been challenging for me, and I think I've made a bunch of improvements of late. And rest is the same thing. You know, it's. For me, it's the same thing in that I think directionally I'm headed in, I'm heading in the right direction. And I really do need to constantly listen to my body and not override its signals because I'm so obsessed with productivity. Because actually, if you're truly and wisely interested in productivity, you will rest the body because then you will perform better. And so learning to take more breaks throughout the day, even if there isn't one scheduled, because my body is exhausted. And Claudia and I talk a lot about that, and I think it's gonna be useful to a lot of people.
- [24:19]
Eleanor Vasily
Absolutely.
- [24:21]
Dan Harris
So let's talk about what's coming up in this series. One of the goals of this little episode is to give people a sneak peek. So let's run through some of the guests we're most excited about. Marisa, why don't you start? Yeah.
- [24:34]
Marissa Schneiderman
So this year's lineup features conversations on exercise, gut health, building muscle, the science of motivation, stress, and rest. As we just discussed, the Dharma, and we also mindfully trickle into biohacking territory. And the first guest that we already mentioned is Christiana Wolf. And like Dan said, she's brilliant and wears many hats. She's been on the show in the past where she spoke about how to boost your pain tolerance through meditation. And in our upcoming episode, she discusses the how to and benefits of something called interoception, which basically just means listening to your body. Here's the clip from Christiana.
- [25:19]
Christiana Wolf
I think our culture, it is this weird thing. On one hand, we are so obsessed with the body, but we're not obsessed with actually listening to our bodies. We're obsessed with what the body looks like or what the body can do. So it's, like, very performance oriented. So what we have learned, I mean, like Descartes and everything, is just like, to value our intellect. And whatever is in the body is not valuable. It's sinful, gets us in trouble. We have this long tradition of not being embodied. And then of course, because also we have a history, like, of big traumas everywhere with, like, war and oppression and misogyny, all of that. And that makes us not feel safe in the body. So that's like how we're coming into this. But the fact is, like the body and the mind is one. It's not. Here's the body and there's the mind. Even though it can feel that way, the body has a wealth of information and is trying to communicate with us all the time. We just haven't learned to listen to it and to trust what the body is saying.
- [26:29]
Dan Harris
She's so good. And in that interview, she does give a lot of practical tips for interoception, learning how to listen to the signals from your body, and then, of course, just to say it again. If you're a subscriber over@danharris.com, we'll be providing guided meditations from Cara Lai that will really help you deepen that practice.
- [26:51]
Marissa Schneiderman
Yeah, it really was an amazing episode and I love this clip so much because she so succinctly sets up how our current culture is designed for us to feel disconnected from our bodies. And later in the episode she talks about how our culture is basically obsessed with teenagers in their underwear. And I think about that a lot because I'm like, oh, is that what I'm trying to look like? Why? And the next guest is a journalist, Mariel Segarra. She is the host of NPR's Life Kit. And the show, for those who haven't listened to it before, offers practical, expert backed advice for everyday life challenges. So basically, Marielle and Dan were two peas in a pod. They were talking about the best advice they've both received while hosting their respective shows. Here's a clip of the two of them discussing the myriad benefits of nature.
- [27:42]
Mariel Segarra
I think if you take meetings when you're walking too, like it can foster creativity, it can help you come up with better ideas. I have definitely felt safe stuck before on a story that I was working on. And then I go for a walk and I talk to my editor or a producer or someone, I'm able to think outside of the box that my apartment creates. You know, when you're looking at the same things all the time, I don't know, it's like your brain doesn't go there, but then you're suddenly among the trees in the park or whatever and you're like you're newly inspired. I think it can also be really helpful to know you might get these benefits, but to let go of outcomes. So it's like I'm pretty sure if I go for a walk it's gonna shake me loose a little bit, but I don't necessarily know in what direction or towards what productive outcome. And sometimes it'll just be the joy of that experience, the joy of being in the park and seeing a little kid on their bike, like learning how to bike with their parent or a cute dog that I smile at. You can find metaphor in nature for pretty much anything you're going through. Whether it's the way that trees, when they die and they fall, they decompose and they become part of the forest floor and they become a different part of the ecosystem, right, where mushrooms can grow and maybe like little birds can live in there. It can be a metaphor for death and grief. I find there's just a lot of wisdom in nature when you sit and watch and so you don't always. You could go for that walk and say, like, this is gonna help me think about the next chapter of my book or whatever, or this is gonna help me come up with my business plan. Or you could go into it with a little less attachment to the outcome and just see this clip I love.
- [29:35]
Marissa Schneiderman
Because it's really about letting the unconscious do its thing. I feel like we are all getting so much information on the regular about what's good for us. And often for me, it can sort of get into this rote, uninspired mode where I'm doing something and then have an expectation that I'll have a very specific outcome or will feel a certain way. And by letting go of outcomes, it just gives us space to be present and inspired with whatever's coming up in the moment. And it also really ties back to Christiana's work because I think if we're listening to our bodies and following like the desires from there, we can just trust that there will be a benefit to that, even if we don't exactly know what that will be. Eleanor, what about you? I want to know about the episodes that you've been working on.
- [30:22]
Eleanor Vasily
Yeah, so I worked on a handful of really incredible episodes. To be honest, all of the episodes resonated with me in some way and I think that speaks to some really universal themes that came up. Ritual is the next episode that I'll jump in on. He is, for those of you who don't know, he's a former entertainment attorney turned wellness plant based nutrition advocate. That is such a mouthful to say, but he's also an ultra endurance athlete, a podcast host, an author, a public speaker. He came in and he talked about his extreme fitness transformation that happened pretty much in midlife, which was pretty extraordinary. And the two of you also talked about your diet choices. He's written a Lot of incredible vegan cookbooks, but he also shared a lot about his recovery from addiction. Conversation went all over the place. You talked about psychedelics. I have a lot of respect for rich roll. And he, he obviously puts great care into his health. In your conversation, I think you asked some really great questions, Dan. You know, earlier in our conversation just now, you brought up Orthorexia. And I love this clip because it not only touches on the tipping point of what makes something go from healthy behavior to unhealthy behavior, and I also think that a lot of what he said kind of perfectly encapsulate the series as a whole. So I'll let it do with the talking.
- [31:43]
Rich Roll
There is this obsession with the perfect body and the perfect diet that's gonna get you there. And this is all exacerbated by all of the biohacking and the kind of six hour morning routine and the supplement stack and the cold plunging in the sauna. And it's like, how many things do I have to do before I can just go live my day? If you added up all of these things, any sane person would go insane. And it's unsustainable. But it's all oriented around self optimization. And I think within that there's a control piece, right, that gets to that discomfort with uncertainty. We're all terrified of dying and what can we control? We can control our bodies. If we eat the right thing and work out a certain way, we'll be perceived a certain way so we'll be loved. And ultimately we're going to avoid this thing that we pretend doesn't exist, which is that we're going to die. Like that's what it all roots back to, does it not? It's attachment, you know, And I'm compassionate for anyone who suffers from that because we live in a culture that sets expectations high. And those expectations are predominantly unattainable for most people and really aren't something that we should aspire to attain. But it's part of the underlying mental health epidemic for sure. So how do you get people to care about their well being without tiptoeing into these unhealthy behavior patterns? I mean, I'm not a clinician. I just think you have to be really honest with yourself. I tend to relate all of these sorts of things across the kind of rubric of recovery. Like where does this fall within the 12 steps? And in this context it's about like the Honest Self Inventory. Like what's driving these choices? Is it some kind of deep insecurity? Is It a childhood wound? Is it a true honest desire to take control of your health for the right reasons? And can you be honest with yourself enough so that you have that self awareness piece to prevent you from, you know, going too far in the wrong direction?
- [34:00]
Eleanor Vasily
I can really relate to that honesty piece. I don't always have mortality on my mind, but I am definitely examining and tracking my own motivations when it comes to my physical health. Is it that childhood wound that Rich mentioned? Is it wanting to live longer? Is it out of respect to the people that I love? Is it vanity? Is it me desperately trying to get rid of cellulite? It might be all of the above. Marissa, I know that we covered a little bit of our history with body stuff and exercise, but I am curious. Where do you stand now? Do you still hang out at the gym? And yeah, do you like to exercise? And if you do, what's your motivation?
- [34:40]
Marissa Schneiderman
I did just visit my parents and my mom most definitely got me a free week pass at her gym, so. So I was reliving old times hanging out with her. But it's funny because when we started producing this series a couple of months ago, I was very excited because I joined a run club. So I thought when we do an episode of the two producers chatting about everything that they learned, I could discuss how I got so strong doing this run club. About two weeks later, after the run club, I quit. Hear me out. I did have a slight injury in my shoulder, so unrelated to running. But that day I couldn't go to the run club cause I had an injury and I went to a Dharma group instead. And I was just so much happier. I was thinking, look, I do wanna exercise. I did buy my hokas for this run club. But in a way being in that meditation group actually felt much more supportive to me. So since then I did quit the run club, but have just been focusing on things that bring me more joy. So for example, I have a walking desk now. I got a little treadmill for 200 bucks under my standing desk and I'm just like racking up thousands of steps a day. That feels good. I take a lot of walks outside. I'm about to start biking more since the weather's getting better. So I haven't quite figured out the key to unlock health and fitness. But I feel like actually saying no to the run club is a form of like mental fitness that I'm working on.
- [36:05]
Eleanor Vasily
I love that I go back and forth between wondering if I take exercise too seriously or not serious enough. I run a ton Like, I run five days a week. I do a bunch of strength training. I like Pilates. And part of that I feel like is just self preservation from working remotely and sitting in a chair so many hours a day. I wish that I had a walking desk.
- [36:27]
Marissa Schneiderman
Join the cult.
- [36:28]
Eleanor Vasily
Yeah, I mean, I'm working on it too. I haven't answered those questions either for myself, but I am slowly becoming more and more obsessed, obsessed with this idea of figuring out how to feel strong, which is a great segue into my next clip. The next guest I want to talk about is Bonnie Tsoi. Bonnie was probably my favorite interview for the series thus far. She is an author, a journalist, a swimmer, and she writes about the human experience through the lens of movement and the body. Her latest book is called, called On Muscle. There was something incredibly powerful about the way that she described the psychological impacts of understanding your own physical potential. I think her excitement about muscles was almost contagious for me. And I even loved the way that she talked about the pushup.
- [37:20]
Bonnie Tsoi
What I love about the pushup is many things. It's a very basic foundational movement.
- [37:24]
Dan Harris
Right.
- [37:24]
Bonnie Tsoi
You really employ like your entire self to do them and to do them well. And I also love that they're sort of like a mythological. There's a lore behind them. You know, with Jack Lalanne breaking the world record by doing like, I don't know, a thousand plus push ups, it's a matter of minutes and that it's also like this demonized thing. Everyone hates them. Not everyone. Some people like yourself, love them. But that. But it's so basic. And the push up is something you can do in a very contained space. It's really like all you have to do is be able to lie down on the ground. You know, you could do it where you are. I could do where I am. You don't require anything but yourself. And there's something also great about that. It's just you and your body and the ground and how many times you can go down to meet it and then come back up and go down and come back up. There's a passage at the end of the book in which someone has asked a character in my book named Jan Todd who was the first woman to lift these Scottish stones of strength called the Dinnie stones. But she's also not only a world record breaking power lifter and a pioneer weightlifter, she also is a sports historian. And so she gets a lot of questions through the center that she runs there. And one was had to do with the history of the Pushup. And where did the pushup come from and who did the pushup for the first time. And of course there's no way of knowing, like, who was the first person to ever do this in the world as like a way to strengthen body and mind. But she did find this wonderful reference in a book about physical health that did not call it the pushup, but what it did call this exercise was kissing the ground in equilibrium. And I love that phrase so much. Kissing the ground in equilibrium, I think is like a great mantra for a living. You are doing this thing that's really hard, as are many things in life. But you appreciate that the ground is there and you go down and meet it and you come back up and you kind of try to figure out how to reach equilibrium, which is, you know, what is equilibrium. You know, you're seeking a kind of like resting state in the flux of life. And I just think there's just so much there to think about. And, you know, we're getting a little heady here, but that's a real thing. That's what a pushup can do for you.
- [39:54]
Eleanor Vasily
I loved the way that Bonnie talked about muscles. It made me excited about muscles. When I was like 9 or 10 years old. I used to be a competitive swimmer and as an adult I did a ton of yoga and I was kind of self conscious about my shoulder muscles because people would. Would comment on them. People love commenting on other people's bodies, which is something that I don't really understand strangers. But anyways, I would associate muscles on myself with being unfeminine in some way. And now all I want is, I want to have them back. Reading Bonnie's book, like I said, it was really inspiring to me because it made me want to go out and buy a new set of weights. And I'll also say, and I mentioned this at the top as well, but there was something very, very powerful for me to think about what it means to be strong in a different way and be aware of the sense that you can actually change your body. When you think about muscles, it almost sounds kind of magical. It' your body goes through this transformation and regenerates itself. And I was really enamored by hearing her talk about it. It made me excited to be strong.
- [40:59]
Dan Harris
It's so cool to listen to these clips and just to say the two of you have done such magnificent work curating these experts, as I think most listeners know there is, and as we referenced earlier, there's so much snake oil out there and it takes a lot of careful work to vet the appropriate people to bring on the show because we are so focused on giving you the listener evidence based, actionable, psychologically healthy advice. So I just want to thank you guys for the incredible work you've done. And also just to mention that we played a few clips, but there are a bunch of other people who are coming on, including the aforementioned Claudia Hammond, who's this incredible writer out of the UK who's written a book about the art of rest, talking about how to incorporate rest into our days in ways that will make us function better, which is so counterintuitive. We also interviewed Jeff Krasno, who's equally fascinating. He's been in the wellness world forever. He founded quite a famous yoga festival called Wanderlust, but then he found out that he was actually physically really unhealthy and and did this whole u turn in his life to get healthy again and has written this book about good stress. You know, stress, I think quite justifiably gets vilified in our culture because it can be incredibly unhealthy. But there are all these forms of good stress, including exercise and, you know, exposing yourself to heat or to cold, exposing yourself to nature, pushing yourself in all these different ways that have had a massive effect on on Jeff's life. And just a couple other episodes to mention before we close here, we're rerunning an incredible interview with Team Morgan Dixon and Dr. Gary G. Bennett about one of the most important aspects of fitness, which is how do you form the habits. It's one thing to learn what's good for you, it's another to actually do the shit that, you know, you're supposed to do. And they talk about the science of motivation and how to, you know, actually do the stuff we're talking about. And finally, probably the most provocative guest who has really stayed with me is do Dr. Robin Chutkan, who's a gastroenterologist and writes about gut health. And gut health is for sure one of the areas where there's the most snake oil. So we really had to work to find somebody who, you know, knows what she's talking about, is not trying to sell us anything other than her books, but she's not trying to sell us any supplements or anything. And she has this whole thing about the importance of looking at your poop, which made me incredibly uncomfortable. But we go there in quite a lot of detail. So long way of saying you guys have done a great job and I think the listeners have a lot to look forward to.
- [43:46]
Eleanor Vasily
Thanks, Dan. I Had a ton of fun researching the guests and finding people that really resonated with me, but also people that I think really anyone can take something away from.
- [43:55]
Marissa Schneiderman
Yes, I agree.
- [43:57]
Dan Harris
And just to say, the two of you are the backbone of this show. You know, there are many people who make the show, but Marissa and Eleanor are choosing and vetting the vast majority of the guests, preparing me, preparing the guests, finalizing and editing the episodes. So just want everybody to know that if you love this show, then you should love Marissa and Eleanor.
- [44:21]
Eleanor Vasily
I really do appreciate that, Dan. I feel like working on the show in a lot of ways is a huge privilege. Cause we're kind of paid to learn. And when you can, you know, find what you're interested in and then have the privilege of digging in and learning more about it and allowing it to help inform my own life. And I think DJ said this once before in one of the other preview episodes for Get Fit Sanely, another iteration of it last year. But one of the coolest parts of this job are thinking about all the things that I still want help with in my life. You know, I'm a work in progress and I've got questions still. And I'm not. I know I'm not the only one doing this research. And being able to find guests that we really connected with was just. It was great.
- [45:05]
Dan Harris
I feel the same way. It's like, if I have a problem in my life, I can make it into an episode. What a cool way to live. I do, in closing, just want to remind people of something that we said earlier, which is that for each of the episodes that will be dropping during the month of June in this Get Fit Sanely series, paid subscribers will also get an email with a bespoke meditation tied to the episode from a great meditation teacher named Cara Lai, who we've mentioned a few times. And Kara and I will go live on substack at 3:30 Eastern on Tuesday, June 3rd. That's June 3rd at 3:30 Eastern. And Marissa, I know you wanted to say a little bit about Cara.
- [45:48]
Marissa Schneiderman
She's an amazing teacher and she's been part of this series before. Like I said, also a friend of the show has been on many times. She's been teaching meditation for a decade and practicing for much longer. And the thing I love about her is, you know, you think of like a Dharma meditation teacher. It can be sort of often a holier than thou approach, which those aren't the type of people we ever have on the show. But Kara in particular is relatable, authentic, funny, a bit crass, and she's very accessible. She's also taught at all of the premier meditation institutions in the US So it'll just be really great to have her on as a companion to these episodes.
- [46:31]
Dan Harris
Totally agree. She's also a friend of mine and just a hilarious and wise person. And just to repeat something I said earlier, this is something I've really wanted to do for a long time, is to have a tighter link between the things we're discussing on the show and guided meditations you can do to pound the learnings into your molecules. So just to be a little salesy here, if you want to be a paid subscriber, you can go over to danharris.com aside from all the meditations that will be dropping in association with this series, paid subscribers also get ad free versions of this show. Also get a cheat sheet for every episode. You know it's an email where we sum up the key learnings and also give you time, coded highlights and a full transcript. Plus, if you're a subscriber, you get to join me live on video twice a month where I lead a meditation and take your questions. And also you can join the subscriber chat where you can talk to me and members of the team and one another. So we got a ton going on over there. We're just getting started. Danharris.com would love to have you join us. And Eleanor, one more thing you wanted to mention.
- [47:37]
Eleanor Vasily
Oh yeah, well, on top of all of that, every Friday in June we'll also be bringing some short gems from the Get Fit Sanely archives just so listeners can catch some of the most useful tips that they might have missed in previous episodes.
- [47:53]
Dan Harris
So much thought and work has gone into this series, principally by the two of you. I also want to thank Tara Anderson, who's producing this particular episode, and DJ for having, you know, helped hone the idea, and Lauren Smith for for making sure the trains run on time. There's just so much work that has gone into this and I think it's just so helpful. So thank you again to Marissa and Eleanor for doing this episode and for doing all the work that went into the episodes to come.
- [48:22]
Eleanor Vasily
Thank you Dan.
- [48:23]
Tara Anderson
Thanks all.
- [48:28]
Dan Harris
Thank you to Eleanor and Marissa, the best producers in the history of planet Earth. And don't forget to check out danharris.com for those guided meditations that will be coming with every episode during June. I also will be doing a couple of live guided meditation sessions in June and pretty much every month henceforth, so we'd love to have your Support over@danharris.com Thank you for listening and thanks to everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily, who you just heard from. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman, who you just heard from as well, is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our Executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
- [49:27]
Tara Anderson
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