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- [00:00]
Commercial Speaker
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- [00:16]
Marielle Segarra
You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, it's Marielle. One of my favorite podcasts is 10% Happier with Dan Harris and he recently had me on as part of a month long series they're doing on fitness. Basically, it's about how to take care of your body without losing your mind. We talked for an hour, which is a long episode for us here at Life Kit, but we wanted to share it with you because it's packed with tips we've learned from lots of different episodes, specifically about movement, sleep and play. It was a fun, playful conversation we.
- [00:52]
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- [02:22]
Ira Glass
This is Ira Glass of this American Life. Each week on our show we choose a theme, tell different stories on that theme. All right, I'm just gonna stop right there. You're listening to an NPR podcast. Chances are you know our show. So instead I'm gonna tell you we've just been on a run of really good shows lately. Some big, epic, emotional stories and some weird, funny stuff, too. Download us this American Life.
- [02:51]
Dan Harris
This is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Marielle Segata. Welcome to the show.
- [03:08]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [03:09]
Dan Harris
It's a pleasure. Before we dive into your principal takeaways from covering health and wellness for many, many years, I'd be curious to hear a little bit of your backstory. You know, how and why did you get interested in this stuff in the first place? I, you know, had a cocaine fueled panic attack on live television. So I have a pretty clear trajectory narratively between my old life and my new life. But I'd be curious. It doesn't have to be as ridiculous as mine, but I'd be curious to hear about your trajectory.
- [03:42]
Marielle Segarra
Well, I guess I have two answers for that. There's the personal and the professional. I feel like they married really well here because this feels like the show that I should be hosting, that I'm supposed to be hosting. But I didn't even. I wouldn't have known that it existed before it existed. Like, I wouldn't have pitched it necessarily. Life Kit existed for years before I started. And then they decided to hire a full time host. And at the time, I was a financial reporter at Marketplace, the public radio outlet. And I covered finance and economics for a number of years. A lot of news coverage and then a lot of consumer psychology. So I know that was attractive to them when they were hiring me. But I think the thing that really connected for my boss, when we had one of our initial calls, I was actually talking to her about I had applied for a different host job at npr. It was kind of like a screening call. And I mentioned that I was gathering a lot of my ancestors stuff, like anything I could find that belonged to them. Like a little prayer book that was my grandmother's and then a little address book that was my abuela's and different little things and also items to represent them. Basically creating like an ancestral altar on my bedside table that I was on, having this kind of spiritual journey that way. And I just happened to mention that to her and she was like, that would be a great Life Kit episode. Did you know we're hiring for Life K could consider applying for that? And yeah, I did. And it just, it made so much sense. Once I connected to what Life Kit does, I was like, oh, I am this person. Like, I'm the person who likes to be really practical about whatever I'm dealing with in my life. We did an episode the other day on car safety, and I was like, oh, every time I drive over a bridge, I have that intrusive thought of if I'm gonna, you know, end up in the water, and what would I do? And then what would be the next step? So I was like, can we do an episode on this? Can we just find out what actually I'm supp to do that'll make me feel better? So there's that, and then there's, like, when people tell me their problems, I want to try to help them and give them, like, specific, practical advice that's not always wanted in real life. But I find that when you do, like, at Life Kit, people are seeking it. So it's a good outlet for that impulse of mine that where I want to try to fix people's problems.
- [06:08]
Dan Harris
My friend Gretchen Rubin calls herself a happiness bully. She can pull it off, but most of us can. Most people don't want unsolicited advice, but if you're hosting a show and people are clicking on it, then it's very much solicited. All right, so this conversation is part of a series that we do on our show about how to get fit sanely. And I know that overlaps with so many of the themes that you cover on Life Kit. So we're going to talk about your top 10 takeaways, like, stuff that you personally are using from all of the things you've learned about various aspects of fitness, including exercise and sleep and even play, which I think is an undervalued part of fitness and mental health generally. Yeah. So if you're cool, I thought we'd start with exercise.
- [06:56]
Marielle Segarra
I'm cool.
- [06:57]
Dan Harris
And I'll chime in throughout with, like, stuff I've learned in my. In my own life. But your number one takeaway after having covered exercise for a while is to incorporate small pockets of exercise throughout the day.
- [07:08]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah.
- [07:09]
Dan Harris
Like, what does that look like?
- [07:10]
Marielle Segarra
For me, sometimes it looks like doing calf raises when I brush my teeth. A lot of it happens when I'm watching tv. I recently binged severance, went back to rewatch season one and then watched season two. And I do a lot of. Because I've been to physical therapy over the last year or so for some stuff, and I do a lot of the exercises they give me during that. Even stuff like you're sitting on the floor, it's a shoulder stretch. It's like, I'm sitting back against my couch and just kind of stretching my arms out like that. It's a simple thing. Also, like lunges, squats, anything like that that's stationary. Or I have an exercise bike that faces the tv. So these are all very helpful. But you could also do it, like, if you have kids and you're waiting in the pickup line to get your kids, you could take that moment and pair it with movement, right? Like, if you're parked and it's. Everybody's just waiting, you get out of the car and you do a couple squats, or, you know, you reach up and move your body in a different way than you've been moving it all day. The reason for that is, like, you want to pair movement with some activity that you're already doing routinely, because that'll help you remember to do it. And it's time that's already accounted for. Like, we brush our teeth every day, you know, ideally. And so if you do that, or you do it when you're taking your pills, or you do it when you're making your smoothie, then you find a way to work it in. And you don't have as many excuses like, I just can't make time for a whole hour to go to the gym.
- [08:46]
Dan Harris
Is the idea there that you'll start seeing benefits and then want to go to the gym, or is this just as good as going to the gym?
- [08:55]
Marielle Segarra
It's not necessarily the former. It's. You can still get a lot of benefits from breaking up movement into these exercise snacks is what some people call them throughout the day. You can still get the benefits, for instance, of strength training or cardio. As long as you're getting your heart rate up to. For cardio to like the target zone, which you can achieve even by walking, it's okay to break it up. You don't have to do it all at once. So you don't have to have the gym that you go to unless you like that, which I do not. I find them. I find gyms depressing a lot of the time. Unless it's the rock climbing gym, because then it's like a fun little puzzle for me to. To do. And it's like a competing against yourself. But the lighting in gyms, usually the smell, all the clanking of weights and things like, I hate it, I won't go.
- [09:50]
Dan Harris
I'm sure for many people who feel the same way you do, either because they hate gyms or because they can't find the time to go to know that you can just weave it into your Life as it is is liberating.
- [10:04]
Marielle Segarra
It is. I think it's a relief for a lot of people that they don't have to work out in the way that they were told they have to work out. And that also exercise can be fun, and you can find the way that works for you. At this moment, you might be really into biking around your neighborhood or something, or biking on the road right now. And then you decide, meh, not so much anymore. Now I want to start jogging or start swimming or something. And, like, it's also okay to just change it up as you get bored of one thing or what suits your needs. Like, I like to. Lately, as. Especially as the weather has gotten nicer, I'm like, oh, let me start biking again to get places in Brooklyn. Then I don't have to take the subway. And I also get some exercise in.
- [10:53]
Dan Harris
I've been doing that with walking, taking meetings. You know, if I've got a meeting that would have otherwise been a zoom, but I can make it a phone call. I can just walk through my neighborhood, or instead of taking a cab to actually, like, just carve out a little extra time and walk to a place. I found that to be really helpful.
- [11:09]
Marielle Segarra
I think if you take meetings when you're walking too, like, it can also. It can foster creativity. It can help you come up with better ideas. I have definitely felt 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.
- [11:45]
Dan Harris
There's an evolutionary case for this. I'm not an expert in this. I'm repeating things I've heard from experts. But, yeah, we evolved to think while moving through nature. And that makes a ton of sense because we were hunting and gathering, migrating, lots of things on the go. And so deep in our molecules, there is a good reason why taking a walk can not only be good for your physical fitness, but also for your creativity and larger mental health.
- [12:14]
Marielle Segarra
I love that. Yeah. 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, or. I was on the beach in Puerto Rico last week, and I just watched a little crab dig a hole for 20 minutes. He had his little claw, and he would go and scoop up the sand and then come out of the hole, dump the sand, come back in. He had these, like, really cute eyes, you know, like a cartoon character. As I got closer to him, he got a little more wary of me. Like, is this girl gonna eat me? And I was like, no, no, no, it's okay. I just wanna take a picture. So he started dumping the sand, like, real quick and then running back in. I loved it. Like, it was one of the best moments of my trip, just sitting there and watching this crab do his thing over and over. And then I was also like, oh, there's metaphor here for my own life. Which is something we learned when we did the forest bathing episode. 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 going to help me think about the next chapter of my book or whatever, or, this is going to 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.
- [14:25]
Dan Harris
I love that. And my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, often says that meditation actually can be a good way to problem solve, but not in an obvious way. You're not supposed to sit down and think about the problem, because that's normally what we do. Instead, you can seed your mind with the problem and then go into a mindful state where you're just watching your breath or noticing whatever's coming up in your body and mind. And then when you get distracted, you start again and again.
- [14:55]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah.
- [14:55]
Dan Harris
And when you let the unconscious mind go to work in this way, connections that you might not have been able to make with your everyday discursive Mind can get made. You know, this is why we get ideas in the shower. So, yeah, I see a lot of resonance there.
- [15:12]
Marielle Segarra
You can work with your dream self, your sleeping self, to do the same thing. We did an episode about dreaming, and we interviewed a researcher at Harvard about this. And she has studied dreaming for a long time. And she would have her students, basically, there was some problem they were working through with a project, and they would. I think it was that they would think about it right before bed or they would ask. It was, like, one question they would ask themselves, not, like, poring over it before bed. But I believe it was like they would ask themselves, okay, how might I approach this? Or, like, what should I do about X? Or whatever, right before bed? And in a lot of cases, they would end up eventually dreaming about it and coming to some sort of solution that might show up in the form of a metaphor or, like, image, visual imagery. Our sleeping minds are really good at that, and they're kind of amazing. Like, if you dream, if you remember your dreams. I'm sometimes like, wow, my brain is so creative, the way it's showing me this problem in my life, but just in a different way through a movie, that it's creating this vivid movie, and it's showing me that, oh, what I'm feeling about this thing is guilt. I had a dream once. I remember that, okay, I dreamt that I was like. I had drawn tic tac toe boards on a public wall. For some reason, I was, like, bored, waiting in a train station or something. And then I got arrested, and I was gonna be sent to prison for, like, 10 years. And I had drawn this in pencil, you know, like, it was not a high crime, but I was in the courtroom, and it was like, you need to, like, apologize for what you've done. And they were like, talking about how I was so unrepent. And I was like, oh, like, I woke up. I was like, I'm gonna be sentenced. But I didn't even know what I'd done wrong. And I woke up and I was like, oh, the guilt is heavy. Like, what am I feeling guilty about? And I realized it was someone that I was seeing at the time who kind of used guilt as a manipulative tactic. But I didn't really recognize this about him consciously. It was like a new person I was seeing. But then after I had that dream, I was like, oh, this is the state that I'm living in. Like, I'm feeling guil all the time. I don't like this. I don't want to see this person anymore.
- [17:30]
Dan Harris
Hoping my wife doesn't have inconvenient dreams for me anytime soon.
- [17:35]
Marielle Segarra
I mean, I do think your dreams can help you work through whatever. It doesn't mean you have to end relationships, but it can help you understand something that you're dealing with day to day that you're like, ooh, what does that, what does that symbol represent to me? There's a lion in your dream. Okay, what do lions mean to me? What does that represent? And what were they doing in the dream? That's what we talked about to that researcher about.
- [17:59]
Dan Harris
I love we've gone a little bit far afield, but in a great way. I'm going to bring us back, but not with any kind of feelings about it. Just to number two in your list of three exercise tips that you as the host of Life Kit, have actually incorporated into your own life. And number two is bundling your temptations with your exercise. Sometimes researchers call this temptation bundling, but say more if you will.
- [18:27]
Marielle Segarra
This is sort of what I was talking about before with the workout while you're watching tv. TV is a good example because a lot of us have shows that we really like and they might come in bite size chunks. So I really love the show Abbott Elementary. I think it's like half an hour, maybe a little less, without ads. You could save that and only watch it when you're working out. So I could say I'm gonna just only watch Abbott elementary when I'm on my exercise bike. And then that's like 20 something minutes on the bike. I imagine this is sort of like a Pavlovian response, right? You're telling yourself, I'm gonna get a treat when I do this other thing that's also good for me. And that's an idea that Katie Milkman at Wharton, she's a behavioral scientist. She shared with us this idea of temptation bundling. You know, the idea is like you will start craving trips to the gym or you'll start craving about on the exercise bike if you know that it's paired with, for instance, your favorite show.
- [19:34]
Dan Harris
Yeah, Katie's amazing. She's been on this show. I'll drop a link to that in the show notes and also a link to your conversation with her as well. So temptation bundling, a lot of evidence behind that. And the third tip that you've incorporated into your own life I think is maybe based on my understanding of the science of behavior change among, if not the most powerful, and that is finding and exercise accountability. Buddy or buddies Plural.
- [19:59]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah. People have been doing this forever. You know, my mom and our neighbor would go for walks around the neighborhood. And it's basically like when you say to a friend, the simple version is, we both wanna start walking around, we both wanna be more active. Let's meet up once a week, let's meet up every morning, whatever the cadence is. And because you know that this other person is relying on you, you're less likely to flake on it than you would be to flake on yourself. A lot of us are people pleasers, so we need that impetus to please another person to actually meet our own goals, or in this case, health goals. There are lots of ways of doing this. You don't necessarily have to do it with just one person and do exactly the same thing. I like the idea of parallel play in a way, but like doing slightly different things. You know, you can be. You could be on your exercise bike while your friend is doing yoga, you know, in the same living room. Or you could both do your own exercise and then just say, we're gonna meet up for a coffee after and this will be like before work or something that works for you. I would never do that because I'm not a morning person. So I might be like a post work kind of situation. But it can work really well for exercise. It also works for other pursuits, like creative pursuits. And we can get into that. I know that that's an area of interest too, just like pursuing fun and joy and play. I went to a woodworking group last night where we meet up once a month. We make wooden spoons. I say we. I'm new to this, my second time, but I really liked it. And I was working away on my spoon and it's that idea of like, I'm not gonna work on the spoon the rest of the month. I'm just gonna go for a couple hours and we're gonna do the spoons together, you know?
- [21:52]
Dan Harris
Is there anything more Brooklyn than that?
- [21:55]
Marielle Segarra
No. Probably a lot of what I say is gonna sound very, very Brooklyn. Yeah. And then we have a drum circle. No. It is kind of great though. Like people, people are really nice and like, I feel like you meet like minded folks and someone will stop you if you're using the. The knife the wrong way. Someone will be like, no, no, no, don't do that. You're gonna cut your finger off. It's not a class, but it's a community, which I love. And the goal is not like, oh, I need to make this many spoons, you know, it's not anybody's job. It's more just like I want to learn this skill. I want to work with my hands. I think that feels good. It again, gets me thinking in a different way.
- [22:39]
Dan Harris
Yeah, no, I buy it. I'm smiling just because I used to have a colleague back when I had a meditation app. My colleague Eva once unironically told me that she was in an artisanal yogurt listserv. And I was like, there is nothing more.
- [22:53]
Marielle Segarra
Okay, that is super. That is over the top. Well, maybe the spoon. The Spoon Making club is also kind of ridiculous.
- [23:00]
Dan Harris
It's, you know, I don't know. Maybe it's a notch below the artisanal yogurt.
- [23:05]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah.
- [23:06]
Dan Harris
Having said that, though, there's something deep here around. The power not only of having accountability buddies while you're doing exercise, but just to connecting to other humans, you know, in pretty much any context, as long as it's voluntary, is incredibly powerful. I don't have trouble getting to the gym. I actually like it. I'm a bit of a mutant in that way. And I have been recently doing some group workouts on the weekends. And it's so much more fun to do it with other people. It's the same vibe where my form is often bad. And so, like, the other people in the room are helping me with my form. And so that's really helpful.
- [23:45]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah.
- [23:50]
Dan Harris
Foreign. Let's talk about another area of fitness that I think, you know, often when we talk about fitness, people go right to exercise or food. But sleep, I've often referred to as the apex predator of healthy habits. Like, nothing can happen if you're not sleeping. You very kindly let me know in advance about the three sleep tips that you've heard about in the course of hosting your show that you've actually incorporated into your own life. And one of them is, and I'd be curious to hear you explain this, find your sleep sweet spot in 15 minute increments. What does that mean?
- [24:25]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah, sleep sweet spot is very hard to say. I'm impressed that you got that out.
- [24:29]
Dan Harris
30 years of being an anchorman.
- [24:31]
Marielle Segarra
So this was. We talked to Rebecca Robbins. She's a sleep scientist at Brigham and Women's Hospital. And she was saying, basically, you want to get seven to nine hours of sleep in a night. That is the ideal range. A lot of people will say that they can do with less, but often they're taking naps throughout the day or they're reaching for a lot of coffee or they're drinking 24 hour energy from those little bottles that would probably give me heart palpitations, but I know some people rely on them. And so are you on the seven hour part of the range? Are you in the nine hour part of the range? It's possible you fall outside of the range also, but you can sort of figure that out. Figure out your personal sleep needs in 15 minute increments. Like, work your way back and be like, okay, do I feel more well rested if I try basically sleeping for 15 minutes earlier than you normally go to sleep. So like 15 minutes earlier than normal, you start doing all of the sleep hygiene stuff that we talk about, which is like, put your phone away, ideally, stop watching tv, especially stop watching it on a laptop. Start turning the lights off the same as you would for a baby when you're trying to teach them to go to sleep. And this is your routine, you gotta do it for yourself too. Maybe part of your sleep routine is you take a bath or whatever it is that cues you reading your little book in bed, dim lighting. You start that routine 15 minutes earlier and then you just keep inching it back. And you're looking for whether you're able to wake up and feel refreshed and have enough energy throughout the day and not really be like, have to reach for the coffee and the energy drinks. You can do that over the course of time. Because often we know too, if you try to be like, you know what, I'm gonna go to bed earlier. I'm gonna be so much better about this. You do it one day because you try to do it all at once. You're like, I'm gonna sleep 10 hours tonight, and then it doesn't happen again. You gotta do it in small bits.
- [26:36]
Dan Harris
First of all, my dad worked at Brigham and Women's for about 30 years as the head of radiation oncology. So I'm quite familiar with Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
- [26:44]
Marielle Segarra
It's an intense job. Radiation oncology.
- [26:48]
Dan Harris
Yes, it was. So this idea of going to bed early or earlier is a thorny one and actually connects to another of your takeaways. And it's really something I see in my own life too. There's this concept, this is one of my favorite terms. Revenge nighttime procrastination or revenge bedtime procrastination. Just last night, in fact, I got home from dinner, I went out to dinner with some friends, and I got home at 10. I have learned recently, actually that 10 is actually the right time for me to start my sleep routine.
- [27:24]
Marielle Segarra
You get in your footy pajamas and.
- [27:26]
Dan Harris
Your exactly at my footy pajamas and my chamomile tea? No, actually, my bedtime routine is walking meditation.
- [27:34]
Marielle Segarra
Okay.
- [27:35]
Dan Harris
Because my big sleep obstacle really is, like, a restlessness. And so if I can do, like, a amble around the house for 10, 15, sometimes 20 minutes before bed while I'm, you know, trying to be mindful, it really gets my body ready to go to sleep. And then I read a little bit, but I found that if I push it too late, it screws me up. And so last night, that's exactly what I did. I pushed it too late, and I had trouble sleeping. And this, I think, is a very common issue, and it's on your list of things you've learned. So what have you learned about revenge, nighttime procrastination and how to deal with it?
- [28:14]
Marielle Segarra
Well, okay, I'm wondering, what did you do when you got home? What did you want to do?
- [28:20]
Dan Harris
Oh, I watch tv.
- [28:21]
Marielle Segarra
You watch tv. Okay. So I think revenge bedtime procrastination is really about. You go all day, you're maybe being very productive. Whatever it is, you have to, like, you go to work, you get this done, you get your errands done, you drop your kids off at school, and then maybe you socialize, and that's important to you, too. Or you go to the gym, and that's important to you, too. But then you get home and you want some quiet time, or you want some creative time, or you want some time with your partner, and you can't squeeze it all in into one day. And so you're like, but I don't want the productive stuff to be my whole life. Like, my whole day. It can't have my whole day. And so you try to carve out this extra time, and you're like, I can steal from. From sleep me. Because that's really what it is. You're like stealing from your sleeping self, and you're stealing from yourself tomorrow. But you're sort of like, I need to do this right now. And sometimes it can be bad if you're like, you can get into a pit because you're like, I want to feel creative or something. But you don't have a creative project you're really working on, so instead you go online, and you start online browsing and shopping, and that's like fake creativity. It's just giving you a little bit of, like, a buzz. It's giving you a feeling that you're doing the thing that you seek, but you actually are not. And you might end up just buying something. Then you look up and it's midnight or it's 12:30 or something like that, 1:00am and so that's also really common among people who have high stress jobs. And they're like, I need that break. If you are going to do those things, like, if you do want to stay up and be browsing or whatever, you should not do it in bed. You should make your bedroom a space that you can actually relax. A space that's just for sleeping. And I would say, like, to be reasonable, also for sex. I mean, that's what most people do in their beds and that's like a healthy thing. But those two things and not online shopping, not working, not watching TV can help you a lot. And if you are up and you're like thinking about something, you're stressing about something, she says, get out of bed and just deal with it or write a note to yourself or whatever, and then get back into bed and try to sleep.
- [30:44]
Dan Harris
Yeah. We've had experts on the show talk about this, and it seems like it just comes down to teaching your brain that the bed is a place to sleep.
- [30:53]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah.
- [30:53]
Dan Harris
And if you're teaching it that, it's for anything else. I was having a conversation the other day with a therapist for my own stuff. I've been suffering with claustrophobia. And she, in the process of the conversation, said, our brains are really dumb and it will panic even though you rationally know there's nothing to fear. And the same, I think, applies to a certain extent with sleep. If you're training the brain that, oh, yeah, this is a place where I shop on my laptop, then you're in a state that's not congenial necessarily to sleep.
- [31:24]
Marielle Segarra
Have you talked about the claustrophobia thing on the show?
- [31:28]
Dan Harris
Yes, I have. Although I'm in a whole new realm because I've been dealing with this for about three years now. And I'm now kicking it up a notch and getting serious about it because my family is getting very tired of me needing to take Klonopin to get on a plane because it makes me annoying in the moment and grumpy later when I'm hungover.
- [31:51]
Marielle Segarra
I've had some experiences with claustrophobia, too, so I'd be curious to listen to any episodes that are specific to it. It's a not uncommon phobia for me. It's like I got locked in bathrooms a couple times, and so now I'm like, public bathrooms. I'm, like, terrified to lock the door unless it's a lock mechanism that I can like. Yes, see and you know know that.
- [32:16]
Dan Harris
Yes, I completely relate to that.
- [32:18]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah. Nightmare fuel. But I know what you mean. That's what I was gonna say. Like, I know what you're talking about where your brain is like, okay, but I'm fine. Someone is going to come, and eventually, and they will be able to get the door open. But I'm like, I'm gonna die in here. It just. Your brain goes to, like, a million, you know. Yeah, I get it.
- [32:41]
Dan Harris
Yeah. So the dumb brain of ours, it's an amazing. It's not dumb, but in this way, it can be kind of dumb. And it needs to be trained, like, in a very kind of obvious ways. And so if you're teaching it that the bed is a place to get activated or acquisitive or inquisitive or productive, for many of us, it will make sleep harder.
- [33:00]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah. Another thing, by the way, that we learned was that it's very important to keep your bedroom at a cool temperature. I like to sleep a little more on the warm side, but Robbins was telling me, you know, you want to make sure it's under 70 degrees, ideally, even in the winter, when you're trying to be all cozy, you know, under your sheets, because they have done studies on this, and they have data to show that when they increase the temperature from that, people's sleepers more fragmented. So they were tossing and turning more. They were more disrupted. They were having more nightmares. So that's another thing we can do to set ourselves up to be successful is like, keep it cool in your bedroom.
- [33:49]
Dan Harris
That was the third. Just a flag for folks. That was the third tip for sleep that you've found to be helpful in your own life. Keeping it cool in the room. I was interested to hear that you're a warm sleeper because I use air conditioning in the winter to keep the room cold. I have a lot of trouble sleeping, unless the room is pretty frigid.
- [34:09]
Marielle Segarra
I mean, I will say this has been a roller coaster over the past year because I did treatment for breast cancer, and I had went through chemo and had hot flashes. Like, really terrible hot flashes. So I dealt with that for a long time, and that's shifted now. So then I was all about the air conditioner in the winter, but I was like, this is no problem for me. I don't even need the heat on. But my base level. Yeah, I feel like my little. Like, my hands and feet get cold, and I just want to be tucked up.
- [34:39]
Dan Harris
Now. I understand why you reacted the way you did to my saying the thing about my dad being a radiation oncologist. He was actually a specialist in breast cancer before he retired. So I'm sorry to hear that you went through that. Are you doing all right now?
- [34:52]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah, I am doing as well as I possibly could be. So my scans have been clear, basically, since surgery, but they did all the other things as a. Just in case, you know, that's how complicated it is with cancer. It's like they don't know for sure that, like, a little bit of it didn't get out. A little micrometastases could be somewhere in your body. That's why I had to do chemo, and that's why they do radiation. But I get checked regularly. It's hard to know what to say because people who haven't gone through cancer or, like, haven't maybe had a family member go through it, they ask, oh, are you in remission or are you cancer free? And it's like, a little hard to answer those questions, like, as far as I know. But I feel good. I feel healthy. It's just one of those things that is gonna be with you. It's just gonna be a thing that you have to be careful about and check on. And I was already interested in living a healthy life, but now I also know what a big role these kinds of practices play in preventing a recurrence of breast cancer. Specifically, because breast cancer is hormone mediated, and so sleep plays a big role. What you eat plays a big role. And also exercise does. There have been studies that show it can decrease the risk of a recurrence significantly if people, women, exercise regularly, get the recommended amount that the government recommends every week. And so seeing those numbers, I was like, okay, I really need to be consistent about this. This is gonna help me maybe as much as taking this pill is helping me, you know?
- [36:46]
Dan Harris
Yeah. Motivation to get even more serious about the things we've been talking about. But also perhaps even an enhanced and broadened perspective on the whole business of being alive.
- [36:57]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah, I definitely don't take it for granted. I never did, to be honest. I lost a few family members when I was pretty young. An aunt and an uncle who both died young. My uncle was, I think he was, like, 52, died from a heart attack. And my aunt, my Thea, she died from colon cancer in her 50s. And I was, like, under 10 years old, very close to both of them. So I think I always had this idea that that can happen, you know, when you're pretty young. And I've always lived in a way that's very like, seize the day kind of, nothing is promised. And I was always pretty careful. That's the thing. Like, a lot of people who get cancer young are like, wait, I did all the right things. I thought I was doing all the right things. And then you realize there are more things you could do, and there's more, like, ways to avoid environmental toxins or try to. But there's this feeling of like, maybe I've realized that you can do all the right things and bad things can still happen. It's not your fault. But also very much. Like, I said this to some friends and family at the time. People were asking me if I was feeling like, why me? Why did this happen to me? And I was like, you know, not really, because it's a little like, why not me? I think it's one in two people get cancer in their lifetimes, and one in eight women get breast cancer. So I was like, well, those aren't great odds. It has to happen to somebody. But if it's, why not me that this could happen, then also, why not me? Why can't I have amazing experiences after I'm done with treatment? I just want to have, like, a beautiful, brilliant life. I want to still be able to have a kid. I want to, you know, like, find the. The partner who's the right fit for me. I want to have, like, a great community and learn how to carve wooden spoons on Monday nights in Brooklyn. Why not me? You know, flipping that has helped me.
- [39:04]
Dan Harris
I could get you into an artisanal yogurt listserv if you want.
- [39:08]
Marielle Segarra
You know, I'm lactose intolerant, so I can't take you up on that.
- [39:12]
Dan Harris
I'm sure they have vegan variants, knowing this crew. Okay, I'm curious because when we went to. My team, went to you and said, hey, we'd love to have you on talk about fitness. What have you learned? You came back with three things that have really hit home for you on the exercise front, and three things that have really hit home for you on the sleep front. And then instead of talking about diet or something sort of obvious on the nose when it comes to fitness, you wanted to talk about play. Why play? And how does that link to fitness in your view?
- [39:49]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah, we've done some episodes on this, and they confirmed what I think I felt intuitively, which is that play is a basic human need. We interviewed someone named Stuart Brown, who's been studying play for his entire career, and he talks about, first of all, that, like, humans aren't the only Animals that play. Lots of animals do it. Bears, leopards, bison, ravens, dolphins. From an evolutionary perspective, it might not seem to make sense at first, like, because it could often it could be risky, it could be costly, like, why do we do this thing? But animal play scholars and biologists argue that it actually serves an important role. It can help us adapt to difficult circumstances. It can help us practice skills we need to survive and help us problem solve and collaborate. And there are studies on this, mostly there are some in animals. And I think it might be a little harder to study play in adult humans and see the outcomes. But just based on the data that they have, they believe that play plays a really important role in our lives. And then I think we can also feel this when we do it, and we just, like, kind of intuitively see the benefits of it. So play, I think, can be lots of different things, though it's not necessarily like, let's go fly a kite or games that hopscotch or things that you did as a kid on the playground, though, if you're into that, cool. But for me, a lot of it, a lot of it is about creativity. A lot of it is about storytelling. I find my play through fashion, through nature. Like I was saying, I like to watch and watch the little hermit crab building digging a hole. And I find that playful, almost like talking to the hermit crab. That's an element of play. Or even sometimes you can be playful with yourself. You're in the kitchen and you do something stupid. I have this, like, water filter that takes a long time. It's a reverse osmosis filter. It takes a long time to, like, fill up my jug of water, so I'll just, like, leave it going. And then on the countertop as the thing is filtering, and I forgot about it. Every other time I forget and it starts flooding. Like, it starts flooding the countertop and then onto the floor. And I'm like, oh, my God, like, you did it again. Instead of being like, oh, like, I'm so stupid, like, sometimes I'm just kind of laughing at myself, like I'm my own bad roommate. You know, you can just sort of be like, ah, you goon, and sort of, like, have a moment of play with yourself, you know? Or you could do it with a little bird that lands on your windowsill. You find these moments throughout your day, just like we talked about with exercise snacks.
- [42:41]
Dan Harris
Yeah. It's not just a practice. It's an orientation to life. I like that.
- [42:45]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah.
- [42:46]
Dan Harris
One of the things you mentioned in the little memo your team sent me about takeaways that have been important to you vis a vis play. One of the things that you talk about is that for many of us, like, we don't even know where to start. We hear that play is good for us, and then we look at our lives and we're like, yeah, well, I haven't thought about this in a long time. I don't see how to fit it in, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the experts on your show advised that if you want to get a sense of, like, what your playstyle is cast back, to interpolate back to your childhood and what were the things you enjoyed doing then? Can you say more about that?
- [43:24]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah. So one of our experts, he was saying, what were your favorite ways to play as a kid? Were you super into Legos or erector sets? You know, did you like finger painting? Did you like make believe or catching fireflies or seeing how far you could catapult yourself off of the swing set? I really liked playing with Barbies and telling stories with them and dressing them up and little dramas and love triangles and things. We added onto that with what we learned from Stuart. Stuart Brown worked as a psychiatrist for many years, and he would ask patients about their early experiences with play. He and his colleagues would review the notes, and they noticed certain types, and they came up with basically a list of play personalities. I think there are eight of them. You can be more than one of these, but maybe, you know, you see kind of where your clusters are. You might be the joker who loves to laugh and make other people laugh. Practical jokes, physical comedy, wordplay, like, could be a lot of things. You might be the artist, creator, which resonates for me. You might be the kinesthete who finds joy in movement. So, like, swimming, running, stretching, whatever it is, archery. There's the director who loves to call the shots and to plan parties, stuff like that. There's the storyteller, which also resonates with me, maybe, obviously. And for a lot of journalists, you could refer to his list, Stuart Brown's list, to see which of those personalities resonate for you. Or maybe you'll come up with a category of your own.
- [45:01]
Dan Harris
Coming up, Marielle talks about how to assess how much play you're getting in your daily life and how to get more. I'm curious, like, when I was preparing for this interview and I was thinking about, you know, how much play do I have in my life? I mean, I do play the drums, but not as much as I would. Like. I do exercise a lot but doesn't feel super playful unless I'm doing it with other people. Then I was thinking about socializing. I really like to see my friends and I. So several nights a week, I probably could do it every night, honestly. We'll go to dinner with friends. I really, really like that. And so I'm like, I did last night. I'm doing it again tonight. That seems to incorporate both storytelling and joking for me, in my experience. But I don't know. Does that make sense to you?
- [45:48]
Marielle Segarra
I think your dinners could be playful or they could not be, depending on what's going on at them. I think we've all been to dinners that feel more like a funeral. And then we've been to dinners that feel super playful and have those elements. So if it's good vibes, if you can joke around with your friends and lean into that. I went to a dinner party recently and we did Esther Perel's game. I think it's called Where Should We Begin? And it has the prompts on it. And that led to some really playful conversations. Some people like to get together with their friends and literally play games, like board games and things, which I do not like. I don't need to learn new rules to anything ever again.
- [46:29]
Dan Harris
I don't like it either.
- [46:30]
Marielle Segarra
I'm like, I am going to want to do this really well. And you've been practicing this because you own this game. You've been practicing this thing at your house for years with every person who comes through. And there's no chance I'm ever gonna win. So we're not playing this. Maybe we could play Candyland, but we're not playing like a strategy game. You learn what you like and what you don't like. You learn what feels like play to you. And it's gonna be different for every person. And yes, you can go back to childhood and think about what felt like play then. Cause sometimes that's like a more pure vision of ourselves. Or it's like when we had less maybe distracting us and we just kind of gravitated towards what we liked. I'm curious for you as a kid, like, what were your favorite forms of play?
- [47:14]
Dan Harris
Music. My parents were really into what we would now call classic rock. Although at that time, I don't think they called it classic rock. So just current rock. Them, you know, the Beatles, the Stones, Greens Clearwater. I was born in 1971, the band. So that definitely scaled up to me learning the drums as a kid. And still, you know, my son, who's 10, plays the drums. And so there's that. Definitely joking around. It's a huge part of my life, storytelling. I keyed in on the thing you mentioned before about like being on the swing and then jumping off. I don't do enough of this. But there's something about that we feeling.
- [47:51]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah.
- [47:51]
Dan Harris
That biking, skiing, rollerblading, skateboarding all have that to them. And I can see it a little bit. Yeah. I was on a beach vacation with my son recently and we were boogie boarding. That sensation is, I think, really powerful.
- [48:07]
Marielle Segarra
I love that. So this is reminding me. As I was thinking about this this morning, I remembered a C.S. lewis quote that I wrote out and had taped on my bedroom wall when I was in high school. And it gets at this and I wanted to read some of it to you. So he says, you may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes them, though you cannot put it into words. But most of your friends don't see it at all and often wonder why. Liking this, you should also like that. And I'm fast forwarding here. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction of something not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap, clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling, faint and uncertain, even in the best of that something which you were born desiring and which beneath the flux of other desires and in the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching, for, listening for.
- [49:24]
Dan Harris
I like that a lot. Yeah. And I think for me it would be something around humor.
- [49:29]
Marielle Segarra
Humor and the we. I love the we thing. Like that is a common.
- [49:33]
Dan Harris
Yeah, the we thing.
- [49:34]
Marielle Segarra
That's a common thread. And you can think about what else might get you there. Is it a physical thing, like roller coasters? You know, do you like that feeling of physically being suspended sort of in the air? Or is there like a mental thing that. It's like. It's a loss of control, but like a controlled loss of control.
- [49:58]
Dan Harris
Yeah. These are really interesting things to think about. Let's just close on this. This is another tip for play. And this comes from Catherine Price, who has been on this show and is a friend of mine and wrote a book about Play and gave a great TED Talk on. On the subject. And she Catherine has this acronym that stuck out to you. Spark, S, P, A, R, K. Can you walk us through it and why it stuck in your mind?
- [50:25]
Marielle Segarra
This is from an episode that was reported by Julia Furlan. She's a journalist here in New York. And I really liked this bit of it because I don't know acronyms, they just. They help you remember stuff, you know? So I love an acronym, the S. So it's spark. The S is make space in your life for fun. It's like we fill up our lives with all kinds of things, and some of them aren't actually nurturing us. For me, that's. Social media is often not nurturing me, and it's taking too much of my time. A lot of the things that go on in my phone, online shopping, and just even activities that feel obligatory but actually aren't the people that you don't really vibe with that much, but, like, you keep going to that meetup or you keep hanging out and you're like, actually don't have to do this. I don't have to invest in this connection. I can say no to that. To leave space for other things to grow. I think that's really important and not always rush in to fill the space, like, let it, let it happen. P is for pursuing your passions. So again, what is that look for that common thread that we were talking about, the smell of cut wood in the workshop that we feeling when you're jumping off the swings? Those things that for some reason it resonates for you in here, the things you're really passionate about. And you don't have to try to become expert level at them necessarily. Like, you're just doing them for the joy of doing them and maintaining that passion. You don't have to monetize them either. The A is attract, for attracting, attracting fun. And that's really about developing an attitude that's open to it. And again, I think it's that playful mindset. I try to live in that playful mindset. And one that's very like, I meet new people, I ask them what they've got going on in their lives. I make connections. I went like, I'm trying to learn the drums, but a different kind of drumming. I love bomba music in Puerto Rico. My dad is Puerto Rican. So I just went and saw like a group of female bomba drummers. And I say that because traditionally it's the men who play and the women dance. But yeah, so it was all women playing the drums. And I got the number from a guy there of his daughter who lives in New York and teaches. So it's like whatever it is about percussion, I'm really feeling it. It feels right to me. It aligns with some other things that I like. And when I show up in that space, I had an open attitude. I talked to this woman who was dancing. Cause I thought she was beautiful and I thought her dance was like, really incredible. And then she introduced me to this guy who had the daughter who teaches the drums. So you gotta come at it with like not knowing exactly why you're saying hello to this person or. Or whatever. You just like it. You like what you see, you like what you saw them do. You're curious about them. And then r in the spark is for a little gentle rebellion. So like, it's doing something that might feel kind of rebellious. Like you'd get in trouble for it if you were in high school. So going roller skating in the middle of the night or jumping into the pool with your clothes on or something like that. I know our sleep is very important to us, but like, we could spare one night for some shenanigans. Some who shenanigans. And then the k is about keeping at it and just like, I guess it's like, it's not a job. We don't want to make it into a job. But having fun is something that you should consider a basic human need and work it into your day to day life.
- [54:04]
Dan Harris
Just to pick up on the K play. You don't want to make it into another thing on your to do list, but you also don't want your whole life to be your to do list.
- [54:15]
Marielle Segarra
Right.
- [54:15]
Dan Harris
And so that's the balance.
- [54:17]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah, totally. I try to leave space now too, Especially when I travel to not really program it, to just be like, yep, I know I'm going to this place, I'm gonna stay in this one space and I'm gonna bop around. I'm gonna go to the beach this day, I'm gonna go to the beach that day. I don't wanna have another list of things to do. And it. It lets me. It lets me follow the breadcrumbs a little bit.
- [54:43]
Dan Harris
Yeah. Yes. Marielle, it was a huge pleasure to get some time with you.
- [54:48]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah.
- [54:49]
Dan Harris
Just before I let you go, can you remind everybody of the name of your show and where we can find it, how often it comes out, the types of things you cover. Just.
- [54:59]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah.
- [54:59]
Dan Harris
I know this makes some people uncomfortable, but plug away, please.
- [55:03]
Marielle Segarra
Okay. Let me do it. Yeah. So the show is called Life Kit. It's from npr, we're a service journalism show, which means we talk to experts and then give you research backed advice. We do a lot of different kinds of stories on health and money and life skills. So some of my favorite episodes are the ones that could potentially save a life. The ones about breast cancer screening or how to do CPR or, or how to prevent kids from drowning. Like the things you can do ahead of time to make it safer. The money stuff we love saving people money. How to negotiate down a medical bill, for instance was a really helpful one, I think. And then we do stuff on life skills like relationships. We're about to do one on how to ask people out in real life because everybody's tired of these dating apps, fun stuff like that, or even like how to make a turkey for Thanksgiving, things that people can take home and use that day. You can find us across platforms. So the podcast you can hear wherever you get your podcast. Or as Alexi Horowitz Ghazi said yesterday, wherever the pods are cast. I thought that was cute. He's the one of the hosts of Planet Money. And then we also have a radio show which you can hear on your local public radio station on the weekends. And we have an Instagram which we post all kinds of lovely videos on. It's NPR LifeKit. And then we have, you can go to npr.org lifekit and we have written up versions of stories, digital versions that have beautiful art alongside them. And I'm Marielle Segarra.
- [56:51]
Dan Harris
Marielle, thank you very much for doing this. Appreciate it.
- [56:53]
Marielle Segarra
Yeah, thanks for having me. This was really fun.
- [56:59]
Dan Harris
Thanks again to Marielle Segada. Awesome to talk to her. I also want to remind you to visit danharris.com for more information on how to get all of the bespoke Get Fit Sanely meditations from carlai in your inbox. As mentioned, we're doing tailored meditations for every episode this month. All of the Get Fit Sanely episodes. And if you're a subscriber over on down danharris.com they come to you in your podcast feed and in your inbox. Finally, just want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
- [57:55]
Commercial Speaker
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- [58:46]
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