As part of our commitment to our community, my coach/business partner at Running Hot Coaching Neil Wagstaff and I are going to be releasing a whole raft of new content aimed at getting you through this coronavirus crisis.

Information aimed at boosting your immunity, keeping you fit despite the movement restrictions we are facing, and mindset and motivation advice to keep you on track and focussed and ready to take on the challenges this time will bring.

First up we have done a session immunity-boosting and doing a wellness check. Steps you can take to make sure your mind and body are ready to cope and there you will be strong to help others in your care.

If you want help with personalizing your nutrition, fitness training or help with your mindset during this time please reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com and check out our programs at www.lisatamati.com 

For our free 8 weeks at home, strength training program go to https://strength.lisatamati.com/

Check out our free weekly podcast "Pushing the Limits" - a show all about everything health, fitness, biohacking, the latest breakthroughs in science, elevating human performance. https://www.lisatamati.com/page/podcast/

We would like to thank our sponsors for this show:

www.vielight.com

Makers of Photobiomodulation devices that stimulate the brains mitocondria, the power houses of your brains energy, through infrared light to optimise your brain function. To get 10% off your order use the code: TAMATI at https://www.vielight.com

For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com

For Lisa's online run training coaching go to
https://www.lisatamati.com/page/runni...
Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body.

Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program
https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epige...
measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home

For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit:
https://www.lisatamati.com/page/minds...

Lisa's third book has just been released. It's titled "Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds"

Visit: https://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ for more Information

ABOUT THE BOOK:

When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a huge aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. The prognosis was dire. There was very little hope that she would ever have any quality of life again. But Lisa is a fighter and stubborn.

She absolutely refused to accept the words of the medical fraternity and instead decided that she was going to get her mother back or die trying.

This book tells of the horrors, despair, hope, love, and incredible experiences and insights of that journey. It shares the difficulties of going against a medical system that has major problems and limitations. Amongst the darkest times were moments of great laughter and joy.

Relentless will not only take the reader on a journey from despair to hope and joy, but it also provides information on the treatments used, expert advice and key principles to overcoming obstacles and winning in all of life's challenges. It will inspire and guide anyone who wants to achieve their goals in life, overcome massive obstacles or limiting beliefs. It's for those who are facing terrible odds, for those who can't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's about courage, self-belief, and mental toughness. And it's also about vulnerability... it's real, raw, and genuine.

This is not just a story about the love and dedication between a mother and a daughter. It is about beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go 'all in'. Isobel's miraculous recovery is a true tale of what can be accomplished when love is the motivating factor and when being relentless is the only option.

Here's What NY Times Best Selling author and Nobel Prize Winner Author says of The Book:

"There is nothing more powerful than overcoming physical illness when doctors don't have answers and the odds are stacked against you. This is a fiercely inspiring journey of a mother and daughter that never give up. It's a powerful example for all of us."

—Dr. Bill Andrews, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Curing Aging and Telomere Lengthening.

"A hero is someone that refuses to let anything stand in her way, and Lisa Tamati is such an individual. Faced with the insurmountable challenge of bringing her ailing mother back to health, Lisa harnessed a deeper strength to overcome impossible odds. Her story is gritty, genuine and raw, but ultimately uplifting and endearing. If you want to harness the power of hope and conviction to overcome the obstacles in your life, Lisa's inspiring story will show you the path."

—Dean Karnazes, New York Times best selling author and Extreme Endurance Athlete.

Transcript of the Podcast:

Speaker 1: (00:01)
Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati brought to you by Lisatamati.com

Speaker 2: (00:12)
This week I have my wingman, Neil Wagstaff, who's been my coach and my business partner for well over a decade now. Today of course we're living in some pretty unusual times with the Corona virus hitting hard. It's very, very frightening and we're not sure what to expect. And last week we had a fantastic episode with dr Manson Mohamad on that subject. If you want to find out all those details about everything that you need to be aware with, with coronavirus, they make sure you check out last week's episode. But this week we turning our focus now to in positive responses to the crisis that we're facing. So immunity, boosting our immunity, lowering stress levels, and learning how to take care of yourself through the crisis is the focus of today's session. We're going to be doing a wellness checklist. We're going to be talking you through the different areas and what they will mean for you and how you can implement some easy wins into your life.

Speaker 2: (01:09)
So I will now going to pass over to my mate Neil Wagstaff who sitting over and have lot North. But before I do, just a reminder, I do have my book just out. It's March last week, literally in the middle of the pandemic. Don't match a book in the middle of a pandemic. It's not a good idea, notes herself. But relentless is now available. You can get it on my website. You can also get it in bookstores throughout New Zealand and you can also get it on audio and on Amazon and it's available worldwide by the printer on demand services pretty much everywhere that you can possibly think of. So if you want to check that out, head over to my website, lisatamati.com And you can grab it there or I will put the link to my international sales page in the show notes so you can click on it if you are overseas. Right. Without further ado then over to the show. Hi guys. Lisa Tamati here and I'm here with my wingman and Neil Wagstaff and today we're going to be talking a wellness check in how to increase in boost your immunity. So if you're listening via my podcast, pushing the limits, welcome. And if you're on video or you're on Facebook listening to this, welcome again to the show. I'm Neil. How you're doing over and have a lot lighters. We had times, isn't it

Speaker 3: (02:26)
In a strange way, in a strange way, Chi personally off a lot of, been part of a science fiction movie. Very bizarre. It's a weird, it's a way week. But what has worked for me this week? I'm not going to lie. There's been some anxious moments, there's been some stressful moments. But what works for me again, again is just coming back to the, the easy wins and low hanging fruit. The bits I can control and if I'm focusing on the bits I can control on feeling, I'm feeling a whole lot better.

Speaker 2: (02:53)
Absolutely. And this is what we want to do with you guys. We're going to start putting out a whole lot more content online to help you cope with the stress and being stuck at home and what you can do to, to optimize your health over the this corona virus time that we are all going through as a, as a, you know, the whole humanity basically. And to keep yourself well. So Neil yeah, we'll give you a quick introduction. My name is Lisa Tamati. I'm an ultra endurance athlete for 25 years. I'm now retired and Neil was my coach for over a decade and saved my career and we've since gone into business and we have a company called running hot coaching together that helps train people and athletes, both has health coaches in as running coaches and epigenetics coaches. We try and have a 700 people all around the world. So we love what we do. We're very passionate about sharing our knowledge and we're going to share a little bit today with you. We didn't want to start new.

Speaker 3: (03:54)
Let's start with a, a wellness check. My, so this is something that we use with our members at the gym, at peak fitness and health. We also use it with our athletes through running hot as well. And I was thinking of how we could, we could share some, some stuff that'd be useful to some people at this time. And I kept coming back to this lady so I just kept coming back again and again, it's simple, it's straightforward and a lot of people look at these things and think they're too simple. But if we can get control of these things through these tough times, then it's going to make a real difference to our to our bodies, our health, most importantly on mental health and wellness as well. So looking at what we want you guys and girls do at home is write these things down and we can send you a copy as well if you want.

Speaker 3: (04:37)
So just let us know afterwards. We're going to write ourselves on a scale of one to 10. You can do this each day, but I suggest you do check in on a regular basis because it's going to be easy at the moment for these things to get carried away. So we're going to rate ourselves on a scale of one to ten one being that we're, we're feeling like we're in the toilet and nothing's going well. 10 being rock and roll, we're ready to part a. We are all guns blazing. Now if all of us, we want to be all guns blazing. Okay. What we're going to want to do is that's going to vary throughout the day, so I'm throughout the week as well. So if we can see where we're at, then it makes it easy for us to identify which areas we can work on. Some weeks we might be low in just a couple of things, some weeks just one, some weeks you might be loading more things, but what allows us then to do is take control and make decisions on where we're at with our own personal health and wellness. And more importantly, if we get these things up and get all schools up, guess what's going to call them as well, which is so, so important at the moment is their immunity. If we can get the community out that is so important for us as well, but also our loved ones around us. And especially our parents or grandparents as well.

Speaker 2: (05:35)
Yes, very much so. They're elderly so we want you to scale one to 10 for each of these sleep, nutrition, hydration, movement, energy, body in stress and give yourself a writing a one to 10 and if you're coming out with some pretty low scores, you've got lot ones and twos and threes and pores. Then you need to sort of understand your body is not in a good place and you need to be adding in some more teaching to the areas that you've got deficit on. Now we use this, where are isolates when they're judging how hard they should be training. Because if they've got poor sleep, poor nutrition, and they were really dehydrated, used to then maybe they had five beers, then we're probably not going to go out and put them into the really hardest transition of the wake. And the reason is because we're not going to get the effect that we're after and we're actually going to cause the body more stress.

Speaker 2: (06:19)
So this is a tool that we use with our isolates, but this works also with just general people going through the population and just knowing where you are on all of these neighborhoods so that you don't end up, you know, with too much stress and putting your body on to too much load at a time when we're all naturally going to be under a lot of stress. So that's the wellness check. We can seen that out to anybody who wants to reach out to us from seeing you a little spreadsheet with us on. Yeah. So make sure you've taken, you know, take note of this and actually use it.

Speaker 3: (06:49)
So where I'm from there, what we're going to do guys is just take you through some of our really easy wins or low hanging fruit for each of these. So you've got some takeaways to actually work with and do. So looking at sleep, sleep is essential as we all know for ultimate recovery of the body and the mind. So it's not just the body is going to be the mind as well. If we sacrifice sleep, we are going to be putting yourself at higher risk and we begin to put in those around us and looking at how we organize our jobs, our day routine and structure, we're going to be key moving forward. We think a lot more clearly when we're well rested. So some easy tips of sleep because you are, the more stressed you are, the more stress you feel, the more important the need is to rest and recover. So our message to our athletes and our message to those that are training hard in the gym is if you are working hard, then rest hard. Okay, rude and Paul and you're gonna work hard, rest hard, even more important. Now. So if we are going hard, putting more time and effort into things, make sure we allow time for the rest. Then we're going to split rest down into three different things. I'll total rest reduced workloads and then meet on important that we've got all three of those types of rests in our lives

Speaker 3: (07:51)
To ask before. Midnight is worth four hours of sleep after midnight. It's your adrenals. So if we're out of the stress load then gets a better like 10 o'clock should be the cut off. Real simply speaking, that can vary from person to person. But simple low hanging fruit is think about winding down nine o'clock and then being out lights out by 10 o'clock make a big difference to how your body's responding. Our body will follow the natural rhythm to life. So slow down, relaxes the sunsets and wa and get up. I'm ready for the days of sunrises.

Speaker 2: (08:23)
We have very much Heidi and based something we Neo, we need the natural rhythms and within, you know, artificial light. One of the tricks that I've got for you there is the blue blocking glasses. I use those at nighttime. If I'm watching telly, if I'm on, have to be on the computer or anything like that, I've got my blue blocking glasses so that I don't affect the melatonin that has been produced, which is inhibited when I've got the blue light exposure at nighttime. And that can stop me going to sleep. So that's a really good quick and simple tip. They're easy to get online for 20 odd bucks. So grab those blue blocking glasses and dim your lights and try to follow the natural rhythm of the world because that's what our body developed from. And your adrenals are just so important right now and your stress levels and your hormones and getting that sleep is when your hormones are know doing their thing is when your adrenals are doing the thing. So if you're, if you're, you're burning the midnight oil and you know, a lot of us are going to have to be because we're, we're you know, stressed out with work, we're losing our jobs and that, but just don't underestimate the power of sleep is very, very important.

Speaker 3: (09:29)
So physical repair journey happens between 10:00 AM I'm sorry, 10:00 PM that should be in and 2:00 AM psychological repairs will happen between 2:00 AM and 6:00 AM. So simply speaking, if you've got a high physical stress load, same him to bed at the latest. That's when you're getting your bodies recover. You've got high psychological stress and stay in bed a little bit longer in the morning. If you can't do every day, pick some days where you can, again, low hanging fruit if it doesn't work every day, pick some days where you can so you can let your voice, your body and your mind recover. Again, simple things. Look at that. It's based on good science and good facts and you all know and when you've had a good night's sleep, how much better you feel? Don't let it accumulate, so don't let the low sleep. If you've been nailing happily I L sleep and you've started letting it drop to six and a half or seven, just don't let it accumulate.

Speaker 3: (10:17)
You can control it. Take this as one of the things you can control in your life and put it to the top of the priority list and reduce work load, allow you your body to take some risks, empty your bucket. We'll move on and talk about that later on the stress bucket and a bit more detail, but allow yourself some, some options to reduce and have a lower workload. Okay? Yup. So what we mean by that is sort of going, some still say that. And what we mean by that is should you a lie a lot a week of exercise, you're training hard to refreeze four weeks, you should have a lot a week of exercise as well. Okay. So is period bicep periodization. But more important now that you do LA cell, some weeks they just have an off week. I have a week where you reduce intensity, reduce loads and that applies not just to exercise to the other bits in your life as well.

Speaker 2: (11:04)
Yeah. So what about the rhythms again? And of course we could break this down and go into a lot more detail for different body types and epigenetic genetic types. And all that sort of thing, but just keeping it simple for you to at the moment. It's a nice rhythm of things.

Speaker 3: (11:19)
You're talking about lists.

Speaker 2: (11:20)
Yeah. So growing up my we were back to the number one.

Speaker 3: (11:25)
You got that there?

Speaker 2: (11:26)
Yeah, we were on the fifth grade. Now we're on the first grade. So next one should be all about while you're trying to fix that, Neil, I'll go on to the you know, the title, the title, race one. If you can pull that one up. Number six.

Speaker 3: (11:40)
it's

Speaker 2: (11:42)
Sorry guys, this one's a soul about having a little bit of me time. Now this is not being selfish. I want you guys to understand that having time for yourself, if you're a mother and you've got kids and you think, Oh, I just need to give, give, give, give, taking a little bit of time for yourself. We'll give the kids more than online because you'll be less irritated, irritable. You'll be laced short with the kids. You'll have more energy to actually cope with the whole stuff. So taking this a little bit of may, Tom isn't weakness and isn't being selfish. It's being sensible, just sensible. You need the time to heal and repair and to have time out and you need to just do things that will lower your stress levels. Now, I mean this is a sound very simple like going and having a boss, but like going and having a boss before going to sleep.

Speaker 2: (12:33)
For example, changing your body temperature signals to your body that you are really getting ready for bed and actually helps you fall into a sleep. Meditation is a wonderful toe. It doesn't actually have to be just a sitting meditation or aligned meditation. Some people can do like meditating. Like I really made a tight end movement really well. But it's giving you the time away from the problems of the world, from the bloody computer, from the, the kids screaming at you. Just getting some time at, you know, like I love reading books too and I have a, usually a pile of science books this big on my, on my table. But actually just before I got asleep, I tune off all of the sciency stuff and I actually got on read a stupid novel, some crazy adventure novel because I actually don't want to be continuing the work mode at 11 at night.

Speaker 2: (13:22)
I need a little bit of just some, you know me time and I need that before I power down. Now sunshine is another very important aspect here. Getting a sunshine means getting your vitamin D precursor. A new vitamin D is really, really essential for so many functions in the body. You wouldn't believe how many things that vitamin D is responsible for. Things like your calcium absorption, the strength of your muscles and your bones your mood. Of course everything is is related. A lot of it is related to vitamin D and that comes from having enough sunshine on your skin every day. So really, really important things. Anything dad they knew

Speaker 3: (14:04)
Nice, but again, keep it simple guys. It's looking at low hanging fruit or some little things that you can add in and just keep just checking is the whole point of this, this discussion is, is is checking in with you yourself so that you know that if things are not feeling good, that you can add these things back in and sometimes as simple as reading a bit what Lisa said is enough to just allow your body to go, ah, thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Yup. Right, and nutrition. Now, the reason we've added this thing, guys and girls, this can put a big load on your body if it's the wrong stuff, and it really jumps out to me when I went into the supermarket yesterday to get some stuff that dinner and I saw how much of the processed food had been emptied off the shelves.

Speaker 3: (14:43)
Now what worries Lisa and I about that massively as if the processed food has been emptied off the shelves and it's not actually needed. Then what lot of people were worried about we'll be doing is then using that because it's in the cupboard. So all of a sudden a good diet changes so bad though, which then adds more load and pressure on the body and creates more inflammation. So simple way, just simple advice and very basic care. But the standard diet or the standard diet, the where we're seeing with the amount of food that's been taken off the shelves is, is crap. So much crap is in your diet is more than 20% or two out of 10 foods and we need to change that. So removing poor choices from your diet, what would you say? Additional stress on your body and and start to take out the information which is going to be better for your immunity.

Speaker 3: (15:27)
So don't fall into the trap of thinking, I'll stock up on a couple of extra bass, a packet food or some what pastor, what bread and things like that and go, Oh cause it's in the cupboards. I'm going to use that instead of what I'd normally, sorry, the correct carbohydrates. I'll, what breads or what flowers are what sugars? The white devils refined foods packet foods versus closer to the source. EG Apple versus Apple juice. So, and then looking at what's in the food. So read your packets, how many items are listed on it. If there's a long list of items on the foods and there's, you've bought something for just in case you need it. If there's full, the numbers, if there's a long list of stuff, don't put it in your body unless you really, really have to all this stuff. We'll just put more load on your body, which then in the, in, in the current world is gonna make a stressful situation feel even worse, cause your body's now full of stuff that is not used to.

Speaker 3: (16:19)
So make, continue to make sensible choices around your, around your food. So making the change. If you're gonna want to stock up with foods and you're doing that, that's fine. Don't, there's a need. We've already been given the information. There's no need to, you know, start ordering stuff. But if you want to get some extra stuff and then make some choices that are healthier. Okay. one of our favorite books by Paul Check, how to eat, move and be healthy as a great resource and a great ones. Put them on a list and we'll take you through this information in a little bit or a lot more, a lot more detail. Okay. Yeah. And if you want to add there,

Speaker 2: (16:54)
Yeah, it's just very high level stuff. But you know, when we're under stress, when we facing the coronavirus, we want our immune system in tip top condition of course that, you know, our supplements and their vitamins and all that. But we are, most of our vitamins going to be coming from and now minerals and so on. It's going to be coming from my phone. So if we're eating too much processed food, data's royally or crappy food with bad fats and so on, that's really going to put a drain on our resources and our body needs everything. It doesn't. If we do get the Corona Vos, you need everything to be able to flush it. Or if you want to stop it actually getting, then the more your immune system is working, the better you're going to have, a bit of chance you're going to have. So we could go into all the details of all of the different types of people and what you need for all of that. And if anyone wants to find out about that, you can reach out to us. We have an epigenetic program which looks at your genes and how you do it, but just as a general thing, keep away from less processed foods, cut deep fried stuff that's crappy. Vegetable oils and so on and cut the sugar. You know, if you just do that eight times out of team, you know, no one's perfect and he was not perfect. I'm not perfect, but it's all about what you do on the regular basis,

Speaker 3: (18:05)
Not be the case. Remember, because Gail's food is designed to fool your body, so after you eat, you should feel satisfied. You shouldn't be craving sugar, sugary foods. Food should restore energy and improve our wellbeing and mental clarity. So if we're feeling sluggish, tired, jittery, or hyper, it's a strong song. The food we're putting in is not agreeing with us. So listen to what your body's saying. All point in the wellness check when you think about your nutrition is has it done the job? It shouldn't for me. So these again are an easy win. If we're putting stuff in that's going to make us feel sides, Cheerio hopper, then replace it. Try something else and see how it makes you feel. Because often then that it's going to cloud our judgment. It's going cloud our thought process and make things feel, feel worse than they are.

Speaker 2: (18:47)
Yeah. And that decision making process, you know, when, you know, they've proven that when you have a crappy foods, you make worse decisions in life in general. So you know, like it's a really good thing to stay away from. And one of the biggest culprits I see is all the sugary soft drinks that we, you know what you see kids just pouring them down. It's like, Oh my gosh, you know, like data's really the easiest way to get into trouble really in a hurry. So the next home we've got is a, you know, hydration and water. So not so much soothing in it as drinking it

Speaker 3: (19:17)
So I can, it's fun as well though. It was funny. Good point. So I didn't lace you to talk about a little bit of the exercise, but it's made me smile. Just thinking about that. So stuff you enjoy as well. Big, important part of your health with the hydration is one thing, but still doing things, the reason that you can do and you eat and then working out. Why is that? If you, if you can't do something that you really love, what's, so what's the plan B, they're still there and we still need to laugh and get those good hormones flying through our system as well. So at least go for it.

Speaker 2: (19:47)
Now we'll go into that. On the exercise thing, you know, if you ask doc in isolation at the moment with a virus overview, you know, being on lockdown because you've got loved ones who need protecting. And there is lots of stuff that we can still do at home and we'll get to that in a minute. But this is some recommendations for hydrating yourself and keeping yourself really in a good tip top condition. Now why is, why is water so important, Neil, you explain it.

Speaker 3: (20:07)
So it's basically the morphine is a big part of our life and keeps us, keeps us, it keeps us, keeps us moving, keeps going. It's a clean name for a porous is important. Straight in the right amount each day based on the weights. Simple guidelines there in front of you. So the simple way to work this out for those you are listening and can't see the slides is North point North three three times your kg body weight. Okay, so that will give you a rough liters. So for 60 kgs it'd be roughly two liters, 75 two and a half liters, nine kg, three liters, 105 3.5 kgs. Sorry, 3.5 liters. So you should plan to increase that if you're exercising for about around 500 meal for every hour of exercise and then an additional glass for every tea or coffee you had. So most people are walking around the hydrated.

Speaker 3: (20:56)
Yeah. Most people are walking around, they hydrated. And we need to make sure that our hydration is good and that we've got what we what we need in our body. Again, use good quality water and drink regularly throughout the day between meals to treat the required amount. We shouldn't need too too much more with meals if we're chewing properly and eating properly for a digestion and not rushing off food. If you're paying those, which we see with a lot of our, our clients and athletes is that they come back and go, I've got my waters and what you recommended and now I'm paying loads. That's an indication that the water's mineral content is not high enough. So a simple win for that is adding a pinch of good quality sea salt, Himalayan pink salt, perfect into the into the water. And that will make a big big difference to how you hold onto the water as well. Yeah,

Speaker 2: (21:46)
Yeah. Sorry. It's electrolytes versus water. You need that right combination. So if you're just having water and you're diluting your potassium and magnesium, you know you know, it would have your mineral content, then you're going to end up with an imbalance in your electrolytes and that can cause trouble. So you need to up both of them and keep them in balance. And this is what we see, you know, during, you know, as a, as an ultra marathon runner, this is always the biggest game that you're playing when you're running, you know, a hundred K, 200 K races is, is getting that balance right and get it wrong. And you know, I've gotten the wrong with you times and nearly kicked the bucket even from a potassium deficiency for example, cause you just not holding onto the, the, the fluids let you should be or if you don't have enough sodium. So just being aware of that. If you are paying loads and not replacing the mineral content, then yeah, you need to be aware of that. If you have any specific medical conditions, same place obviously can help your doctor because that can, but this is for the general population. Okay.

Speaker 3: (22:44)
Instruction and your Walter will will help as well. So not just so lemon will help. Using essential oils is good as well. So structure in the water will allow the body to hold onto it that little bit more.Looking at exercise and as we work our way down, the wellness checks the right type of movement. Exercise is important. So we still need, we know that the, the evidence is there for exercise and immunity and exercise and resilience and mental strength makes a huge, huge difference. So, but what is important to understand the exercise is still a physical stressor. So if we've already got high stress levels, will exercise help? Yes it will. As long as it's the right type of activity. So we want to encourage you to definitely be moving and exercising. But if your body, some weeks or some days it's got a high level of stress, which we'll know from your wellness check, then just change the type of activity you're doing. So we'll look at our work and university on working out, working in should create energy. So this is a type of session that you should create an injury with getting the mix of working and working out, right? That's what we want to, we want to do. So an example

Speaker 2: (23:46)
Of working in session, you could perform it on a full stomach. So he's telling you already it's going to be lower intensity. It would involve some good breast control. No, my just sparks in heart rate or breathing. You'll be able to move with your breath and you should find it relaxing as well and feel light at the end. The more energized. Where are all our festivals over the years with this is feeling like it's not really a session. Yeah, me too. I have, I know you definitely have many times, but once you get the feel the benefits, then you realize that some days it's fine. If you're having to do a working in session every single day, then you know you're putting these some real risks. But you should find the a few times a week if you are switching incentive session for working in session, your overall energy throughout the week, your wellbeing, your mindset will be a whole lot better because you've allowed your body a little bit more time to recover while still doing some movement.

Speaker 2: (24:38)
So what, so the types of things that we've spoken about here are things like or yoga or some just scheme stretching, some myofacial release, maybe some foam rolling. Keeping the body mobile and in the all your joints lubricated but not, you know, going for a high intensity interval training that wouldn't count as working in session. Even like meditation and deep breathing exercises as a part of this process. And the reason this is really important and this is so counter intuitive and this why I argue with new for many a year in my mind a workout was where you're sweating your asset and you puffing your ass off and you are out of brace and you are gone. You know, I mean, I was happy with myself. And, and there was a time and a place for that. Absolutely. You know, we want to get stronger and fitter and all the rest of it and get all the brain derived neurotrophic factor and all these other things that are really, really good in hunting.

Speaker 2: (25:31)
It's fantastic how Eva, you need to balance that with this working in. And the more stressed you are and the more trouble you're having with your, with your body, the more uniquely leaning towards this way and not overdoing the other stuff because your hormones are involved here. And this is a very important one for ladies, right? Especially, you know, we've got some very complicated hormone sessions and you know, later on we'll, we'll get into more complicated stuff like that. But you don't want to be smashing your hormones every day. You, you won't want to be sending your cortisol through the roof because that's what you are doing. That short term when you're doing the high intensity and you need to be controlling that. If you're having a stressful life, you don't want to add more to the mix and end up with adrenal burnout and cortisol problems and that sort of thing, which will lead to more information and so on and so on and to decrease in your immune system.

Speaker 2: (26:22)
So any surfing these sessions are gold for reducing inflammation. So we get, we send you some gums besides, we will post them some videos over the next week and some examples of a working session because they are just, they're really all game changers. Oh, you type channel or winning? Actually Neil, so yeah, we've got a huge YouTube channel. I'm just on the Lisa tamari. If you go on YouTube, you'll find over 500 videos on everything like this from full full documentaries right through to, you know, working in and working out and all sorts of injury prevention. And more

Speaker 3: (26:59)
So I'm looking at the working out so we are designed to move and when not designed and equipped to sit in front of a computer in a car or on the couch. Okay. We're really not designed to hunt and gather, not to sit so real. Simply speaking, when you're putting together and this is what we're going to help you with over the coming weeks as well. If you can't use the gym, if you having to try and go home and exercise at home, then this is where we can help massively, but a real simple way to look at it, to start with is if you're doing some exercise that involves a squat, lunge, bend, push, pull, twist, and some sort of walking or running and you were covering. A lot of the primal movement patterns that we used to use when we were in were Hunter-gatherers. Now if you're covering those as well and you're moving through different ranges of movement, you'll be moving in this three dimensional movement. You'll be moving through all planes of motion, which means your body is going to get a good workout. It's going to get a good a good amount of exercise and also you're going to be looking after your your, every part of the body should do that so you're not just moving in one place. That makes sense.

Speaker 2: (27:58)
Absolutely. Like working, having worked with my mum and people might know my story. Mom had an aneurysm and I've just released a book called relatedness about your journey back. But one of the things like, because she was a basically Bader and from for almost two years, you know, emotionally she's lost all the ability to do all these various things and getting them back. I'll tell you, as I had had, you know, I was trying to treat you the other day to do the twist, you know, the twist that's hit the music going on. She couldn't, she didn't know how the body, the hips go one way. The upper body goes the other way. So I had to teach her or these things. Again, these, we on the other hand, my dad who's 81 and doesn't have the healthiest lifestyle and try arguing with him. But anyway, but he does have a healthy lunch. He's a hot, he's a hot cool. He does have a healthy last start on that. He's gotten in old day pretty much every day. So he's been doing squatting, Pauling lifting heavy loads. He's in funny awkward positions and that makes them extremely mobile, extremely strong for an 81 year old. So even though he doesn't go to the gym and he doesn't do any of those athletes things, he is working his body and all those planes and that's what keeps him strong at 81.

Speaker 3: (29:10)
Yeah, that's a perfect example when he's looking bloody good as well. So energy, it's on the wellness check as well. It's there for a reason. One of my continuous goals on a daily basis is to get out of bed like a kid on Christmas day. And you'll all know what that feeling feels like, that excitement that, that just that high energy that, Ooh, I can't wait to get up. That's what we should be. And I'd encourage all of you to strive for, strive for that as well. A lot of, a lot of us, even if we get half of that where we're going to be failing a whole lot better than we and we currently are. So check each day how much energy you got, how should you feel? Where's your expectation? Where do you want to be failing because you, with all the things we've been talking about on today's session, you can change that and then put some expectations around yourself that it doesn't have to be the norm, that that's how you feel when you get up in the morning.

Speaker 3: (30:01)
It really, really doesn't set a standard and work through it. And then I know that if I lose a bit of sleep, but I'm not gonna feel like a kid on Christmas morning over. If I do focus on my sleep flux and all the things we've been talking about, good foods, good exercise and the hydration, then I'm a lot closer to running out of bed. So I'm right in the presence and that's what it should be like every day. So keep the energy tanks full and don't feel one of the best bits of advice I was given. By it's actually by a client I was working with as I was talking to him about these things and he said, do you know what makes sense to me now is that this, the building up your energy stores should be like a bank account. So don't fool. You've got to spend it all at once. What a lot of us do and go w you just go, well I'll feel great today. I'm going to go and use all this energy out and so we'll have to save a bit so that we're keeping to increasing our savings up. And then we had a bit more energy and we use a bit but always, always got surface there. So think of it like that rather than MC in the MTV account all at once.

Speaker 2: (30:56)
And the way we think in the positivity and we'll be going into this in the, in the near future without they'll call producing is very much around mindset and the way you approach big challenges. We are all facing, you know, an unprecedented time. We've all got huge challenges to deal with both financially from a business perspective, from a health perspective of our loved ones. We were feeling a lot of fear and you know, none of us are immune to that but it's how we then deal and this is why this sort of information is super, super crucial. Cause if you're doing all the physical stuff then you'll be able to cope with the medial stuff a hell of a lot better. If you're going out and you're drinking a lot of alcohol misuse, praised, and if you're not exercising and you're just, you're giving up on each other's nerves cause you're trapped in the house together and all of those sorts of things and you haven't done the exercise and you're not getting the right stimulus at the right times, then that's going to access abate.

Speaker 2: (31:45)
This whole process that we're all being forced into. So try and change the direction of the way your thoughts are going. Try look for the positive things from this experience that we're going, it's gonna make us reflect on who we are, the direction we're going and they will be good things that come out of this if the do right now is to protect the vulnerable in our society and that means our elderly are immune compromised. People who have had cancers or transplants or have for some reason got an immune system problem that is the ones that we are doing this for. We are not just staying home and protecting, you know like ourselves. We are doing that to protect the people on the front lines cause more we stay home the more we're going to be protecting them and also our L vulnerable hourly and so on.

Speaker 2: (32:36)
Those are the ones that we had staying home for. So if we can look after ourselves and make this as a time of reflection and a time to change direction and to make us a more caring society, things of value, then something good will come out of it. And I'm really big on always finding the silver lining and every damn cloud that's come, you know, like I've just released a book called relentless and it's about the story of bringing my mum back after her aneurism. And we were left in a state where she was like hardly any how I function. And it was, I couldn't find anything in the silver lining for status. But after working with her for four years, after bringing her back after this, the discoveries that I might have along the way, and now having written the spoken, helping hundreds of other people on their journeys, they was the silver lining.

Speaker 2: (33:20)
You don't always see it on day one. Okay, we're on day one right now, but there will be some silver lining things. It will be some benefits that we'll get out of this. But what we have to do right now is consolidate as a society and to protect the vulnerable that is that as absolute. So stay safe, I think that's all we've got for the day. We're going to be producing much more content. Please subscribe to our podcast. We have a poll, Costco pushing the limits and I put out a container every week home. Nia, we'll be hearing some of these episodes on there and we've also got, you know, our YouTube channel where you can reach out to us on Facebook. We're pretty easy to find at least the time of or near Wagstaff. You know, anything you want to add to before we wrap up for today?

Speaker 3: (34:03)
One thing, just a, an easy one. Just to really kick in your cause. The other one, the other things you've got on the, on the list is just around stress. So really spending some time activating your parasympathetic nervous system. One of the easy ways to do that is to is to just focus on a simple box breathing technique. And one of our favorites, which we'll leave you with is, is I'm just simply doing a simple count of four where you breathe in for a count of four, you can hold for a count of four, slowly breathe out for a count of four.

Speaker 3: (34:41)
Then you hold it again before you breathe in. So you're literally going through count a full and a breath in a hold, a breath out, breathe hold. Try and do that through the nose. Be much better for your personal clinic system as well. Once you get comfortable with it, you can then look at it. Increasing that up to five seconds, six seconds, go with where you're comfortable. But bringing that in as a simple way just to flip yourself into your parasympathetic system each day, which will take more stress and load off your body. A lot of us will be very sympathetic or the moments are high heart rates, high sweat rates, high breathing rates. And we need to just spend some time bringing that, bringing back back, back down.

Speaker 2: (35:17)
It stops the, the cortisol and the adrenaline production and I can, you know, cause I do this many, many times that I throughout the day, as soon as I can, you know, and I'm a very adrenaline dominant person. I know from my epigenetic type that I am. So I have to like stop every, every half an hour, a couple of hours, especially when I'm doing a lot and sit there. And just do three breaks and that box pattern and immediately I can feel the cortisol drop. It really it has a benefit. So just keep practicing that and use it to your advantage to lower those stress levels so your immune system stays on fire because when those cortisol and adrenaline are high, what happens? It takes energy from your immune system running and we need that

Speaker 3: (36:00)
Simple breathing. But guys, girls, thanks ladies. There's great is always talking to you. And the other thing they'll say that was, there was nothing else, but I'm going to, I've got one more thing is, is is great at all, just even connecting with you today. That social connection, it really is nice to spend some time talking with ya, with you mate. And even having these conversations today, I can feel from our body now smart a bit more. I've lost a bit more. That's good. So make sure whether that's done in person via face-time, via messenger, over it's done. Just keep it there because the social aspect as well as so important for our health,

Speaker 2: (36:33)
Social distancing does not mean social disconnection.

Speaker 3: (36:37)
Well said my faith. All right, let's talk soon.

Speaker 2: (36:43)
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Speaker 1: (37:33)
That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com

The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.

Geoffrey started off as a computer scientist after graduating from Stanford but after creating a successful start-up that sold to Groupon, a public company he decided to change the trajectory of career and used his incredible intellect to learn more about optimising human performance at first concentrating on enhancing cognitive performance through Nootropic stacks and then delving deep into the science behind the keto diet, intermittent fasting, metabolism, ketone esters and supplements.

Boomer Anderson hails from the USA but has lived and worked in many countries and cities from Wall St to Singapore to Amsterdam among others.

After graduating from the University of Minnesota, Boomer pursued his first love (finance) through a successful career in investment banking in New York and Singapore. Always desiring to learn more and pursue his second love (health), Boomer left finance to found a successful clinical practice leveraging data to help entrepreneurs and executives achieve better performance through health.

He continues to pursue his joint loves of health and finance through early-stage startup investments, advisory roles, and public speaking. In his free time, Boomer enjoys experimenting with the latest in performance technologies, travel, adventure, and spending time with his girlfriend.

Sanjay Rawal worked in the human rights and international development sectors for 15 years in over 40 countries before focusing his love for photography and storytelling onto filmmaking.

His first feature, Food Chains (2014), premiered at the 2014 Berlinale and screened at Tribeca before securing domestic distribution from Screen Media. The film was produced by Eva Longoria and Eric Schlosser and narrated by Forest Whitaker.  It went on to screen in 1,100 more theaters during its theatrical, semi-theatrical & community screening tour.

A lifelong runner, Sanjay was happy to lose the pounds he gained eating Mexican food in farmworker towns and take on a project about running. His latest film, 3100: Run and Become, opened in theaters in fall 2018 and comes to New Zealand in February 2020.

Sanjay learned under spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy and studies in this film the power of running to connect humans to powers beyond themselves.

The film follows the incredibly long and brutal 3100-mile race held every year in New York City as well as diving into the long human history of long-distance running visiting The Mt Heiei Monks in Japan to the Navajo Indians to the Kalahari Bushmen.

A film not to be missed and an interview to open the mind to new possibilities.

We would like to thank our sponsors:

Running Hot - By Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff

If you want to run faster, longer and be stronger without burnout and injuries then check out and TRY our Running Club for FREE on a 7-day FREE TRIAL Complete holistic running programmes for distances from 5km to ultramarathon and for beginners to advanced runners.
 
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www.runninghotcoaching.com/info and don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel at Lisa's Youtube channel  www.yotube.com/user/lisatamat and come visit us on our facebook group
 
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Epigenetics Testing Program by Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff.

Wouldn’t it be great if your body came with a user manual? Which foods should you eat, and which ones should you avoid? When, and how often should you be eating? What type of exercise does your body respond best to, and when is it best to exercise?

These are just some of the questions you’ll uncover the answers to in the Epigenetics Testing Program along with many others. There’s a good reason why epigenetics is being hailed as the “future of personalized health”, as it unlocks the user manual you’ll wish you’d been born with!

No more guesswork. The program, developed by an international team of independent doctors, researchers, and technology programmers for over 15 years, uses a powerful epigenetics analysis platform informed by 100% evidenced-based medical research.

The platform uses over 500 algorithms and 10,000 data points per user, to analyze body measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home

Find out more about our  Epigenetics Program and how it can change your life and help you reach optimal health, happiness, and potential at https://runninghotcoaching.com/epigenetics

You can find all our programs, courses, live seminars and more at www.lisatamati.com 

Transcript of the Podcast:

Speaker 1: (00:01)
Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa [inaudible], brought to you by Lisatamati.com

Speaker 2: (00:13)
You're listening to pushing the limits with Lisa Tamati. Welcome back everybody. Today I have a very, very special podcast, but before we get underway, I just want to remind you, if you want to reach out to me, you can do that at lisatamati.com Find me on Instagram. I'm very active on Instagram at least to [inaudible] the same on Facebook. And I'd love you to come and check out our website and our flagship programs. We have three programs. We mainly do our work and we have the epigenetic program, we have the run online run trading system running hot, and we also have mindset you, which is all about mental toughness, resilience, and being the best version of yourself that you can be. So make sure you go and check those lisatamati.com Right now. Today we have a very special guest all the way from New York city.

Speaker 2: (01:05)
His name is Sanjay revile. Have you haven't heard of? Sanjay? He is an internationally renowned filmmaker. He was in the human rights and international development sector for 15 years and worked in over 15 so over 40 countries before he tuned his love for photography and storytelling into his new career, which is filmmaking. He's done a number of films. I'm most well known as his feature film, his first feature film called food chains. This was produced with Eva Longoria and Eric Schlosser and was an over 1100 theaters worldwide. And his latest film is what we're going to be talking about today. Now Sanjay is a lifelong runner. He's dedicated to doing just this running. And he was also a follower of the late Sri chum NOI, who many of you runners may know of. He was a Indian spiritual leader who died in 2007, but he was very much into unifying religions and to meditation and the power of a sport and athleticism to help you reach spiritual realms, which I find really, really fascinating subject.

Speaker 2: (02:25)
And the film that Sanjay has just produced is called 3,100 run and become, and it's based around the fact that human beings are meant to do this long, long distance running that we talk about that we're born to run. And it's particularly seen it on the race in New York city. 3000, 100 miles. This has been going for over 27 years, I believe around half mile block in New York city. And every year about 14 to 16 runners come to test the metal against horrifically long brutal arduous race. And the distances that they cover in that time is over 52 days. Is 3,100 miles set is over with just up, no, sorry, just over 5,000 kilometers. That's like going right across the United States, but in a half mile blocks. So you can imagine how hard this is. It's absolutely brutal. It's not something I would've ever tackled. It's too big. But he talks in chosen this foam, one of the characters, the main characters is the Norwegian runner who has done this over 15 times. And as really the world's best at the super, super, super long distances. So we get into a really deep conversation around philosophy and spirituality. The power of running to train, seeing yourself the healing abilities of running, how it can connect you with mother nature and you know, soul, a lot of our modern day woes. So without further ado, here's Sanjay.

Speaker 3: (04:01)
Well, hi everybody and welcome to pushing the limits. It's fantastic to have you guys back again. We're nearly at the end of 2019 and I can't believe it. And today I have a special special guest with me who is sitting in New York city at the moment. Sanjay Rowe. Wow. Welcome to the show. Sanjay.

Speaker 4: (04:20)
Thank you so much. It's a, it's a winter here, so I'm just trying to keep it together while you guys enjoy mother nature in a different way than I am right now.

Speaker 3: (04:28)
Yes, I've been, yeah. Well you're welcome to come over here anytime. We'd love to have you ever New Zealand. You can come and visit way. That'd be fantastic. So have you ever been to New Zealand?

Speaker 4: (04:38)
I have, I haven't been there in almost 20 years, but I am coming for about 10 to 12 days at the end of February. The screen, the movie that we're going to talk about.

Speaker 3: (04:48)
Oh wow. Okay. I've got to make sure I get to that somehow. So we'll talk about that afterwards. So everybody listening who doesn't know sanjay you will soon. So he has produced a number of films over his career. But recently won a film that we are going to be talking about mostly today is a film called 3,100. Sanjay, can you tell us a little bit about this amazing though?

Speaker 4: (05:15)
Yeah, I'd be happy to. So the movie's 3,100 running become and it follows a pretty diminutive relatively unheard of. Finished man named Ashbery. Hannah Alto is a paper boy by trade. At the same time, he is an underground, multi-day distance running legend. The film follows him trying to complete the 3,100 mile race and the year 2016 this race is the world's longest certified road race. It's almost 5,000 kilometers. It's just a few case short of five K 5,000 but it takes place all around a half mile, close to a kilometer along a loop. In the heart of New York city runners have to try to complete at least a hundred K a day for 52 days in order to finish the race. Under that window. It's grueling, but at the same time, although it sounds like an absolute misery Fest, a suffer Fest, people don't come out of it physically devastated. In fact, the only way you can actually tell the line for this type of mores is to have a deep understanding of the spirituality of long distance running.

Speaker 4: (06:31)
So in the film, not only do we follow Ash Briana, El Alto, but to kind of show how and why this race is even possible, we'd go back into time. We follow three other runners on their own quests, but runners who come from very deep traditional cultures of running a, we follow an ultra marathoner on the Navajo nation. In Arizona, we go to the Kalahari desert and Botswana at hunt with Bushman hunters who chase down game across two to three day law tracks. And we follow an aspirant in the Highlands of Japan who was doing a thousand day Trek of about 31,000 miles in the mountains outside of Kyoto. This shows the spirituality that's inherent to running that really fuels the runners in the 3,100 mile race.

Speaker 3: (07:20)
Wow. Well you preaching to the converted here and a lot of my audience, of course Evan runners. And what really surprises me, I mean I have to, I have to tell you a little bit of a story. I actually tried to get a documentary series done for discovery channel called run the planet and we actually uncovered, so the Kalahari, the Navajo, the, the Mount Tia amongst the, and a number of other tribes, people with stories and legends of doing long distance running. I didn't manage to pull it off. We did the the pilot for the series a in Australia reenacting an Aboriginal men story who ran 250 kilometers to save a friend of hers across the desert. And that was the end of the project unfortunately. But you actually manage the Paul was off which a huge amazing seat too though because I know what these sort of things take.

Speaker 3: (08:17)
But we, we came from the same premise that running is an inherently, we are born to run and stuff. The famous book is from Chris Google. We have born to run and we are made for this sort of long distance stuff and that we've done that throughout history. And you have uncovered these amazing people doing these incredible things. What's interesting for me is you've come from a very spiritual background and I've actually not come from that same background as a runner come more from the sporting and the, you know and I, I think I lived a lot of untapped potential sort of on the table looking back cause I didn't tap into the more spiritual side. I think I did to a certain degree without really understanding it. But you know, let's talk a little bit about Sri chum noise and what the races that he set up all around the world actually have to do with a 3,100 mile race. And, and your, your what, what your beliefs are around, she treats your NOI and has had a trick to long distance running.

Speaker 4: (09:25)
First of all. I so wish you'd completed that series. It sounds like it would have been awesome and I probably wouldn't have had to do this movie.

Speaker 3: (09:33)
It would have been complimentary, would've been awesome. Yeah. We didn't manage to pull it off. As, you know, there are lots of hurdles to jump through when you're totally, yeah.

Speaker 4: (09:44)
So, you know, to your question, I, I ran track in high school and I, I, I grew up in the United States and you know, the state that I grew up in, California has 35 million people. So a lot of people ran track, you know, but kind of got disillusioned from everything at university and ended up after graduation moving from the West coast of the U S to New York city where an Indian spiritual teacher named Sri Chinmoy lived his path really intrigued me because no harm, no foul, like there's no superiority or inferiority. But he really advocated a a pretty unified philosophy of not just making your heart strong and, and trying to develop the kind of beautiful qualities that we have inside, like love and peace and joy. But he also felt that physical fitness was a paramount importance to achieving that sense of inner peace. And so he came at running an exercise from a totally different vantage point than I did for me.

Speaker 4: (10:45)
You know, it was all about competition. And you know, when I was in high school, I would win a lot of races, but by the time I got to college, you know, I was no longer in that kind of top echelon. And you know how it is. It's like once you realize you're never going to be like at the very, very top, you know or, or you're not going to win every single race. I know you want a lot of races, you start really losing, you know, a sense of purpose. But when I came across region wise philosophy, it was totally different. You know, and, and this is reflective in all the cultures that we explore in 3,101 and become that there's something unique about running and we just have to take it on faith that unlike any other activity, however wonderful, whether it's tennis or swimming or biking, that running connects us to mother nature in a completely unique way.

Speaker 4: (11:41)
And when I, when you know, when I spent time with the Navajo and people will see in the film are our main Navajo character. Sean Martin says, when you run your feet are praying to mother earth, you're breathing in father sky. You're showing them, you're praying to them, you're showing them that you're willing to work for the blessings of mother earth. And that's a philosophy that I've seen reflected in traditional cultures all over the world. And that was in Sri Chinmoy. His philosophy, even though we don't actually, nobody really consider as Eastern philosophy as something that really revolves around an act of, of, of physical fitness, like running. Yeah. But in a sense, you know, it was men and women, humanity's first religion, that idea of connecting to nature and the energies both within and without through our feet. So when, when, when he kind of presented that to me and to others, that blew my mind, but I wasn't really ready for the philosophy. You know, I ran 800 meters and the 1500 meters, but when I moved to New York to study with them in 1997 that was the summer that the 3,100 mile race was launched and I hadn't, I hadn't even done a marathon. So the idea of doing 60 miles a day or 52 days just blew my mind.

Speaker 3: (13:03)
Yeah, absolutely. How does the human body, I mean I've, I've done, you know, the longest I've run is like through New Zealand, like 3000, 250 Ks in 42 days, which is not as much money per day is what they were doing. Given we were on the road and doing book tours and things at the same time. But the, the amount of pain in the suffering that you do go through and people have often said to me, did you reach this flow state? And then you became a, and I know that a lot of people experience that. And I, and I have to say I had had times or flow state when I was in a flow state, but unfortunately I couldn't leave a hole myself in that flow state. And the, the suffer face did, you know, it was about, you know, overcoming a lot of pain amazing levels of fatigue with a lot of willpower which we know as limited, you know, we will have a limited amount of willpower.

Speaker 3: (14:09)
And, and I was always hoping to reach that state of self transcendence really. And, and Neveah, but I hadn't been a catered myself to meditation and to the other sides of all that. Probably enough looking back which I'm much more into these days. But back then it was all about, you know, the physical, mental, the mental strength and the physical strength to actually prepare your body for this battle going in. And this is a completely different approach to what Sri, Jim NOI head and what these people that are doing the 3,100 have really it's, and I wonder how do they actually get to that, you know, as someone who's don't done a hell of a lot of running and not really achieved that flow state for long periods of time, at least how the heck do they do it.

Speaker 4: (15:00)
So there, there, there are two types of runners in the race and you know, again, no superiority or inferiority, but there are very few people on earth like you that have the mental fortitude to like will themselves through 40, 45, 50 days, you know, of of doing, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60, 80, a hundred Ks per day. Like, you know, that willpower will only take you so far. And, and in your darkest moments, you know, in the run, willpower is not going to offer you any light. If it's gone, then it's just Sufferfest. So a lot of people who come to the 3,100, whether they, there, they come from a background of faith or not, they realize either in their first attempt or beforehand that if they don't kind of develop access to a place within themselves where they can be happy, simply just happy in the worst moments.

Speaker 4: (15:58)
If they can't be in that flow state at will, then it's going to be a long 52 days. And you know, a lot of people, I would say probably at least a third to a half of people who do it the first time, you know, it's, it's it's a mixture of pleasure and pain and those moments like you experienced in, in your, in your cross-country run, those moments are enough to get you up the next day. But they're not necessarily gonna fuel every single mind mile. That said, it's like the people that come back and do it over and over and over, either through the race or outside the race, they really develop the power of meditation and at the same time, like unlike your race, and I think you'll appreciate this more than most, the reason why they do the race on a half mile loop is so that you have access to your aid every half a mile.

Speaker 4: (16:53)
You have access to a bathroom every half a mile. There's no traffic. There's foot traffic on this loop from just the public, but it's a pretty isolated area of New York and you don't have to worry about cars or anything. So in that sense your mind can like stop forgetting about the surroundings and, and it's, it's a lot easier that way. So that said, it's like this race, like the people that get the most out of it come at it the way you would now that come at it, knowing that you need to have access to that meditative side of you and you need to train with that in mind. It's like you have to find a way to find joy or happiness in those moments of exertion. And that doesn't come spontaneously out in the suffer Fest. You have to build that in your training.

Speaker 3: (17:38)
Yeah. And you have to develop that skill and the years and years of meditation, I should imagine to be able to reach that state. And that's something that fascinates me now. And I'm in, I'm developing, you know, those skills of late, but it's something that I wish on head back then instead of just the will and mindset. And I'm doing this no matter what. And, and it surprises me that how many people can override all of the the pain and the, you know, we do have an amazing ability to deal with things. But I cannot, I cannot, in all honesty, say to you, I enjoy it or I was happy in doing a lot of those races. There was a lot of, you know, I want to achieve this. It's a challenge. It's an opportunity to find out who I am. And I think when we, when we connect to nature and we do find out so much about ourselves and so even though I didn't approach it from a spiritual point of view, I think the stuff that I learned from it has been so, so powerful to helping me in, in everyday life.

Speaker 3: (18:51)
In, in getting through obstacles, other people that are doing these types of things, in your opinion just more, are they tapping into a higher power? Are they able to actually leave the the, the suffering behind in some way?

Speaker 4: (19:12)
That's a great question. So like going to the time that we spent with the Bushman and the Kalahari, these cultures that have been running for literally 125,000 years, they say you cannot separate running from God. Of course, if you want to run to become a better looking person running, we'll give that to you. If you want to run to become healthy running, we'll do that for you. But if you run with the intention, I mean this is wild, but if you run with the intention of getting closer to the divine part of yourself, to the divine part of the universe, whatever you, you label that as running, we'll get you there. I mean, just like if you meditate for just power of concentration, it'll do it. If you meditate to feel a little bit of peace, it'll do it. But if you meditate for a self discovery to discover the oneness you have with the divine, that's everywhere.

Speaker 4: (20:07)
Meditation will do that. And so when it, when it comes to running this particular race, people come into it as a pilgrimage. You know, you can either come into it what the mental attitude of like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to achieve this. But there was a runner on an Israeli multi-day champion and Coby Orrin who did the race, I think in 2017 and across the first thousand miles he was pushing. And he actually sat in Israeli national record for the fastest time to a thousand miles in the midst of this 3,100 mile race. But he realized that the true meaning of this race wouldn't reveal itself unless he moved into a completely different state of mind. And he realized that he had to take the race as a pilgrimage. And what that meant was not thinking about your splits, not thinking about how many miles you're doing each day, but really finding a way to focus on the meaning of each action of each step.

Speaker 4: (21:06)
And when he got into that sense of, or lack of expectation, and when he got into that sense of focus, he realized that there was, there was joy, there was actually happiness by looking at the moments, by looking at the specific actions and the steps and that happiness wasn't going to come. Looking at your watch or looking at your daily mile totals, that happiness kind of existed in the middle of all that. But again, it's like, it all sounds like fun and games, but unless we had that kind of intention, we don't actually find where happiness really exists.

Speaker 3: (21:40)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, overcoming changing perspective. I mean, I never went into races with the, the thought of winning, to be honest, most of the time it was all about, you know, survival getting through to the other in some which way. And I've had some very spiritual type experiences underway. Perhaps induced by, you know, fatigue, sleep deprivation, those types of things, hallucinations. And the things that you actually discover about yourself are just absolutely mind blowing, even without the spiritual aspect. But I do wish now that I had gone more into that side of things to be able to overcome the limitations. You know, what worries me nowadays as a, as a running coach and we train $700 sleets all around the world is, is the danger that is involved with ultra marathon running. Because there is, you know, you can do permanent damage.

Speaker 3: (22:44)
I've done some damage to my body. Why do these guys not have physical damage from doing these extreme races or do they? I've had, you know, big problems with things like rhabdomyolysis kidneys, you know, not functioning properly from repeatedly breaking down too much muscle. Things like that, fibroid problems, adrenal problems, adrenal burnout. Do these guys ever suffer from those sort of normal physical breakdowns? Of course, muscle tears and in those sorts of things as well. And if not, why not? Why do they not have that limitation, those very human limitations on them

Speaker 4: (23:26)
That, that, that, that's a great question. You know, as, as opposed to most ultra distance running, I mean this is more akin to your, your, your 42 days across New Zealand where you can't push it. You know, you can't win the 3,100 mile race in a day, but you can lose it in a day and it's not wanting a 24 hour race where you can say like, I can push myself past the limit because I can sleep for two weeks and I can take care of like the damage I do across the next six months or a year with the 3,100. Imagine doing a hundred K then waking up again and doing it again and then waking up again and doing it again. And the, the, the leaders are, are, are at about 120 K per day. So it's a totally different mindset. I mean, you know, they can't, they Canyon say that when you run long distances, whether they're 10 Ks or marathons, you have to run dumb.

Speaker 4: (24:20)
The UMB like in the 3,100 you have to have like a real sense of softness between your ears. You know, even physiologically, it's like if your, if your mind is thinking and thinking and thinking, your face muscles get tense, which tenses up, you know, your upper cervical vertebra, which have ramifications all the way down your body and you start getting repeated. Use injuries. Your, your knees aren't aligned, your tabs aren't aligned. But frankly it all starts in the mind. And so if you can find a way not to be in your mind, to cultivate, you know, your heart, your spiritual heart, that things that you focused on in meditation and bring those feelings and emotions and sense of self, sense of peace, sense of joy into your one, then it becomes an entirely different experience physiologically. You know, you're much more in tune with what's going on.

Speaker 4: (25:14)
You're much more in tune with the sense of balance. You have more patients. But in that patience, when you're not pushing, you can also experience a sense of happiness that you, you, you typically don't get in shorter races. And when I mean shorter like, you know, 24 hours and less, where are you going? Like, I've got to get there. I've got to get there. I can't stop. I can't stop. You know, when you've got that type of an attitude in a race, you, you rarely dissociate from your mind. I mean, the trick for those of us wanting shorter races is finding ways in training like the Kenyans to completely get rid of expectation and to find a way to get into that flow state in the first couple of miles.

Speaker 3: (25:53)
Yup. Yeah. And it does association. I mean, I definitely use it to some degree, obviously not to the degree that I would like to have used it and being able to take your mind away from the pain and the suffering in the body. And that's one of the tools that I, you know, teach about a little bit. And I do find like when you get into a rhythm, a rhythm is something that that is meditative. And I'm often, if I'm running behind, someone will use their feet as a little flicker of they fry, they fried and they, it's almost a trance like state that you can get into. But I can't keep it in the forever. That's a, that's the key point I think. And that's the difference between these guys. So they are tapping into things that we as, you know, average not so spiritual human beings, if you like, for the ones who have a bit of expression and you know, can't tap into.

Speaker 3: (26:52)
And that's what I find absolutely fascinating because I know what it takes to run 70 Ks a day. I cannot imagine the amount of pain that it would take to run 120 days beyond. It's certainly beyond my physical limitations. And the, the amount of pain that you'd have to overcome us is, is phenomenal. But what you were saying there about stress and stress is I listened to an interview with dr Chatterjee that you were talking about stress and how, why can't AIDS epidemic in our world. And it's one of the killers and it's one of the most problematic things. And we are living in a cult stunt state of alertness and fight or flight sort of state because of the society that we live. And we're no longer being chased by lions, but we seem to be living in that constant state is meditation and using even this, running this self transcendent, running a way of calming the body and stopping those stress responses.

Speaker 4: (27:59)
So the curious thing is that running is humanity's oldest physical practice, maybe dance as well. That movement through your feet and there is something electric when you're aware of it, between the connection between mother earth and our feet, our lungs breathing in oxygen and air, there's something deeply nourishing and effecting that way. At the same time, meditation is humanity's oldest practice of contemplation. Not just getting rid of stress, but understanding who we are, why we're here, what we're meant to do in any given moment. And meditation gives us access to different parts of our body and our, or of our being, I should say. It's like we've got a tool belt on and we've got 15 sets of tools, but we're using a hammer 24 hours a day. You know, it's like we might not even know all the other tools that we've got, but meditation is a very simple, very natural way for people to go, wow, when I'm stressed, I don't have to like think about it.

Speaker 4: (29:05)
I don't have to like, you know, just become obsessed with what's going on. There's another part of me that will allow me to feel something different, to allow time, for example, to take its course at the same time. If, if this dress requires something hyper-focused, you know, we can pull that tool out and apply it to the moment and get rid of that stress in a very constructive, you know, analytical way. Some meditation and running, you know, are really the two oldest tools that we have. But it's a question of, of coming back to that as, as a civilization, as a species. And you know, obviously as individuals we can come back to that just, you know, we just have to, we just have to take those first steps.

Speaker 3: (29:45)
Well, I actually had to an argument or not an argument, but a discussion with reduce your, of the, the portal, which is a new movie that's come out. Tom Cronin, who was on the podcast a few weeks ago and he was, he's, it's all about meditation and the power of meditation to heal the whole world. And I'm a very, very interesting man. And I said to him, I believe meditation running is a meditation. And he said to me, no, it's not a meditation. It's running. And I said, I know, and I had this discussion with an amazing no, because running you are in a sympathetic nervous system state and you're not in a parasympathetic state.

Speaker 4: (30:23)
It's that if for four, I would say for most people not myself included. That was true up until a few years ago. But I F I was trying to understand why the people who do the 3,100 mile race, most of them come back and do it a second time, a third time. The main character in the movie, Ashby Hunnel, you know, did it again last summer for get this a grand total of 15 times he's completed that race 15 times when when you understand that running and meditation can actually go together, you know, and you've explore what that truly means. I mean, again, it's, it's not simply the fact and I, I get where he's coming from. It's not simply saying like, my running is my meditation. The way that chopping onions is my meditation. It's like, you know, I, I get the kind of like, you know, hyperbole that that comes with that. But if you get into a state in running where you're completely beyond your mind, where you're completely in that flow state and, and you know, it's like the definition or the flow state is not an absence of pain, but it's finding happiness in the, in that exertion. And there there was a Hopi elder. Hopi is there. There are tribes in central Arizona, some of the best runners anywhere

Speaker 3: (31:46)
We uncover the swipe for that with a series. Yeah.

Speaker 4: (31:50)
Yes. W a Hopi elder had told us when I was on a prayer run with a bunch of native kids in Arizona, he told us as, as we headed off for monument Valley, he said, find joy through exertion. And that was mind blowing to me because how many of us, when, when we're really working hard, number one, feel joy, number one or number two, even know that we can feel joy in those moments of intense effort. And he said, not only do you need to realize that joy exists in the most extreme forms of exertion, but you can find it. You just have to be aware of it and find a way to, to tap into it. I mean, that totally changed the way I race that only that changed the way I run. It's like in those moments when you're really pushing to learn that joy actually exists there.

Speaker 4: (32:43)
That you can go beyond that pain by tapping into joy. I mean that that's how to get into flow. That's literally step one and to getting into flow. And when you're in that flow state as, as you know, it's like you can have experiences or you can tap into those same places within your being that you try to get to in your highest form of meditation. That said, learning and knowing how to meditate is going to help you get into that state a lot easier. And if you get into that state and running, you're going to be able to get into that state when you're meditating. So I completely disagree based on experiences that I've had personally, but more importantly, seeing these cultures that have understood the connection between prayer running and the spirit for tens of thousands of years.

Speaker 3: (33:33)
Oh, I'm so glad you've said that because I've, you know, had a debate with myself over the last few weeks because I took him on what he said, and I thought, well, that's probably got an element of truth about, you know, we're looking at the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system, and you, when you are in the meditative state, you have to be in the sympathetic state. But I have that, I've had that experience of being in a meditative state, running granted I can't do it on demand, but I have been there. So I, I was having trouble with that sort of like autonomy, if you like. They, they're sort of opposites. And that gives me permission to go back to the thought. And yes, actually there's a type of meditation and it is a powerful one and it's something that I've missed like the last four years.

Speaker 3: (34:19)
Sandra, you you wanna know, but I had a mom who had a mess of aneurysm and my listeners know the story and was in a vegetative state, basically would have any high function at the age of 74. And obviously the last four years I just stopped doing the long distance running because I had to completely focus on her rehab and that, you know, they're trying to make a living was all there was 24 hours in a day basically. And now four years later, I've just written her book. It comes out in March this year. It's called relentless and tells the story of, of bringing her back and she's now completely normal again. At the age of 78 against all odds. And I created, I created this comeback journey that I've been on with her, on to the fact that I've done this running.

Speaker 3: (35:06)
If I had not have had the mental skillset that I developed through running, I wouldn't have been able to, to do the things that I did with here to look outside the square to, to push through boundaries that most people would have, you know, quit long, long time ago. And to go up against some medical system and say, no, this is the, she will come back. And this the story is very powerful because it's in why I'm so passionate about getting this book out there is because it taps into these types of tools that we discover when we are doing these extreme things like you know, running long distance races and we learned stuff about ourselves and then how the body works and how that we are capable of so much more than what your average local doctor will tell you. What capable of, I mean, have you ever been to a local doctor and they've said, look, you can't run anymore. You've got a sore knee. Yeah,

Speaker 4: (35:59)
Yeah. I mean, I mean th th th the thing to understand is that we physiologically evolved as runners. You know, from, from an evolutionary biology standpoint and all your, all your listeners will know that the humanities first advantage as bipedal beings was number one, unlike Quadra peds, we could step without having to breathe. Many people can imagine what a dog looks like or a horse looks like in full sprint when their legs are extended, you know, splayed out on the, on the an extension. Their lungs, inhale air. When the legs come together as they all do, they all come together in the middle of the, of the center of gravity. It's like that's when the lungs are forced to expel air. So they're incredible anaerobic beings, but we're the only animals by virtue of standing on two feet that can like trot and not have to breathe every single time we take a step.

Speaker 4: (36:56)
And so that's given us a tremendous sense of endurance. You know, we can breathe, you know, multiple times per step, which Quadro peds can't do. And you know, we can, we can breathe every three or four steps, which also keeps our Arabic level kind of pretty low. So it's like, if you, if you look at that, you know, human beings are meant to move on our feet. The things that take us away from that state of being are all the, all the afflictions of modern day life. But I would say weirdly enough, like I, I'm on the medical team at the 3,100 mile race too, and 95% of the day to day trauma that the runners face. The pain, you know, we can take away through a deep tissue, we can take away through Raul thing, but it tends to come back day in and day out. And when that starts happening to runners, I tell them like, look, your problems are mental.

Speaker 4: (37:50)
Like there's no reason why if these problems are taken away through through some sort of therapy that they, that they should come back the next day. I find that 90% of injuries that people have through, you know, basically through a non-traumatic running racing is totally different. But when you're just in training and you're just doing like low stress low intensity type of stuff, you know, maybe heavy miles, the injuries that are repeated use injuries are really due to bad form, which really comes from a state of mental unrest from a state of anxiety and not allowing the mind to release. And then the body subsequently to release.

Speaker 3: (38:31)
There's not so much rinks in the core strength and you know, like we teach about, you know, you've got to have a strong core and strong had some things to be able to be upright. You were saying it's more of a mental stimulus. That's, that's the problem that we are because of the stress that we're all under or that we are thinking we are under we're actually inflicting that on our bodies as, as much as anything else.

Speaker 4: (38:56)
I mean of course is since most of us don't spend day to day, you know, I spend, spend our day to day kind of inner body the way we might've as hunters and gatherers. Yeah. Yeah. We need to do all the range of motion, all the core activities that we don't get from our, our, our standard nine to five jobs. Yeah. But still like you have plenty of students that do all of that and that still gets Phantom injuries. Yep. And then I'll take it

Speaker 3: (39:22)
Good. You know, I can do everything and I'll still be struggling with one or two injuries

Speaker 4: (39:27)
And that come that that comes entirely from the mind. Like the 3,100 mile race is a great Petri dish for it. Because like I said, like, you know, like LA last summer, Ashby hunt all did it and I was, his handler. It, I would kind of take care of his afflictions, you know, every break he had every six or eight hours. And after a few days of of him having calf pain and taking it away through simple, you know, deep tissue or, or Rolfing or, or, or you know, active release stuff. And I just told them like, I can take care of this every single day. But the reason why you're having these problems is somehow you're, you're not running fluidly, you know? And that comes in that race from overthinking, from stressing out, for thinking about stuff that you shouldn't be thinking about. Mainly from, from thinking at all.

Speaker 4: (40:18)
Yeah. And so I go, I go back to the time I go back to the time we spent with Sean Martin on the Navajo reservation. We're all you're supposed to do when you run is listen to the sound of your feet. Breathe in the universe through your lungs. And when you do that, you begin to feel the importance of the connection of your feet and mother earth and your breath and father sky. And that nourishes you. And that gives you the sense of happiness that you need from running. But most of us, myself included when I go for a run and looking at my watch, I'm looking at my pace, I'm thinking about my workout. I might think about like, you know what I'm going to eat afterwards, what I'm going to do afterwards. My, my, my, my experience of running is already done, you know, and I'm getting nothing out of each moment. I'm only just checking off a workout. And that's the difference. It's like unplugging from our playlist, you know, you can run with a GPS watch. We all do. But not worrying about what your watch says to you, but listening to yourself, listening to your thoughts, listening to your heart, and taking, running as a spiritual discipline rather than as an escape. I mean, that's when the fruits of running really, really coming to the fore.

Speaker 3: (41:34)
Yeah. And I'm just going back briefly to that story with mum. The difficulty if I haven't been able to do the long distance running in the, in the last, you know, three and a half, four years and I've missed the clarity of mind that came with it. You know, when you, when you spend hours a day running is indulgence as that sounds. It actually, you know, I had time to work through the problems that I was facing in my life and to get them out, it's very cathartic, sort of a, a thing to do. And when you don't have that, you can be missing that piece quite badly. And then, you know, so they, I think running is a physical release and a spiritual release in a, in a mental release. It's a, it's all rolled into one and the connection that you say to, to mother earth.

Speaker 3: (42:28)
And I think this is one of the major, major problems that especially our young generation are facing because we so on devices and we so connected all of the time that we have no time to just be in our own thoughts or just being with ourselves and to just be in movement. We just constantly wanting entertainment or connection. And, and not being connected to mother Ruth not being outside in the burning sun, the freezing rain, the, all of those things that really make us feel good. You know, when you go for a run in a storm, you can't come back, you know, if anything but invigorated and like alive, you know. And it might've been hard and it might've been cold and it might've been this, but you're alive. You're, you're feeling you're alive. And I think that they, in their very artificial world where everything's air conditioned and we jumped from Avalon to a garage, into the car and off to the mall and you know, all of these things is just disconnecting us so completely from, from the way that we are meant to be living generally, like outside of just running, but just not being connected to nature is, is killing us, I think.

Speaker 3: (43:44)
Do you agree?

Speaker 4: (43:46)
I'm, I'm totally with you now. You know, imagine that 3,100 mile race on a city block. It's sidewalk. Almost a K it's, but it's a square. So it's like you're going around right angles. It takes place in New York city summer, you know, for for almost eight weeks where the temperature last summer climbed above 41 42 seas. For a day or two. But much of the time in, in the heat of the day, you know, you're talking between 32 and 36 Celsius. Again, it's like unrelenting. You're pretty close to some major roads. There's buildings all around and it's not like you're running through the grand Canyon, but that, but that said, it's like if you're, you know, on the South Island or if you're in the grand Canyon, it's really easy to feel the power of mother nature. But our, our Navajo character's father is a, is a as a medicine man.

Speaker 4: (44:39)
And he told me mother earth is under the sidewalk to no mother earth is under the asphalt. That is mother earth. So on this course, you know, people are, are desperately, desperately struggling to maintain their connection to nature despite being in an urban setting. And you know, when you've got that type of intense focus on what you need when it comes to you, it's, it's in a much higher dosage than you can imagine. So like, yeah, in the 3,100, that connection to mother earth, even though they're running around in circles on a sidewalk, it's absolutely essential.

Speaker 3: (45:16)
Absolutely. And that you don't need, you know, people often say, well we don't lock them did on these rices and the Sahara and the Gobi desert and Dave belly and Australia and all like Himalayas. To be honest, actually it wasn't about,

Speaker 4: (45:33)
Yeah,

Speaker 3: (45:33)
The views, it wasn't about what you were seeing, keeping you going. In fact, most of the time, unfortunately, you know, your heat is usually down on the ground trying not to fall over the next thing or you're so, so tired. You can have the enjoy your surroundings very often. And, and of course it is more inspiring to at least go to these places and you know, in the before and the after and the cultural exchange that you have. But actually during the race, it's not about the beauty, you know, it's and running around and ran a block or running through a desert. They're both connected the both outside and nature. Like you say, they both are.

Speaker 4: (46:15)
And w one of the great things about this race happening in New York is that whatever you need, whether it's a new pair of shoes, whether it's a very specific type of medicine you're in New York city, someone will be able to get a volunteer. We'll be able to get it for you within a couple of hours. And as you know, it's like when you travel for these like international ultras, very often if you don't have something with you is stuffed, you are not going to get it. Yeah. It's not going to be a good experience for you.

Speaker 3: (46:44)
No, it must be. Yeah, it definitely has a be a great advantage to have all of the things around you and that half-mile block, although it's, you know, mind numbing and people think, Oh gosh, going around in a circle. I mean I've only done like 24 hour races, but they are easier than running across the desert per se, where you don't have access to anything. And if you've forgotten something, you're in deep, deep trouble, physically in trouble. But it does become about the mind and what you are, what you were doing. The so this, this movie is coming to New Zealand. This phone was [inaudible].

Speaker 4: (47:23)
Yeah. Yeah. So from February 10th through, we'll be traveling from, I think we're going to be an Oakland, Wellington, Christchurch maybe a few other places in between doing single nights screenings. The information is going to be up on our Facebook page, which I think is facebook.com forward slash 3,100 film and afterwards, after the 20th, that you can't make, one of those screenings will be up on all the online platforms. But Lisa, I would love to have to be able to, to, to ask you questions at one of our screenings. You know, I'm not sure what city you're in, but

Speaker 3: (48:02)
It would be fun. It would be really, really fun. I think we can make that happen. I live in a little place called new Plymouth, so you probably not coming here, although that would be awesome. But I can travel to, you know, walking into Wellington or something to make sure that I get to see this and I've seen the movie. But to actually meet you would be of course just, you know. Awesome. and you know, people out there, how do they get tickets so they can just go onto Facebook and find out where the screenings are. Get me tickets via that way.

Speaker 4: (48:30)
Yeah. The, the, the, the movie screenings are going to be in proper theaters and all of those cities. And so, you know, on our Facebook page there's links to the times and dates and we're going to be adding a few more things here and there. But yeah, all the tickets can be purchased online.

Speaker 3: (48:45)
Fabulous. And we will put all the links in the, in the show notes and stuff and all that. I do want to ask you a couple more questions about you and your background because you've had a fascinating life. This isn't the first movie you've done. Tell us about how did you get into filmmaking? Cause I'm very fascinated by filmmaking. I made a couple of, well eight documentaries, but on a very, very low budget documentaries. And I know I want to know, you know, how did you fall into this area and do the amazing things that you've done. So tell us a little bit about your life.

Speaker 4: (49:19)
I, I'm, I'm a Jack of all trades, master of none. Know I, I moved from California to New York to basically, you know, S to just study what's rich and white and spend a few years even with a good university degree, you know, just spend a few years working in health food stores and just, you know, getting to understand who I was and what I really wanted to do in life before launching into a career or whatnot. But switch in my head a lot of friends from other Theresa to Desmond Tutu and Mikhail Gorbachev and Mandela. And as I got more interested in kind of humanity specifically in, in like international development, humanitarian aid, human rights, I began having opportunities to work with some most rich and moist friends. So I got a chance to, to work with Desmond Tutu and you know, a ton of other people and gradually kind of like made my way into the world of humanitarian aid and human rights.

Speaker 4: (50:18)
So I kind of worked in that, in that sphere for about 15 years till around 2010, 2011. And you know, realize that a lot of the projects that I really, really enjoyed were ones that required me to take photos or to make little small documentaries, just being the only person with a camera for hundreds of miles. And I began making some short films, like my first one that most of them have been on sports, weirdly enough. My, my first one was called ocean monk and it was like an, a personal exploration of the connection between meditation and surfing in the winter in New York city. Of all things. I mean there is surfing like you know, in New York city in the winter here, you know, you might walk through, you know, half a meter of snow or a meter of snow to get to the water. But you can imagine like when the city's going like 24 hours a day to be out in the water was no one else around is probably the only experience of real nature we can get in New York city.

Speaker 4: (51:21)
But my, my second film explored, you know, kind of a curious aspect of streets and noise life. You know, after he stopped being able to do distance running, he took up weightlifting and he left, he lifted astronomical pounds, you know, in fact, when I was in New Zealand in 2002 and 2003 I was actually on a three month trip with him and one of, one of the cutest things he did was he went to a farm, you know, not too far away from Topo. A sheep farm and sheep are put into little cages and put onto this contraption that's reaching. Mike could sit under and he would like push up, you know, a cage with a sheep on each hand and you know, lifted a thousand sheep. It was just, it was really, really cute and childlike but also kind of mind boggling. And the physicality.

Speaker 4: (52:11)
I made a film called challenging and possibility, but then kind of went back to my human rights roots and made a film about the exploitation of farm workers in the United States. And that was, that actually achieved some success. You know, we had some famous people that were involved, Forrest Whitaker and then this movie 3,100 run and become was my second, you know, big feature length project. Wow. Oh, I should add as well. Just jumping back to the last topic that there have been two Kiwis that have done that 3,100 mile race, a man named Jade Lynn who did it I think in 2006 but there is a three time female finisher of the race. Hurry to Davey's. She lives in the States, but she's actually gonna be in New Zealand with us for all these screenings. They, cause she's doing a series of events during that time called the peace run. It just basically, it's like a, an Olympic torch style relay where they're going to be running from Oakland all the way down. You know, obviously what the ferry all the way down to Christchurch and stopping in a zillion schools. So she'll be at all though. She'll be at all the screenings too. I'll get to make a hopefully.

Speaker 3: (53:27)
And we also have another very famous lady. He used to do the 2000 kilometer race in New York city. Sandy Barwick. Oh yeah. Cause she's [inaudible] who was my role model. I feel like as a little girl growing up and who, who came with me to the family when I ran through death Valley, an incredible woman fates that again, just defy I think she had nine world records. I think some of them still stand. So we've got a, you know, great tradition in New Zealand of incredible runners and, and she was certainly way above where it, anywhere I ever got to. So we've got some amazing people. And on the note of shirt tree, Jim, he wanted to tell you just a little cute story. I was in the nationals. We have the streets of NOI, 24 hour race in Oakland every year.

Speaker 3: (54:17)
And it was, she was actually very, very sad while we were doing it was, it was in 2007 and we were doing the 24 hour race and a day before the race. [inaudible] He died as you would. Well, and, and so the people were devastated who were organizing. Right. And so they all just dropped everything and flew to New York basically. And I didn't really understand the whole street and rowing movement at that stage. I just, just was a runner turning up to the race to run and all of a sudden the rice was no longer happening. So one of the other runners and I, we decided we're doing it anyway, so we just, we ran around the track for hours. Well, I need actually made it to 20 hours that they ended. It was a absolutely torrential rain. The poor people in the street show me the way that were just so devastated.

Speaker 3: (55:16)
I just had to go, you know, they just had to be there to say goodbye to the master. And it was just a really for us back home running around in the rain, me and one other guy. And it was one of those special memories because it wasn't an official race. It wasn't going to be the official national race. And I'd been trying for years to qualify for the New Zealand team to go to the world champs. So I had to wait another year before I qualified, but we did get there in the end. But yeah, just the dedication to him was, was really moving and that they all just, they just dropped tolls and all just flow to, to New York overnight. It was really they were so, they were so devastated, obviously. Because he was such a great man and, and it was a man who, who really unified the religions rather than, you know, things are, don't matter. From what I understand. He was a very unifying figure. And yeah, for sure. I mean, his philosophy was, was, was love of God. Again, from an Eastern tradition, we don't really have the singular

Speaker 4: (56:24)
Concept of, of God being just, just, you know, a masculine energy, you know, it can be anything and everything. And, you know, we, we worship many different forms of, of the divine. But you know, his was about, you know, kind of an ancient path that way. But at the same time it was very accepting of people no matter what their backgrounds were. And, you know, he felt that you could live in the outer world and still achieve the highest. You didn't necessarily need to become a monk and renounce everything. And I know he loved New Zealand, you know, he, he had a, he's had a long friendship with a number of Kiwi runners like Alison Rowe, who he, I think he first met during the the New York city marathons. And you know, just to my great benefit, when we opened the movie in theaters in New York city and in November of 2018, it was during the week of the New York city marathon. And Alison was there to be inducted in the New York city marathon hall of fame, and she came to one of our screenings and did a panel. So I got to meet a lifelong hero of mine. And yeah. It's like, it's interesting because all the people that I've met through each and Moy still have, you know, you know, some sort of a connection with activities that his followers still kind of hold around the world.

Speaker 3: (57:41)
Yeah. Yeah. And even, you know, even my life. So through that we connected in some weird, weird, bizarre way, you know, and that's fantastic. And, and th the, the one that you did was the on the food food chain. Tell us a little bit about the food chain movie. And that was all about the, the site of conditions for workers migrant workers.

Speaker 4: (58:04)
Yeah. So most countries require some sort of foreign labor to pick their food. And especially when you're looking at like industrialized countries. I mean even England, you know, has had pre-Brexit you know, had a lot of, a big requirement for Polish workers, for Chinese workers, for Thai workers to come seasonally to pick food. You know, we know these are the hardest, most labor intensive jobs anywhere in the world and most people in developed countries don't want to do that kind of work no matter how much it pays. But in as we know it, those types of jobs don't pay much at all. I guess the big corollary in the South Pacific are the, the fishing fleets with a lot of indenture Thai workers, Filipino workers, Burmese workers working in essentially some in some cases like realistically slave like conditions. But the movie really delves not just interpersonal stories but looks at the kind of economic system behind it.

Speaker 4: (59:05)
Most of us, most places in the world kind of follow a food system that America set up. And that's like a supermarket grocery system where we expect to buy the cheapest possible food, good quality, but like very low prices. And w you know, Walmart in the U S a big chain kind of started that. And from their standpoint, they insisted on buying it ultra low prices from farmers and from meat producers and dairies, but buying in very, very high volume. And that created a set of conditions that not only had made it really hard to be a farmer in the us, but has made farm work essentially, you know, extremely low wage. Now we've see, we see these supermarkets all over the world and this is really a model that was created in the U S and exported to other countries. Even though you know, obviously there's, there's chains that are completely, you know, owned by people in their country.

Speaker 4: (01:00:04)
But when that supermarket system, that idea of convenience and being able to have the same types of food, you know, 365 days a year, that's made us in the U S rely on a lot of like New Zealand blueberries. But at the same time, you know, you guys get a lot of stuff into your country that are, that are not seasonal, that aren't grown in New Zealand, but that you still expected very low prices and we don't necessarily know the ripple down the food chain that it's causing farmers to really, really make very little at the same time. It creates this reliance on labor that's very colonial, that's very almost kind of feudal as well. And that's what the, the movie food chains kind of looks into.

Speaker 3: (01:00:47)
Well thank you for bringing it to light because it is a worldwide problem and that, you know, we have migrant workers here as well from the islands. You know, I, when I was the young girl I used to work on, on fruit, on, you know, Apple picking and kiwifruit cracking, I can tell you it's bloody hard work and very little money.

Speaker 4: (01:01:07)
Yeah. So yeah, so you, you, you, you, you absolutely know that it's, it's not something you would ever want to do the rest of your life.

Speaker 3: (01:01:15)
Oh my, no, definitely not. I'd rather run the 3,100 actually. There you go. There you go. Look st I would have taken up so much of your time today and I just really wanted to thank you for all the work you do, all the goodness that you put out into the world because it's very, very powerful what you are sharing and you're making people think and you're making people aware of some of these humanitarian stuff that you've done earlier. And also with this new wonderful movie that you bought out, everybody, you have to go and see this movie. It is, if you're into running, obviously you have to go. But if you are into just finding out about what the human body is capable of, what the human mind is capable of, and you want to see very average. And I put that into, you know, a quotation marks, average looking, average appearing, people doing incredible things.

Speaker 3: (01:02:06)
And that's the beautiful thing about ultra marathon running. We don't all look like Hussein bolt or Paula Radcliffe or or some, you know, elite specimen. We just normal people, but with very, very strong minds and strong willpower to do things. And in this case, it's all about the spiritual side as well. So thank you very much for doing this movie, for putting it out there. And I can't wait to see it and I hope we can connect and not, I can get to one of those screenings that would be absolutely fabulous. Meet you. It'll make my entire trip worthwhile. Right. We've got to make that happen. Thanks for not Sanjay. Thanks so much, Lisa.

Speaker 1: (01:02:48)
That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at Lisatamati.com.