Peak Performance at Any Age | Christiane Wolf (Dharma Teacher/Doctor/Ultramarathoner)

Beyond the cliché: listening to your body. Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD https://www.christianewolf.com/ is a former physician and internationally known mindfulness and Insight (Vipassana) meditation teacher. She is the author of "Outsmart Your Pain" and the coauthor of "A Clinician's Guide to Teaching Mindfulness". She is also a senior teacher at InsightLA in Los Angeles. And in her spare time, she runs ultramarathons. In this episode we talk about: How to develop and hone interoception How to do practices like a body scan — and how helpful it can be for all aspects of life How to shift how we relate to our body The four foundations of mindfulness — one of the crucial discourses of the Buddha What a healthy relationship to the body looks like Translating monastic practices to our modern day lives How to reduce stress and suffering in the body Indifference vs equanimity / serenity Helpful questions to ask yourself in cultivating a new relationship with your body The four sources of reluctance or resistance to exercise Discipline vs self-compassion Unpacking the dysfunction among people who overexercise What we can learn from injury Paid subscribers of DanHarris.com will have exclusive access to a set of all-new guided meditations, led by friend of the show Cara Lai https://www.caralai.org/#/, customized to accompany each episode of the Get Fit Sanely series. We're super excited to offer a way to help you put the ideas from the episodes into practice. Learn all about it here. https://www.danharris.com/p/a-month-of-guided-meditationsjust Related Episodes: How To Outsmart Your Pain | Christiane Wolf https://www.danharris.com/p/how-to-outsmart-your-pain-christiane-dce?utm_source=publication-search How To Take Care of Your Body Without Losing Your Mind https://www.danharris.com/p/how-to-take-care-of-your-body-without Get Fit Sanely: the podcast playlist https://www.danharris.com/p/get-fit-sanely-0f2 Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:18Dan Harris?

  Hey, gang. Today, we're going to tackle one of the most venerable and, in the wrong hands, annoying contemplative cliches: listening to your body. There's actually a scientific word for this. And my guest today, who's awesome and is a triple threat, she's a Dharma teacher, a doctor, and an ultra-marathoner, is going to talk about both the benefits of interoception or listening to your body, and how to do it, how to actually operationalize the cliche. I love this conversation. Actually, we cover a lot of ground here. As mentioned, we talk about listening to your body, including some meditation techniques that can help you hone this skill. But we also talk about how to achieve peak performance at any age.

• 1:00Dan Harris?

  She's an ultra-marathoner in her late 50s, which I found incredibly inspiring. We talk about why some people don't exercise, and how those folks can get motivated, how, for those of us who do exercise, it can often come from a place of trauma-based hustling, which rang a bell for me, how to deal with injuries and what you can learn from injuries, discipline versus self-compassion, indifference versus equanimity, how to have a healthy overall relationship to your body, and much more. This is the second appearance on the pod by Dr. Christiana Wolf. She no longer practices medicine, but she has both an MD and a PhD. She now spends most of her time teaching

• 1:41Dan Harris?

  meditation and writing books. She's the author of two books, Outsmart Your Pain, which she came on the show to discuss several years ago, and she's also the co-author of Clinician's Guide to Teaching Mindfulness. And she's a senior teacher at Insight LA in Los Angeles.

• 1:59Dan Harris?

  And as mentioned, in her spare time, she runs ultra marathons, which she will talk about, and I found incredibly cool. This episode, by the way, kicks off a month-long series called Get Fit Sanely, where we talk about how to take care of your body without losing your mind. We've run this series a couple of times on the show, but we're back now with our biggest and most ambitious version yet. One extra cool aspect of this series is that we're now integrating the episodes here on the show in a very deep way with our subscription program over at danharris.com. Specifically, we will be posting guided meditations that accompany each episode. These bespoke meditations are led by friend

• 2:40Dan Harris?

  of the pod and friend of mine and one of my favorite meditation teachers, Cara Lai. Cara is both deeply wise and very funny. For example, in the companion meditation for today's episode, which is a body scan meditation, by the way, she warns you, the listener, if your chakra is open and you have a full body orgasm, not my fault. If you want more of this wisdom wrapped in humor, you can become a subscriber over at danharris.com. We will get started with Dr. Christiana Wolf right after this.

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• 4:14Dan Harris?

  Christiana Wolf.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 4:16Dan Harris?

  Welcome back to the show.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Thank you so much.

• 4:18Dan Harris?

  It's so nice to do this in person.

• 4:19Speaker 03

  It is, isn't it? Yeah. Such a difference.

• 4:21Dan Harris?

  And we actually got to have dinner together last night.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  We did.

• 4:24Dan Harris?

  Yes, it's a long warm-up period. You're like the perfect person for this series that we do occasionally on the show, Get Fit Sanely. It's not entirely Buddhist. It's kind of a Buddhist plus modern psychological approach to holistic fitness. You're interesting because you're a physician and also very into fitness. Am I right that you're an ultramarathoner?

• 4:46Speaker 03

  I am, yes.

• 4:47Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:48Dan Harris?

  So can you just tell me, like, I get why somebody would want to become a doctor, but why? Why do you want to be an ultramarathoner?

• 4:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a really good question. So maybe we just start with an explanation what an ultramarathoner is. So an ultramarathoner is somebody who runs more than a marathon distance. So that's one. And the second is, we run on trails. So we are out in nature and we are running up and down mountains. And that is actually the biggest appeal for me. I got really fed up with road running. It's harder on the body. I don't want to like to be in the city all the time. So actually to be able to get out in nature. And then I love exertion. There's just something that feels very, very satisfying for me to work out and sweat

• 5:40Speaker 03

  and do hard things. Not too hard, but you really...

• 5:45Dan Harris?

  Not too hard. What do you mean? More than a marathon, up and down a mountain?

• 5:49Speaker 03

  So I mean, one thing that people really need to realize is you don't start as an ultramarathoner. When I started running in my late twenties, I literally started walking one minute and running one minute because that was all I could do. And then over time, you just do more. How I got into ultra running was actually during the pandemic. Because that was the only sports that were still available.

• 6:13Dan Harris?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  Right? So getting out and going out on the trails and then having all this time. My husband jokes is like that I used to run away from him and the kids every day. And then I would come back and I just needed to be away for a few hours every day or would go like steer crazy with three teenagers at home. So.

• 6:35Dan Harris?

  I have curiosity. How old are you?

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Fifty six.

• 6:38Dan Harris?

  Fifty six. I mean, that's incredibly impressive that you're running. I mean, it's impressive to run more than a marathon up and down mountains on trails at any age. But fifty six, I say this as a fifty three year old, that's really impressive. And also I find it really encouraging.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  Beautiful. I love that. I actually ran this last Saturday. I ran a fifty mile race.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  People go like one five, like no five zero in the Santa Monica Mountains here. And it was hard and beautiful.

• 7:09Dan Harris?

  You know, I've been making fun of you for this ultra marathoning thing over the last two minutes. But I actually have to say, I feel what I actually feel is envy because I also really like exertion. And I love to run on trails and my body does not love it. I get a lot of knee and hip pain and honestly, if where my head's going is I gotta figure out how I could do that. Yeah. Even even honestly, five, ten miles would be incredible for me.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:34Dan Harris?

  Running on a trail is for me incredibly exhilarating. I love doing it.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. So one thing that people also don't really realize around trail running or ultra marathons is I hike a lot. I'm mid of the pack runner, right? And so people are like on front of the pack. They might run up mountains. I don't. I hike them up. And just that is so you use actually a lot more muscles. So you can go a lot longer instead of if you would run the whole distance like on a flat surface. Yeah. And so I often say like after when I run like so typical shorter ultra marathon distance is fifty K, fifty kilometers, which is thirty two miles. I feel less exhausted after doing that than when I run a rope marathon. And that says a lot.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  And so I'm thinking like for you, so often what happens is that people build too fast. What they say is that the body of like an ultra marathoner is built over many years. And I can really see that. So my body is really different. And it was when I started five years ago, it looks different, it feels different. And it's really something. So I think a lot about longevity and what brings longevity. And of course, there are studies saying like, oh, you can actually run too much. But I don't think that those studies have actually been done with ultra marathoners. So I think there's a way how to we train our bodies and that includes strength training, actually. So I usually try to do like two

• 9:07Speaker 03

  strength training sessions a week so that the whole system is built up. And I think that is often where runners get injured is because they don't do strength training. So the whole system that is supporting the muscles that are running, you don't just need those muscles, but actually your entire body. So you need core strength and you need upper back strength, you need arm strength. And that is often something that's really overlooked.

• 9:32Dan Harris?

  I have a million questions. I'll get to some of them later. Some of them are quite selfish. Just staying on you and your psychological makeup here. You love exertion, that's been established. And you are, and I think this is the way you've described it, fascinated with the human body as a physician.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Totally fascinated with the human body. Yeah. And with endurance and what keeps us healthy. And as I said, with longevity. So I really, my goal is with this, I'm in it for the long run. And so I'm very careful that I don't get injured. And at times I work with a coach. And for me, it's really important to work with a coach who knows the aging body. I'm not 30 anymore. Yeah. And so I can't put effort into my body in a way that I could have done it. I mean, I didn't do it when I was 30. I was running the family raising marathon back then. But there is an art form to that and I feel like not all coaches really know about

• 10:34Speaker 03

  that. So I see some of my friends who are about the same age getting injured and partly it is because their coaches are too ambitious.

• 10:43Dan Harris?

  Hmm.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  That's an interesting thing, right? So how can we keep an aging body fit and at full capacity without overdoing it and getting injured?

• 10:54Dan Harris?

  Injury is a huge issue for me personally because I am quite a dedicated worker outer. I get hurt a lot. I'm hurt right now, actually, and it's a bummer. And I want to hold on that for a second because later in this conversation, we're going to talk about your thoughts, both for people who are not exercising but want to or feel badly about not doing it, and for people who are exercising but like me, maybe have the wrong approach and they're pushing their bodies too hard. I've seen in myself, not so much now, but especially in the past, a kind of mindset issue around exercise where you're, the goal is actually to look a certain way, which is not the, I don't think, it didn't work out well. So

• 11:34Dan Harris?

  I want to hold on that and stay at a high level here around this term interoception, which is our ability to feel the body, to be in touch with our bodies. And I actually think so much about modern life militates against being in touch with your body.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

• 11:52Dan Harris?

  I've heard one Dharma teacher describe us as like Macy's Day parade floats, like all head.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:00Dan Harris?

  Floating through the world with these little strings attaching you to the ground, but we're not in touch with the body. Can you talk a little bit about this?

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, I can talk for days about that. I think our culture, it is this weird thing. On one hand, we're 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, right? So if you look at like stoicism, for example, like emotions are bad, better not to have any or never be guided by emotions. There's like, we have this long tradition of not being embodied.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  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. So we're like often like a really mistrustful relationship to the body.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  And so interoception, and maybe I just say, so the term isn't really well known. People are probably more familiar with the term extrorception. And extrorception is whatever comes in through the senses. What I hear, what I see, what I smell, what I touch, what I taste. Extrorception. And then interoception, and it's, it is such a huge catch-all term because it is all information that comes from the bottom up and communicates with the brain. And that is everything. Yeah, so that is like, the body is trying to be in what we call homeostasis all the time. So it tries to like balance the pH system, your blood pressure, your heart rate. Like it is constantly adapting and adjusting.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  And it does that, thank goodness, most of it like kind of under the radar. Yeah, so we don't have to be aware of it. But then also, the body talks to us. It says like, I'm hungry, or I need to go to the bathroom, or I'm uncomfortable, or my neck is tense, right? So that is also all interoception. And but what the part of interoception that is really that I'm fascinated with is what we call the felt sense. And the felt sense is how we feel in our bodies. Do we feel at home in our bodies? Are we in a constant communication with the body? Yeah. So are we listening and really trusting what the body is communicating with us?

• 15:02Speaker 03

  And I think we can learn so much in that area. And for me, as a Dharma teacher and as a mindfulness teacher, and somebody who works with stress reduction a lot, this is what I do all the time. Yeah, because stress manifests in the body. We're often, if we haven't learned to listen to that, then we're missing signals. And I can't tell you how often I hear people, I also work a lot with people with chronic pain. Right? So then I said, well, your body is might try to communicate with you. And then people said, oh, yeah. And I only started listening once the body was screaming at me. Yeah. Often people will say, oh, when I now look back, the body was already trying to get my attention years before.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  And I didn't listen. I just kept going. I kept adding on more stress. Until one day, the body says, like, you know what? Try to do it without me. Right? And then you're forced to listen. And I think, or I wish that more people could prevent having to go there.

• 16:06Dan Harris?

  Just to put a fine point on it, you've hit some of these, but can we just be very direct about the benefits of developing this skill? We will eventually talk about how to develop the skill of interoception. But based on what you said, one benefit is if you're not listening to your body, that's how you get into burnout, injury, breakdown.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 16:24Dan Harris?

  Another thing is, we have an epidemic of overeating. I'm very pro eating, all kinds of foods. I think that's very healthy and I think it's unhealthy to be obsessed with getting your body into a specific shape. I sometimes think about the term getting in shape. Who decide, who dictates what the shape is?

• 16:42Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 16:43Dan Harris?

  I think we need to be red pilled around that.

• 16:45Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah.

• 16:46Dan Harris?

  Having said that, we, myself included, we sometimes eat for reasons that have nothing to do with

• 16:51Speaker 03

  Often, very often.

• 16:53Dan Harris?

  With the cues from the body. So that's another benefit.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 16:55Dan Harris?

  I just listed two. What am I missing?

• 16:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. So one thing is, so if your body is in discomfort, you want to know that. And there is not always that you want to do something about it or need to do something about it. Right? But so for me, like, I remember, so when I was in my residency, doing my residency as a gynecologist, there was so like, sometimes this is like, we don't have time to go to the bathroom. So you just suppress that urge to go to but I mean like people dying around you, right? So like there is no time to take care of your basic needs or you don't eat. The fact is, you need to go to the bathroom and you need to eat. Otherwise, you can't keep going. Sometimes very basic things or people like are you? Do you know when you're tired? Do you know when you're full with eating?

• 17:42Speaker 03

  Like if we're using that example, right? So that is one area, but the really like the area that I'm so fascinated with is we can feel really at home, at ease and very pleasant in the body. Right? And then, so when we're talking about, so why do so many people have a hard time being in their bodies in a meditation? Why is it so hard to sit still? Not because it feels so nice and calm and at ease. So of course, if I'm crawling out of my skin or I have pain or I can't feel my body at all, then it's really hard to be in the body. But if the body was just a really comfortable home,

• 18:27Speaker 03

  wouldn't you want to be there? And wouldn't you want to be there instead of just being gone in the past or the future all the time? And I think often what we do, so either we don't feel the body at all or the sensations that we feel in the body are negative or they feel overwhelming or they feel weird or strange. We know like about trauma and what trauma does to the nervous system, what stressed us to the nervous system. And part of it is numbing out and part is just like giving too much sensations. And I think our practice is really, and then mindfulness is like a wonderful tool, but not the only tool, of course, is to bring us back to, bring us back home, really.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  And then what we learn, and then the other thing is something that is also, I think that people really underestimate is like how pleasurable it can feel to be in your body. And then why would you go anywhere else?

• 19:24Dan Harris?

  There's a meditation teacher who is also a close friend of mine, a guy I really love, Jeff Warren. And in some of his guided meditations, he talks about like tuning into the creaturely feeling of being

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 19:37Dan Harris?

  in your body.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:38Dan Harris?

  And sometimes he'll recommend sprawl out on the ground.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 19:41Dan Harris?

  You know,

• 19:41Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 19:42Dan Harris?

  don't assume the lotus position.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  No, oh, my God.

• 19:44Dan Harris?

  Go for it. Lie on the ground and just, there is something luxurious about just inhabiting this thing.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 19:52Dan Harris?

  That being said, as you indicated, for people with trauma, it can be terrifying to get into the body.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely. Where I like to start is just, do you know what state your nervous system is in right now?

• 20:03Dan Harris?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  A very simple way to say that or to assess that is, is your nervous system in green, in yellow, or in red right now? And then, because everybody understands that, what I will often do, like when I teach a class, it's like we do like crowdsourcing, saying, what does it feel like when your nervous system is in green? What does it feel like when it's in yellow? What does it feel like when it's in red? Right? Everybody knows that. Red is like high stress. And people say like, oh, a lot of people say like, I'm in dark yellow most of the time. And then what we're learning is, so what helps us to down-regulate more into green, or down-regulate out of red into orange? And that is so individual.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  And so I think like what we're really seeing like in the meditation or the mindfulness world is like, we're really moving away from the old box of like, you sit in this position, you close your eyes, you don't move, right? And if you can't do this, well, that's on you.

• 21:03Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Instead of saying like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. So that, closing your eyes, being still, not moving, is really triggering for some bodies. And so what are ways how we can feel more safe? Before we meditate. Or when we're in a meditation, we're noticing like, I'm crawling out of my skin. That is the fine line, which like for me also comes back to ultra endurance sports is the fine line of do I stay or do I go?

• 21:34Dan Harris?

  Right.

• 21:34Speaker 03

  Right?

• 21:34Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 21:35Speaker 03

  Do I just sit with this and say like, this is just uncomfortable, but I'm okay with that? Or is that what I'm doing here right now is actually unkind and reinforcing a trauma pattern and not helpful at all?

• 21:50Dan Harris?

  I've had these conversations with Joseph Goldstein. You and I have sat meditation retreats with Joseph. Because I, I deal with a lot of physical restlessness.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 21:58Dan Harris?

  On the cushion, like overwhelming restlessness. Actually, it's a problem for my sleep too. Or sometimes I'm just in physical pain and he says something that really rhymes with what you just said, which is see how far you can push it without hurting yourself. At some point, you know, even with the restlessness, you're not going to get hurt, but sitting with it is excruciating. It's like continually just pushing the envelope gently, seeing how far you can go. But I found that to be very helpful. The other thing I'd say for people with restlessness or people who are just too squirmy or ADHD or they've got some trauma is walking meditation. I think this form of meditation does not get nearly enough airtime.

• 22:41Dan Harris?

  I'm all for taking a walk in nature, but this is different than that. This is often at a bit of a slower pace and you're really bringing all of your attention to the sensations in the body. And then every time you get distracted, start again and again. And I find this to be, in fact, in some ways, the walking meditation is a great way to build interoception because

• 23:02Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 23:03Dan Harris?

  The sensations in the body are the object of the meditation.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah. I mean, you can argue that in most of our meditations, interoception is the object of our awareness. Yeah, so when we are like doing breath meditation, we're feeling the breath.

• 23:16Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  When we do sound meditation, that's extrorception, but it's like still we are connected with the senses. So really like getting out of our head and choosing an anchor. And I think one thing that's really important is that we have an anchor that feels safe enough.

• 23:31Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  And we know now, which we didn't know, like even like fifteen years ago, I didn't know that and I didn't get instructions, that for some people focusing on the breath does not feel safe. It actually makes them more anxious and more restless. And then they're sitting there and saying like, what's wrong with me? Here's another thing I can't do. Instead of saying like, oh, it was never about the breath. It was about finding an anchor that you can sense in your body that feels safe enough.

• 24:01Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  And it could be your hands, could be, it could be sounds. Often people say, well, I feel so like, oh, I can't be in my body. It's like too overwhelming, but I can totally track sounds.

• 24:11Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  That feels so much less threatening than anything that goes on in my body in that moment.

• 24:17Dan Harris?

  Yeah, when I guide meditation, I really try to give a long menu of potential objects.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  Awesome, yeah.

• 24:22Dan Harris?

  My wife really likes to meditate on the visuals of her, what she sees when her eyes are closed.

• 24:28Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, what she sees when her eyes are closed. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, visual, yeah.

• 24:31Dan Harris?

  Before I forget, I think for me, another big benefit of interoception has come at work. I come from the very puritanical strain of the American experience and also was raised, professionally raised in an environment where burnout was celebrated as a journalist and we are pushing. I remember, and I may have told this story before, so I apologize to any listeners who's going to be annoyed by that. I remember once covering the 2004 presidential election during the primaries, there was a candidate named Howard Dean, before John Kerry ultimately got the Democratic nomination, but Howard Dean was all the kids, he was kind of like the Bernie Sanders before Bernie Sanders.

• 25:12Dan Harris?

  And I covered his campaign and the night the campaign ended was he got up on stage and had this very weird scream and it just kind of reinforced the backstory of him being weird in some way. Anyway, that night, my bosses made me stand out in the freezing rain to do a live shot and they wanted it to be outside because they had a cool bus they had decorated with the ABC News logo. And I was like, it's raining, it's freezing rain out. Can we do this inside? They said, no, we want the bus in the shot. So I had to do a live shot that night in freezing rain. I got more sick than I've perhaps ever been. And I had to stay in Iowa for several days and go to the hospital. When I got home, one of my bosses said, you getting sick like that wasn't a good look.

• 25:58Dan Harris?

  Yes, so my point is at work, I come from a both genetically and professionally from the standpoint of of push, push, push, push. And in later years, I've learned to listen to when I'm exhausted and take breaks. And I have a lot of breaks built in throughout my day now, and I find that I'm way more productive.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  You still have a part that feels guilty about that?

• 26:24Dan Harris?

  Yes, a little.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  Right?

• 26:26Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Right? Those habits are so deeply ingrained.

• 26:30Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 26:31Speaker 03

  I can so relate to that. It's just like, yeah, overachieving, go getter, going hard, right? People joke about my ultra marathons, right? It's like, oh, now you're just channeling it in something new. Like you chose a new addiction. It's just, there might be something to it.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  But there's something for me, I really learn to be softer. And to, it's hard to say, yeah, just ran fifty miles. So like, I do less, I push less hard. And what I find is actually my being able to communicate with my body better actually allows me often to do more, if that makes sense.

• 27:17Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  Because the problem really, and to come back to really like the body and to know, that's a language, it's like learning a language.

• 27:26Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  And I see, again, I see so many people getting hurt running. And I think a lot of them, they don't know when their body says like, no, this will hurt us over just like, oh, this is hard, I don't want to do this.

• 27:44Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  Right?

• 27:45Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  So the body whining or the mind whining. That's a really tricky, but for me, so deeply fascinating area of exploration.

• 27:56Dan Harris?

  I want to talk about the how of interception in a second, but just to say on this point you made a second ago about how in some ways you do less or you push yourself less hard. And yet you're still running 50 miles at age 56. I was recently rereading the transcript of an interview I did many years ago with a person for whom I have a ton of respect, Kristin Neff.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 28:22Dan Harris?

  Who's been the pioneer of self compassion. And she was saying to me, I think in the interview, a man needs to write a book about how tenderness is strength.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 28:35Dan Harris?

  I have seen this, the older I've gotten, that the gentler I am with myself in some many ways, the more I can achieve.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Yes, and that is hard to believe until you experience that. Yeah, and so like people really ask me, they say like, so how does like ultra marathoning and self compassion, because that's I teach Kristin Neff's class, how does they go together? And it goes together perfectly because I can trust myself and my body more that I won't hurt myself, but that I will stop if I need to. But because I'm in this constant conversation with my body, I feel I can actually push myself more. And the thing is like, we know the body is capable of just amazing physical feats and that we leave so much on the table.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, so if you've ever like read David Goggins' work, it's just like, so basically by the time your mind and body is saying like, we're done, we can't do anything more, you've used 30% or something. What you actually can do, and that is something also like where for me, running these long distances makes it really fascinating because at some point it is more the mental game that you're playing and not your body, because you trained your body to go that distance, but the mind gets tired. Yeah, and when we have this term called the pain cave, and the pain cave is of course not just like in ultra endurance sports, but we know this, like the mind can just

• 30:07Speaker 03

  like drop into a really dark place where it feels like I can't go anymore, I can't do it anymore. I'm not not talking about depression here, that's a little bit different, but then. Something shifts and then, I don't know, just an hour later, you're totally fine again. So that's like a very common experience that people have in ultra and endurance. And it's so helpful, honestly, for everyday life. This experience that you know, even though it might feel like I can't keep doing what I'm doing right now, I know, and this is of course like Buddhism 101. It's impermanence. The way that you feel about something right now won't stay that way.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  It feels like, and it might even feel like this will go on forever like this, but it won't. And so to remember that when we're in it is just very helpful practice.

• 31:04Dan Harris?

  Yes. And scalable to all of life, as you said.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:08Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Dr. Christiana Wolf talks about how to develop and hone interoception, how to do practices like a body scan and how helpful these practices can be, how to shift how you relate to your body, the four foundations of mindfulness, one of the crucial discourses of the Buddha, what a healthy relationship to the body looks like, translating monastic practices to your modern life, how to reduce stress and suffering in the body, and the difference between indifference and equanimity.

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• 32:45Dan Harris?

  Okay, so how can we develop interoception?

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, so first of all, interoception is always there already. And then for people who are interested in meditation, we do a lot of body scans. And body scans is just anything from like five minutes or forty five minutes. The full length is we are just paying attention to different parts of the body and just checking in and seeing if there are any sensations. Yeah, so right now, when I'm saying like, bring the attention to your feet. So then people will say like, I'm not really feeling anything. But then I'm saying like, are your feet warm or cold? Of course, you can answer that, yeah, as long as the nerves are okay. And then can you feel whether what your feet are resting on is soft or hard? Yes, you can do that. You can probably feel like I can feel my shoes a little bit, yeah?

• 33:34Speaker 03

  So those are all sensations, but until I asked that question, we weren't aware of it. Yeah, so that means there's again, like so much under the threshold of awareness, which makes sense. I can't not feel my feet the entire time. But when I know that that is available, then I could, for example, like you, when you walk from here back to your car, right, coming back to walking meditation, that's what we do in walking meditation. Right, you feel your feet, which is in many cases way more preferable over what goes on in your mind right now. Where you go, oh, my God, I'm late for this and I have a little, and the mind is just a little, little. And then we feel that

• 34:15Speaker 03

  pressure, that anxiety in our body, instead of saying like, right now, there's nothing I need to do but feel my feet. And that is not threatening. If you don't have pain, obviously. So that is a way, and then we just train that, just like we train anything. We just keep doing that over and over again. And we can bring that awareness to other areas of the body, and there are areas we can feel. So most people, when they start out with body scans, like lower legs, I guess I have lower legs, but I'm not sure right now, right? Because I can feel them. But we know with everything, what we pay more attention to, that becomes stronger in our awareness. In my first practice, we do body scans regularly, short, just checking in.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  We kind of turn up the volume on these so-called neutral sensations. So that they become more. I'm not aware of my body all of the time, but most of the time as I'm moving through the day, I feel my body and I feel my body in a nice way. Yeah. I also, I mean, I have to say, I knock on wood, I don't have chronic condition or chronic pain, which is of course very helpful. But I have to say, these trainings or teachings around interreceptions are super helpful with chronic pain as well.

• 35:35Dan Harris?

  And to say, you wrote a whole book on.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  Yes, working with chronic pain.

• 35:39Dan Harris?

  Yes, and we did a whole podcast.

• 35:41Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:41Dan Harris?

  And I will drop a link to that in the show notes.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:43Dan Harris?

  But just to make sure that I've got this for the listener, interreception isn't, it's happening anyway. The body is communicating with the brain.

• 35:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:52Dan Harris?

  The brain is obviously part of the body, but the rest of the body is communicating with the brain and all.

• 35:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:55Dan Harris?

  But whether you're aware of it or not, that skill can be trained.

• 36:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 36:01Dan Harris?

  And you're saying that meditation, pretty much any kind of meditation, but specifically body scans, will hone our sensitivity.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  Yes, but also things like Tai Chi or Qi Gong or yoga, when you're really paying attention to the sensations in the body. So any practice that brings you back to feeling the sensations will help increase that over time. Then, because what we are aware is just a small fraction. And then what we are developing is what's called like either body awareness or the felt sense. So the felt sense is something that's quite fascinating and the felt sense is something. So if you have to make a decision about anything, you will decide that based on the felt sense, unless you're really just doing an intellectual assessment. So where you want to go for dinner tonight?

• 36:54Speaker 03

  What do you want to eat? What kind of socks do you want to put on? It's actually quite fascinating that if we cannot feel anything, we can't make decisions. Because how do you know?

• 37:06Dan Harris?

  There's that expression, the full body yes.

• 37:09Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. Yeah. Hell yes, hell no, hell no, right?

• 37:13Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  That's interoception. Imagine you didn't have that. Wouldn't that be sad?

• 37:19Dan Harris?

  Yes. And I think many of us don't have it. Well, we have it, but it's been atrophied.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 37:25Dan Harris?

  Through lack of use.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  Buried.

• 37:27Dan Harris?

  Yes, it's buried. I don't love this. One of my little problems is that a lot of the traditional phraseology in the meditation community rubs me the wrong way. Honestly, probably because of culturally ingrained sexism, because a lot of the language codes as feminine. And this phrase, I think, fits into that bucket perfectly. And it is, listen to your heart.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Oh, yes. I totally get you on that one.

• 37:48Dan Harris?

  And I don't like it, right?

• 37:50Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 37:50Dan Harris?

  And I'll cop to the fact that there may be some obnoxious reasons for not liking it, but I don't like it. And I feel like other people either wouldn't like it for the same reasons as me, or they just don't know what it means because it's kind of nonspecific, or it's a cliche and therefore doesn't land because it doesn't mean anything anymore. And yet, this is what you're talking about, I think, which is, once you hone the ability to receive the signals from the body, then you can listen to the intelligence that lives below the neckline, that it can inform your decisions.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Yeah. It's not making the decision for you. That's really important, right? But you want to have, especially like for the big decisions in life, but even for small decisions, right? So is your body saying yes? Is your body saying no? And it's often very subtle, but it's like, for me, it's just like, sometimes when the body says no, we have a very subtle stress reaction. So it means like we're tightening up a little bit, our breath gets more shallow, right? So that kind of thing. And it's something we can feel. There's no magic in there. There's no woo woo in there. On the other hand, if something is really like wonderful and appealing, it can either be like a sense of relaxation that goes more into green, what I said earlier, right?

• 39:03Speaker 03

  Or it can be an excitement, the flutter of excitement. You go, oh, yes, I want to do that. We can actually train that, to feel that more, and to really, and get more information. And I honestly think we're making better decisions when we do that.

• 39:18Dan Harris?

  And again, the training can be as simple as... Meditation specifically.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 39:24Dan Harris?

  Body scans.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:24Dan Harris?

  To take this to a kind of, maybe this wasn't part of the plan, but it's just on my mind, listening you two talk. This might not have been in our plan for this conversation, but there is a deeper level to feeling the sensations from the body. And our mutual friend, Joseph, talks about this a lot, which is that there is no such sensation as hand. You said, feel your hand.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:46Dan Harris?

  But if you're really paying attention.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:48Dan Harris?

  Actually, you don't even have to pay attention that hard.

• 39:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:50Dan Harris?

  There may be vibration, there may be tingling, there may be hard or soft.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:54Dan Harris?

  Those all exist.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:55Dan Harris?

  But there's nothing called hand.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  No.

• 39:57Dan Harris?

  That is happening for you. And that's really interesting because it starts to put this solid sense of I am through a cheese grater. That can be very helpful and healing.

• 40:11Speaker 03

  It can, especially when our attitude is very clingy or very obsessive about the body or very negative. So to feel like, oh, those are just sensations arising and passing away in that moment, and I can be aware of it, can be very helpful and it can be very scary, too. Yeah. Because what does that mean if there is no such thing as a hand or my hand? And this is actually something we also teach. So there is a section in the Four Foundations, so Four Foundations of Mindfulness. It's like one of the core teachings that we teach from in our tradition. And the first foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of the body.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  Mindfulness of the body, not mindfulness of my body. And that is a really important, very interesting, fascinating thing, right? So as I said, we're often so obsessed with certain body parts, what they look like or what they do, what they can't do, all of that, and we take it personally. We think this is who we are, this is what defines us. But then when we're just doing the body scans, we're just going like, this is what feet feel like. This is what knees feel like. This is what thighs feel like.

• 41:23Speaker 03

  I don't know, it's nothing me about that. Yeah, and it can be very helpful so that we can actually get a different relationship to the body instead of whatever we like or don't like about our body parts. Just remembering that through evolution, every body part evolved for a function, not for what it looks like.

• 41:45Dan Harris?

  You mentioned the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, just for the uninitiated, that's one of the crucial discourses of the Buddha. He gave a talk, apparently, that was transcribed and now codified in the Buddhist texts. It's a little hard to know what he didn't say because

• 42:01Speaker 03

  We don't know.

• 42:02Dan Harris?

  He allegedly said it hundreds of years before they wrote it down, and then it was preserved in the oral tradition and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the Buddha's talking about basically four ways to establish mindfulness, and the first is the body. If memory serves, and I am no Buddhist scholar, somewhere in the Four Foundations, there's this idea that we should meditate on the sort of unlovely parts of the body.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 42:25Dan Harris?

  The mucus, the spit, the blood.

• 42:28Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 42:28Dan Harris?

  Again, as a way to get us to not take this thing so personally, not to cling to it.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 42:37Dan Harris?

  And also, some people don't love that, this exercise.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is, but it is again, like, this is exactly, I'm actually teaching a retreat every year on those, it's called the Thirty-Two Parts of the Body. I mean, obviously, we have a lot more parts, but it kind of is a doorway in, and it makes us really reflect on what's our relationship to that. Yeah, and what's funny is, so the first, what this list starts with, and we get to the mucus and the urine and all these things, but the first is head hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin. So just think about those five, and think about how obsessed we are with head hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  How much money have you or have I spent on just those? How much pain has been inflicted on just those five? It's mind-blowing, and what are they? Head hair is just like these thin, flexible shafts of hardened cells. That's it. They were supposed to keep us warm at some point, right? It's crazy. And so when we're practicing that, we can have these moments of going like, oh, my goodness. I don't need to have that relationship to that body part. And we're all sharing that. Yes. So we all have our history with head hair,

• 44:07Speaker 03

  body hair, nails, teeth, skin, and then all the other things. And maybe we can change that. We can let go of some of that. And we can also really grieve really the amount of pain that has been inflicted on us and other people based on totally random characteristics.

• 44:26Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I think a lot about the interpersonal and intrapersonal violence that's done around

• 44:32Speaker 03

  Oh, my goodness.

• 44:33Dan Harris?

  as I was saying before, aesthetic standards around how a body should look.

• 44:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:37Dan Harris?

  From a Buddhist perspective, given everything we're talking about here with the thirty-two parts of the body, what would a healthy relationship to the body look like?

• 44:45Speaker 03

  Look, so this body is fifty-six years old. Do I like that I have wrinkles? No. But what's wrong with wrinkles? That's just a natural thing that happens to your body that has reached that age. And I'm being aware that is just what happens to a body at that age. And I'm also aware that like the pressure that has been put by society on saying like, this is not desirable, or aging is not desirable. But this is really cultural and it is random. We know there are cultures on the earth that actually really value age. And they value people who look really old and wrinkled

• 45:27Speaker 03

  because they are, because they are the wisdom carriers. Yeah, and we're just obsessed basically with teenagers in underwear. And we think that's the pinnacle of human humanness, right?

• 45:40Dan Harris?

  You and I are doing this interview on the Sunset Strip in L.A. And there are lots of billboards of teenagers in underwear.

• 45:49Speaker 03

  Right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what sells. And that is what we think what we should look like. And it's heartbreaking. And the practice just invites us very gently back to say like, what can you feel? Because if you think about it, I can't feel wrinkles. Can you feel wrinkles?

• 46:06Dan Harris?

  No.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  Right? So if I close my eyes.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  Coming back to interoception, just like, oh, I can let go of that. It's a construct, one that is painful and that I have learned to identify with. And I think it's really just an invitation for us. I mean, like, all these teachings around is what I'm doing helpful or not? Is that increasing suffering or is that diminishing suffering? For us and of course, for all beings.

• 46:38Dan Harris?

  Some people don't like this whole meditate on the pus and the poop and blood and the urine and the mucus. But what are the Buddhists really pointing at there with? It strikes me, and maybe this is the wrong way to look at it. They're trying to cultivate a healthy sense of disgust.

• 46:55Speaker 03

  Okay, I'll say a little bit about that. So one thing we have to keep in mind that most of the Buddhist texts. So who has transmitted those texts into the next generation?

• 47:06Dan Harris?

  Probably not the women.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  Not the women and not laypeople, householders, right? And you have to think about, so you have mainly male group of young people who you have to keep celibate. What kind of relationship do you want them to have towards other bodies?

• 47:26Dan Harris?

  There's that great moment from the texts where a monk is wandering through the woods and a man comes by whose beautiful young wife has run away. He says to the monk, did you see my beautiful young wife run by? And he says, I saw a bag of bones run by.

• 47:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, so he was trained well, right? So that was actually helpful for him. But for us as laypeople, what we are focusing on, because the way that there is a word in that sutta that has traditionally been translated as disgusting.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  But the actual translation, when you look at that word, so suba and as suba, the word is not beautiful, meaning not something you need to obsess over, which is very different from disgusting, isn't it?

• 48:15Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  So the point is just saying like, you have a human body, and as part of the human body, we don't like to think about it, but you actually have like blood and sweat and pus and stool and feces in you. So do I. Our listeners might go like, ew, I don't want to hear it. But it's just the truth. And you can be happy that you have that because that means you have a normal functioning body. That's actually good. It's really good that your body is able to build pus when there's an infection, because that helps you to heal. So that's great. When we look at it in that way, then it becomes like more neutral ground and not something, it's either disgusting or it's something we have to obsess over, like about the way it looks.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  So it's really more like, yeah, we have a body. And we need a body. And we can be very, very grateful that we have a body. And we can focus on what works well in this body. Coming back to like, all these things were made for function. And am I grateful that my feet and my knees and my legs work the way they do? So even if they are not looking perfect, right? Or if they don't meet the whatever beauty standard of whatever or whoever. We can again reduce suffering or stress so much when we can just really boil it back down to the basics in that way.

• 49:41Dan Harris?

  So let me see if I can say a few words and you tell me if I'm in the right neighborhood in terms of understanding

• 49:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:46Dan Harris?

  how a Buddhist would describe a healthy relationship to the body.

• 49:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:49Dan Harris?

  A lot of people get hung up on Non-attachment, because that is a big Buddhist word.

• 49:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 49:55Dan Harris?

  But you're talking about can you be grateful for the body?

• 49:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:58Dan Harris?

  How can you be grateful if you're not attached? And we're supposed to be contemplating the unlovely parts of the body as a way to help us cling less. And one of the ways I've heard this described is if you can think about holding something in the palm of your hand, it's still important to you, but you're not bawling your fist up around it.

• 50:16Speaker 03

  Exactly, yes.

• 50:17Dan Harris?

  And so we can be grateful for our body while recognizing there's a lot going on here that is not for public consumption and maybe not beautiful. And also, it's a process, in many ways, we have no control over it. As Joseph says, it's unfolding lawfully, but we don't make the laws.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  Right.

• 50:36Dan Harris?

  And we're going to die at some point. So it's a very impermanent, the Buddhists really keep it real.

• 50:43Dan Harris?

  This is an impermanent, compound structure that we are renting. And so there can be gratitude without clinging.

• 50:51Speaker 03

  Yes. And there's something which can be helpful to distinguish between indifference and equanimity. Equanimity, or serenity, or peace of mind, is actually a loving quality. It has the quality of loving kindness, of metta, in it. And we care. We call this the near enemy. And the near enemy is something that disguises as that quality, which for equanimity is indifference. I don't give a shit. And so I think it can be very helpful to see like, what's your relationship with your body? Is it one more of exactly what you described, right?

• 51:34Speaker 03

  I'm very grateful for this, and I really appreciate it, and I care a lot. And I know it will change, it will get old, it will get sick, and it will die at some point. So have more space around that and not clinging to like, oh, I don't want to get older. Good luck with that. Yeah? But it's not indifference. And I think we often get confused there. Because we want to, the body is painful, or our relationship, we don't like ourselves, we hate the body. And then we try to move, because that is so painful, move into indifference. I don't care anymore. Yeah, and that is also something that in a weird way I do see in the athletes

• 52:16Speaker 03

  community, right, that some people really don't treat their bodies nice, but they're almost using exercise as a punishment.

• 52:25Dan Harris?

  Classic middle way stuff you're describing there is the attitude between overly clinging to something or being indifferent or being aversive even.

• 52:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 52:39Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Christiana talks about some helpful questions to ask yourself if you're in the market for creating a healthier relationship to your body, the four sources of reluctance or resistance when it comes to exercise, the key difference between discipline and self-compassion. We also unpack the dysfunction among people who over exercise and we talk about what you can learn from injuries.

• 53:06Dan Harris?

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• 53:51Dan Harris?

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• 54:33Dan Harris?

  For both of us, the cold weather is now officially back. I, however, am not dreading it this year because I've got Bombas. They make socks, slippers, and footwear that keep me warm and cozy and snug all winter long, and everything they make is great for gifting. So I'm also not stressed about the holidays. Bombas makes slippers for staying cozy inside, and now they make footwear for going out and about. From fuzzy sundae slippers for lounging around in to water-resistant suede booties that can handle the winter, Bombas socks are a winter go-to as well. Merino wool and cashmere blend socks for warmth, fuzzy socks and plush gripper socks for cozy vibes at home. They also, of course, make socks that you can exercise in. I am a heavy user of Bombas socks for working out.

• 55:18Dan Harris?

  I also wear them when I'm wearing sneakers out and about because they look good and they're really, really comfortable. And the best part about Bombas, for every item you purchase, they donate an essential clothing item to somebody facing housing insecurity. One purchase equals one donated with over 200 million donations and counting. Head on over to bombas.com/happier and use the code HAPPIER for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash happier and use the code HAPPIER at checkout. Just to pick up on what you said there, you recommend we ask ourselves some questions as a kind of thought exercise. What's my relationship to my body? Do I love and respect it? Do I listen to it? Do I speak its language? How do I know? Can you just build on that a little bit?

• 56:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think those questions can just be very helpful. And like even when you just read them, I can imagine that some of the listeners feel almost a little bit guilty saying like, oh, no, I don't, or I don't have a relationship, or I'm not really appreciating my body. And it just really comes back to what we talked about before, is this is something we can change. And these practices, including the body scan practice and the 32 parts of the body practice, they can, over time, really change our relationship to our body.

• 56:37Dan Harris?

  They can change your relationship to your body, and it starts by hearing the signals in the first place.

• 56:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, and starting in a safe place. Really important. Starting with like what we said about like a safe anchor when we practice meditation. Notice is what you're doing actually helping you to stay more present? If you can't stay present, try something else. Yeah.

• 57:00Dan Harris?

  Very important. Let's get back to exercise. You and Marissa Schneiderman, one of the ace producers on this show, you put together a little memo for me in preparation. And in that memo, you listed some of the reasons why we don't exercise. I'm going to list your list back to you and then maybe you can say some words about it on the other side. Habit energy, shame energy, a history of inconsistency, or desire not to feel the body at all.

• 57:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:24Dan Harris?

  So let's start with habit energy.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. Habit energy is just something that we are more likely to do what we have done before than to do something new. And so there is like this little mountain or big mountain that we have to overcome. And we can overcome that with motivation just for a very brief amount of time. Yeah, because motivation actually is not a reliable exercise partner. Because we'll all get to the point where like we just don't feel motivated and we have to find something else and we do it anyway. So that's really important. We know that we have to do things repeatedly over and over again, but then also knowing that our body is actually trying to conserve energy.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  So if you make it expend energy either through exercise or even like mental exercise or doing something new, doing something new costs energy, which is one of the reasons why our brain is so resistant to try something new, because it's expensive. Yeah, so our brain is the organ that needs the most energy in the body. If I remember correctly, it needs like 30% of all the energy gets to the brain. And brain is pretty small compared to the rest of the body. So in building new pathways, just like if you build new streets, costs money. And so you have to have really good reasons to put in that money and that effort. And your brain goes like, what we're doing right now, we're surviving that, that works well.

• 58:53Speaker 03

  Like, why would I try something new? So there's often some resistance over just doing something new, period.

• 59:00Dan Harris?

  And one of the ways to surmount that is, I think you were talking to Marissa about the work of BJ Fogg and taking these tiny little steps.

• 59:08Speaker 03

  Yes, I love that. So the tiny habits can be so helpful because one thing that I also see, we see that at the beginning of every year, New Year's resolutions, people go like, "Oh, go to the gym every day now." And I haven't been to the gym in the last nine months, right? And then they go to the gym and they work out. I see it with runners all the time, right? So they haven't run at all. And then they go out and they run like 5K or they run for an hour, right? And then they're so sore and so terrible that they're not doing it again. So instead of, and I know this takes more patience, like what I said in the beginning, how I started running, it's like you walk for a minute and then you run for a minute and you walk for a minute. And of course, you don't want your friends to see you doing

• 59:50Speaker 03

  that, right? There's like the whole, like the pride thing, like because I'm strong and I'm working out and that, and at the gym. But start small, start so small that it's almost ridiculous of not doing it.

• 1:00:03Dan Harris?

  Working through our list here of four sources of reluctance or resistance to exercise, the first was habit energy. The next is shame energy. What's that about?

• 1:00:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, shame, it is sometimes we use shame to motivate ourselves. So coming back to, so Kristin Neff and Chris Germer, who like talk about self compassion, they, they teach about that quite a lot. So that we basically have some internal self-talk. So you're on the couch and then what do you say to yourself in order to get you out of the door? And it's often not nice, not pretty. Then there's a part in there in us that goes like, "Make me," right? Right? Doesn't it sometimes feel like that struggle, right? And especially when shame is involved, shame feels so icky to us that then we're shutting off completely.

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that sometimes I can see that, that people try to shame themselves into exercising, and that backfires.

• 1:01:06Dan Harris?

  Is this where you would say self-compassion is an antidote?

• 1:01:09Speaker 03

  Yes, and that feels so counterintuitive, because the people who I say that will work with self-compassion, they say, oh, if I'm kind to myself, I will never ever get off the couch again. But self-compassion is really, self-compassion wants you to change too, just like shame does, but it doesn't hurt you doing it. So it would say more something like, okay sweetheart, can you just put on your shoes? Can we do that and see how that goes?

• 1:01:39Dan Harris?

  I prefer dude to sweetheart.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  Gotcha.

• 1:01:45Dan Harris?

  That being said, there are, as Kristin talks about, at least two types of self-compassion. There's the tender

• 1:01:52Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:01:52Dan Harris?

  type that you just described.

• 1:01:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:54Dan Harris?

  Okay sweetheart, let's do this. And then there's the fierce kind,

• 1:01:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:01:57Dan Harris?

  which can also get you off the couch. It can definitely get you off the couch.

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  It can get you off the couch. So like an example of fierce compassion to get you off the couch is to, let's say you've been to the doctor and the doctor told you, you're prediabetic. And if you don't start exercising regularly, you will be diabetic on medication within a year. And so then self-compassion can say like, we don't want to become really sick. We are doing this now. And it's not like the sweet like woo woo, right? The flowers, but it's just something, there your shoes, put your shoes on.

• 1:02:34Dan Harris?

  Yeah, it's like the energy that it takes to pull a kid out of oncoming traffic.

• 1:02:38Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:02:38Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:02:39Dan Harris?

  How would you describe the difference between discipline and self-compassion? Because a lot of us feel we need discipline.

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  Yes, I love the term because I, yeah. Discipline is like, we need discipline meditation, we need discipline in anything. As parents, as if we're working out, if we want to accomplish anything, we need discipline. But again, to see like, so what is my why? Why am I doing this or want to do this? And how am I talking to myself? And I have realized that my inner self-talk has changed so much since I've really started working with the Kristin Neff's material. Which is really interesting because I have been a Buddhist practitioner and mindfulness practitioner for many, many years before. But I was tough, right? I was going hard. I was doing it all right.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  And I didn't even realize, because it felt so normal and so natural to me, how hard, harsh, and mean I was to myself.

• 1:03:38Dan Harris?

  Yeah, Teutonic efficiency comes with a price.

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  It does. And we can change that.

• 1:03:43Dan Harris?

  This kind of goes back to tenderness as strength. That discipline, which I think for many of us comes from a weird extrinsic place. Like, I'm doing this because I've got to be like David Goggins, you know, the ultra-performance athlete or whatever. It runs out of road eventually. You start internally rebelling against the discipline, the quote-unquote "discipline" you're applying upon yourself. Whereas self-compassion, it's a cleaner burning fuel. It's more abiding in its power because you've figured out why you're doing it and you have a clearer purpose.

• 1:04:23Speaker 03

  Yes. And you can really, with awareness practice, and this is why mindfulness is so helpful, you start to see more, when do you become mean to yourself? Right? It's not about hard. I think hard is important. And hard is important for us to explore edges. Sometimes it's actually really hard to do less. So that's something that I'm working with. It's really scary to do less for me. But it's like, where's the growth? And then what I experience is like, I start to get rigid. Rigidity is a sign for me that I'm moving into self-critic, harsh, mean. And then to see like, oof.

• 1:05:08Speaker 03

  And this comes back to, I can feel getting more rigid. That's interoception. And then what I actually really do is sometimes I will then just invite a little bit of movement in. Take a deeper breath, right? Because I know when I'm getting more rigid, then my breathing slows down, right? My shoulders go up, my jaw sets, all the, all the things of just like, oh, I just moved from green into yellow or into red.

• 1:05:36Dan Harris?

  Yeah, we have a lot in common.

• 1:05:39Dan Harris?

  Let's just keep, keep going through these list of four reasons why we don't exercise. I think them, because I kind of badly want to get to the people who do exercise because that's me and, and, and some of their rigidity that I see in myself. One of the other reasons you say that people don't exercise is a history of inconsistency.

• 1:05:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. And that is basically they're defeating themselves. It's again, a lot about the self-talk and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. So we're debating, do I get off the couch right now? Do I go to the gym? Do I go out for a run? And you said, like, you know, last time it lasted a week. That before you were able to keep it on for a month. Why bother? So we're kind of pulling out the budding energy of wanting to do it right out from under us.

• 1:06:23Dan Harris?

  I was interviewing yesterday, although I don't even know if this interview will have posted by the time this interview posts. But yesterday I was interviewing our mutual friend, Trudy Goodman, who's a legendary Buddhist meditation teacher and psychologist and secular mindfulness teacher, lots of things. She was saying that one of her teachers used to say, it's never too late. And I like that. And the other expression that I was mentioning to her is that I read it somewhere recently. What's the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. What's the second best time?

• 1:06:55Speaker 03

  Love that.

• 1:06:56Dan Harris?

  Today?

• 1:06:56Speaker 03

  Love that. I totally love that. Yeah.

• 1:07:00Dan Harris?

  Fourth on your list, we've already kind of touched on this a little bit, but the fourth reason that you list for people not wanting to exercise or not exercising at all is that they don't want to feel the body.

• 1:07:10Speaker 03

  Yes. And that is something I think is not actually really that well-known. So when we have either a lot of anxiety in our bodies, or we have a lot of discomfort in the body, or when we're very stressed, or we have a history of adverse events or trauma, then an activated nervous system, including a higher heart rate, is very scary to us. And I think what happens, and I've, that was actually an experience that were an insight that I had at some point is like, I really don't like to go to this day, and it might be different reasons too, but I don't like to go to my max heart rate, going all the

• 1:07:53Speaker 03

  way out, which of course, so healthy, like the VO2 max, right, and for longevity and blah, blah, blah. I don't like that because it reminds me of panic. So if my heart rate goes into the red, my system goes like, this is unsafe, this is unsafe, we can't do this, we can't do this. And I would really be curious, I don't know any data around this, it's just something that I kind of put together in my own experience and then talking to people like who have, who had trauma specialists about it. It's just something like sometimes those sensations that they're coming up when we work out, including a higher heart rate, including sweat, because what we do is we activate our nervous system, is totally threatening,

• 1:08:38Speaker 03

  unpleasant and overwhelming. And we're not aware of that because we go, oh, this is so good for us, right? But we have parts in our system that go like, oh no, this is not safe. Whenever we felt this before, it was really, really scary and overwhelming. Yeah.

• 1:08:59Dan Harris?

  This is another thing we have in common. Generally speaking, exertion feels really good to me, but the going into the red or high intensity interval training, I do do it, but if I go all out to like, all out, I can't go any harder, I have panic disorder. And so

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, it makes total sense. Makes total sense, right?

• 1:09:17Dan Harris?

  I don't like it.

• 1:09:18Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I don't do that either. I'm not a sprinter for that reason. The thing is like when I do like the endurance, endurance isn't asking us to go into zone four. That's a different kind of sport. And I don't like that. I don't like that level of exertion because that feels very, very unpleasant in my body. So I try to avoid that.

• 1:09:40Dan Harris?

  Okay, let's talk about people from a Dharma and modern psychology standpoint, some of the dysfunction among people who do exercise or over exercise. One of the things you said to Marissa that I really took note of is that hustling, this is your words, hustling. Can be a trauma symptom.

• 1:09:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Dan Harris?

  Can you say more about this?

• 1:10:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:10:01Dan Harris?

  Maybe it has to do with your fear of doing less too.

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:10:04Dan Harris?

  That you referenced earlier.

• 1:10:05Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. So what I am seeing really, again, in myself and a lot of people around me is when they stop doing or going hard, they get completely restless. They go crazy. They need to do something, right?

• 1:10:21Dan Harris?

  Yeah, that's me.

• 1:10:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. And we know a lot of people, other people who have that. And it is something what is very interesting is I think that there is an inability to actually feel safe with the body resting. And that can have all kinds of different reasons. One can be that we've always gotten a message when you're not doing something, right? So what's idle hands are the devil's playground? I think that's a common American proverb, something like that. Is so we have gotten a message that, and I definitely have that with my German background, right? It's like doing nothing is not acceptable. That is lazy, that is not acceptable. So you always have to work hard.

• 1:11:06Speaker 03

  And that means when you work hard, you get to be part of the tribe. And if you're not, you're out. So I have like very deeply rooted guilt attacks around doing nothing, where I have parts that feel they have to earn doing nothing. Yeah, which is like very interesting again to look like, why do I do ultra endurance? Yeah, so right now I'm really enjoying my recovery phase after the ultra marathon. And now I actually enjoy it while in other times I might feel like the old ugly voices of you're just lazy, just get out and move your body. Those are going so deep, those traits, you know?

• 1:11:51Speaker 03

  If you look at our society, our society, and especially the American society, is all around hustling. There is no time for rest, if you think about it. And if you think about like how nature works, nature works in seasons. We have spring, we have summer, we have fall and we have winter. And there's a break where we don't do anything. We're just noodling around and we wait like for the seasons to change again. We don't have that in our work culture. It's always like spring, summer, maybe a little bit of fall. And then we'd go right into spring again. That is not sustainable. And so no wonder we have like these huge amounts of burnout.

• 1:12:33Speaker 03

  And I think that definitely comes out in in everything we do, honestly. Yeah.

• 1:12:39Dan Harris?

  So overworking out and overwork.

• 1:12:41Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:12:42Dan Harris?

  Can be coming from the same source.

• 1:12:44Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:12:45Dan Harris?

  I think they are for me.

• 1:12:47Speaker 03

  Right? Does that resonate?

• 1:12:48Dan Harris?

  Yes, very much.

• 1:12:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:49Dan Harris?

  I was just thinking back to the top of this conversation. We were talking about ultra marathoning and my external response was to make fun of you. But my internal response was, I want to do that. I'm sure there's a healthy part of me that wants to do it. And I think there's also an unhealthy part of me that wants to do it.

• 1:13:05Speaker 03

  I think we always have these different parts within us. And what I find really interesting is because from the outside, we can't see what is driving. It is just something that we know from the inside. Yeah, and so we can look at other athletes, for example, and we see what they do. And sometimes, so like when I look at my athlete friends that are get injured constantly, I'm thinking like, you're not practicing self compassion. You don't know how to listen to your body. And I wish you would want to learn that, right? But often there isn't even the awareness that because the inner drive is so overwhelming.

• 1:13:43Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:13:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:44Dan Harris?

  Well, let's talk about injury. I signaled at the beginning that I wanted to get to this. I deal with it with injuries a lot. Sometimes I think it's because I'm pushing myself too hard unquestionably. Sometimes I think it's just a matter of poor form. Sometimes it's aging. I heard interesting, I've been going to this chiropractor, which I always had a funny feeling about chiropractors. But my brother was going to see this guy and he got me in there. He doesn't actually, he's never done any of the classic chiropractor moves on me. It's mostly just like deep tissue, very painful fascia release for the tendonitis that I have in my biceps. What he was saying is that actually injuries can be fruitful because you learn better

• 1:14:27Dan Harris?

  form to prevent injuries going forward.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:31Dan Harris?

  And yet I do struggle in these periods because I can make the injuries worse because I'm unwilling to rest. I go into a little bit of a spiral around injury.

• 1:14:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course, because they are feel like an insult, don't they?

• 1:14:48Dan Harris?

  They feel like an insult and more than that, it's if I then can't exercise, then I feel awful about myself.

• 1:14:54Speaker 03

  Yes, which is also interesting, right? So the spiral then and then to listen to yourself when you don't exercise, what's the inner self talk?

• 1:15:03Dan Harris?

  Yeah, you're a lazy pile of shit.

• 1:15:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, something like that, right? Which is again, like we have to remember also those parts are really trying to be helpful.

• 1:15:11Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:15:11Speaker 03

  And try to motivate us. So we don't want to be angry at them, but we become more aware. And so basically what's very interesting, so when you look at the way that the nervous system works and how chronic illness is actually statistically quite highly related to the amount of cumulative stress that we've had over a lifetime. We can see in quite a number of chronic conditions that they are exacerbated by stress. That can also be stress that is not something that you do physically. But it feels sometimes and people say that that is their experience.

• 1:15:54Speaker 03

  It's like physical symptoms can be the body's way to slow you down.

• 1:15:59Dan Harris?

  I see.

• 1:16:00Speaker 03

  Or to pause you. Yeah, that can show up as a physical injury, but sometimes we are overworking in your work. The injury might not actually have anything to do with your workout. It is just that it might be a weak spot where you don't have enough like muscle support or whatever. But sometimes people tell me stories of like the coincidence of like a super high work stress and then they go out for a run and then they fall and trip. So the body basically pulls a plug. I mean, because you can think about when we have chronic pain or we have a chronic condition, we are forced to slow down.

• 1:16:39Dan Harris?

  So my bicep tendonitis could be my body telling me you need to take more days off.

• 1:16:45Speaker 03

  Maybe. I don't know. What happens in you when you hear that and the cynic steps aside?

• 1:16:51Dan Harris?

  I don't want to do it.

• 1:16:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:53Dan Harris?

  I literally was thinking this morning about how in the coming weeks I have a vacation, which I'm looking forward to. My family and I are going to Costa Rica. But I was thinking like, I might do a little writing in the morning.

• 1:17:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. Right? Right?

• 1:17:08Dan Harris?

  Because I feel behind on this book and I actually have some momentum going and I don't really want to. What else would I be doing in the morning?

• 1:17:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. What else could you possibly be doing in the morning in Costa Rica on vacation?

• 1:17:21Dan Harris?

  Who cares what the fucking sloths, you know? Why do I need to see those sloths?

• 1:17:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, and when your family is still sleeping because you get up two hours before them anyways, what are you going to do, right? After you've done your meditation and your workout, you still have like a couple of hours left.

• 1:17:35Dan Harris?

  Exactly. I feel seen.

• 1:17:37Speaker 03

  It takes one to see one, right?

• 1:17:42Dan Harris?

  So again, I mean, who knows why I have tendonitis and a couple of annoying spots in the body, but I should be open to the possibility that the body is telling me

• 1:17:53Speaker 03

  To slow down.

• 1:17:54Dan Harris?

  Slow down. Okay, well, we covered a lot in this.

• 1:17:56Speaker 03

  We covered a lot of ground.

• 1:17:57Dan Harris?

  Do you feel like there was something that we should have talked about that we haven't?

• 1:18:01Speaker 03

  No, I think that was quite thorough. Yeah.

• 1:18:04Dan Harris?

  Will you do me the favor?

• 1:18:06Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:18:07Dan Harris?

  Can you tell everybody what the names of the two books are?

• 1:18:09Speaker 03

  So the first book is a classic instruction manual for teaching mindfulness and it's called A Clinician's Guide to Teaching Mindfulness. And I co-wrote that with my friend and colleague at the VA where we have implemented a national mindfulness facilitator training. And his name is Greg Sperber. And then I wrote a second book called Outsmart Your Pain, which is a little bit tricky topic, but it's a catchy title. So, and this is really how we can use mindfulness to work with chronic health conditions.

• 1:18:43Dan Harris?

  And do you have a website?

• 1:18:44Speaker 03

  I do have a website, which is my name, so christianewolf.com.

• 1:18:49Dan Harris?

  I'll put a link in the show notes so people can get it.

• 1:18:53Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 1:18:54Dan Harris?

  Thank you for doing this.

• 1:18:55Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:18:56Dan Harris?

  Really fun.

• 1:18:56Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:19:01Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Cristiano Wolfe. Always great to talk to her. She's a star. Don't forget to check out her previous appearance on the show. I will drop a link in the show notes. That conversation really centers on how to mindfully deal with pain. Also, don't forget that this episode comes with a bespoke guided meditation, a body scan, from the great Dharma teacher Cara Lai. Paying subscribers specifically can access that meditation over on danharris.com. And we will be doing guided meditations from Cara for every Get Fit Sanely episode that is coming out in the month of June. If this works, you'll see a lot more of this over on danharris.com. Oh, and don't forget, Cara and I are going to do a live video session

• 1:19:44Dan Harris?

  on Substack together where Cara will guide a meditation and then we will take your questions together. This is happening on June 3 at 3:30 Eastern. So come join us. Finally, just want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. 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 Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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