This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about psychedelics — the consciousness altering substances, and the extraordinary moment they are having in our culture at this time. 

We explore the reasons that popular interest in psychedelics has risen dramatically in recent years — although certainly not for the first time — and we consider the historical and emerging scientific research that supports their use in a variety of applications. 

We also share our own range of lived experiences with psychedelics and why we have both chosen to dabble with — or avoid — them over the years. 

Finally, we offer some considerations on why and how you might choose to learn more about, experiment with, or take a pass on psychedelics yourself. 

And as always, we leave you with some experiments to help you delve deeper into this fascinating topic, if you choose.

“Psychedelics” Episode Highlights

• Defining psychedelics as a broad category of perception- and mood-altering substances
• Acknowledging this as a topic of interest to people who are focused on health, happiness, self improvement, and self discovery, and why we decided to talk about it
• The wide variety of uses — as cultural or religious practice, as professionally-guided therapy aid, as recreational drug
• The importance we place on the intention and experience over the chemistry, politics, stereotypes, and any expected outcomes
• Dallas and Pilar share their experiments with psychedelics
• Being open to new ways of making ourselves happier and healthier, and of seeing and experiencing our world
• Reasons you may not want to try psychedelics, and other caveats

Read Michael Pollan’s book, How to Change Your Mind (linked below in Resources). As you read it, what comes up for you? Do you agree with his perceptions? Does it raise any doubts in your mind?

If as you listen to this episode you experience really strong feelings of resistance or judgement, explore that. Ask what the narratives are around these substances and/or people who use them that turn you off, or what it might be about yourself that generates these reactions.

Resources

• Michael Pollan’s thoughtful (and influential) book on psychedelics, How to Change Your Mind, and the Netflix documentary series of the same name based on the book
• James Fadiman’s The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys
• Some science From WIRED: “This is a Philosopher on Drugs”
• Danielle Giffort researches the research in her book Acid Revival
• Trip reports from The New Yorker: “The Science of the Psychedelic Renaissance”
• “The Best Books About Microdosing and Psychedelic Therapy” from New York Magazine
• Pilar’s “Are You a Healthy Deviant?” quiz
• Dallas’s “More Social Less Media” program
• Connect with us on Instagram: Pilar and Dallas

Plus …

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Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Nutritious Movement, the brainchild of our brilliant friend, biomechanist, fitness expert, and best-selling author Katy Bowman.

Katy’s term “nutritious movement” refers to the type of movement that nourishes, educates, shapes, energizes, and repairs us in ways that support optimal health and vitality. And, as Katy explains during the conversation, that does not describe most conventional fitness approaches.

So here, Pilar talks with Katy about a great many science-y things very few of us have ever learned about movement and exercise, including some key differences between the two.

Katy shares some misconceptions most of us hold about what good fitness constitutes and requires, and she offers up some wonderfully simple, effective, and sustainable strategies for improving your body’s physical form and function.

We wrap up with a few experiments to help you discover what nutritious movement feels like and how you can easily enjoy more of it, starting today.

“Nutritious Movement” Episode Highlights

• Katy’s philosophy on movement and exercise, and what she means by “nutritious movement”
• Defining and differentiating exercise, fitness, and movement
• The movement away from movement (and fitness)
• The concept of “stacking” to meet all your physical, social, professional, emotional, etc. needs at the same time
• Learning to accept (and convince others) that “simple” movement can replace (and even be healthier than) all those exercise classes
• The protective effects of movement on our DNA (from Katy’s book, Move Your DNA)
• Parts of the body we tend to neglect — especially the feet
• The problems with exercising in repetitive ways
• How our clothing restricts daily movement
• Re-thinking ongoing immobilization after an injury
• Talking minimalist shoes
• The metabolic benefits of regular daily movement (vs. bursts of “exercise”)

Experiment of the Week

Identify a physical behavior that you’d like to engage in, but that you haven’t done yet. Think more along the lines of “I’d love to go camping with my family” or “I really want to do that hike” rather than “I want to go to three exercise classes a week.”

Once you have that picture in your mind, think about the physical limitations that are keeping you from that goal — “My foot hurts” or “My hip has been bothering me for years,” for example. Then pick one activity or movement that you know alleviates that problem — a stretch, a yoga pose — and do it once a day.

As an added experiment, pick one simple, “small bite” movement you can easily add to your day. Walk to the nearby cafe instead of driving. Watch TV sitting on the floor rather than the couch or the recliner.

After a few days of incorporating one or both of these experiments into your routine, notice if you feel motivated to add more movement.

Resources

• The Nutritious Movement website, and Katy’s books
• The animated definition of nutritious movement
• Nutritious Movement blog posts on minimalist shoe brands, and a list of favorite foot, shoe, and walking resources
• “Find the Movement In Your Day” video — ideas for more movement without exercise

Plus …

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If you like this podcast, you’ll love Healthy Deviant U!

Healthy Deviant U (or HDU, for short) is Pilar’s four-phase, year-long online program that will equip you to become a healthy, happy person in the face of real obstacles. Learn more here.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week, we’re talking about Pandemic Era Discoveries. Last winter, after two years spent in various forms of social isolation, Dallas and Pilar met up at an improvised San Diego studio to catch up live and in person. We compared notes about how we’d weathered the weirdness of COVID reality, where we’re at now, and some of the most rewarding stuff we encountered along the way.

From craniosacral therapy to cigars, from continuous glucose monitors to toe correctors, from garden plot puttering to nature-based spirit questing, we serve up some of our favorite COVID keepers, along with some of our just-emerging curiosities.

And, as always, we leave you with some experiments to get you thinking about what you’d like to take away from this next phase of post-COVID reality.

“Pandemic Era Discoveries” Episode Highlights

• Catching up on the podcast, and our lives
• The mental, emotional, and physical healing potential of craniosacral therapy
• Creating beauty through gardening … and all the other benefits
• Pilar’s foot-healing discoveries: minimalist footwear and toe spacers
• Dallas’s profound experiences on an 11-day Winter Desert Quest at the Animas Valley Institute
• Continuous glucose monitoring — not just for diabetics
• The low effort/high reward (in Dallas’s opinion) of a continuous fitness and health tracker
• Can cigars fit with a healthy lifestyle? (No, and/but …)

If you’ve ignored or abused your feet for the past several years and have never tried a toe-spacer device, consider experimenting with one (see the Resources section below for a link).

Even if you don’t think you’ve abused your feet, look at them closely and ask what they might need from you — more care, scrubbing, exfoliating, massaging, moisturizing, more comfortable shoes, more walking or resting?

An alternate experiment: Soak your feet in a bath of 50% warm water and 50% real, organic apple cider vinegar for 15-20 minutes. Give them a little scrub, and marvel at how revived they look.

The small experiment: If you don’t have a plant at home, get one. It can be small, it can live indoors or out. There’s a quality of tending and connection to a living thing that can be enriching.

The large experiment: Visit the Animas Valley Institute website (link below in Resources) and consider signing up for one of their events. If that’s too big, read one of Bill Plotkin’s books, maybe starting with Soulcraft.

Resources

• Check out the live interviews Pilar conducted during COVID at The Living Experiment’s YouTube channel or our Facebook page
• Toe spacers: Correct Toes, YogaToes
• Minimalist shoes that Pilar has tried: Xero Shoes, Groundies, Lems
• Bill Plotkin’s Animas Valley Institute, and his books
• Some continuous glucose monitoring programs: Nutrisense, January, Levels
• The WHOOP band and Oura ring health and fitness trackers (and our “Biometric Devices” podcast episode)
• To learn more about Pilar’s Healthy Deviant U experience and be among the first to know when registration for the next round opens, sign up here

Plus …

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Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week on The Living Experiment, as part of our live-edition episode series, Pilar welcomes a special guest — Brian Johnson, the creator of Optimize and the Founder + CEΦ of Heroic Public Benefit Corporation (Heroic).

Brian has spent half of the last twenty-five years as a Founder/CEO and the other half as a Philosopher, creating hundreds of his PhilosophersNotes — summaries of all sorts of brilliant books worth reading.

As a Founder/CEO, he’s built and sold two market-leading social platforms. As a Philosopher, he’s served tens of thousands of people from every country in the world with his Optimize membership, and he has also trained over 3,500 people from 90+ countries with his Optimize Coach program — a 300-day program scientifically proven to change lives for the better.

Most recently, in March 2021, with the support of 2,500+ Founding Investors from dozens of countries around the world, Brian’s new business — Heroic — made history. And just recently, Brian has begun giving away a big chunk of his life’s work — for reasons he explains here.

Along the way, Brian and Pilar talk about what it means to be a “living experimenter,” about the inner voices and instincts that help each of us find our own way, and about the exciting paths Brian sees ahead as he embarks on the most ambitious project of his life and career — training heroes for a world that needs them more than ever.

As always, we wrap up with some fun experiments to help you connect with your own most inspired and heroic self.

“Optimize” Episode Highlights

• Brian’s personal and professional career arc, built on his low tolerance for doing things that just don’t feel right and his willingness to experiment
• Getting comfortable with failure as a necessary stop on the road to success, and overcoming the creatively paralyzing aspects of perfectionism
• The origins and evolution of PhilosophersNotes and Optimize
• Making important life decisions through experimentation — with self compassion and a sense of our common humanity
• Learning from mistakes, using challenges as fuel for growth  — and ultimately enjoying the process
• How Heroic grew from Optimize
• Brian’s decision to give away his Optimize content and temporarily lower the price of his Optimize Coach program, and the amazing response to that
• Brian’s goal to prove with Heroic that virtue and benefiting the greater good can be a competitive advantage
• Defining the word “hero” — a protector with the strength to protect themselves, their values, and the people they care about, with love rather than violence
• Measuring Heroic’s success using “annual recurring virtue” rather than revenue — and creating a more virtuous world, one act, one person at a time
• Optimize Coach — a 300-day program for individuals who want to live their most heroic lives by mastering themselves and serving the world around them

Experiment of the Week

Become an Optimizer by signing up for a free Optimize by Heroic account.

Resources

• The Optimize by Heroic website — where you can access summaries of Pilar’s and Dallas’s books, plus hundreds more (PLUS Brian’s “101” master classes, and more)
• Become a Founding Member of the Heroic social training platform and express the best version of yourself
• The Heroic Coach (formerly Optimize Coach) program
• Learn more about the Heroic Public Benefit Corporation on Wefunder
• Pilar’s live video interview with Brian (where this episode was recorded)
• Brian’s favorite book, Tal Ben-Shahar’s The Pursuit of Perfect, and Brian’s Conquering Perfectionism 101 course

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Plus …

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Sponsor Love and FREEBIES

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting this season of The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week, Pilar talks with special guests Leslie Salmon Jones and Jeff W. Jones, co-founders of Afro Flow Yoga. Leslie and Jeff created Afro Flow Yoga in 2008, fusing a new blend of expressive movement and rhythmic music from their own explorations of healing and their African-American and Caribbean heritage in West Africa, Haiti and Jamaica. Leslie is an Alvin Ailey-trained dancer, yoga teacher, health coach and community activist. Jeff is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer and engineer whose musical roots stretch back through four generations of Black musicians. What they create together is extraordinary. Leslie and Jeff describe Afro Flow Yoga as “an embodied practice, integrating dance movements of the African Diaspora with meditative yoga and live healing music, promoting individual and collective healing in a compassionate, inclusive, non-judgmental and safe environment.” Pilar was delighted to have a chance to talk with Leslie and Jeff as part of The Living Experiment‘s COVID-edition live-broadcast series. First, because Leslie and Jeff are themselves great examples of “living experimenters” — creative innovators seeking a healthier way forward. And second, because Afro Flow Yoga is exactly the sort of re-centering and healing practice that so many of us are seeking for our own physical, mental and emotional health. So in this conversation, Pilar talks with Leslie and Jeff about what inspired them to create Afro Flow Yoga, the special role this practice has in helping us heal our fractured selves and trauma-stricken culture at this time, and where they see things going from here. If you haven’t already checked out one of their virtual classes or retreat experiences, we hope you will — so you can experience the whole-person “aha” of Afro Flow Yoga for yourself. Note: The audio for this episode was sourced from a live video interview. If you’d like to watch it, click on the live video interview link in the Resources section, below.

“Afro Flow Yoga” Episode Highlights

• Leslie’s background in dance and yoga, including her training at The Ailey School, plus a glimpse of her personal background
• Jeff’s musical lineage — a pianist grandmother who was a mentor to Roland Hayes and Marion Anderson; a father who played bass for Billie Holiday, Sammy Davis Jr. and Tom Jones; a classical soprano mother — and his influences, including Quincy Jones
• Leslie and Jeff’s early collaborations in live-music dance performances and fitness videos
• Leslie and Jeff’s explorations in West Africa — how witnessing slave dungeons and participating in traditional healing rituals informed Leslie and Jeff’s personal, professional and inter-cultural work
• Some examples of Afro Flow Yoga performances and classes
• Afro Flow Yoga as an inclusive, non-judgmental, healing, anti-racist, communal experience for anyone and everyone
• Conversations about race, trauma and healing in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder
• Afro-Flow Yoga’s circle-class configuration — how this community-centered format promotes inclusion, connection and non-hierarchical exchange
• The post-pandemic future of Afro Flow Yoga, including in-person and virtual classes and multi-day retreats (see Resources, below, for more on those)

Pilar’s Experiment of the Week

Take an online Afro Flow Yoga class, or even just watch one, and notice what happens. How do you feel in your body when you follow Leslie’s cues and feel into the class vibe? How long has it been since you let your body do something that just feels good?

Leslie’s Experiment of the Week

Learn something about the history of the culture you came from, or spend some time studying your personal lineage. Often we know nothing about our ancestry, so give some thoughts to your roots and your interconnectedness with everyone.

Jeff’s Experiment of the Week

Look at a map of the area where you live and start to recognize place or feature names that might be indigenous in origin. Learn more about the First Nation cultures that occupied or passed through the area before you.

Resources

• The Afro Flow Yoga website — more on their classes, memberships, retreats, workshops, teacher training, private classes and other offerings
• The Afro Flow Yoga YouTube channel, where you can see Leslie and Jeff (and class goers) in action and find sample classes
• Pilar’s live video interview with Leslie and Jeff (where this episode was recorded)
• VIDEO: Afro Flow Yoga on the stage at Lincoln Center at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition’s “Transform Health” Conference
• VIDEO: Afro Flow Yoga class with guest artist Iyeoka Okoawo and other guests at The Dance Complex in Cambridge, Mass.
• VIDEO: Afro Flow Yoga on Dark Girls 2 documentary on OWN Network
• VIDEO: A trailer for a documentary about the pioneering artist-dancer-choreographer Alvin Ailey
• A profile on Afro Flow Yoga from the New York Times 
• Upcoming Afro Flow Yoga retreats at Omega Blue Spirit in Costa Rica, January 2022
• Afro Flow Yoga’s recommended Anti-Racism and Healing Resources
• To learn more about your cultural lineage in the U.S., start with the links on this “Genealogy and Family History” page. Or interview a family elder!

Like this podcast? You’ll love our books!

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Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released. Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Sponsor Love and FREEBIES

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting this season of The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot! We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week, Pilar talks to a special guest — James Beard award-winning journalist, author, and food legend Dorothy Kalins.

Dorothy is the founding editor of Saveur magazine and Metropolitan Home. She’s also a celebrated cookbook creator and the author of a terrific new book, The Kitchen Whisperers: Cooking with the Wisdom of Our Friends.

Dorothy’s book is a compendium of food know-how, acquired during a career spent rubbing elbows with some of the world’s most celebrated chefs. But it’s also an intimate, often funny, and sometimes moving homage to the food wisdom each of us integrates — if we’re lucky — through our own cooking and eating experiences over a lifetime.

In this episode, captured during a live video interview, Pilar and Dorothy chat about how their deepest stores of food wisdom come not from fast-action YouTube videos or chef cook-off reality shows, but rather from those real-life human influencers — parents, aunties, friends — who have passed down their quirks and crafts in ways that stick with us forever.

In The Kitchen Whisperers, Dorothy shares the wide array of culinary voices she hears in her ears — from her own mother to Mark Anthony and Marcella Hazan — and she explains why all those whisperings hold rich value.

Pilar and Dorothy talk about the thrill of getting tips from food titans, as well as the comfort of hand-me-down kitchen-wisdom, tidbits settled so deeply into our consciousness they’ve become a part of our own culinary identity.

From re-creating mom’s meatloaf to witnessing the alchemy of a French omelette, Dorothy helps us more fully perceive how our lives are enriched by what amounts to kitchen-wisdom osmosis, especially in an era where home cooking can seem like a nearly lost art.

Dorothy also makes a strong case for “what’s for breakfast?” as a morning mindfulness practice. And finally, we wrap up with some experiments to help you hear and appreciate the kitchen whisperers in your own life.

“Kitchen Whisperers with Dorothy Kalins” Episode Highlights

• The origins of and inspirations for Dorothy’s book, The Kitchen Whisperers: Cooking with the Wisdom of Our Friends
• Dorothy’s interest in demystifying simple ingredients, bought locally and cooked at home, vs. striving to replicate haute cuisine
• The story of creatively re-creating her mother’s meatloaf
• Our cultural angst around cooking and eating, and this book as antidote
• A return to home gardening, accelerated by the pandemic and in response to the “tyranny of agribusiness and processed food”
• Learning from the people around us, and keeping the tidbits that speak to us
• Cultivating a reverence for ingredients, and the creativity of putting them together to make something that tastes good
• The value of cultivating awareness and finding moments of gratification as we prepare — or even contemplate — something as simple as a cabbage

Dorothy’s Experiment of the Week

Watch the short video of Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton of Canal House Cooking making a wonderful radicchio salad. Notice how they impart their calm, kitchen-whispering magic as they work. Observe how many tidbits of wisdom come across — seemingly effortlessly — as they prepare the salad, offering little asides and how-tos. Also notice how much of that wisdom is transferable to other ingredients and other dishes.

Pilar’s Experiment of the Week

Check out Dorothy’s terrific book, The Kitchen Whisperers. As you read it, notice how many personal memories and whispers it elicits for you. Notice the feelings that come up and evaluate what it is about those memories or that wisdom that have made them take hold for you. Or just scan your mind and memory to identify one personal kitchen whisperer who inhabits your culinary mind. Consider making a dish that leverages that wisdom, perhaps repeating the memory of the making of that dish — or even just some related technique — at it was demonstrated to you. You might also consider writing a note of gratitude to the person who imparted that wisdom, reaching out to the kitchen whisperer in question to let them know that you appreciate this gift, and that it stuck with you.

Resources

• Dorothy Kalins’ website, which includes more on her rich professional background and accomplishments
• Dorothy’s new book: The Kitchen Whisperers: Cooking with the Wisdom of Our Friends
• Pilar’s live video interview with Dorothy Kalins (where this episode was recorded)
• Saveur magazine (just one of the celebrated magazines co-founded by Dorothy Kalins)
• VIDEO: Jacques Pepin (a famed kitchen whisperer to millions) demonstrates his famous (and super simple) French omelette technique
• VIDEO: Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton of Canal House Cooking demonstrate how to make their simple yet extraordinary Radicchio Salad.

Like this podcast? You’ll love our books!

The Healthy Deviant by Pilar Gerasimo

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The 4 Season Solution by Dallas Hartwig

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Plus …

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Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Sponsor Love and FREEBIES

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting this season of The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

 

This week we bring you an episode that has been a VERY long time coming — a special guest episode with New York Times best-selling author John Zeratsky.

John is the co-author — with Jake Knapp —  of two terrific books, Sprint (a popular business title from 2016) and Make Time: How to Focus On What Matters Every Day, which came out in the fall of 2018.

In this episode, recorded in the fall of 2019, John and Pilar talk about both titles, and about the themes connecting them. From the value of creating clear mental space for our most pressing priorities to the importance of respecting the limits of our time and attention, John makes a case for doing our lives differently than we’re doing them now — so we don’t get overwhelmed and start feeling like our lives are passing us by.

John shares some of the brilliant ideas from Make Time, including a strategy that helps you carve out 60 to 90 minutes for a single “highlight” priority each day, and then get better and better at making that priority happen.

We also talk about the value minimizing digital distractions, the pleasure of doing one thing at a time, the importance of taking breaks, and our shared passion for ultradian rhythms. We even veer into the territory of ancestral health and learning how to take better care of our bodies and minds by taking cues from the ways our ancient ancestors lived.

Whether you are looking to create more clarity and momentum in your life, or striving to keep anxiety and burnout at bay, the Make Time approach offers a lot of promise. John’s wisdom in leveraging small changes to create big impacts also holds a lot of hope — especially for those of us who feel like we are endlessly juggling more balls than we can handle.

Finally, we leave you with some fun experiments to help you make more time for whatever matters most to you.

“Make Time with John Zeratsky” Episode Highlights

• The Google Ventures design sprint process behind Sprint: A unique and flexible 5-day process for solving tough problems and launching new products
• Applying the design sprint ideas to everyday life in Make Time
• John’s personal history with trying to become more productive and manage his time wisely
• The Make Time strategy of choosing one daily highlight to focus on for 60 to 90 minutes, and how it results in easier decisions and interactions throughout the day
• The pleasure of doing even one small thing well and to completion and the motivation that naturally follows
• Why the human body is not capable of staying in a high productivity state all day long, and the energy-creating benefits of frequent breaks
• The sick society we’ve created with the norms we’ve chosen to adhere to, and why the problem isn’t lack of willpower
• The evolutionary benefits of distractability
• John’s transition from the high-paced corporate world in San Francisco to a more deliberate life based in Milwaukee

John’s Experiment of the Week

Tomorrow morning, think about one thing that you want to accomplish. The one thing you most want to make time for and bring your greatest energy and attention to. It should be something you can do in 60 to 90 minutes, so it won’t be the only thing you will do all day. It might be something that needs to happen soon, or something you’ve been putting off doing, or just a fun thing. Block off the time in your calendar — it’s the best way to make sure the thing happens, but it also forces you to confront the tradeoffs in how you spend your time. Is your calendar too full to fit in the thing? What do you have to move around or re-prioritize to make it happen?

Pilar’s Experiment of the Week

Choose one day this week to track your Trouble Clock. On a piece of paper or in your calendar, make a note of every time you experience lower “willpower” — eating something you don’t want to eat, getting distracted on social media, skipping gym time, falling into a bad mood — and notice what you were doing two hours before the trouble started. What are the patterns and experiences that tend to precede the trouble? You might notice that trouble often strikes when you have gone too long without a break, and become depleted, overwhelmed, stressed, and overly  hungry as a result. Can you see how and when over-running your energy stores sets you up for “lower willpower” and unhealthy choices? Experiment with preemptively taking a break to rest and refuel before your situation becomes critical. Notice how predicting and getting ahead of your depleted states can help you avoid trouble.

Resources

• John Zeratsky’s website and the Make Time website
• Connect with John on Twitter
• John’s books with Jake Knapp: Sprint and Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day
• Pilar’s book, The Healthy Deviant: A Rule Breaker’s Guide to Being Healthy  in an Unhealthy World
• The Time Timer: Simple visual timer for stress-free time management (available as an analog tool, and also as an app)
• Tanja Hester’s website and The Fairer Cents podcast

If you like this podcast, you’ll love our books!

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Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.

Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Sponsor Love and FREEBIES

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting this season of The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week, we’re talking about Midlife — that fun and potentially funky moment when you realize you might well have fewer years ahead of you than you’ve already put behind you.

It’s a clarifying moment for many, and a moment of crisis for others. A moment when we realize that we may not have lived our own highest choices up until now — and that if we’re going to make the rest of our lives more the way we’d like them to be, this is the time to make that happen.

In the midst of all of this is the anxiety about getting older, looking older, being seen as just plain old in a culture that glorifies youth and youth-centric standards of beauty. And then, of course, there’s our mortality to consider.

So here, we talk about what middle age means to us, and the meaning our society has ascribed to it — cliches, stereotypes, prejudices and all.

We explore the assumptions we’ve had to challenge, and the gifts we’ve only begun to unwrap.

Dallas shares his view of life past 40, and Pilar shares her view from the other side of 50, which is looking pretty darn good to her.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you more fully appreciate — at any age — the years you’ve lived into while also making the most of the years you have left to embrace.

“Midlife” Episode Highlights

• Appreciating that every day of our lives is precious, regardless of our age
• The “midlife crisis” as a directional change and a natural phase of the expansion-contraction cycles of life
• Our cultural failure to value the depth of experiences on the other side of youth
• Pilar’s Healthy Deviant take on the Amplified Awareness of midlife — recognizing that we’ve spent years trying to conform to our society’s Unhealthy Default Reality and that it doesn’t work for us
• Seeing that the images and ideals we’ve been chasing aren’t really who we are, accepting that without self-blame or shame
• The ways our pursuits of pleasure and purpose change as we age
• The shifts in Dallas’s life as he enters his 40s
• Why investing in your self-understanding can help ease you through directional changes
• The grief — and opportunities — associated with entering the autumn and winter of life
• The unanimous response of women in Pilar’s circle saying that life is improving with age
• Dallas’s Four-Season Solution take on neurochemical motivators: The dopamine of spring, adrenaline of summer, and serotonin of autumn
• Understanding that our culture doesn’t educate us on the pleasures of later life, and finding your own information on aging well
• Overcoming the inertia of societal expectations and old patterns, and our fear of change

No matter your age, imagine the middle of your life. Ask yourself what you’ve learned and experienced in the first half of your life that you can distill and carry forward into the second half. What is valuable?

Find a person who models for you a successful second half of life. It could be a good friend, an acquaintance, a public figure or a fictional character. First ask yourself if you’ve invested attention in looking for models of middle age and beyond, or if you’ve exclusively admired people who embody success in the first half of life. If you don’t have an older role model, find someone. They are out there.

Resources

• Pilar’s “Are You a Healthy Deviant?” quiz. Share your score on your social media feeds and tag #healthydeviant
• Our episodes on “Dying”, “Purpose vs. Pleasure” and “Aging Gracefully”
• From The Atlantic magazine: “How the Midlife Crisis Came to Be”
• Poet and philosopher David Whyte’s reflections on Courage
• From Experience Life magazine: “The Happiness Curve” and “Rekindling Your Fire”
• From Pilar, “Getting to Know You” — a way-back letter from 2008, referencing the work of Richard Leider, including his classic book on living well at every age, Repacking Your Bags

If you like this podcast, you will love our books!

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Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.

Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Sponsor Love and FREEBIES

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting this season of The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Life continues to be weird. So we are just rolling with it.

Here, Pilar offers some updates and options for folks who want to stay connected and who are eager keep experimenting through the rest of 2020.

“Mini Update” Episode Highlights

• Our commitment to staying true to the energy of the moment and this podcast
• The challenges of remotely recording podcast episodes in the context of COVID-19 and all its attendant disruptions
• The necessity of putting our retreat plans on hold for now (our growing wait list will have to keep waiting!)
• One potential retreat alternative: Pilar’s Healthy Deviant U experience
• Healthy Deviant U includes:
• A year’s worth of twice-monthly course sessions with real-life experiments that help you advance your Healthy Deviant skills and confidence — step by step, stage by stage
• Alternate-week, twice-monthly office hours with live group coaching and Q and A sessions to help you create greater clarity and momentum
• Individualized hot-seat coaching opportunities to help you navigate past hurdles and stuck spots
• Community support and accountability, with access to Pilar and a merry band of fellow Healthy Deviants for non-stop encouragement (and gentle-tough love when needed)
• Regular infusions of Healthy Deviant wisdom, multimedia content, and tools designed to keep you inspired and moving ever-forward
• The four phases of the year-long HDU program focus on helping you establish the three Nonconformist Competencies of Healthy Deviance and then step confidently into your own Healthy Deviant identity

Make yourself a Healthy Deviant mocktail:

• Fill your favorite cocktail glass half full with ice
• Add your preferred kombucha up to the top of the ice
• Add a teaspoon to a tablespoon of juice — whatever 100% pure, preferably organic fruit or berry juice you like (consider apricot or mango nectar)
• Top off the glass with sparkling water, ideally something with a simple flavor like lemon, lime, tangerine — or plain
• Gently stir
• Add a twist of lemon peel, squeeze of lime, or some other fun garnish, taking a moment to run the citrus peel around the rim of the glass
• If you want to get fancy, add flowers or umbrellas, or whatever makes you feel celebratory

Smell the drink as you take your first sip, and enjoy!

Resources

• Our recent Facebook Live video episodes: “Pandemic Navigation”, “Re-Ordering Your Body-Mind”, “The New Normal”, “What Comes Next?”, “Rethinking the Win” (with Pilar and Lea B. Olsen)
• The Living Experiment Facebook page, where we’ll be doing more Live events
• The Healthy Deviant U website (includes a little video overview from Pilar, plus lots more detailed info on the HDU experience)
• Connect with Dallas on Instagram and via his website, where you can find more about his current projects and goings-on

If you like this podcast, you will love our books!

ORDER FROM AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER
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ORDER FROM AMAZON

Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.

Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Sponsor Love and FREEBIES

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting this season of The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week Pilar interviews a special guest, hunter-gatherer and rewilding enthusiast Daniel Vitalis. Daniel is a well-recognized advocate for what’s known as rewilding, a term that he points out means very different things to different people.

To Daniel, and also to Pilar, it means reclaiming and reconnecting with aspects of our own wild-creature origins, and for getting into a closer, more intimate connection with our natural world.

Daniel visited Pilar’s family farm in Wisconsin in summer 2019 to film an episode for his forthcoming TV series, called “WildFed.” In the process, he collaborated with Pilar’s partner, Forager Chef Alan Bergo, to put on an amazing dinner of pigeon and wild-harvested plants.

But Daniel wasn’t always the hunter-gatherer type. In fact, for a long time he was a hard-core raw food vegan — a way of life he has happily left behind.

So here, we talk about the evolution of Daniel’s viewpoints, including some of the mistakes he says have taught him a lot of what he knows today. Along the way, we offer up some reflections on the history of humans, both ancient and modern.

And as always we leave you with some experiments to help you re-connect with nature and your own natural self, right here and now.

“Rewilding With Daniel Vitalis” Episode Highlights

• Daniel’s passion for wildness and human history, and his own evolutionary path
• Integrating a back-to-the-wild lifestyle into our technology- and achievement-driven culture
• The importance of finding a balance between success, resilience and happiness
• Daniel’s views of the essence of rewilding, which includes learning and using specific nature-based skills while also embracing modern conveniences
• The importance of accepting the fact that our viewpoints and messages will evolve as our experiences change us — and it’s helpful to accept this evolution from others (including “influencers”), too.
• Why Daniel was initially drawn to veganism, and what later convinced him that the lifestyle wasn’t for him
• The WildFed team’s ethos of Made of Place: Making the building blocks of the body — water, carbon, minerals — of the place where the body is living
• How connections to the natural world create a resilience to fragility

Daniel’s Experiment of the Week

Choose one species of any kingdom — plant, animal, fungi, bacteria, algae — that you could use for food or medicine. It could be as simple as a dandelion in your yard or as complex as a musk ox in northern Canada. Read about it, learn about it, find out what time of year its medicinal or nutritional properties are at their peak. When you’re ready, go out and harvest (or just meet) it. Notice how comforting it is that you have a friend in that landscape.

Pilar’s Experiment of the Week

Choose one or both of these options:

1) Borrowing an exercise from naturalist and tracker Tom Brown, Jr.: Mark out a 1 foot by 1 foot area in the soil or grass and get down to that level. For 15 minutes, comb through the dirt or grass with your fingers and look closely at what’s there. Notice everything, and how pleasurable it can be to touch the natural world.

2) Find a place outside where you can sit quietly without distractions for 30 minutes. Observe the wind in the trees, the birds that fly over or are perched nearby, all of the sounds and sights and smells. Notice how long it takes for the landscape around you to become even richer — do animals start moving closer? Has your breathing changed? Has your connection to nature shifted?

Resources

• Daniel’s Instagram feed
• The website for the WildFed show and podcast
• Daniel’s nutrition company, SurThrival
• Kenton and Rebecca Whitman’s ReWild University
• Forager Chef Alan Bergo

Looking for ongoing support for healthier, happier daily choices?

Check out Pilar’s “Healthy Deviant U” experience.

If you like this podcast, you will love our books!

ORDER FROM AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER
ORDER FROM AMAZON

ORDER FROM AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER
ORDER FROM AMAZON

Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.

Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Sponsor Love and FREEBIES

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting this season of The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week, we’re talking about Moving Forward in this unusual time in history.

Thanks to COVID-19, we’re still recording from a distance. Since we were last in the studio though, and even since the last time we did one of our COVID-edition Facebook Live episodes, so much has happened.

We’ve seen new waves of conflict around the pandemic, as well as the murder of George Floyd and the historic calls for social and racial justice via the Black Lives Matter movement.

Meanwhile, we’ve been witnessing divisions widening, not just within our country, but within our circles of family and friends.

So here, we talk about how we’ve been coping with the present moment, and also about how we are moving forward, from managing our media choices and navigating difficult conversations to finding our own points of view in what can seem like a very disorienting world.

Finally, we leave you with some experiments that encourage you to explore your own capacity for making sense of what’s happening now, and for building discernment into your own next steps.

AND we offer hearty thanks to this season’s sponsor: Brian Johnson’s Optimize by Heroic.

“Moving Forward” Episode Highlights

• Dallas and Pilar talk about what they’ve been doing (or not doing) and how they’ve been coping during the pandemic and this time of social and racial unrest
• Controlling the flow of potentially distressing information rather than letting it chase you down
• Understanding the reactivity triggered by difficult conversations — the DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim-Offender) phenomenon and the Karpman Drama Triangle
• Victim-hood as a reaction to shame, trauma and fear of loss
• How to talk to someone who disagrees with you: Create a safe, defined, private space and don’t get attached to specific outcomes
• Overcoming our personal and societal resistance to being told what to do, even in the interest of the greater good (mask mandates, for example)
• Stoic philosophy and the dichotomy of control: Understanding what you can’t control (the pandemic), and what you can (your responses to it, how you show up and manage yourself under strain)
• Interpreting prevailing scientific data and topical expertise with precautionary practicality — while still maintaining a healthy skepticism of the large institutions behind it
• Opting out of the reactivity feedback loop: Not getting sucked into violent, inflammatory mindsets may be the most important thing we can do to heal ourselves and our communities
• The benefits of slowing down and sitting with discomfort so we can learn from it
• Addressing the rise of tribalism, and rekindling the hope of diverse people uniting to overcome our biggest problems

Go back to someone you had an uncomfortable conversation with, or someone who said something you found shocking. Start with your own vulnerability — tell them that you were triggered and how you reacted (by withdrawing, getting defensive or angry, etc.). Then invite them to tell you how they felt in that moment of conflict. Sometimes the charge of an exchange can obscure the real meaning and flood (rather than support) the space of the relationship.

Listen to our “Trauma” episode with Resmaa Menakem, paying particular attention to his description of how our bodies respond physiologically to being triggered. If you can begin to recognize the initial signals that you’re moving into fight or flight, you may be better able to control your reaction.

If you want to conduct a controlled experiment on your trigger responses, seek out a social media feed or news channel that expresses opinions you don’t agree with. Notice how long it takes before you recognize unwelcome feelings — heat, flutters, anger, narrowing peripheral vision, a desire to hit something or someone. Bring yourself back down and consider what it was that caused your reactions.

If you don’t want to create a stress reaction as an experiment, just take a moment to breathe, rest, relax and do something you enjoy. Consider listening to our “Coping” episode.

Resources

• Our recent Facebook Live episodes: “Pandemic Navigation”, “Re-Ordering Your Body-Mind”, “The New Normal”, “What Comes Next?”, “Rethinking the Win” (with Pilar and Lea B. Olsen)
• Our “News” episode — advice for managing your media intake
• More on coping in “Coping” and “How We See the World”
• Some serious info and resources on DARVO via its Wikipedia entry, plus a more comedic 90-second animated explainer via South Park: “It’s Called DARVO”
• “The Three Faces of Victim — An Overview of the Victim Triangle” by Lynne Forrest, on the Karpman Drama Triangle
• Physical, mental, emotional and cultural expressions of trauma in “Trauma with Resmaa Menakem”
• “Stoicism in time of pandemic: How Marcus Aurelius can help” from The Guardian
• Pilar’s Healthy Deviant U membership experience

Break the rules, or break yourself.

Pilar Gerasimo

Looking for ongoing support for healthier, happier daily choices?

Check out Pilar’s “Healthy Deviant U” experience.

If you like this podcast, you will love our books!

ORDER FROM AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER
ORDER FROM AMAZON

ORDER FROM AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER
ORDER FROM AMAZON

Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.

Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Sponsor Love and FREEBIES!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting this season of The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

This week our guest is Dr. Frank Lipman, one of the world’s leading integrative physicians, a thought leader and innovator in the realm of disease reversal, and the author of a bunch of books, including his most recent, How to Be Well: The 6 Keys to a Happy and Healthy Life.

Frank Lipman, MD, is best known for helping high-profile celebrity clients — like Gwyneth Paltrow — reverse stubborn and mysterious health problems. But his real passion is educating regular people about what they can do to intervene in their own health conditions, and helping them upgrade their day-to-day self-care so that they can lead healthier, happier, more balanced lives.

Pilar first encountered Dr. Lipman when she was editing Experience Life magazine, and he became one of their favorite expert resources. He’s also a regular contributor at Goop and a variety of other leading health media sites. Plus, he hosts his own podcast, Tune into Wellness.

A practitioner of functional medicine and eastern healing methodologies, Frank seamlessly blends both into what he calls “good medicine” at his beautiful clinic, Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in New York City, which is where Pilar interviewed him for this episode in Fall of 2019.

Here, we talk about the nature of health transformation. We explore what’s required for recovery from complex chronic conditions. And of course, we offer you some experiments to help you upgrade your own body-mind health in ways that work for you.

“Health Transformation with Dr. Frank Lipman” Episode Highlights

• The art of inspiring people to make changes that transform their health
• The importance of being in agreement with the body’s natural cycles and rhythms, starting with getting enough sleep
• The benefits and potential downsides of using biometric devices to monitor our biomarkers and daily patterns
• How we’ve adapted our rhythms to society, to the detriment of our health and happiness
• The encouraging trend toward challenging conventional, symptom-suppressing medical approaches to chronic diseases and embracing whole-person, root-cause approaches instead
• Dr. Lipman’s experience as the Chief Medical Officer of THE WELL wellness club in New York City
• The focus on patient longevity at Dr. Lipman’s clinic, especially with older patients
• The difficulties and successes in treating autoimmune diseases
• The rapid mainstreaming of functional and personalized medicine and other body-mind approaches to health

Dr. Lipman’s Experiment of the Week

Try one or all of these experiments:

Experiment with not eating anything between your evening meal and around noon the next day, ideally a span of 14-16 hours between meals. Do this one day for the first week and two days the next week. Notice if morning hunger goes away and the amount of food you need to feel satisfied when you do eat decreases. Do you feel mentally sharper and clearer? Does the intermittent fasting get easier every time you do it?

For two weeks, try going to bed and waking up at the same time every day. Notice your activity levels. Do high-intensity activities become easier?

For three weeks, meditate for 15-20 minutes every morning after you wake up. Notice if you become less reactive to external factors.

Pilar’s Experiment of the Week

In reflecting on Dr. Lipman’s experiments, notice if you’re more able to manage a routine in the evening or in the morning and start there. Also, turn off all media and devices at least an hour before you go to bed, and try to get some natural outside light (without sunglasses) first thing in the morning.

Resources

• Dr. Frank Lipman’s website
• Some of Dr. Lipman’s contributions to Experience Life magazine:
  • “Get Your Groove Back”
  • “Frank Lipman, MD, on Foods to Eliminate for Better Health”
  • “6 Keys to a Happy and Healthy Life”
  • “Trying to Unwind? Try These Two Breathing Exercises”
  • “23 Perfect Plates”
  • And many more…
• Dr. Frank Lipman’s books
• The Eleven Eleven Wellness Center
• THE WELL wellness club
• The Living Experiment episodes on “Sleep”, “Pause” (body rhythms), “Aging Gracefully” and “Fasting”

Have You Read Pilar’s and Dallas’s New Books?

You’ve heard us talking about them for years. Wouldn’t you like to among the very first to read them? Both are on shelves now!

ORDER FROM AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER
ORDER FROM AMAZON

ORDER FROM AN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER
ORDER FROM AMAZON

Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.

Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week we have an extraordinary guest, functional medicine pioneer Dr. Jeffrey Bland. Jeff Bland, PhD, is something of an international legend in functional medicine circles. He is a preeminent scientist dedicated to systems thinking, and a thought leader intent on transforming health care as we know it.

Dr. Bland is a former biochemistry professor who once served as director of nutritional research at the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. He worked directly with Pauling, a two-time Nobel laureate, and considers him a mentor.

Dr. Bland is also the principal author of more than 120 peer-reviewed research papers on nutritional biochemistry and medicine. So, Jeff is a serious scientist, but he’s also a profoundly caring human being, once who’s concerned about the health of real people and the fate of medical practitioners.

That’s just part of what led him to help create the Institute for Functional Medicine, and more recently the Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute. It’s also what led him to write six books for the lay public, including his latest (and one of Pilar’s personal favorites) — The Disease Delusion: Conquering the Causes of Chronic Illness for a Healthier, Longer, and Happier Life.

Bland’s latest venture is Big Bold Health, and we talk about that project, among others, as we cover everything from new thinking about genomics and personalized medicine to chronic disease reversal and the importance of taking charge of your own health.

We wrap up with some experiments to help you begin more boldly owning your own health in ways that work for you.

By the way, if you want to watch the video of this interview, it’s available at Pilar’s YouTube channel. And if you want to see Dr. Bland interview Pilar for his Big Bold Health podcast, both videos are linked in the show notes below.

“Functional Medicine with Dr. Jeff Bland” Episode Highlights

• How the Institute for Functional Medicine, the Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute and Big Bold Health evolved in relation to one another
• The three tiers of the projects: Practitioner education, being on the leading edge of new information and technology, and consumer-driven action
• The conventional model of disease diagnosis and treatment, and why it doesn’t work for autoimmune and other non-communicable chronic diseases
• Why economics rather than results is driving our disease-care system
• Dr. Bland’s argument against using the terms “good” and “bad” for genes that cause disease states
• Creating a new healthcare system built around individual function (physical, physiological/metabolic, cognitive and behavioral/psychological) rather than the presence or absence of disease
• The dismal failure of the top 20 most prescribed drugs in America to actually create a positive health effect (60% effective at best)
• Our societal awakening to the interconnectedness of all systems that contribute to our health and wellbeing, in large part due to the wealth of information we can now access

Dr. Bland’s Experiment of the Week

(Note: This episode was recorded before the COVID-19 outbreak. Please wait to perform this experiment until after stay-at-home orders are lifted, or try it during an online gathering!)

The next time you’re in a large group of people of different ethnicities, genders and ages, be a conscious listener for 10-15 minutes. Don’t try to listen for any particular information, just take in all that you can and get totally absorbed in the environment around you. Listen to every piecemeal conversation and observe body language. Notice how people meet, greet, move, think and communicate. Doing this experiment frequently can help you reset and reconnect to the much larger picture you are a part of.

Pilar’s Experiment of the Week

Read Dr. Bland’s most recent book, The Disease Delusion: Conquering the Causes of Chronic Illness for a Healthier, Longer, and Happier Life. Or …

Educate yourself on functional medicine by checking out one of the articles in Experience Life magazine, listed below in Resources. Or …

If you suffer from a chronic disease, or know someone who does, search online for the name of the disease and include the words “reversal” and “functional medicine” (in quotes) in your search. Notice: Do the results expand your thinking, help you understand the role you might be able to play in your own healing, and give you a sense of expanded options about where you might be able to seek support in improving your health?

Resources

• The video version of this episode on YouTube
• Dr. Jeff Bland’s video interview of Pilar for the Big Bold Health podcast
• Dr. Jeff Bland’s books
• Big Bold Health
• Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute
• The Institute for Functional Medicine
• Dr. Jeff Bland’s bio
• From Experience Life magazine:
  • “Functional Medicine: A Science Whose Time Has Come”
  • “The Functional-Medicine Matrix”

Have You Read Our Books?

You’ve heard us talking about them for years. Wouldn’t you like to among the very first to read them? Both are on shelves now!

Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.

Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week we’re talking about Dallas’s new book, The 4 Season Solution, which is now available in bookstores everywhere!  

In addition to recapping the central themes of Dallas’s book, and hearing about the excited response it has gotten from early readers, we talk about the relevance of the book’s themes to the challenges so many of us are facing now.  

We explore the overall importance of seasonal living in relation to good health. And we also consider how incorporating season-appropriate adjustments can relieve stress and even support the reversal of chronic conditions and diseases — by lowering inflammation, re-regulating our biochemistry, and improving the resilience of our body-mind’s integrated systems. 

As always, we wrap up with some experiments to help you integrate more season-driven wisdom into your own life.

“The 4 Season Solution” Episode Highlights

• The scope of The 4 Season Solution: What you eat, what your dark/light cycle is like, how you move and how you connect
• How we got stuck and where we went wrong (Part 1 of the book), and how we get unstuck (Part 2)
• Listening to your inner expert: If something that is supposedly good for you doesn’t feel right in your body, it’s not good for you
• How each of the seasons has a symbolic theme that can be represented by neurotransmitters and hormones, and our year-round cultural focus on the high productivity of summer
• Why we fight nature’s cycles at our own peril, and why honoring each season’s unique patterns is an essential part of the solution
• How we’ve become more binary in our thinking and prone to tunnel vision as we’ve become more stressed as a society
• Integrating seasonal health into the functional/integrative medicine model
• “Anchors”: The most critical, impactful things anyone can do, regardless of resources or circumstances
• How people are responding to The 4 Season Solution and living it themselves

Right now (or tomorrow morning, first thing), walk outside, take a deep breath and smell the air. Notice the feel of the air on your skin and the quality of the light or dark. Notice the sounds. What are the qualities of this moment and how are they broadcasting the season to you? How does your body feel in response to the stimulus? What messages is nature sending you? See if noticing these seasonal inputs inspires you to change some aspect of your daily choices, attitudes or behaviors.

Do something to release yourself from our society’s chronic and stressful “summer” energy. If you don’t have a meditative practice, start a tiny one — even two to five minutes can bring you more into the present moment. During the meditation think about what you have in your life and see if you can notice what you’re grateful for. Gratitude can spark spontaneous generosity, and generosity can help heal the world.

Resources

• The “We’re Back” episode of The Living Experiment, in which Dallas and Pilar both offer updates on their books, and Dallas presents a detailed overview of his book’s key messages
• Episodes that delve deeper into Dallas’s seasonal model of health: “Seasons”, “Winter”, “Spring”, “Summer” and “Autumn”
• Want to come on a retreat with Dallas and Pilar? Tell us so we can hook you up! Click here or on the “Retreat” button in the nav bar to give us your contact info and tell us which locations and seasons appeal to you most!

Order Our Books!

You’ve heard us talking about them for years. Wouldn’t you like to among the very first to read them? Both are on shelves now!

Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.

Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week we’re talking about chronic disease reversal. Over the past decade there’s been an emerging clinical awareness, with increasing research support, that many diseases we’ve been told are progressive and incurable can in fact often be turned around — or at least significantly ameliorated — through systems-based functional and lifestyle medicine strategies.

So here, Dallas and Pilar explore the approaches that are proving most successful in interrupting the chronic inflammatory processes involved in most chronic conditions. We highlight the exciting progress being made by leading practitioners who are disrupting the status quo and moving beyond conventional disease management strategies to address the real root causes of chronic ailments that affect millions.

We explore the power of elimination diets and other lifestyle medicine interventions to help identify and remove common disease triggers, and we consider the importance of supporting the body’s own healing mechanisms.

We explain why chronic disease reversal can no longer be the exclusive domain of doctors, and why it must instead involve us and our daily choices.

Finally, we offer you some experiments in re-framing what we’ve been encouraged to think of as incurable health ailments, and we invite you to re-imagine how a whole bunch of us might begin healing ourselves in ways the conventional medical system might not yet think is possible.

This episode also marks the beginning of a series of guest episodes with leading physicians and thinkers who are raising awareness of how numerous chronic diseases can be reversed, while helping regular people recover from ailments they were told they would suffer from for a lifetime.

“Chronic Disease Reversal” Episode Highlights

• The healing power of food and short-term interventions as evidenced by the Whole30 program (which was not designed to be a chronic disease reversal program)
• “Content as therapeutic” (a line borrowed from our functional-medicine colleague Tom Blue): How healing can start with simple self-education and awareness
• Lifestyle interventions that have proven effective in resolving chronic conditions: Elimination diets, intermittent fasting, gut healing and microbiome rebalancing protocols, basic nutrition supplementation, augmented rest and recovery, moderate exercise/interval training, mindfulness stress management and resilience training, resetting daily rhythms
• Why many medical provider-assisted interventions are unavailable to most people
• The often dis-empowering and discouraging approaches taken by many conventional medical-advice websites
• The difference between evidence-based, data-driven medicine and real-life personal interventions
• Books by leading physicians that outline chronic disease reversal interventions you can begin embracing — at least in part — on your own (see Resources below for links)
• Dr. Mark Hyman’s observation: 80% of his patients get 80% better using a nutrient-dense elimination diet alone
• The fundamental concept: Allowing your body to heal itself after removing offending/irritating agents and supplying necessary support
• Dr. Alessio Fasano’s three common drivers for all autoimmune diseases: Genetic pre-disposition to a particular disease, leaky gut (intestinal permeability), and a stressful trigger
• The importance of dealing with trauma of any kind (including inter-generational) while addressing a chronic illness
• Why you don’t necessarily have to understand all the science in order for many of these interventions to work for you (although understanding how your body works is often highly motivating)

If you haven’t already done it, do the Whole30 program. There are free resources on the website or you can buy the book for an all-in-one handbook. Changing your eating is often the single most important thing you can do to start reversing your chronic disease.

Look in the Resources below and read an article or book that speaks to you.

List the number of people you know (including yourself) who have chronic diseases — psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, cancer, depression, anxiety, insomnia, digestive problems, etc. Or check out the “Weird Symptom Checklist” in Pilar’s book, The Healthy Deviant, to reflect on the ways your body may be indicating its displeasure with the way you are currently living.

Resources

• From Experience Life magazine:
  • “3 Miracle Cures (That Aren’t, Really)”
  • “Functional Medicine: A Science Whose Time Has Come”
  • “How to Heal a Leaky Gut”
  • “Heal Your Gut, Heal Your Joints”
• Dr. Alessio Fasano’s research on gluten-related autoimmune diseases
• James Maskell’s book, The Community Cure, on the power of group visits and supportive community in transforming chronic health conditions
• The End of Alzheimer’s by Dr. Dale Bredesen — addresses many forms of cognitive decline
• The Wahls Protocol by Dr. Terry Wahls — autoimmune disease reversal (including her reversal of her own multiple sclerosis)
• The Blood Sugar Solution by Dr. Mark Hyman and Always Hungry? by Dr. David Ludwig — diabetes and related heart disease and cancers
• Grain Brain and Brain Wash by Dr. David Perlmutter — digestive and neurological conditions (e.g., migraines, Parkinson’s)
• Healing Arthritis by Dr. Susan Blum — rheumatoid and osteoarthritis and other joint pain
• How to Make Disease Disappear by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee (and his TV show Doctor in the House) — a variety of chronic illnesses
• The Depression Cure by Dr. Stephen Ilardi — depression and anxiety
• The Disease Delusion by Dr. Jeffrey Bland — a case for rethinking how we diagnose and treat chronic disease
• Recent guest episodes from The Living Experiment on healing trauma: “Trauma 1” and “Trauma 2”
• Our related episode on “Functional Medicine”
• A TED Talk from Dr. Nadine Burke Harris on childhood trauma and health
• Information on The Institute for Functional Medicine’s elimination diet

Order Our Books!

You’ve heard us talking about them for years now. Wouldn’t you like to among the very first to read them? Both are on shelves now!

Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.

Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week we’re talking about biometric devices — the appeal those fascinating little gadgets hold and the distractions they can present.  

From Fitbits and Apple Watches to Muse Headbands and Oura Rings, we evaluate the ways knowing more about our own biomarkers and daily patterns can help us become better stewards of our bodies and minds. We also explore how increasing use and dependence on these devices is affecting us all, and how their trending adoption is influencing our culture. 

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you become more conscious of the signals your body is sending you all of the time — and whether you are more likely to benefit from embracing a new biometric device, or just becoming a better tracker of your own body’s readings.

“Biometric Devices” Episode Highlights

• What we mean by biometric technology — heart rate and fitness monitors, sleep trackers, glucose scanners, but also fingerprint readers, facial recognition, etc.
• Pilar’s and Dallas’s personal history with health-related biometric devices
• The benefits of being able to see in real-time — and believe — what’s happening in the body
• The diminishing returns most of us experience over time from devices as we become more familiar with the correlation of objective metrics and our own subjective sensations
• How biometric devices may interfere with or impair our ability to develop crucial self perceptions
• Pilar’s experience with the Oura Ring, and the surprising range of data this device can track and report on (note: this is not a paid advertisement or testimonial — just Pilar’s two cents)
• Challenging the idea that more consumer technology is the solution to our health problems
• How data from biometric devices can be beneficial, and when it can be detrimental

Try this low tech self-monitoring technique: While at rest, find your pulse on your neck or wrist, count your heartbeats for 30 seconds and write down the number. Next, get your heart rate up by moving quickly for 30 seconds. Stop, immediately count your heartbeats again for 30 seconds and write the number down next to your resting heart rate. Notice the difference between the two numbers, witnessing how quickly your body responds to vigorous exercise, and how your body feels. Are you warmer? What is your energy level? Are you judging yourself for tiring or getting winded? Note that all of this information offers insight into how your body-mind is functioning today, and it can be had for free.

If you have a biometric device you rarely or never use, reflect on whether you have a desire to know more about your body and what you want to know. Does your device do what you want it to do? If it doesn’t, or if you don’t yet have a biometric device but want (and can afford) one, go ahead and try one out — just don’t count on it changing your life.

When you have a moment to pause, maybe upon waking or right before bed, take note of your general sense of well-being. How do you feel? What is your energy level, your mood? Do you feel better than yesterday or last week? Are you trending in a positive direction, and are the choices you’re making working for you? Regularly checking in with your body can help you develop more nuanced self awareness without needing data or scores to back it up. If a biometric device helps you develop this self awareness, use it.

Resources

• From Experience Life magazine: “Can Fitness Trackers Help Detect Illness?”; “New Tech Tools for Mental Health”
• “Fitbits of the Future: What’s Next in Biometric Data for Health” (via Aetna)
• The Oura Ring website
• The Muse Headband website

Order Our Books!

You’ve heard us talking about them for years now. Wouldn’t you like to among the very first to read them? Both are on shelves now!

Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.

Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week, we’re talking, once again, about trauma — this time with internationally renowned trauma expert Dr. James Gordon.  

A couple of episodes back, in “Trauma with Resmaa Menakem”, Pilar talked with another trauma expert about how familial, ancestral and racialized traumas take hold in us from generation to generation, and what it takes to process and release those traumas in conscious ways. 

Here, Pilar talks with Dr. Gordon about his new book, The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma (see linked resources below), about how we tend to get stuck in traumatic experiences of all sorts — and how we can get ourselves out.  

Dr. Gordon is a Harvard-educated psychiatrist, the founder of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, and a clinical professor at Georgetown Medical School. Here, he explains the importance of healing trauma’s psychological and biological wounds — and how we can do that in ways that leave us stronger and more resilient, rather than broken and bereft.  

We talk about the strategies he’s seen work in war-torn countries, in violence-ravaged homes, and in addressing the more common sorts of traumatic experiences virtually all of us encounter in our daily lives.  

We leave you with experiments to help you better manage your own moments of stress and trauma, including the ones you might not even realize you are still carrying around.

“Trauma with Dr. James Gordon” Episode Highlights

• Dr. Gordon’s background in trauma healing at the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, which he founded almost 30 years ago
• His body of work, including his latest book, The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma
• Pilar’s observation that trauma-awareness is currently having a long-overdue “moment,” and a discussion of why we’re now reawakening to the damage being done to us and by us
• The reality that everyone experiences trauma of some kind during their lifetime — loss, injury, illness, poverty, abuse, neglect, shame — and we all need to understand how humans naturally respond to it
• The importance of dealing with old traumas before they accumulate and precipitate new ones
• Antidotes to trauma-induced stress: Understanding that you will be visited by trauma eventually; knowing that it is possible to recover and become more resilient; finding ways to quiet the agitation and resolve anxiety after a traumatic event
• Physiological reactions created during “fight or flight” and the “freeze response,” and strategies for completion, calming, and release
• How to identify unresolved traumas that want (or need) to be addressed
• Why processing trauma creatively and somatically, rather than just intellectually, may be more helpful and expedient
• The 80% success rate of Gordon’s “Transformation” approach as described in the book, and its applicability to everyone
• The universal capacity of humans to heal themselves when provided with the right tools

Dr. Gordon’s Experiment of the Week

Try this soft-belly breathing exercise. (Soft-belly breathing is a foundational trauma-healing technique that helps 80% of people who try it.)

Find a comfortable resting position and close your eyes. Breathe slowly and deeply, in through your nose and out through your mouth, with your belly soft and relaxed. Say to yourself “soft” as you inhale and “belly” as you exhale. Feel a little more relaxation with each exhalation, knowing that as you do this more air is getting to the bottom of your lungs and feeding all the cells in your body with oxygen.

As you calm and quiet your body, you’ll also be calming your brain. You’ll be activating the vagus nerve, which is the antidote to the “fight or flight” response. Feel your heart rate slow and your blood pressure go down. Feel all your muscles release a little more with each breath. If thoughts come let them, then let them go, bringing your mind gently back to “soft belly.”

If you don’t have luck with this exercise the first time, try again. If you’re too antsy to relax, get up and move around to release the tension and then try again. If you’re not comfortable sitting, try lying down.

Pilar’s Experiment of the Week

Read Dr. Gordon’s book, The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma.

Bonus points: Listen to the “Trauma 1” episode of The Living Experiment to gather more wisdom on cultural, ancestral, and racialized trauma.

Resources

• Dr. Gordon’s latest book, The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma
• The Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s website
• Audio and video of some of Dr. Gordon’ self-care tips
• The “Trauma 1” episode of The Living Experiment with Resmaa Menakem
• An article on the lifelong impact of Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) and another on using movement therapy to heal trauma, both from Experience Life magazine

Order Our Books!

You’ve heard us talking about them for years now. Wouldn’t you like to among the very first to read them? Both are on shelves now!

Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.

Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week we’re talking about Love — the romance, the heartbreak, the profound sense of connection that most of us are after. Both our desire for love and our struggles to navigate it are some of the biggest opportunities we have for growth, and for stress, both of which can have huge impacts on our health and happiness.

So in this episode, we talk about how our childhood experiences help form our adult romantic patterns, about the dramas of first love, and about what both of us have learned as we’ve moved through the ups and downs of romantic attachments.

As always, we leave you with some experiments to help you explore how you’d like to show up for love, and love more skillfully, in your own life. 

“Love” Episode Highlights

• Why the quality of your life depends on (and reflects) the quality of your love
• How childhood experiences and young love inform how we navigate being in, and moving out of, adult romantic relationships
• The confusion between love and codependency
• Attachment theory: Why we’re attracted to people with whom we are inclined to to re-live traumatic experiences
• Starting with understanding, accepting and loving yourself
• The Gottman Institute’s “Four Horsemen” — four communication dynamics that forecast a dying relationship: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling
• How intimate partnerships force us to become stronger, more resilient individuals
• The fallacy of a “soul mate” who can meet all of your needs

Reflect on your definition of love, and what you want it to look like.

Think about the complaints you have about your current partner (or a past partner if you’re not currently in a relationship), and see if you can find the ways that you did the same things you find your partner guilty of. Notice if that awareness opens up space for more love for yourself and your significant other.

If you don’t currently have a partner but have had previous relationships, reflect on what was at stake and what went wrong. Can you pick out a pattern in your breakups? Why did you choose the partners you did, and how did you show up when things were at their worst? Consider: Are you willing to do it differently the next time? Envision yourself engaged in an argument or difficult situation with a partner, and coming out the other side with a better understanding of yourself and that person, and a stronger relationship rather than a dying one.

Resources

• Marriage and Family Therapist Linda Carroll’s website, and her forthcoming book, Love Skills
• Summaries of attachment theory and codependency from PositivePsychology.com
• More on The Gottman Institute’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse communication styles
• Love 2.0 from Barbara Frederickson, PhD — finding micro-moments of love in our daily lives — and Brian Johnson’s corresponding Big Ideas video
• Video “top 10 big ideas” overview of Brian Johnson’s “Relationships 101” course
• Harville and Helen Hendricks, relationship masters and authors of the classic book, Getting the Love You Want
• Our series of talks with Lafayette Morehouse teachers on love and intimacy: “Resistance to Pleasure”, “Win-Win Relating”, “Intimacy and Connection” and “Winning Cycles”

Order Our Books!

You’ve heard us talking about them for years now. Wouldn’t you like to among the very first to read them? Both are on shelves now!

Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.

Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! And leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe. Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week Pilar interviews a special guest, clinical therapist and author Resmaa Menakem. We’re talking about trauma, the effect it has on us as individuals, and also the impact it has on us in groups and as members of society.

Resmaa’s most recent book, My Grandmother’s Hands (see linked resources below), explores themes of ancestral and racialized trauma, topics informed by his personal and familial experiences, as well as his professional clinical expertise. Resmaa’s insights are also informed by a broad array of cross-cultural explorations, including two tours in Afghanistan as a military contractor.

Resmaa’s teachings are relevant to anyone who has experienced any kind of trauma, which, as he points out, is all of us. So here, we talk about the lasting impacts trauma leaves on our bodies, hearts and minds, as well as our families, communities and societies.

We also talk about what it takes to heal trauma’s current wounds, as well as its legacies of pain and depression, and we leave you with some experiments to help you better recognize and resolve the sources of trauma in your own life.

“Trauma with Resmaa Menakem” Episode Highlights

• Resmaa’s background as a healer, therapist, cultural trauma navigator, and coach — and the meaning of his name
• A discussion of his latest book, My Grandmother’s Hands, and the woman who inspired it
• The five brutalities that have defined America from 1492 to the present day (colonialism, enslavement, genocide, imperialism and land theft), and how they became the seeds upon which our entire culture is built
• Looking closely at white body supremacy in order to abolish it, and the importance of understanding that “it’s not the shark; it’s the water”
• The effects of our shared history on everyone’s mental and physical health, even before conception
• Resmaa’s HIPP theory of the origins of trauma: Historical, inter-generational, persistent institutional, personal
• The six-fold weight of a trauma event on the body and the vagus nerve response
• The importance of repetition, consistency and “doing the thing that sucks” in healing
• The ways the body can get stuck in trauma, and simple strategies for moving it through
• Why community is essential, and how it serves our resilience
• Why is it so hard for white people to talk about racism?
• Resmaa’s intended audience for his book, My Grandmother’s Hands — whom it is for and not for, and why

Resmaa’s Experiment of the Week

You can do this exercise sitting or standing, but if you are standing, put a little slack in your knees. Start by breathing naturally, and notice what is accepting the breath and what wants to push against it. What’s happening in the body? Then turn your neck to look behind you and notice without judgement if anything shifts. Does anything settle, drop or activate? Turn your neck to look over the other shoulder and notice again if anything shifts. Bring your neck back to neutral, and look for the room’s exits. Look up, then down, and straight ahead. Notice if the experience now is different than when you started. If any part of your body wants to move allow it to do so, using your hands to give it support. Notice the texture of that energy — is it about protection, or something else? Continue to breathe, and slow your breath. Slowly open your eyes, take a deep breath in and hold it for a pause, then let it go with a sigh. Repeat the deep breath two more times. Note that this practice may or may not have a dramatic impact the first time you complete it, but as it’s repeated, it can bring up all sorts of thoughts, feelings, and bodily reactions. Stay on the lookout for your system’s responses. 

Pilar’s Experiment of the Week

As you listened to the podcast, did you note any resistance to anything you heard? Did you feel an unwillingness to embrace any of the ideas? A desire to argue with them or to find reasons that they do not apply to you? If so, listen again after you’ve had a chance to process the information, and read Resmaa’s book, My Grandmother’s Hands.

Resources

• Resmaa Menakem’s books, including his latest, My Grandmother’s Hands, available signed by the author (standard copies also available via Amazon and other retailers)
• More about Resmaa and his background as a healer and thought leader
• Resmaa’s Chromatic Elephant podcast with fellow trauma expert Tyler Reitzner, in which they explore the context and impacts of racism and white-body supremacy — boldly inviting “the racialized elephant into the room” and sitting with both the discomfort and the transformative insights that elephant brings
• The study on how depopulation in the Americas after the arrival of Europeans contributed to climate change
• Resmaa’s free 5-day course on racialized trauma
• Links to the sites and collected works of Rachel Cargle and Layla F. Saad (leading writers/teachers/podcasters referenced by Pilar)
• Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and her other books about racial and social justice
• Some reading on the vagus nerve, including the basics of what it is and how it works (via clinical psychologist Arielle Schwartz, PhD); some insights on why it is an important key to wellbeing (via New York magazine’s The Cut by Edith Zimmerman); and a medical description of its role in modulating the gut-brain axis via an article in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry)

Order Our Books!

You’ve heard us talking about them for years. Wouldn’t you like to read them? Both are on shelves now and getting rave reviews!

Plus …

Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.

Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week we return from a nearly one-year recording hiatus with a report from the outer limits of book writing and creative life.

Dallas unpacks the contents of his forthcoming title, The 4 Season Solution. And Pilar reflects, with unexpected emotion, on both the final push to turn in her book, The Healthy Deviant AND one of her most intense years on record.

We both share some of the insights and appreciations that have come to us while we’ve been away, and of course, we offer you some experiments designed to help you take stock of your own comings and goings.

Oh, and by the way both our books are now on shelves, so you can order them from your local independent bookstore or favorite online retailers. Wooo hoooo! Please buy as many copies as you can for you and your health-motivated friends and family. We’re wildly grateful for your support!

“We’re Back” Episode Highlights

• A heartfelt thank you for sticking with us!
• Dallas shares the evolution of his next book, The 4 Season Solution, and the challenges he overcame to write and publish it
• A summary of that book’s contents (food, circadian rhythms, body movement, social and self connection)
• Balancing accessibility and reality: The challenge of writing a non-formulaic yet successful book
• How our bodies interact with the environment via the light/dark cycle, and the other cycles that may have profound but not-yet-understood influence on us
• The target audience for Dallas’s book: Real people who live real lives with real challenges and are motivated to face those trials in a healthy, integrated way
• The approachability of both books: Breaking down the science and making sense of the nonsensical
• Pilar’s journey over the past super-intense year, as she finished her book and also took a new job in New York City
• Why being a New York Times bestselling author isn’t all that
• The five parts of Pilar’s book:
  • “The Crazy that Passes for Normal” (how we got here)
  • “The Making of a Healthy Deviant” (Pilar’s story and yours)
  • “The Way of the Healthy Deviant” (specific competencies and rituals for living a healthier life)
  • “Your Healthy Deviant Adventurer (a 14-day program for developing your Healthy Deviant mojo)
  • “Taking it to the Streets” (changing the Unhealthy Default Reality through individual and collective action)
• Why Pilar considers this book to be her opus, and the feeling that having completed it (often against naysaying and resistance) evokes for her
• What to expect from Season 11 of The Living Experiment and how it will be both similar to and different from our previous seasons
• Pilar’s upcoming series of Healthy Deviance workshops being offered as part of a weeklong retreat at Rancho La Puerta 
• P.S. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to this podcast to get previous episodes and get new content as soon as it becomes available

Think about a period of your life that was particularly difficult, stressful, sad, heartbreaking, etc. and identify the gift that came out of it. Was it a learning experience, a revelation about yourself or someone else (or the world)? A pay-it-forward opportunity? Recognize that you were able to bring beauty out of suffering, and let that beauty grow.

1) Reflect on something that you’ve let go of, consciously or unconsciously, that might be calling to come back into your life. It might be an abandoned hobby, a social circle, a self-care ritual, or a difficult project. Is there any part of your world that you’ve put away that deserves to be reconsidered or welcomed back?

2) Think about the period that The Living Experiment podcast has been on hiatus. How does it feel to have something you enjoyed (and perhaps even came to rely upon) suddenly be gone (even for a while)? Notice whether it made you clearer about your desires, needs, and values; if it made you recognize your appetite for knowledge or meaningful conversation; or if it just made you appreciate the podcast more. What are some other ways that you can honor the insights from this experience in other parts of your life? 

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Order Dallas’s book via Amazon or Barnes & Noble
• Order Pilar’s book via IndieBound or Amazon
• A study on how solar flares and other geomagnetic activity affect the body-mind, including heart-rate variability, perception of time, and more (we’re still looking for that multi-decade study Dallas referenced, and we’ll post it when we find it, but in the meantime, you’ll get the gist from this)
• For more on circadian rhythm and the light/dark cycle, check out our seasonal episodes: “Seasons”, “Winter”, “Spring”, “Summer”, and “Autumn”
• For more on Pilar’s concepts of the Healthy Deviant, listen to “Healthy Deviance” and “Healthy Deviance 2”
• Pilar’s Healthy Deviant Facebook group, where you can find out how to get the first chapter of Pilar’s book for free!
• Pilar’s December 14-20 retreat at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico: “Inner Fitness: Healthy Deviance”

Plus …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, and receive notifications when new episodes are released
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

This week we’re talking about taking a Break — the value of choosing to pause a project or commitment, and the factors you might consider in doing so.

We share the reasons — after 100 episodes, close to a million downloads, and 10 full seasons of live-and-in-person collaboration — we’re choosing to take a breather from our established recording schedule.

We reflect on both the demands and rewards that have come along with co-producing this weekly podcast over the past three years.

We also share a preview of the projects and priorities we’re both working on now, and what we’ll be producing over the next few weeks and months.

Finally, we share some experiments to help you reflect on your current use of time, energy, and resources — and why you might want to considering taking some well-deserved breaks in your own life.

“Break” Episode Highlights

• Moving from a weekly format to a schedule that works for us as we are working on our respective books
• What you might be hearing from us during the interim, and why you should remain subscribed to the podcast
• Reflections on where the podcast fits into our lives, schedules, and career plans
• What we’ve learned about the technical and logistical aspects of producing a podcast
• The reasons we launched the podcast, and why we’re pausing it now
• Encouragement to find helpful, shareable information in our previous 99 episodes, and via our personal sites and social feeds
• Suggested resources and places to turn for continued insight and inspiration
• Some ways to reconsider the commitments you’ve made and look for opportunities to take breaks in your own life
• A reminder to stay in touch with us via our sites, mailing lists, and social channels: Visit www.pilargerasimo.com and www.dallashartwig.com
• P.S. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to this podcast to get previous episodes and get new content as soon as it becomes available

Challenge yourself to look at the way your life is operating currently, and focus on something that is recurring — a subscription, a weekly class or podcast, a regular TV series. Ask yourself if it still serves you in the way it did when you first started. If it doesn’t, let it go.

Make a list of your commitments and pick one or two that you could renegotiate. That might mean downsizing or opting out, finding someone else to help, swapping tasks, or finding some other creative way to temporarily or permanently take a break from what you’ve been doing.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• “The Mirrors of Your Spending” via Experience Life magazine
• Connecting with Pilar: Her website, The Healthy Deviant website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
• Connecting with Dallas: His website, Instagram
• Sam Harris’s Waking Up podcast
• Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings website
• Brian Johnson’s Optimize work
• Experience Life magazine

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week

This week we’re talking about Healthy Deviance (again!), so we’re calling this episode Healthy Deviance 2.

First, we explore the evolution of Pilar’s notion of Healthy Deviance, reflecting on how it has taken ahold and become part of a larger conversation about how to be a healthy, happy person in an often unhealthy, unhappy world.

Next, after Dallas dashes off to catch his flight, Pilar breaks down some of the key concepts of her book about Healthy Deviance, which is now on shelves. Yay!

Pilar describes the nature of what she calls the Nonconformist Competencies of Healthy Deviance, as well as the wide range of healthy-person skills you need to claim and sustain them for yourself.

Finally, Pilar offers you some experiments to help you evaluate whether or not you currently identify as a Healthy Deviant, and where you might be right now on the Healthy Deviant Hero’s Journey of your own life.

Want to go deeper and get ongoing support for your Healthy Deviant way of life? Check out Pilar’s Healthy Deviant U experience.

“Healthy Deviance 2” Episode Highlights

• Part 1: The crazy that passes for normal, the unseen problem, and the renegade solution
• Part 2: The Making of a Healthy Deviant and the stages of the Healthy Deviant Hero’s Journey
• Part 3: The Way of the Healthy Deviant and the Nonconformist Competencies of Amplified Awareness, Preemptive Repair, and Continuous Growth and Learning (Pilar goes into detail later on these competencies)
• Social media’s and technology’s influence on our lifestyles and health
• Going beyond telling people “what to eat” and “what to do” by giving them tools to make their own healthy choices in any situation
• Learning to relate and self-identify differently to the world around you
• Pilar’s Renegade Rituals for building resilience to the Unhealthy Default Reality: Morning Minutes,  Ultradian Rhythm Breaks, and a Nighttime Wind-Down Ritual
• Part 4: An overview of the two-week program that guides you through integrating the Renegade Rituals (plus other Healthy Deviant experiments) and reflecting on how your life is changing as a result
• Part 5: Taking it to the Streets — how do you bring what you’ve learned to the larger world, and why does that matter? What could we accomplish as a society if the majority of us were healthy and happy?
• Pilar offers a closer look at the Nonconformist Competencies and the logic behind them

Amplified Awareness:

• The importance of noticing what is going on inside and around you
• Observing how you are doing, when you suffer, struggle or get off course
• Noticing how you’re feeling in body and mind, what triggers you to make good or not-so-good choices?
• How much you depend on numbing agents or coping strategies (medications, distractions, alcohol, etc.) to get through your days?
• What makes you feel inadequate, disempowered, or in need of fixing? What drives you to buy stuff?
• The value of keeping a wish-list file of all the “improvements” you want to make and reviewing it monthly, looking deeper to see patterns in what truly inspires you, and then deciding what you really want to do about it

Preemptive Repair:

• The importance of getting out ahead of the damage that is done to you — and that you do to yourself — simply by virtue of living in an unhealthy, pro-inflammatory society
• The role of continuous, accumulated damage and delayed maintenance as a trigger for chronic disease and depression
• Inflammation as the inevitable result of going along with the Unhealthy Default Reality, and why our so-called “healthcare” cannot solve the problem
• The restorative effects of a healthy whole-food diet, plenty of water, taking breaks, daylight, good sleep, and a strong relationship with self; how these fundamentals function as pre-emptive repair strategies

Continuous Growth and Learning:

• The role of a growth mindset as a foundation of Healthy Deviance
• The necessity of building the “skills of the healthy person” over time
• The stress brought on by our cultural confusion around healthy choices and trying to learn everything all at once (hint: you can’t)
• Starting with the primary skills of basic self-nourishment and the Renegade Rituals
• Coming to grips with the fact that you are the first generation of humans to be faced with these challenges
• Accepting that you will never know everything, and that every day is a chance to learn something new
• The real challenge and opportunity: Joyfully embracing the challenges of choosing to be a healthy person in an unhealthy world, and accepting the unusual position that puts you in

Choose one of the following (or do both for extra credit):

1) Take my “Are You a Healthy Deviant?” quiz to find out where you fall on the healthy deviant spectrum. Your quiz results will also give you suggestions for how to move forward on your path.

2) Reflect on where you are in your own Healthy Deviant hero’s journey. Are you stuck in Compliance with the Unhealthy Default Reality? Have you waded into the Descent of unhealthy choices, self-judgment, and worsening health outcomes?  Have you hit the Darkness that comes from seeing no way out and feeling helpless to change your circumstances? Are you in Divergence, experimenting with more progressive approaches and considering a better way forward? Are you in Rebellion — fed up with trying to adhere to unachievable ideals and following the “authoritative” (but ineffective) mainstream prescriptions of the unhealthy culture? Or have you moved into the more nuanced, non-reactive, energy-sparing, self-sustaining stage of Healthy Deviance? Where are you headed next?

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Our first “Healthy Deviance” episode
• More on the Renegade Rituals in our “Morning”, “Pause”, and “Sleep” episodes
• Pilar’s Healthy Deviant website (lots of great related resources there)
• Pilar’s Are You a Healthy Deviant? Quiz
• “The Way of The Healthy Deviant” — a feature article via Experience Life magazine
• The Healthy Deviant on Facebook
• Pilar’s Healthy Deviant U membership and community experience.

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week

This week we’re talking about Coping — the base level, essential things we do to get through our days, particularly when we’re under pressure and stress.

In a world that can lead us to feel helpless, reactive, and overburdened, it’s important to have strategies for calming our nervous system, for managing our internal and external resources, and for creating a stable sense of center.

So here, we talk about how we wade through the craziness of everyday life, and the fundamental skills we use to stay aware and resilient even in the face of depletion and reactivity.

We look at the physical, mental, and emotional dynamics of coping — from anti-inflammatory eating and sleeping to anti-insanity media habits. And, of course, we offer you some experiments to help you relate with more consciousness and self-compassion to the coping scenarios in your own life.

“Coping” Episode Highlights

• The essence of coping — recognizing the things you can control and the things you can’t
• Doing the things that are within your capacity in the service of yourself and everyone around you
• The challenge of making good decisions and acting out of compassion while in a depleted state
• Coping fundamentals:
  • Good food and nutrition
  • Consistent circadian rhythms and rest time in darkness
  • Meditation, or even three deep breaths when you notice you’re in reaction or off balance
  • Preemptive Repair (one of Pilar’s Non-Conformist Competencies of Healthy Deviance)
  • Decluttering and creating havens in your home and office
  • Time alone, without distractions
  • Body movement that feels good (vs. exhausting)
  • Limiting exposure to upsetting/disrupting/stress-inducing media
  • Connecting with a positive, supportive community
  • Laughter and fun
• Self-perpetuating stress: How we rationalize compromising what we know to be healthy behaviors
• Why emphasizing reconnection — to others, to nature, to nourishment, to self — is the best coping strategy of all

Choose one of the following:

1) During a moment of transition or waiting time during your day, rather than defaulting to your digital devices, look around for someone to be kind to. Make eye contact and say hello. If you’re driving, turn off all distractions and look for opportunities to let people into your lane or give other drivers the benefit of the doubt. Notice how you feel after these interactions.

2) Make a list of resiliency fundamentals and keep it with you. When you get to that time of day when you feel at your very last frayed nerve, note which practices you’ve been doing and which you haven’t. When did you last take a rest break, have a healthy meal, drink water, move your body, connect with anyone in a loving way, turn off media, step outside and look up at the sky? If you’re not doing the basics, breakdown (and loss of productivity) is inevitable.

When you feel stressed or overextended, spend 5-10 minutes re-connecting with yourself, others, nature, or your sense of purpose. How are you really feeling? Can you find an opportunity to be kind to a friend or stranger? Can you get outside for a walk? What are your life goals or spiritual practices? If you can’t find 5 minutes, it’s probably more important than ever that you carve them out.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Pilar’s “10 Tips for Staying Healthy — No Matter What”
• Dallas’ Ancestral Health Symposium talk: “Friends and Lovers: How Other People Modulate Your Stress Response”
• From Experience Life magazine: The stress-busting power of “Three Deep Breaths”, “The 5 Best Ways to Build Resiliency”, “The Way of the Healthy Deviant”, and “Finding Calm in a Frantic World”
• Brian Johnson’s Optimize program, and his short video on the power of consistent fundamentals (or as he says, “fundies”)
• More of our episodes that dive deep into coping essentials: “Morning”, “Seasons”, “Pause”, “Busy”, “News”, “Sleep”, “Clutter”, “Decluttering”, “Anxiety”, “Meditation”

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week we’re talking about Introverts and Extroverts — from the different ways these two distinct types show up in the world to the sometimes perplexing ways they can relate.

In the process we unpack our own introverted and extroverted tendencies, and we share expert insights on what both these types have to share with, and learn from, each other.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you expand your own awareness of introvert-extrovert dynamics and how they might be showing up in your own life.

“Introvert Extrovert” Episode Highlights

• How western culture is designed for — and by — the success of extroverts
• Significant differences between the types: How energy is recharged, sensitivity to stimuli, neurochemistry, enjoyment of or discomfort with silence
• Expert tips for communicating with the other type
• The importance of mirroring in communication — observing and adopting the patterns of the person you’re talking to
• Pilar’s experience with typing herself as a college student vs. as a mature adult, and her introverted need to recharge in solitude or small groups
• How extroverted Dallas gets energy — from talking things out and socializing
• How to care for introverts and extroverts
• The misunderstandings that the types have about each other, and the problems that can arise in introvert-extrovert relationships

Read the Fast Company article on introverts and extroverts. Look at the Quick Tips for Care list of the type you don’t self-identify with, and use two or three of those tips on a person you know is that type without telling them. Notice how it changes the quality of your interactions. Or go through the list in advance with the person and ask them which ideas they wish you’d use more often.

The next time you’re interacting with someone who is the opposite type, notice their energy, posture, gestures and level of interaction (or lack thereof) and try to mirror what they’re giving. Notice what happens for you and the other person.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• From Experience Life magazine:
  • “Lost in Translation”
  • “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking”
• Susan Cain’s “The Power of Introverts” TED Talk, and a Q&A on the TED Blog
• “Why Introverts and Extroverts are Different: The Science” from Quiet Revolution
• Introvert-extrovert differences, tips for relating, and the definition of an ambivert from Fast Company
• An introvert-extrovert-ambivert quiz from Adam Grant
• Will Storr’s book Selfie — our cultural obsession with the “perfect self,” who is usually an extrovert

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week we’re talking about Motivation — the force that gets us to do, accomplish, and change the things we want to. And the force that sometimes fizzles without our really understanding why.

So here, we talk about the nature and source of motivation, and the art of cultivating it in the service of our highest goals.

From the dynamics that cause us to procrastinate and avoid fulfilling ostensibly worthwhile commitments, to the science behind making change even when change is hard, we explore the realities of harnessing the willingness to do what must be done.

We also acknowledge the reality that an unlimited supply of superhuman willpower is often not the magic bullet that many motivational gurus might have you believe.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you tap into your own best sources of motivation, and to put them to work in ways that feel most rewarding to you.

“Motivation” Episode Highlights

• The neurochemistry behind motivation and the role of dopamine
• Dr. BJ Fogg’s behavior-change model relating motivation, ability, and a triggering prompt all converging at the right moment in time
• The classes of motivation: extrinsic (external) vs. intrinsic (internal)
• Pilar’s concept of catalysts and catastrophes as motivators
• Dr. James O. Prochaska’s Transtheoretical Model — the six key stages of readiness to change
• Dallas’s intuitive, values-based approach to motivation
• Pilar’s halting motivational ride in finishing her book proposal
• The importance of Preemptive Repair — one of Pilar’s Non-Conformist Competencies of Healthy Deviance — in maintaining the motivation to reach goals
• The conflict between our rational (“The Rider”) and emotional (“The Elephant”) minds as the largest obstacle to change, as described by Jonathan Haidt
• Drs. Chip and Dan Heath’s “Switch” work about the art of making change when change is hard:
  • Directing the Rider’s planning and analysis skills, motivating the Elephant’s passion and sustained energy, and shaping the Path
  • Motivational tips: Finding the bright spots rather than the problems, shrinking the large goal into small steps, tweaking the environment to set yourself up for success, and rallying the herd to support you
  • Seeing beyond the obvious: What looks like resistance may be lack of clarity; what looks like laziness may be exhaustion; what looks like a people problem may be a situation problem
• Challenging your assumptions about your own lack of motivation

Think about the thing you’ve been putting off or wanting to do, and what the first step in doing that thing would be. Do that first step today.

Think about the last thing you satisfactorily accomplished and break it down. Notice what it was about the goal that allowed you achieve it, and compare it to a goal you’re trying to achieve now. Consider for example:

• Does it meet the same high standards of something you truly want to accomplish?
• What were the steps you took in reaching that previous goal? Did you set out to do it all at once or was there a process you discovered over time? Were there multiple attempts? How can that apply to the thing you’re working on now?
• What were the skills and strengths that you brought to that challenge? How did you use your intellect, physical strength, stamina, focus, relationships, resources? How can you leverage those same strengths towards your current goal?
• Reflect on what it felt like to achieve the goal, and what the rewards have been. Were there unexpected benefits? Were the rewards part of the motivation? Think about how those results might help motivate you now.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• From Experience Life magazine:
  • “Switch” by Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard
  • “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit
  • “The Stages of Change” — James O. Prochaska’s Transtheoretical Model
• “The Science Behind Motivation” from Forbes
• BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model and his Tiny Habits method
• “Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation: What’s the Difference?” from Verywell Mind
• The Elephant and Rider analogy in Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week we’re talking about Meditation — its near-countless benefits for body and mind, and also the real and perceived barriers that keep many from embracing it.

From the challenges of making space for a regular practice, to the frustration that can set in when we attempt to calm our chaotic minds, we talk about the block-and-tackle of meditation and the many forms it can take.

We also share our own experiences with meditative practices and the benefits we’ve found in exploring and expanding them over time.

Finally, we offer you a snack-size taste of a guided meditation and some experiments to help you discover the profound gifts you stand to gain from building more meditative practices into your own life.

“Meditation” Episode Highlights

• Pilar’s recent commitment to a daily hour-long guided meditation, and Dallas’s conversion from skeptic to occasional meditator
• Why only 8% of Americans meditate regularly despite the long list of upsides (and no downsides)
• What motivates people to meditate — and how the impetus to continue might differ from that original motivation
• The research into the minimum-effective dose for meditation (time needed to see benefits) — just 12 minutes a day, according to Dr. Amishi Jha
• The stress relief available from even a few seconds of any practice that stills your mind
• How meditation fits perfectly into Pilar’s first Non-Conformist Competency of Healthy Deviance: Amplified Awareness
• Why a busy, constantly wandering mind is completely normal and NOT a good reason to think you “can’t meditate”
• The wide range of mindfulness practices — pretty much anything that keeps you aware, in the present moment, and disinclined toward automatic or volatile reaction
• Where meditation and contemplative practice fits into the healthy body-mind triad of nutrition, fitness and stress management strategies
• How digestive disorders like Irritable Bowel Syndrome and skin problems can be mitigated or healed by meditation via the vagus nerve connection between the brain and gut
• Tools for starting (or invigorating) a meditation practice
• A VERY short introduction to guided meditation
• Forms of meditation and their effects on different areas of the brain
• Finding a mindfulness practice that works for you

Meditate for 10 minutes every morning for a week using an app like Headspace or Calm. Notice how the rest of your day changes and unfolds following your practice.

Try Tara Brach’s 16-minute “Quieting the Mind” guided meditation. Notice: What resistance comes up? Does anything or anyone get in your way?

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• From Experience Life magazine: “Brain-Body Benefits of Meditation”, “How to Begin a Daily Meditation Practice”, and “Wherever You Go, There You Are”
• Dr. Joe Dispenza’s You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter
• “Meditation for fidgety skeptics” from Dan Harris’s 10% Happier website and books
• Dr. Amishi Jha’s research in attention and working memory, and how they can be modified by mindfulness practices
• Statistics from the National Institutes of Health on the use of complimentary health approaches in the U.S.
• Some of our favorite guided meditation resources: The Headspace and Calm apps, Insight Timer, Pilar’s “Your Ideal Day” visualization, and Tara Brach’s website
• Meditative music selections: Evening meditation music track via Stevin McNamara (Pilar’s fave yoga music composer!) on an album compiled by Caroline Myss, more from Stevin McNamara, and the meditation collection from Sounds True

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re available.

This week we’re talking about the Enneagram — a personal wisdom tool that has been transforming lives and relationships for thousands of years.

The Enneagram is generally thought of as a personality typing system, and it does sort people into 9 primary types, but it’s different from other personality typing systems in a variety of important ways.

The central aim of the Enneagram is to help people understand their own and others’ deepest motivations. It helps us develop and better leverage our central strengths while also helping us recognize and work around our most challenging and potentially self-destructive tendencies.

One thing both Dallas and Pilar like about the Enneagram is that it is an incredibly rich body of knowledge, one that you can use to keep learning about yourself and others for the rest of your life.

So in this episode, we share an overview of our experiences with the Enneagram, and how we’ve benefited from them.

We offer some very basic information about the nature and origins of the system, and how it helps people evolve toward their highest and healthiest potential.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you discover more about your own Enneagram Type and put its wisdom to work in your own life.

“Enneagram” Episode Highlights

• The murky ancient origins of the Enneagram and its modern applications, from conflict-mediation corporate team-building
• How the Enneagram differs from other personality typing systems, like the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator
• The healthy-to-unhealthy spectrum of the Enneagram types
• A quick rundown of the nine primary Enneagram types
  • #1: The Perfectionist, Reformer or Idealist (Pilar’s type)
  • #2: The Helper or Giver
  • #3: The Achiever or Performer
  • #4: The Individualist, Romantic or Artist
  • #5: The Investigator or Observer
  • #6: The Loyal Skeptic
  • #7: The Optimist, Enthusiast or Epicure
  • #8: The Leader, Protector or Challenger (Dallas’s type)
  • #9: The Peacemaker or Mediator
• The benefits of noticing your type’s tendencies when under stress
• Using your and others’ types to better understand how differently we all view the world, and to create more compassionate relationships
• Taking a quiz or reading a description to discover your type: The pros and cons of each

1. Take the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI) test from The Enneagram Institute, and then read about your type in their Type Description pages.

2. Bonus experiment: To better understand the dynamics between you and a loved one or co-worker, have them take the same Enneagram test and then read about how your types relate in the Type Description pages (you have to pay a membership fee to view this info). Does the description match how you experience each other? Without using the description to judge and point fingers, how can understanding your Enneagram types help you better understand past areas of friction or misunderstanding?

Check out The Enneagram Institute’s website. Read through the nine type descriptions and see if you can find one or more that resonates with you (see below to links to type pages). If you’re interested, consider reading more deeply, or even taking a course on the topic.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• From Experience Life magazine:
  • “Inside the Enneagram”
  • “The 3 Instincts From the Enneagram”
  • “Peace Through Personality”
• The Enneagram Institute has in-depth type descriptions, as well as descriptions of compatibility with other types and possible misidentifications:
  • #1: The Perfectionist, Reformer or Idealist
  • #2: The Helper or Giver
  • #3: The Achiever or Performer
  • #4: The Individualist, Romantic or Artist
  • #5: The Investigator or Observer
  • #6: The Loyal Skeptic
  • #7: The Optimist, Enthusiast or Epicure
  • #8: The Leader, Protector or Challenger
  • #9: The Peacemaker or Mediator
• The history of the Enneagram from The Enneagram Spectrum
• Discovering your type: The Enneagram Institute’s Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI) ($12) or the RHETI Sample (free from 9types.com), and Dr. David Daniels’ Essential Enneagram Online Test ($10)

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re available.

This week we’re talking about Weight Loss — the myths, the methods, and the massive struggle it represents for the majority of Americans today.

Starting with our own frustration with the muddled messages often broadcast on this topic, we strive to set the record straight.

From the madness of trying to control one’s weight through low-fat eating, calorie counting, and “portion control,” to the sensible strategies that work a whole lot better, we share what we know, and what we wish more people knew, about the keys to managing your weight in a healthier, happier way.

Pilar shares her Healthy Deviant approach to weight loss, and Dallas draws from his two New York Times bestsellers to help you rethink not just the way you’re eating, but also the way you are managing your thoughts, your energy, your daily patterns, and your biochemistry.

And of course, we offer you some experiments to help you recast your assumptions about weight, and weight loss, for the long haul.

“Weight Loss” Episode Highlights

• Seeing excess weight as one symptom of our many intersecting physical, social, and cultural imbalances
• Our societal tendency to focus on the superficial indicators that are right in our face rather than looking for root causes
• Why junk and fast food is so hard to resist — the insidious practices of the processed food industry and their marketing machine
• The role of stress in weight gain and chronic undernourishment
• Finding a balance of being well-fed and well-nourished
• Why giving in to food cravings is not a failure of willpower or moral fiber
• Pilar’s Healthy Deviant perspectives on self regulation, ego depletion, and learned helplessness — factors that help explain our daily patterns of impulse and reactivity
• Why heavily-marketed diet crazes, surgeries, and pharmaceuticals are not sustainable “magic bullet” solutions
• Losing weight in the pursuit of a healthier, more authentic, pleasurable life (vs. to meet popular culture’s impossible attractiveness standards)
• Looking beyond conventionally desirable attributes to notice what actually attracts us to others
• Why the best decisions are made from a place of self love and compassion rather than fear and self criticism
• Dallas’s basic principles for maintaining a healthy body weight — whole foods and complete proteins, regular short-duration/high-intensity or long-duration/low-intensity body movement, and consistent circadian rhythms
• Challenging the popular presumptions about how to lose weight and learning how to do what works for you based on your own experience and observations

Examine something you think you “should” do — “I should lose 10 pounds” or “I should be working out harder” — and ask yourself whether those “shoulds” are based in self love or fear. If your motivation is fear, can you restructure the “should” from a more loving perspective? Alternatively, could you modify the behavior (or drop it altogether) to make it a more loving act?

Rather than focusing on a specific diet strategy or a dietary goal, shift your attention to preemptively warding off and repairing the depletion and anxiety that tend to result from stressing, rushing, and white-knuckling it through your day. To help you get a sense of how this Healthy Deviant strategy works, start with one of Pilar’s Renegade Rituals:

1. Try a morning practice (listen to the “Morning” episode for suggestions)

2. Take Ultradian Rhythm Breaks (as described in the “Pause” episode)

3. Develop a nighttime wind-down ritual (check out the “Sleep” episode)

Notice how performing these self-sustaining practices improves your ability to self-notice and self-regulate, and helps you better manage your eating choices throughout the day. 

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• From Experience Life magazine: “Rethinking the Rules of Weight Loss”, “The Smart Way to Weight Loss”, “The Fit Way to Weight Loss”, “5 Tips for Losing Weight — Without Calorie-Counting”
• Also from Experience Life: Pilar’s video interview with obesity expert and New York Times bestselling author Dr. David Ludwig, and her article, “Your Body, Reframed”, about important psychological barriers to weight loss
• Dallas’s books The 4 Season Solution, It Starts With Food and The Whole30, and his “More Social Less Media” program
• For more on the nutritional aspects weight management, check out our “Nourished” episode
• Our “Healthy vs. Hot” and “Questions” episodes
• Dr. David Ludwig’s Always Hungry? — the science behind food cravings
• More on Dr. Martin Seligman’s positive psychology from TED

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week we’re talking about Quitting — the importance of knowing when to do it, and the stigma that so often accompanies that decision.

From jobs and relationships, to projects and attachments, we talk about both the pain and the relief of letting go of the things we once decided to pursue. And we point out that quitting needn’t represent a failure or a referendum on your value as a person.

Dallas makes his case for becoming an “expert quitter,” and Pilar shares some of the biggest, baddest, most formative quitting experiences of her life.

We also offer you some empowering experiments to help you explore the potential of quitting more skillfully and selectively in your own life.

“Quitting” Episode Highlights

• What Dallas means by being an “expert quitter”
• Pilar and Dallas share their stories of big life quits
• The detrimental effects of trying to hold on to everything
• The iterative process of trying new things, and being willing to let go
• Overcoming the fear of quitting by tapping into your deepest feelings, noticing how your body reacts, and then having faith in the response
• Change in any form as the first step in getting out of a bad situation
• Quitting certain aspects of a job or relationship, for example, rather than leaving altogether
• Keeping your values in mind when making decisions about what to do
• Reframing quitting as reinvention in the hero’s journey

If you’re considering quitting something, try following these steps:

1. Slow down. Find a moment when you’re not trying to get somewhere or do something, and physically stop. Take some deep breaths and calm yourself down. Then, allow yourself to feel what it feels like when you say “I quit.” What comes up? Do you feel fear? Dread? Anticipation? A lightening?

2. Imagine you’re doing something else, even if you don’t know what that thing is. Again, what do you feel?

If you feel a sense of relief, excitement, or anticipation in either or both of those steps, start looking in the direction of making a change. You don’t have to quit right away, but give yourself permission to start planning without feeling ashamed about giving up.

Quit doing something small that doesn’t feel good to you, especially if it’s something that you feel obligated rather than excited to do. Examples: Stop being self-critical (it might take many tries). Stop going to the early morning yoga class you don’t like. Put down the book group assignment that isn’t interesting to you. Notice how quitting the small thing makes you feel, and see if it empowers and energizes you to make other changes.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Via Experience Life magazine: “Quitting”, “When Something’s Gotta Give” and “The Freedom of No”
• Via Fast Company: “Ask Yourself These 4 Questions Before You Quit Something”
• Via Oprah.com: “Know When to Fold ‘Em”
• The Dip: A Little Book That Tells You When to Quit (and When to Stick) by Seth Godin
• “Knowing When to Quit or Persevere” — video summary of Seth Godin’s book, The Dip
• “8 Ways You Can Tell That It’s the Right Time to Quit” via Psychology Today

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week we’re talking about being Childless by Choice. That’s a decision that an increasing number of people are making these days, so the assumption that any given person is hoping to someday “get married and have babies” is increasingly a questionable one.

And yet, those who consciously decide not to have kids are often confronted by the judgment of others. From opinion leaders who argue that not having children is “selfish,” to relatives who are counting on you to carry on the family line, there’s no shortage of reasons you might feel pressure — or peevishness — as the result of other people’s investment in your reproductive capacity.

So here, we talk about the many reasons a person might choose not to have kids, and how to cope with the reactions that choice might provoke. We also offer you some experiments to help you get more comfortable and compassionate with your own decision, and others’.

“Childless by Choice” Episode Highlights

• The statistical reality that choosing not to have kids is becoming an increasingly popular choice
• Pope Francis’s declaration that being able to reproduce but choosing not to is selfish and sinful
• The surprising environmental impacts of having fewer children (or not having them at all)
• The ethical dilemma of bringing kids into our overpopulated, unpredictable world
• How holdover biological, religious and cultural motivations to have kids still drive the decisions of many
• Pilar shares her story of — and reasons for — being childless, and Dallas’s shares his perspective
• The judgments passed both on people without children and on certain people who have lots of kids
• The personal values that can guide individuals toward not having kids
• The myriad ways people can make the world a better place without having children

Imagine a future that’s different from the one you envision. If you want kids but don’t have them, think about how that might play out. If you have children, envision your life without them. Whatever your situation, imagine how you’d achieve a life of purpose and meaning without kids. Are there aspects of that imagined life that you can apply to the life you have?

Consider the messages you got from your family of origin and what you’ve taken away from other social programming about the choice to have or not have kids, the responsibility you have to reproduce (or not), and how you might be judged about the choice you make. Then reflect: How much is this decision driven by someone else’s opinion or beliefs about what you should or shouldn’t do? How have those messages influenced how you judge other people’s choices, and can you soften those judgments and assumptions? How does having a judgment about someone else’s decision on such a personal matter really serve you?

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• “How People Decide Whether to Have Children: A Guide for Those on the Fence” via The Atlantic 
• “10 Women Look Back on Living Childfree by Choice” via Self magazine
• “The Childfree Life: Why So Many American Women Are Deciding Not to Have Kids” via The Washington Post
• The transcript of Pope Francis’s general audience in which he declares choosing to not have children is a selfish act
• Sid Perkins’ article in Science magazine — having fewer children is by far the most significant way to reduce your carbon footprint
• Sam Harris’s Waking Up podcast interview with David Benatar on his philosophy of “anti-natalism”
• The dystopian reproductive future of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and the TV series based on the novel
• The book, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Thirteen Women Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids curated by Megan Daum
• The blog, “We’re {Not} Having a Baby: Childfree Adventures in a Child-Centric World” authored by a couple that includes Amy Blackstone, PhD, a sociologist specializing in childfree studies, and her book, Childfree by Choice: The Movement Redefining Family and Creating a New Age of Independence

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week we’re talking about Questions — the value of asking more of them, and the potential of making inquiry a regular life practice.

Rainer Maria Rilke once advised a young poet to “live in the questions,” and that advice can serve all of us.

So here, we share the questions we’ve found most helpful in keeping us on a good path, as well as the questions that tend to get us in trouble.

From the reality-challenging questions that define Byron Katie’s “The Work,” to the Learner and Judger questions that make up Marilee Adams’ Choice Map, we explore the evolution that is possible when we ask, rather than assume.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you consider the questions you might benefit from asking in your own life.

“Questions” Episode Highlights

• The power of questions (vs. “expert answers”) in shaping your choices and responses
• Using inquiry to slow the rush of emotions and judgment when things go awry
• Dallas’s recent experience with questioning just about everything he believes in
• Acknowledging and finding comfort in the fact that most of us — including people who appear to have it all together — are fumbling around most of the time
• The value (and uncertainty) that comes from asking questions without clear answers
• Marilee Adams Ph.D.’s Choice Map, and the Learner and Judger paths available to us at any time
• Letting go of what we think we know and embracing mystery and magic
• The power of asking “What if …” in exploring our choices and plans
• What we can learn from asking other people questions, especially people we don’t know well
• The questions Dallas and Pilar are sometimes afraid to ask themselves
• Helpful and not-so-helpful questions, confirmation bias, and the hazards of clinging to answers
• Abandoning our assumptions and asking what’s calling us

Consider a question or decision that you’ve been contemplating for a while. Write down the first two obvious answers and keep going until you find a third (or fourth or fifth) response. Don’t dismiss anything.

Choose from one of these options:

1) If you are facing a current quandary or conundrum, watch one of the Byron Katie’s “The Work” videos (linked in the Resources below) and then work through that process yourself.

2) Work through Marilee Adams’ Choice Map. Notice if you naturally tend towards the Learner or the Judger path, and pay particular attention to the Switching questions.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• The Work of Byron Katie — four simple but powerful questions for helping to identify the root causes of suffering
• Byron Katie videos — a great way to see The Work in action
• Change Your Questions, Change Your Life by Marilee Adams, Ph.D., plus her Choice Map and her work via the Inquiry Institute
• David Foster Wallace’s “This Is Water” commencement speech (audio and transcript)
• From Maria Popova and Brain Pickings: “The Power of Cautionary Questions: Neil Gaiman on Ray Bradbury’s ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ Why We Read, and How Speculative Storytelling Enlarges Our Humanity” (excerpts from an essay in Neil Gaiman’s The View From the Cheap Seats)
• Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week we’re talking about Suicide — the fact that it has become tragically more common in recent years, and some reasons we think that might be.

We also talk about how we personally view suicide, and what we’ve learned about it in our own lives.

We share expert insights about the signs that someone near you might be having suicidal thoughts, and what you can do if you have been experiencing them yourself.

We unpack some different viewpoints, and some suggestions for how to process the thoughts and feelings you might be having about this complex topic.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you expand your understanding about suicide, and to show up for others in ways that help you build compassionate, life-nourishing connections in your own world.

“Suicide” Episode Highlights

• The difficulty of making sense of suicide from the outside, and long-term mental and emotional processing involved in reacting to it
• The increasing frequency of suicide in our culture, and why sensitive, thoughtful people may be most at risk
• How environmental inputs — toxins, molds, food intolerances, for example — can contribute to depression via inflammatory response and circadian rhythm disruption
• Adolescent vulnerability to extreme social pressure, especially via social media
• The ramifications of isolating ourselves from the in-person social connections and rituals that are so vital to our health and happiness in all stages of life
• The particular tragedy of high suicide rates among veterans returning from war
• The ways our dehumanizing culture has failed us by creating a definition of success that is unattainable by most people — and deadly to some
• How the mass media contributes to the problem
• Reclaiming your health and mental wellness by getting back to the basics of good food, movement, daylight, nature, natural rhythms
• The importance of compassionate intervention in supporting people who are having suicidal thoughts
• Helping people whose loved ones have committed suicide
• Signs that someone is thinking about taking their own life
• The idea of creative maladjustment, and creating a world where everyone can survive and thrive

Listen to Meg Hutchinson’s song “Gatekeeper” (lyrics linked in Resources below) in a quiet place, free of distractions. Let it sink in, and notice what feelings and emotions it brings up for you. Consider how the notion that “we keep each other here” rings true for you, or not. 

Create a space for intimate connection. If you’re struggling, ask for help. If you know someone who you think might be having problems, connect with them. If neither of these apply to you, reach out to someone anyway and ask them (relative to Meg Hutchinson’s lyric, referenced in Pilar’s experiment above) what their plans are for tomorrow.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Resources

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline with lots of linked resources
• “When Someone Is at Risk” via the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (a quick rundown of what to watch for and do if you think a person might be having suicidal thoughts)
• “How to Help When Someone You Know is Suicidal” via Real Simple
• The Work of Byron Katie, and her story of recovery from severe depression
• From Sebastian Junger: his book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging; talks and interviews, including the Joe Rogan podcast episode that Dallas referenced; and “How PTSD Became a Problem Far Beyond the Battlefield” via Vanity Fair
• Our “Anxiety” and “News” episodes
• Meg Hutchinson’s beautiful song, “Gatekeeper” (lyrics here), about dealing with suicidal feelings, and how “we keep each other here”
• The dystopian film Children of Men, based on the novel by P.D. James, in which the U.K. government encourages suicide for people 60 and over as a way of conserving scarce resources in a world where civilization is on the brink of collapse

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

This week, we’re talking about Orthorexia — an eating disorder in which a person becomes so obsessed with what they think of as “healthy” eating that they over-limit their diet and become unhealthy as a result.

Dedicated healthy eaters sometimes write off orthorexia as nonsense, seeing the diagnosis as just another way of marginalizing the sensible choices made by many not to consume certain types of foods they are sensitive to, or simply don’t want to eat.

But as we share here, orthorexia is a real thing — definitely not your garden-variety picky eating — and for some, it can become life threatening.

So we talk about what orthorexia is, the rigid thoughts and beliefs that can predispose people to suffering from it, and how you can steer clear of its grip.

We share some of our personal experiences and professional insights about this condition, and as always, we offer you some experiments to help you reconsider the attitudes you hold about food, and the healthy-eating decisions you choose to make in your own life.

“Orthorexia” Episode Highlights

• The National Eating Disorder Association’s list of orthorexia’s warning signs and symptoms
• Why some restrictive eating approaches don’t fall into the category of obsessive healthy eating — and some do
• Orthorexia as another anxiety-producing neurosis that needs to be approached with compassion
• Getting clear about the real reasons you choose to eat the way you do — the first step in resisting unhealthy defaults
• The value of what Pilar calls “Amplified Awareness” — the first Core Competency of Healthy Deviance
• How scarcity mentality can lead to compulsive food thoughts and actions
• Applying the “orthorexic” label carefully, and understanding when it’s being used to undermine healthy eating choices
• How food and diet obsessions may be keeping you from giving the world your best gifts

Create an open space for dialogue about food by choosing one of these experiments:

1) Ask a close friend of family member what impression they have of your eating habits.

2) With an open mind, ask someone you know who restricts their diet what their motivations are.

Take Food Renegade’s “Am I an Orthorexic?” quiz. If your results trouble you, give some careful thought to how your food choices affect you — are they improving your life, or creating anxiety?

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Warning signs and symptoms of orthorexia from the National Eating Disorders Association
• The Living Experiment’s “Eating Meat” episode
• Pilar’s discussion with eating-disorder survivor and conscious-living advocate Geneen Roth in “This Messy Magnificent Life, Part 1” and “Part 2”
• From Experience Life magazine: A recovering orthorexic’s path to healing, and “Fearless Health”
• The effects of scarcity mentality in Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means so Much by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, and our “Enough” and “Fasting” episodes
• Dr. David Ludwig’s Always Hungry?
• “Orthorexia is Bullshit: A Lesson in Intellectual Laziness” from Medium
• From the “101 Revolutionary Ways to be Healthy” — Revolutionary Act #98: Make It a Party
• The “Am I an Orthorexic?” quiz from Food Renegade

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week we’re talking about Fats — the role they play in healthy eating, and the fact that a lot of what we’ve been told about them is all wrong.

From the healthy fats your body probably needs more of, to the inflammatory fats it most definitely does not, we share what we know about America’s most misunderstood macronutrient.

We explain why low-fat diets are generally not helpful for weight loss, and why saturated fats are not the dietary evil you’ve been led to believe.

We look at the fascinating role fats play in metabolism, health, mood, mental function and more. And we help you pick better fats as often as you can. Finally, we offer you some experiments so you can reconsider the role that fat-rich foods play in your own life.

“Fats” Episode Highlights

• The oversimplified theory that weight gain (or loss) is a simple function of calories in, calories out
• Dietary fat myths and misunderstandings around weight, heart disease and more
• Cholesterol’s important role in repairing damaged tissue and reducing inflammation
• The myriad problems with human observational studies linking diet and illness
• Ketogenic diets — when they are useful, and when they are not
• Challenging the conventional wisdom of the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet
• The value of adding healthy fats and limiting or eliminating industrial vegetable oils and trans-fats
• Healthy vs. pro-inflammatory fats, where they’re found, and how to balance the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio
• The processes that create unhealthy trans-fats, and the role of oils and fats in a whole-food diet
• Managing the glycemic load of carbohydrates using fats, protein and fiber
• How the thinking on fat’s role in diet and disease has evolved

Try one of these options for a month. Take notes and see if you feel any different at the end of the experiment.

1) Throw away all the vegetable oils (canola, corn, soybean, other processed omega-6-rich oils) in your pantry. For extra credit, radically reduce or eliminate processed foods that contain those oils.

2) Increase your omega-3 intake with a fish, krill or algal (vegan) oil. Good brands are Carlson’s, Nordic Naturals and Stronger Faster Healthier.

3) Both 1 and 2.

Choose from one of these options:

1) Ask yourself how much you’ve bought into the ideas that eating fats will make you fatter and lead to chronic diseases. What foods have you given up as a result, and how have you changed your diet? Has confusion about what to eat left you feeling less motivated to pursue healthy eating? If these questions resonate with you, check out some of the Resources below.

2) Read the ingredients list on some of the packaged foods that you buy and eat most often. Note which industrial fats and oils (e.g., soybean, corn, canola, safflower) show up most frequently, and consider whether you want to continue to put them in your body.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Dallas’s book, It Starts With Food — an excellent starting point for learning about fats
• Articles from Experience Life magazine:
  • “A Big Fat Mistake”
  • “Advice on Fats”
  • “The Facts About Fat”
  • “All About Oils”
  • “Rethinking Heart Health”
  • “Cholesterol Reconsidered”
  • “Sugar — Not Fat — Increases Risk of Heart Disease Death, New Study Finds”
  • “Anti-Anxiety Eating”
  • “Which Fats Should You Eat? An Interview with Mark Hyman, MD”
  • “ASK THE DOCTOR: The Pros and Cons of the Ketogenic Diet”
• Dr. David Ludwig’s Always Hungry? and the Always Delicious cookbook — challenging the dietary dogma on fats
• Dr. Mark Hyman’s Eat Fat, Get Thin Cookbook

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re available.

This week, we’re talking about Supplements — why you can’t rely on pills and powders for all your nourishment, and why you still might want to take some anyway.

We cover the value that both multis and targeted nutrients can have in filling dietary gaps, and why what works for your friend or partner might not work for you.

We both share the supplements we take (or don’t), and we offer you some recommendations on the supplements that most of the smart doctors and nutrition pros we know suggest as basics.

Finally, we offer some counsel on picking high quality products, and some recommendations for adjusting your own supplementation strategy in ways that work for you.

“Supplements” Episode Highlights

• Dallas’s three supplement questions: how much potential good can it do, what’s the risk that it can cause harm, and how expensive is it?
• Pilar’s philosophy on using supplements in the context of a modern diet — even a “healthy” one — that diverges from our diverse seasonal evolutionary nutrition sources
• The importance of understanding not just which supplements to take, but why
• Basic supplementation: high quality broad-spectrum multi-vitamins and multi-minerals, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, magnesium, and probiotics
• A healthy microbiome’s role in absorbing nutrients (and what the microbiome is)
• Tips for choosing high-quality supplements, recommended brands, and ingredients to avoid
• Following a good practitioner’s nutrition protocols for particular health problems like migraines and arthritis
• The benefits of digestive enzymes

If you’re currently taking supplements and aren’t sure that they’re really helping, take a month off from all of them. Notice how you feel without them. Then reintroduce them and again take note of how you feel.

If you’re not taking any supplements, try the recommended dose of a high-quality multi-vitamin and multi-mineral for a month. If you don’t want to try one of those, try an essential fatty acid supplement. Notice how you feel.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• The whys and hows of healthy eating and supplementation in Dallas’s book, It Starts With Food
• PureGenomics® — advice for targeting supplementation based on results of genomic testing
• Supplement articles from Experience Life magazine: “Digestive Enzymes”, “Don’t Stop Taking Your Vitamins” and “5 Tips to Supplement With Vitamin D”
• A helpful blog from Mark Hyman, MD, on the counsel he offers his patients who have questions about supplements
• Advice on choosing high quality supplements via Deanna Minich, PhD
• Expert perspective on supplements and the supplements industry via Jeff Bland, PhD

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week we’re talking about Imposter Syndrome — that disconcerting sense you may not be entirely worthy or qualified to be doing whatever it is you are doing, and that accompanying sense of dread that it’s just a matter of time before everybody else figures it out.

Imposter syndrome is a well-recognized phenomenon that affects almost all of us at one time or another, and it can be a significant source of chronic stress.

So here, we talk about our own personal experiences with imposter syndrome. We also share what we’ve learned through our professional explorations of it, plus some expert strategies for not letting it get the best of you.

From investigating your negative self-talk to overcoming your unconscious upper limits, we suggest ways of identifying and navigating through imposter syndrome. And of course, we offer you some experiments to help you evaluate the impact it might be having in your world.

“Imposter Syndrome” Episode Highlights

• Dallas’s trepidation and disorientation every time he publishes a new book or appears on television as an expert
• Imposter syndrome’s roots in fear of inadequacy, failure, and vulnerability
• Five types of imposter syndrome as defined by Valerie Young: The Perfectionist, The Superwoman/man, The Natural Genius, The Rugged Individualist, and The Expert
• Pilar and Dallas discuss their answers to nine questions to help you better understand if you suffer from imposter syndrome
• How some people use narcissism to drown out their feelings of inadequacy, and the importance of defining and understanding our hidden motives
• Suggestions for unraveling imposter syndrome, starting with understanding that almost everyone suffers from it
• The value of questioning your thoughts
• The potential costs of imposter syndrome — and the promise of finding your “Zone of Genius” (as defined by Gay Hendricks)

Ask yourself what would happen if you decided that you weren’t all that smart and that you didn’t have anything to share with the world. How would it impact your life? Would it be as terrifying as you think? Does thinking about it allow you to unravel your identity from all the externalized outcomes?

Review one or more of the Resources below. If you don’t relate to the problem of Imposter Syndrome at all, become aware of how many people do, and see if you can regard their struggles with compassion.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

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Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• A simple definition and overview of Imposter Syndrome via Harvard Business Review
• “7 Signs You Suffer From The Imposter Syndrome” via Business Insider (features great quotes from Meryl Streep, Maya Angelou, Will Smith)
• The collective works of Brené Brown on shame, fear, and vulnerability
• “The Five Types of Imposter Syndrome and How to Beat Them” via Fast Company
• Dallas’s “I Am Not a Guru” blog post
• Kevin Simler’s and Robin Hanson’s The Elephant in the Brain — confronting our hidden motives
• Charles’ Eisenstein’s essay: “The Age of We Need Each Other”
• The Work of Byron Katie — questioning your thinking
• Gay Hendricks’ The Big Leap, and his “Overcome Your Upper Limits” article in Experience Life magazine
• Our “Therapy” episode
• “Learning to Deal With the Imposter Syndrome” by Carl Richards, via The New York Times
• More suggestions for overcoming imposter syndrome in “Who, Me?“, via Experience Life

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about How We See the World.

This episode started out as an answer to a listener question — and then morphed, evolving into a big rambling conversation about hope and doubt, energy and attention, agency and activism, and more.

It became one of those conversations where you discover what you think and feel as you are saying it, and you have no idea what is going to come out of your own or the other person’s mouth until it does.

It’s worth noting that within weeks of recording this episode, Dallas had what he described as a “mind-melting experience” that caused him to question virtually everything he thinks, so by the time this podcast goes live, he may or may not be willing to stand by all of his statements here.

The point is, conversations about how we see the world are worth having, and having, again, and again, and again. So, here, we invite you into ours, and we leave you with experiments to help you start some conversations and explorations of your own.

“How We See the World” Episode Highlights

• The worldwide suffering caused by unwillingness to see the larger consequences of our actions
• How artificial boundaries like national and cultural borders create a “us vs. them” lack of empathy
• Recognizing systems that are dehumanizing, unhealthy, socially unjust, or otherwise broken and looking for ways to change them locally
• Dallas’s parallels between the predatory capitalism of our world and the governmental control tactics in dystopian novels and movies
• Choosing how and when to expose yourself to the non-stop stream of disturbing images on the news and in social media
• Being willing to try to make a difference even if you never know what effect your actions may have
• The value of traveling to other cultures and witnessing the good work that humans are doing everywhere

Spend a moment contemplating the tension you feel between “what is” and what you think “should be.” Rather than getting angry or hopeless about something you find bad, wrong, or unjust, see if you can shift toward acknowledging the situation as “the way things are right now” — while also acknowledging that you’d like things to be different. See if you can find a way to feel empowered and focused by that viewpoint, rather than held hostage by anger, grief, or hopelessness. 

Explore some different viewpoints and philosophies of life to see how they help clarify or inform your own. Start by reading Charles Eisenstein’s The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible or watching a few clips of the interview with him (via Oprah Winfrey) linked in the Resources below. 

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Our “News” episode — advice on staying informed without becoming overwhelmed
• One example of the consequences of actions: John Perkins’ The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman and his TEDx Talk, “An Economic Hitman Confesses and Calls to Action”
• John Stauber’s and Sheldon Rampton’s Trust Us We’re Experts and Toxic Sludge is Good for You, on the deceptive practices of the public relations industry and corporate communications
• Secrets of media manipulation in Ryan Holiday’s Trust Me, I’m Lying
• Jared Diamond’s books on the rise and fall of societies: Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse
• The starving polar bear video from National Geographic
• The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible by Charles Eisenstein plus Eisenstein being interviewed by Oprah
• Helpful articles from Experience Life magazine: “On the Other Side of Right”, “The Undefeated Mind”, “Toward a Meaningful Life”

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, by listener request, we’re doing a special guest-episode follow-up on the topic of Conscious Language, a subject we originally addressed way back in episode #66.

Joining Pilar this week is Cat Thompson. She’s the teacher and friend who originally introduced Pilar to the study of Conscious Language.

Conscious Language is about noticing and choosing your words with awareness. It’s also about recognizing that everything you say both reflects and influences your daily reality — your perspectives, beliefs, attitudes, energy, and intention.

Here, Cat shares her expert insights about how Conscious Language works, and about why it might be worth incorporating into your life.

“Conscious Language with Cat Thompson” Episode Highlights

• “I am …” statements as a declaration and reflection of your reality
• Thinking about “I want …” as a self-programming intention to desire without having, and how rephrasing with more intention can bring the desired experience closer
• Language that expresses victimization and fear vs. empowerment and creation
• The Automatic Negative Thoughts stemming from childhood traumatic events and ancestral history, and how paying attention to our words can be the first step towards healing
• Cat’s simple questions to help process and evolve negative emotions
• The manifestation of guilt in “I should …” statements
• Suggestions for where and how to start changing your language to serve you better
• “I” vs. “You” statements, and speaking only from your own experience
• Why the younger generations are creating their own language, and considering that their language might be what they’ll need to function in a high-tech future
• The emotional awareness and Healthy Deviant skills required to move from a victim reality to a creator reality

Cat’s Experiment of the Week

If you’re feeling stressed or upset about something, use this worksheet to walk through your emotions. Later, when you’re not feeling so triggered, go back and look at the words your emotions used to talk to you. Notice what the different parts of your personality are trying to express, and how they’re creating those expressions. Do you see any trends that might make you aware of when you’re moving into a negative emotion?

Pilar’s Experiment of the Week

Review one of the Resources in the list below. Notice what you have an appetite for — does something really pique your curiosity, trigger a reaction or ring particularly true for you? If you’re inspired to upgrade your own language, engage a friend and talk about what you observe in each others’ speech.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Other episodes of The Living Experiment that reference Cat’s work and wisdom: “Conscious Language”, “Winter”, “Spring”, “Summer”, and “Autumn”
• The trauma brain book that Cat referenced: The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk
• Dr. Marilee Adams’ learner-judger Choice Map via the Inquiry Institute
• From Experience Life magazine: Cat’s article on “The Power of Language”
• Robert Tennyson Stevens’ Conscious Language: The Logos of Now, his “Conscious Language: Back to the Basics” course, and other resources at Mastery Systems
• Our “Astroturfing” episode — how special interests use language to manipulate people
• “CYMATICS: Science vs. Music” by Nigel Stanford and Evan Grant’s TEDTalk on “Making sound visible through cymatics”
• Mariano Sigman’s TEDTalk: “Your words may predict your future mental health”

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re available.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Libido — the nature of our drive for sensual and sexual contact, and the variables that can affect it, for better or for worse.

We start from the assumption that a healthy libido means different things to different people, and that there is no “right” way to feel it, or do it.

We explore some of the factors that influence libido, and the concerns that many people share about their own, from a lack or surplus of sexual desire to uncertainties about sexual performance.

We talk about challenges of living in a society where sexuality is distorted by media and blunted by stress, anxiety, over-scheduling, shame, religious dogma, and more.

We also talk about the physiological, biochemical role that healthy sensuality plays in supporting human health and happiness.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you get more comfortable with your sense of libido, and wherever it fits into your own life.

“Libido” Episode Highlights

• The reasons for cultivating and sustaining a healthy libido — without judging your current libido as “wrong”
• The problem of living in a culture that is both obsessed with and squeamish about sex, and how “sex education” in schools (or lack thereof) is failing us
• The evolutionary reasons for the inversely proportional relationship between chronic stress and libido
• The multi-generational ignorance and hopelessness among women when their sex lives don’t live up to the sensationalized hype of mass media
• Why focusing on a woman’s pleasure can make everyone happier
• Suggestions for rebalancing your libido, starting with reducing stress and removing inhibitors to pleasure
• Health problems that can affect libido
• The idea behind and benefits of sensual “research dates” (a concept originated at Lafayette Morehouse)
• How sexual intimacy evolves as relationships age, and learning to speak the truth with yourself and your partner

Set aside an hour to an hour and half as a sacred time for yourself. Turn off your phone, shut out distractions, and create a pleasure-oriented environment by making your space beautiful and putting your attention on your own sensory experience. Light some candles, bring in some fragrant flowers, play some music, and perhaps plate up some little delicacies to bring more richness to the experience. Notice what happens as you put attention on pleasing your senses. Do you feel more open to a sensual encounter with yourself or someone else?

1) If you feel like your libido is sluggish, consider that it may be natural for where you are in your life right now rather than dysfunctional.

2) If you have a regular sexual partner, share something with them. Tell them what you like — it may open you both up to a more beautiful, connective experience.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

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Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

Please note that while neither this episode nor its show notes includes any graphic or explicit sexual content, they do reference sensual experiences, and the links within this section may take you to sites through which you may discover more explicit content. Please explore at your own discretion.

• From Experience Life magazine: “Boost Your Libido” and “On Sex and Health”
• Our episode on “Sensuality”, and Pilar’s interview with Lafayette Morehouse instructors in “Intimacy and Connection”
• From The Atlantic, an article with images of a 3-D printed clitoris
• Books on the nature of female desire and cravings: Alexandra Jamieson’s Women, Food, and Desire and Caroline Knapp’s Appetites
• Books on female pleasure and orgasm: Ian Kerner’s She Comes First, Nicole Daedone’s Slow Sex, and Emily Nagoski’s Come as You Are
• Lafayette Morehouse, and some other outlets focusing on reclaiming or reframing sensual experience: OneTaste, Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts, OMGYES, Dodson and Ross
• From The New York Times: “Unexcited? There May Be a Pill for That”
• Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, Esther Perel’s books on relationships

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re available.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Functional Medicine — a systems-based approach to addressing the fundamental causes of disease and distress.

Both of us have been immersed in the functional medicine movement for years — Dallas as a practitioner and Pilar as a health journalist — and we both see it as a science whose time has come.

Here, we talk about what functional medicine is, and why this science- and lifestyle-based approach represents such an exciting evolution in healthcare.

We touch on the tools, methods, and philosophy that make functional medicine so different. We explore functional medicine’s practical but revolutionary strategy for addressing chronic diseases of all kinds, from digestive disorders and depression to autoimmunity and Alzheimer’s.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you assess whether functional medicine might hold promise for you and those you love.

“Functional Medicine” Episode Highlights

• Addressing the root causes of diseases to help the body heal itself — the “thing” that sets functional medicine apart from other healthcare models
• Why the conventional “whack-a-mole” approach of using prescriptions to make lab results look better is keeping people sick
• How the functional medicine timeline seeks to identify clues in your medical history (or even your parents’ or grandparents’ history) that may be causing your current disease manifestations
• The functional medicine matrix: Mapping body systems and symptoms to visually illustrate how symptoms might be linked
• Why the gut is often the starting point, and how healing digestive problems often makes other seemingly unrelated issues disappear
• The dysfunctional U.S. healthcare system — when the bottom line is profit, there’s no incentive to eliminate disease
• Why functional medicine is great at addressing certain chronic conditions and imbalances: Obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, skin conditions, digestive disorders, and many types of cancer, for example
• The effectiveness of functional medicine’s mind-body approach to healing neurological and mental health diseases
• Finding a functional medicine practitioner, and using self-directed care, including elimination diets, to address the long wait lists at clinics
• Understanding and accepting that functional medicine isn’t magic, that it isn’t a quick shortcut solution, and that a conventional approach may be the most appropriate in some situations
• The differences between functional and other complementary and integrative medicines
• Common functional medicine laboratory tests

Read one of the articles on functional medicine in the Resources section below and think about how your lifestyle choices might be affecting your quality of life. Question how the dots can be connected (for example, job stress is causing insomnia) and start an intervention.

1) If you’re plagued with significant health issues, fill out a functional medicine timeline (linked in the Resources section below) and see what it reveals.

2) If you’re really motivated to make a change, try an elimination diet for a month. Keep a journal and notice if and how things improve.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• From Experience Life magazine: “Functional Medicine: A Science Whose Time Has Come” and (find Functional Medicine Timeline model here) “The Functional Medicine Matrix”
• The Institute for Functional Medicine website, and their Find a Practitioner database
• Revolutionary Act #7: Practice Medicine Without a License — Pilar’s concept of “self-directed care”
• Dr. Rangan Chatterjee’s book, How to Make Disease Disappear, and his TEDx Talk of the same title
• Dr. Mark Hyman’s functional medicine approach to curing diabetes, The Blood Sugar Solution
• The Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine website, and results of some of their conventional medicine/functional medicine comparison studies treating asthma and diabetes
• Examples of elimination diets: The Whole30 program, The Autoimmune Protocol, Functional Medicine Elimination Diet 
• Parsley Health and kNew Health — healthcare, lifestyle, and nutrition team approaches

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
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This week on The Living Experiment, we bring you Part 2 of Pilar’s conversation with New York Times bestselling author and teacher, Geneen Roth.

Geneen has been teaching and writing about conscious eating and living for the past 30 years. Her most recent book is This Messy Magnificent Life: A Field Guide. Through keen observation, reflection, and some very funny asides, her work guides us to see our compulsions and self-sabotaging habits through more curious and self-compassionate eyes. It also helps us see the bigger picture of what we are doing here in the first place, and what we want to do with, as she says, “the breaths we have left.”

In Part 1, Geneen and Pilar covered all sorts of ground. Here, in Part 2, they pick up where they left off, talking about appetites, aging, beauty, creativity, mortality, and more. Geneen also shares a few of what she calls her “touchstones” — simple strategies for getting grounded, for warding off anxiety, and for evolving your own viewpoints.

Finally, they both suggest experiments to help you explore and enjoy your own Messy Magnificent Life in ways that work for you.

“This Messy Magnificent Life, Part 2” Episode Highlights

• A continuation of the discussion about living in the small moments
• The problem of scarcity-thinking and our perpetual search for “the next thing” we think will make us happy
• The cult of youth, and how it robs us of our sense of self
• Recognizing yourself for who you are, and focusing on what’s good rather than what’s wrong
• Anxiety as a byproduct of the belief in the stories — true or not — that we tell ourselves
• Geneen’s touchstones for finding the freedom and joy in life that’s already there
• Why we need to look at therapy as a means to reaching a better relationship with ourselves, rather than a process for becoming a different person

Geneen’s Experiment of the Week

1) If you can’t sleep in the middle of the night, instead of lying in bed believing your thoughts, go outside and experience the sounds and scents of the nighttime world. Notice if your state of mind has changed when you go back to bed, and if you can more easily fall back asleep.

2) Pay attention to how many of your conversations involve complaining, and then decide to not participate. Notice if other people notice a difference in you, and if it changes the way you choose to react to things you otherwise would have simply complained about.

Pilar’s Experiment of the Week

Find Geneen’s book, This Messy Magnificent Life, and try “The Red String” exercise. Also, check out one or more of the recommended links in the Resources section below.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Geneen Roth’s main website, which includes a complete listing of her books
• Geneen’s most recent book, This Messy Magnificent Life, plus her tour schedule and links to her book-club guide
• Geneen’s master class on women, weight and power — free when you buy her new book
• “Nighttime Revival”, Pilar’s essay about her strategy for dealing with sleepless anxiety, which echoes Geneen’s own nocturnal “visiting” ritual
• “Winning Cycles”, a podcast episode Pilar referenced about the “two ways to win, one way to lose” philosophy taught at Lafayette Morehouse

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
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This week on The Living Experiment, while Dallas is off on adventures, Pilar has a very special guest: Geneen Roth.

Geneen has written close to a dozen terrific books, including Lost and Found: One Woman’s Story of Losing Her Money and Finding Her Life and When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair. She  also teaches life-changing workshops all over the country.

Most of Geneen’s work explores the intricate, under-examined spaces between how we feel, think, act, and relate — to ourselves, to each other, and to the experience of being alive.

In this interview, a far-ranging conversation that stretches over two full episodes, Pilar delves into Geneen’s new book, This Messy Magnificent Life: A Field Guide. It’s a work so rich in wisdom, feeling, and funny insights that it’s kind of hard to categorize, and even harder to contain.

“This Messy Magnificent Life, Part 1” Episode Highlights

• The challenges and rewards of writing honestly about very personal (and universal) emotions and experiences
• Geneen’s story of learning to set physical and energetic boundaries, starting with a circle of red string
• Why women sometimes use excess body weight to create a sense of protection
• How our cultural obsession with thin bodies is distracting women from achieving their power as individuals and as a group
• What we gain by facing our fear and pain, rather than anesthetizing with addictions
• Thinking about life — and what’s truly important — in terms of how we spend our finite number of breaths
• Achieving freedom from anxiety by living in the small moments

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Geneen Roth’s main website, which includes a complete listing of her books
• Geneen’s most recent book, This Messy Magnificent Life, plus her tour schedule and links to her book-club guide
• Geneen’s master class on women, weight and power — free when you buy her new book
• Geneen on the power setting boundaries and reclaiming your rights to your own body (insights from her Red String Project)
• Geneen talking with Oprah about conscious eating and also about the bright side of losing all her money to Bernie Madoff
• Referenced by Geneen, Terry Gross’s interview with Gloria Steinem on Fresh Air
• “Nighttime Revival”, Pilar’s essay about her strategy for dealing with sleepless anxiety, which echoes Geneen’s own nocturnal “visiting” ritual
• “Your Body, Reframed” via Experience Life magazine — a piece Pilar referenced about the mixed feelings that often arise from weight loss
• “What We’re Really Hungry For” by Geneen Roth via The Sun magazine

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Apologizing — the reasons it’s worth doing, and the art of doing it well.

We explore the value that a good apology can have in healing conflict and shame, and the reasons our well-intended apologies sometimes don’t go as well as we’d like.

We talk about the characteristics of good and not-so-good apologies, about private apologies and public ones.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you evolve your own apologetic skills and sensitivities in ways that work for you.

“Apologizing” Episode Highlights

• The context of the “Me Too” movement, and our world’s many other overdue apologies
• The inflammatory stress caused by strained relationships and unresolved conflicts
• How superfluous and disingenuous apologizing can undermine the value of substantive apologies
• Dallas reflects on the fact that women tend to apologize more than men
• Features of a good apology
• The healing opportunity an apology provides for the giver and the receiver
• Pilar shares the most meaningful apologies she’s received and why they mattered
• The nature of transactional vs. heartfelt apologies
• When apologies need to come with reparations
• The danger of using an apology to force closure
• The question of justice vs. retribution vs. support for healing
• Being willing to hear the other person’s experience, and how apologies can bring up stored feelings
• The value of public vs. private apologies (Pilar shares an experience)
• The feeling of “being owed” an apology, and what to do with that feeling

1) Think about an apology you owe somebody, then go make that apology. In the course of your apology, emphasize the significance of your connection with this person, that they mean something to you. Share your authentic feelings of regret at having hurt or disappointed them.

2) Think of an apology that you feel you are owed, but have not received. Recognize that, for reasons unknown to you, you may never receive that apology. Let it go. Move forward without expecting an apology, and see what happens.

Plan a micro-apology. Think about a small but irritating habitual behavior of yours (like being late, leaving the toilet seat up, interrupting, or checking your phone at the table) that you know bothers someone close to you. In the moment where you’d normally do that thing, don’t. Tell the person that you are aware you typically do this thing, that you recognize it bothers them, that you feel badly about it, and that you intent to make a change around it.

Be willing to listen to the other person share how your patterned behavior has impacted them, what they’re thinking and feeling about it, and what they’d like you to do differently. Thank them for sharing their thoughts and feelings. Then act on your promise of improvement, and notice how that feels.

Big Thanks to Our Friends at Optimize!

Thanks to our sponsor, Optimize by Heroic, for supporting The Living Experiment. Now you can get Optimize membership (formerly $250) for FREE just by signing up here. And check out the Heroic social training platform, with a goal of creating a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by 2051 — starting with YOU!

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig the podcast, please share it! Every recommendation from you means a lot!

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• “A Good Apology Is Hard to Find” via Psychology Today
• A 2010 study showing that women apologize more than men
• “How to Apologize” via MindTools.com
• “The Right (and Wrong) Way to Apologize” via CNN
• “Forgiveness” via The Living Experiment
• “Making Amends” via Experience Life magazine

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Friends — not the kind we call “friends” social media, but the real, meaningful, human kind we connect with in person. The kind we care about deeply. The kind we count on for hugs, empathy, perspective, emotional support and fun.

In a world where many of us feel painfully pressed for time, we’re barely connecting with our romantic partners and close family members, much less making time to forge and maintain meaningful connections beyond the walls of our own homes.

So here, we talk about the difference between various levels of friendship intimacy, and how relationships are deepened by time, proximity, shared experiences, vulnerability, and trust.

We explore the essential role friendships play in defining our lives, and how to go about evaluating and evolving the friendships in your life now.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you give your own friendships a little more of the energy and attention they deserve.

“Friends” Episode Highlights

• Dallas deconstructs the word “tribe” — both the controversy and distortion surrounding the word
• How friendships have tended to become broad and shallow rather than narrow and deep
• The role authenticity and vulnerability play in the formation of friendship
• The art of making space and energy for your friendships in a distracted, over-scheduled world
• Pilar shares how living on a communal farm has shaped her ideals around friendship and intentional community
• The paradox of our wanting more meaningful connections without wanting to make ourselves vulnerable
• How to evolve the friendships you have, and create the friendships you seek
• The role of accepting presence and interested, empathetic inquiry in the creation of deeper friendships
• Pilar describes how she and a friend used a  “Genius Pact” to connect around shared interests and goals.

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Resources

• “The Genius Pact” by Pilar Gerasimo via Experience Life Magazine
• “25 Ways to Be a True Friend” via Tiny Buddha
• “More Social Less Media” by Dallas Hartwig
• “The Anatomy of Trust” by Brene Brown (describing her B.R.A.V.I.N.G. acronym)
• “Overcoming Your Upper Limits” by Gay Hendricks via Experience Life Magazine

PLUS …

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Reading — its potential for informing and enriching our lives, and its potential for becoming an escapist habit.

In a world dominated by a non-stop stream of mass media and clickbait, is there still a place in our lives for real, deep, intentional reading?

Is reading a paper book or long-form magazine article the same as reading on screen, or listening to books on tape?

Has the ability to read, and ready deeply, become endangered in our culture?

We address all these questions and more. We also share the role that reading — particularly book reading — plays in our lives, and the reasons we both read as much as we do.

Finally, we offer some guidance on making more discerning reading selections. And we suggest some experiments to help you reflect on how reading can enhance your wellbeing, your thinking, and your quality of life.

“Reading” Episode Highlights

• Motivations for reading — from escapism and entertainment to education and self-evolution
• Pilar examines how her upbringing shaped her love for reading
• Fiction as a tool for understanding universal human experiences
• The difference between reading e-books and paper books
• The value of having physical books in our space — and the many reasons we like to keep them around
• How “junk food” reading can contribute to feelings of distraction and overwhelm
• Using intentional reading as an awareness practice
• The benefits of processing and sharing what we’ve read with others
• Pilar’s “Ape in the Arcade” metaphor and how it relates to our present-day sense of information overload
• Assessing whether you are using reading as an unhealthy escape

Change your reading routine. If you don’t currently read, pick up a book and make some time to read. If you are currently a regular reader, read a different type of book. If you’re currently an e-reader, try a paper or audio medium. If you’re a compulsive reader, take a break from reading.

Imagine yourself in a comfortable reading environment (e.g., reading a book in a pleasant coffee shop, on a beach, or in bed) or imagine reading aloud to someone you love. Do any of these visualizations give you a sense of longing or excitement? If so, make a date with yourself to try some sort of related pleasure reading for just 15 minutes. See how that feels. 

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Resources

• “Your Paper Brain and Your Kindle Brain Aren’t the Same Thing” via Public Radio International
• “Random Acts of Reading” via Experience Life Magazine
• “Who Doesn’t Read Books in America” via the Pew Research Center
• “Idleness” episode from The Living Experiment
• 7 Essential Books on the Art and Science of Happiness via Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings
• Carl Sagan on the Power of Books and Reading as a Path to Democracy, also via Brain Pickings
• “Reading Books Can Extend Your Life and Improve Quality of Life” via Signs of the Times

Books mentioned during the episode

• Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapolsky
• Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
• Poet David Whyte
• Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
• Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
• It Starts with Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways by Dallas Hartwig and Melissa Hartwig
• Author Haruki Murakami

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about “Dying” — the fact that it’s something we’re all going to do, and the fact that most of us live in denial of that reality, often to our detriment.

The age-old advice to live each day as though it was our last might be inspiring, but it is also rather impractical. The truth is, most of us alternate between repressing most of our thoughts and feelings about death and then being uncomfortably confronted by them. And then, beyond feeling weirded out by the prospect of death, we’re just not sure what to do.

So here, we dive into the topic of death and dying. We share our take on our own mortality. We share some insights on how to live better by thinking, talking about, and planning for death as a fact of life.

Finally (no pun intended), we offer you some solutions to help you explore your own feelings about death in ways that help you live your own life with greater meaning and satisfaction. 

“Dying” Episode Highlights

• Pilar shares an app that does nothing but repeatedly remind her she is going to die
• Dallas talks about the inspired way his mom is approaching the second half of her life
• An exploration of The Top Five Regrets of Dying (via The Guardian)
• The chase for money, fame, and power and why they rarely deliver all we hope
• The value of taking ownership of your life — with your death in mind
• Dallas reflects on the passing of his father and his father’s end-of-life experience
• Some tips and tools for opening conversations about death and dying with your loved ones
• How an obsessive focus on health and longevity can work against happiness

1. Check out one of the death calculators in the resource list with the goal of gaining more concrete knowledge about how much of your projected lifespan you have left. 
2. Watch one of the death-themed movies in the resources section (or of your choosing) and notice if and how it causes you to reflect on your own mortality. Open a conversation with a friend or family member about the movie or topic.

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Resources

• Death-prediction tools
  • The Death Clock
  • Death Date
  • World Population Project “How Long Will I Live” calculator
• “Top Five Regrets of the Dying” via The Guardian
• The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
• Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, plus his interview with Krista Tippett on her award-winning podcast, On Being
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• The Order of the Good Death website
• The death-reminder app, We Croak
• The movies Captain Fantastic, Bucket List, Steel Magnolias
• National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization
• The Conversation Project (guidance for talks about end of life planning)
• Articles from Experience Life magazine:
  • “On Dying Well“
  • “Dying With Dignity”
  • “How to Start End-of-Life Conversations”
  • “New Thinking on End-of-Life Planning”

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Noise — its many sources, its surprising impacts, and the options we have for relating to it more consciously.

From the difficulty of escaping noise in our modern environments to the effect it can have on our health, happiness, and quality of life, we talk about the underestimated toll that noise can take on our bodies and minds.

We explore the important role quiet spaces have in supporting our wellbeing, and the opportunities we have for regulating the noise in our midst.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you make more discerning choices about the kinds of noise you choose to tolerate — or eliminate — in your own world. 

“Noise” Episode Highlights

• Pilar shares her impression that our tolerance for noise has increased as the result of our constant exposure to it — at a cost
• The problem of background noise, layered noise, and more — how it dulls our sensitivity and adds to our stress burden
• Dallas talks about his experience using a sensory deprivation chamber
• How noise contributes to chronic low-level stress and fatigue
• The distracting impacts of noise on cognitively demanding tasks in the workplace
• Mitigating noise in your environments
• What’s actually going on in your brain when it’s not being overstimulated; the power of the Default Mode Network (DMN)
• Finding margins of silence in our day, and the reparative effect that can have on our lives

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Resources

• “Silence is Golden” via Experience Life Magazine
• “Quiet, Please” via Experience Life Magazine
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cane
• “Parents Push to Quiet Roar From Trains Near Queens School” via The New York Times

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Dating — its modern trials and tribulations, and the options we have for reclaiming it from the limiting realms of texting, swiping, and scrolling.

In an era where face-to-face interaction is limited, and where an entire generation has lost track of real-life flirting, mingling, and conversation, many are bemoaning what they see as the sad state of dating, even as they are feeling constrained by its commoditizing conventions.

So here, we make a case for challenging the superficial status quo, and for making romantic connections that respect the depth and humanity of all parties.

We also offer you some experiments to help you experience more fun and satisfaction within your own dating world.  

“Dating” Episode Highlights

• The lost art of dating in the age of technology
• Pilar recalls (with some nostalgia) the reality of dating in decades past — the bygone process of getting to know someone, the experience of building real-life familiarity, romantic interest, and intimacy
• The value of defining your dating end-goal and aligning your strategies and behaviors to match
• Moving beyond acceleration and efficiency in a culture that seems to prioritize them
• Pilar and Dallas explore societal pressures on women and men, presentation of self and how these impact the building of a dating relationship
• The anti-hack approach to dating, and the opportunity to connected more pleasurably with people
• The best dating advice Pilar got from her therapist back in her 20s: “Be the person you want to find”
• The essential role of authenticity in intimacy — being willing to show up as you really are and attracting those most likely to connect with you in real life

Think about the kind of person you want to date or eventually have as a partner. Consider who you would have to be in order to be in a satisfying relationship with that ideal partner. Examine the extent to which you are actually showing up as that person — then consider how you might want to adjust accordingly.

Build a collage or vision board that helps capture the values and characteristics (not just the physical appearance or attributes) of your ideal partner, including how you want to feel in the relationship. For each image you select, clearly articulate what it is about each picture that speaks to you. Be as specific as possible about your hopes and desires and examine the language you use in these real or imagined “captions.”

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Resources

• “The End of Courtship” via The New York Times
• “Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse” via Vanity Fair
• Helen Fisher’s “Love Test”
• Love Cycles by Linda Carroll
• The Lafayette Morehouse course, Basic Sensuality
• The Intimacy and Connection episode of The Living Experiment
• “Make a Vision Board” via Experience Life Magazine
• “Be The Person You Want to Find” by Cheri Huber via Experience Life.

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Anxiety — a condition that causes tens of millions of people to feel rattled by intrusive thoughts and worries, sometimes to a disabling degree.  

Anxiety has now surpassed depression as America’s number one mental health disorder. So here, we talk about a wide range of strategies proven to help, from nutritional interventions to self-calming techniques.

We also explore the underlying reasons anxiety is giving so many of us so much trouble. 

From the factors that have given rise to our high-stress society, to the implications of medicating anxiety’s symptoms rather than addressing its root causes, we invite you to consider the role anxiety may be playing in your own life, and the options you have for making it better.  

We also offer some experiments to help you build your own collection of anti-anxiety skills.  

“Anxiety” Episode Highlights

• The scope and nature of our society’s widespread anxiety problems
• Why digestive issues are commonly associated with anxiety, and how they directly impact mental health
• Dallas describes his self-imposed experience with anxiety — how it helped him empathize with others who experience anxiety from natural causes
• How anxiety blurs the lines between things that are relevant and irrelevant — plus tips to reclaim focus and equanimity
• Pilar observes how our current societal trends and recent history have contributed to the high level of anxiety many of us are experiencing
• Dallas and Pilar discuss how anxiety can be triggered by inadequate nutrition, circadian rhythm disruption, stimulation from modern technology, and chronic perceived threats
• The importance of physical touch and social support in mitigating anxiety
• The role medication can play — in conjunction with essential lifestyle and environmental adjustments — in easing anxiety

Try the “4-7-8” breath. Breathe in deeply for 4 seconds, hold your breath for seven seconds, then slowly release the breath for 8 seconds. Do three rounds of this breathing exercise and tune in to how it makes you feel. The next time you begin to feel anxious, consider doing a few rounds of this breathing, knowing that your slowed breath “directs” your nervous system to relax. 

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Resources

• Anti-Anxiety Eating via Experience Life Magazine
• Anxiety Effects on Society Statistics via the Anxiety Centre website
• High Anxiety via Experience Life Magazine
• Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapolsky
• “Effects of Exercise and Physical Activity on Anxiety” by Elizabeth Anderson and Geetha Shivakumar via frontiers in Psychiatry
• How Caffeine Can Increase Anxiety via Experience Life Magazine
• For helpful sleep hygiene and night time routine suggestions, The Living Experiment “Sleep” episode
• Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi

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This week, on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Vacation — the benefits that regular breaks from work can have for our health, happiness, and sanity, and the reality that most of us aren’t getting nearly enough of them.

We look at statistics suggesting many U.S. adults aren’t getting any paid vacation time, and many more aren’t making full use of the vacation time they have.

We explore some of the reasons for that, as well the real costs to our health, wellbeing, and productivity.

We also consider some strategies for making the most of the vacations you do take, and for navigating around some common vacation mistakes.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you begin making space and time for more satisfying vacations in your own life.    

“Vacation” Episode Highlights

• How our prevailing culture undervalues vacation (and leisure in general) — at our peril
• Important facts and insights from the “Take Back Your Time” movement, supporting the benefits of vacation
• How socioeconomic status and societal pressures prevent people from taking the vacations they need
• How our consumption-centric priorities tend to work against our taking time off
• The “let loose” and “see everything” effects that can cause you to come home from your vacation feeling anything but restored
• The unanticipated challenges of unplugging from daily life, including unfamiliar time for reflection, and the potentially uncomfortable feelings that can result from leisure
• Fear of being penalized for taking vacation, and counsel on getting around that
• Finding the potential value in mixing vacation with certain kinds of focused projects or “work”
• Pilar and Dallas talk about how they mix vacation and avocation
• Leveraging your vacation as a change of pace from your daily life — whether slowing your rhythms or increasing novelty and variety
• The balance of “letting loose” vs. sticking to a healthy routine while on vacation
• The value of tuning in to your intuition when designing your vacation

Micro-experiment: Take a single day in the relatively near future, and schedule it as a vacation day (even if you have to take a “sick” day to do it). Plan this day the way you would an actual vacation — scheduling pleasurable experiences and destinations — and observe the thoughts and feelings that come up. Notice whether you have an appetite to create more space for vacation time in your life, and what kinds of activities would feel most gratifying.

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Resources

• No-Vacation Nation by John DeGraaf via Experience Life Magazine
• Take Back Your Time public advocacy website and the Nielsen Consumer Research data on vacation
• The  “Idleness” episode of The Living Experiment
• Also from Experience Life magazine:
  • Do’s and Don’ts for Planning a Staycation
  • How to Take Time Off — Guilt-Free
  • Don’t Miss Your Life
  • Seize the Day: An Interview With Jon Levy (on creating your own adventures and the transformative power of new experiences)
  • MORE vacation-centered articles

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Judgment — the critical opinions we hold about ourselves and others, and the sometimes scathing assessments we make as a result.

From our natural tendency to disparage those who disagree with us, to the opportunities we miss when we make up our minds too quickly, we explore the territory between learning and judging, between connecting and distancing, between living in the questions and having all the answers.

We suggest some ways of moving from self-righteousness belief toward open-minded inquiry, and we offer you some experiments to help you soften the judger within yourself.

“Judgment” Episode Highlights

• Dallas and Pilar address a listener question about whether all judgment is inherently negative
• The difference between having opinions and being judgmental about other’s opinions
• Pilar shares some insights about the “discerning” and “judging” parts of her own personality, and shares a real-life conflict where judgment played a role
• The importance of keeping in mind your goals for the various relationships you have, and letting those goals be your guide
• The value of asking questions as a tool for better understanding other people’s views and avoiding hurtful assumptions
• Pilar walks through the “Learner Path” and the “Judger Path” as articulated in Dr. Marilee Adams’s “Choice Map” (linked in Resources below)
• The difference between “the facts” vs. the facts as you see them
• The role that assumed meanings and incomplete perceptions play in catalyzing our judgments
• Byron Katie’s tool for transforming judgment and finding things right: the “Judge Your Neighbor” worksheet (linked below)
• The body-mind’s stress response to judging, including tunnel vision, tension, and inflammation
• Noticing how your own judgments impact your connections and your daily experiences, for better or worse
• The value of being able to hear and process different viewpoints without becoming a victim of your own reactionary responses
• Utilizing breathing and mindfulness to mitigate our impulse to judge prematurely
• The practice of empathy and forgiveness — how they can help soften our judgments and improve our mental and physical health

With the understanding that we typically base our judgments on perceived meanings, take a look at a negative emotional response or judgment you’ve held about your own or someone else’s behavior. Reflect on the meaning you ascribed to that action, and the emotions or thoughts that followed from that assumed meaning. Then consider: Is it possible that there could be a different meaning (or no meaning at all) behind the behavior? Could you be wrong about the meaning that you initially gave it? Seeing the previously-judged action or behavior through that lens, could you choose to have a different experience around it, and perhaps envision a more positive resolution?

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Resources

• How to Stop Being Judgy, Lines of Inquiry and Loving What Is via Experience Life Magazine
• The Choice Map, created by Marilee Adams, PhD, via the Inquiry Institute
• Books by Marilee Adams, PhD: The Art of the Question and Change Your Questions, Change Your Life
• Byron Katie’s Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet
• Resources from The Living Experiment episode “Impulse” (clearing the mind when feeling judged or judgmental)
• Judgment Detox by Gabrielle Bernstein
• A link to the Thich Nhat Hanh print “Are You Sure”? (which Dallas keeps on his wall)

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Impulse — that sudden urge to do or not do a given thing, and the ways such urges can take hold of us without our conscious permission.

Whether from a hunger for excitement, or the depletion of our available willpower, our impulses can work against our healthy intentions, and against our better interests.

They can also be a powerful indicator of how well we are coping with our current circumstances, and a barometer of our overall resilience.

Here, we talk about the variables that influence our impulses, and our ability to manage them. We explore the differences between response and reactivity, and some useful ways to create more space between our urges and actions.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you better govern your own impulses in ways that work for you.

“Impulse” Episode Highlights

• The concept of self-regulation in making considered choices vs. giving into knee-jerk reactions
• The marshmallow test — a reflection of how early-childhood self-regulation and delayed gratification powerfully predict life success
• How the grind of repetition and joyless routine can give rise to impulsive behavior
• The natural human craving for novelty and how taking purposeful breaks can help us feed that craving in healthier ways
• The dynamic of ego-depletion and how our culture feeds our impulsive tendencies by subjecting us to constant temptation, stress, and sensory overwhelm
• How to honor conscious choices that align with your values and the reality you’d like to create
• Mindfulness, meditation, gratitude — how they can help to moderate impulsive mindsets
• Pilar’s concept of Amplified Awareness — one of three non-conformist competencies at the center of her “Healthy Deviant” approach
• The role good nutrition, sleep, and other physical health factors play in impulse regulation, and how an inflamed nervous system makes matters worse

Consider the short-, medium-, and long-term factors that may be contributing to excessive impulsivity. Some examples… Long-term: How might your nutritional status (including your intake of essential fatty acids, dietary protein, vitamin B12, anti-inflammatory phytonutrients, and more) be influencing your mental/emotional state? Medium-term: How have you slept the last few nights? Short-term: What happened in the last few minutes or hours (e.g., stress, lack of breaks, excess caffeine, alcohol, chemical intake), that might be triggering impulsivity? Reflect and take action as you see fit.

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Resources

• The Living Experiment episodes “Morning” (on establishing a healthy AM ritual) and “Pause” (on the value of taking ultradian rhythm breaks)
• Don’t Just React: Choose Your Response article by Leslie Becker-Phelps Ph.D.
• Impulse Control: Why Is It Harder than Ever? and Two Words to Remember to Maximize Success and Satisfaction in Life: Control Impulses both by Thomas G. Plante Ph.D., ABPP from Psychology Today
• 5 Ways to Slow Down and Three Deep Breaths via Experience Life
• A piece by Pilar: Reclaim Your Mornings via Experience Life
• The Sam Harris article “Free Will” and his podcast Waking Up
• Consolations by David Whyte
• 5 Gut Instincts You Shouldn’t Ignore via Experience Life

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Purpose vs. Pleasure — the apparent tensions that exist between our pursuit of those aims, and the ways they can live in harmony.

We offer philosophical and biological insights on the roles that both purpose and pleasure have in guiding human experience.

We share how we’ve come to discern the difference between cravings and longings while honoring the real value of both.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you find the proper place for purpose and pleasure in your own life.

“Purpose vs. Pleasure” Episode Highlights

• Dallas and Pilar consider how the goal of “finding” our purpose is often set up as being in opposition to the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures
• Dallas’s take on cravings vs. longings — the role that modern processed food, digital stimulation, technology, pornography, and social media plays in shaping our appetites
• The intersections of pleasure and purpose — how they can complement, conflict with, and inform each other
• The potentially false dichotomies around purpose vs. pleasure, and the different sorts of gratification that come from each
• Pilar shares the story of her friend Cindy Joseph, who used her commitment to pleasure-centered living to guide her evolution of a successful purpose-driven business
• How being socially connected and supported can moderate cravings and give you an advantage in pursuing your deeper longings, including your exploration of purpose
• “Failure to launch” syndrome  — how lacking role models for balancing purpose and pleasure is hamstringing a generation
• Our society’s moral prohibitions against pleasure, its enticements to hedonic excesses, and the art of finding the sweet spot between the two
• Pilar makes a case for tuning into how you feel about your pleasure/purpose balance and allowing your deepest appetites and intuitions to guide you
• Some suggestions on purpose-centered navigating, and the importance of enjoying that quest

Healthy, Happy Goodness

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Resources

• “A Real Pleasure” — Pilar’s feature article on the practical health payoffs of pleasurable experiences, via Experience Life magazine.
• Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia.
• “Refine Your Life” a roundup of Pilar’s “Refine Your Life” workshop wisdom, as described by Brian Johnson, via Experience Life magazine.
• “How to Discover Your Purpose in Less Than 5 Seconds” video by Brian Johnson.
• “How to Figure Out Your Mission in Life” video by Brian Johnson.
• Resistance to Pleasure episode featuring instructors from Lafayette Morehouse
• The book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
• Women, Food and Desire by Alexandra Jamieson
• Appetites by Caroline Knapp
• Carl Richards’s Behavior Gap Radio podcast

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On this week’s special guest episode of The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Decluttering.

This is a follow-up on our “Clutter” episode from earlier in the season, in which Pilar promised to consult her decluttering expert and Feng Shui-certified sister, Andrea, for some of her down-and-dirty practical tips.

Here, Andrea shares essential guidance on how to turbo-charge your decluttering projects, and how to avoid getting bogged down or overwhelmed in the process.

Andrea has been a pro declutterer for decades. She regularly consults and teaches workshops on the topic, and she’s the featured expert in an award-winning article and video series called  “Order Out of Chaos” that’s featured in Experience Life magazine.

Blending Andrea’s philosophy, strategy, helpful techniques, and real-life examples, we set out to help you take charge of the clutter in your own world.

“Decluttering with Andrea Gerasimo” Episode Highlights

• The simple but important preparatory steps Andrea uses to set up her decluttering projects for success
• The value of creating and preserving “receptive space” — not just in your living environments, but in your schedule and your life
• Simple strategies for making decluttering more efficient, productive, and rewarding
• Different types of clutter and how to tackle them in your home
• The value of “defending with beauty” to keep new clutter from encroaching on recently decluttered territory
• How to avoid getting overwhelmed by a big or emotionally charged decluttering project

Pilar’s Experiment of the Week

Three options:

Using Andrea’s “multi-bin” technique, declutter a small area (like an overstuffed drawer, cupboard or your car) that has been annoying you.

Walk around your house with “fresh eyes,” looking at places clutter has accumulated or where “receptive space” would be appealing. Make a list of the areas that are asking for attention and consider scheduling some time to address them.

Read or watch one or more installments of Andrea’s “Order Out of Chaos” series from Experience Life magazine (see list of individual installments, below).

Andrea’s Experiment of the Week

Block off an entire day in your schedule for a “you” day (to use for decluttering or resting or whatever you like) — then notice what “comes up” that inclines you to give up that day or that impinges on it in some way. Consider how “schedule clutter” works much like physical clutter in your life, and how the two are connected.

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Resources

• Andrea’s personal site, ThirdMountain.com, which offers more background on her and her work
• A description of one of Andrea’s previous Rancho La Puerta workshops
• David Allen’s book Getting Things Done
• For more related resources, see the “Clutter” episode of The Living Experiment

Via Experience Life magazine:

• Order Out of Chaos: The Closet
• Order Out of Chaos: The Bedroom
• Order Out of Chaos: The Home Office
• Order Out of Chaos: Bill Payment and Desk Organization
• Order Out of Chaos: The Linen Closet and Bathroom
• Order Out of Chaos: The Laundry and Mud Room, plus VIDEO of the process and results
• Order Out of Chaos: The Car
• Yoga for Your Home: Andrea’s take on how Feng Shui can transform your life by removing areas of blockages, tension, and friction

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Conscious Language — the art of refining your words to support your higher choices, and the value of becoming more aware of how your verbal expressions both reflect and create your reality.

From the surprising power of key words and declarations, to the value of saying more of what you mean and less of what you don’t, we explore the ways language defines our experience, and how it shapes our connections with each other.

We also offer you some experiments to help you become more conscious of the way your current language patterns are playing out in your own life.

“Conscious Language” Episode Highlights

• How Pilar was introduced to the concept and study of Conscious Language
• The history of words as powerful tools for shaping belief and reality
• How language, like posture, both says a lot about you and can dramatically shift the way you feel
• Understanding the power of declaration, and the special importance of the words following statements like “I am”
• The value (and surprising challenge) of intentionally refining your word choice
• The rewards of accuracy and specificity — saying more of what you mean, less of what you don’t
• Ways to become more conscious of how your current language patterns are playing out
• Some tips and guidelines for upgrading your everyday communication
• How using conscious language can help us develop deeper, more authentic relationships with those around us

Review your language for a limiting word or phrase that you use regularly and consider eliminating it from your vocabulary or replacing it with a more consciously chosen option. Refer to the articles in the resources section for ideas and examples to get you started.

Do away with rhetorical conversation starters like “How are you?” and unless you authentically want to engage someone in conversation, don’t. When you do choose to open a conversation, rather than resorting to a throwaway question or small talk, consider more open-ended, curious inquiry  — like, “What are you feeling most hopeful about?” (or if you know them well, “How’s your heart?”) — that will allow you to connect with them on a deeper level.

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Resources

•  “The Power of Language” by Cat Thompson via Experience Life magazine
• More information on resources from Cat Thompson via her Emotional Technologies site
• Further insights on conscious language in our “Busy” and “Therapy” episodes
• Conscious Language: The Logos of Now by Robert Tennyson Stevens

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Eating Meat — the nutritional, ethical, and environmental questions that choice raises, and how we’ve come to our own answers.

From the vegan-vs.-paleo propaganda to the disconcerting realities of factory farming, we consider both the pros and cons of meat consumption.

We wade into some of the controversies and conundrums that polarize many well-intended eaters, and we shed light on some little-considered factors that we think deserve more attention.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you explore on the question of how meat-eating fits into your own life, or doesn’t.

“Eating Meat” Episode Highlights

• Pilar and Dallas share where meat fits into their eating, and why
• The quandaries of eating meat in our current food system, and how well-intended eaters can easily get led astray
• The dangers of orthorexia and other misguided, counterproductive clean-eating obsessions
• Balancing the environmental, health and ethical concerns of eating meat, while recognizing that there is no perfect or “pure” solution
• The value of undertaking deeper research and reflection before adopting a major dietary change, and the importance of paying attention to the longer-term effects
• Considering your individual health profile and priorities in shaping your own eating decisions

Expose yourself to some alternate points of view on the topic of meat-eating, and strive to empathetically consider the factors that are driving others’ decisions. Be open to adjusting your own meat-eating habits based on what you learn. If you’re an omnivore, be willing to acknowledge the reality of factory farming as an unsustainable, inhumane, and unhealthy-for-everyone practice that deserves critical scrutiny and activism. If you are a vegan or vegetarian, consider reviewing the arguments and real-life experiences of former vegans as expressed in books like The Vegetarian Myth, Women, Food and Desire or The Mindful Carnivore.

Do the Whole30. This is a 30-day experiment in eating high-quality whole foods, and for vegetarians, a great exercise in eliminating the processed foods that are too often at the center of meat-free eating. If you’re a vegetarian willing to expand your health experiment to include eating some meat, the Whole30 is a great opportunity to maximize the health improvements that come with focusing on nutrient-dense, satiating, anti-inflammatory food. Be sure to especially focus on the systematic re-introduction of foods, taking note on how they impact your energy, skin, digestion, mood, and general health.

Healthy, Happy Goodness

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Resources

• From Pilar, a reminder that how you eat is as important as what you eat: “Revolutionary Act # 32: Savor What You Eat”
• “Nutritional Assessment of the Symptomatic Patient on a Plant-Based Diet: Seven Key Questions:” A terrific scientific paper on the importance of key nutritional considerations (including the potential need for customization/supplementation, as well as contraindications) in adopting plant-based diets.
• “Paleo vs. Vegan,” a roundup of leading voices from both camps, and “Progressive Eaters, Unite,” a terrific overview of the considerations faced by discerning eaters of all stripes — both via Experience Life
• “The Food-Mood Connection” and “Comfort Food for Your Brain” — two more articles from Experience Life on the important role that proteins and healthy fats from animal-based foods may have on mental and emotional health
• Insights on seasonal eating and Dallas’s Seasonal Model of Health: “Seasons”, “Winter”, “Spring”, “Summer” and “Autumn”

Recommended books

• It Starts With Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways by Dallas Hartwig and Melissa Hartwig
• Always Hungry? and Always Delicious (releasing in March) by David Ludwig, MD
• Women, Food and Desire: Honor Your Cravings, Embrace Your Desires, Reclaim Your Body by Alexandra Jamieson
• The Mindful Carnivore: A Vegetarian’s Hunt for Sustenance by Tovar Cerulli
• The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability by Lierre Keith
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Clutter — the oppressive burden all that excess stuff represents, and the some strategies for dealing with it constructively.

We talk about clutter’s underlying causes and its real-life impacts. We explore some of its deeper meanings.

And of course, we offer you some experiments to help you deal more consciously with the clutter that’s been collecting in your life.

“Clutter” Episode Highlights

• The problem of living in a culture where acquiring “stuff” is comparatively cheap, easy, and socially promoted
• The value of looking at where clutter accumulates in your home and life, and what it represents
• The subconscious effect that clutter has on our mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing — and our self-regard
• Clutter as a source of friction, anxiety, and shame
• How to reduce the clutter in your life, and the payoffs of making that a priority
• Some expert insights from Pilar’s sister Andrea (a professional de-clutterer and certified Feng Shui consultant), including the concept of creating “receptive” spaces and “defending” them with objects of beauty (see Resources, below, for more how-to advice from Andrea, and listen to this special guest episode with her)
• The rise of the minimalist movement (previously known as Voluntary Simplicity) and the growing appeal of owning less

Building on Pilar’s sister’s Feng Shui concept of “defending with beauty,” pick a cluttered surface or area of your home, clear it entirely, and — as a way of warding off the re-accumulation of clutter — reclaim that space with something beautiful (e.g., a vase, a candle, a wooden bowl, a sculpture, or another appealing object). Appreciate the special quality of that space, and see if it inspires you to do more. 

Read one of the recommended articles in this week’s show notes (see links below) and get inspired to take on a decluttering project of your own. Consider starting with one of the small but high-impact areas described in “Three Spaces to Declutter Now”  or Andrea’s award-winning “Order Out of Chaos” series. Notice the result even this small bit of decluttering has on your outlook and energy. 

Healthy, Happy Goodness

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Resources

• Our fun and hugely helpful follow-up episode packed with practical decluttering tips from Pilar’s certified Feng Shui decluttering-expert sister, Andrea Gerasimo.
• Recommended books on decluttering: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo and Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston
• Experience Life magazine’s Decluttering Series — more than a dozen articles and multimedia resources, including:
  — Andrea Gerasimo’s “Order Out of Chaos” article series, featuring practical applications of Feng Shui wisdom, plus a video makeover of a real-life laundry and mud room
  — From Pilar: “Clutter’s Continuity” and “3 Spaces to Declutter Now”
  — “Take Action Challenge: Declutter Some Spaces”
• Some alarming clutter statistics via BecomingMinimalist

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Unwanted touches. Inappropriate jokes. Mortifying propositions. Depending on when and where they occur, they can all be forms of the abusive dynamic known as sexual harassment.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about the recent spate of high profile sexual harassment revelations. We’re also talking about the much lower profile cases of sexual harassment that many of us have suffered — and witnessed — for as long as we can remember.

We share our personal perspectives and experiences, including my own recent “hey-that’s-my-thigh!” incident. We address the increasingly charged topic of physical contact and sexually charged banter among friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. We explore the anxiety and growing sense of outrage that pervade this emerging conversation about power, politics, and our scandal-crazy culture.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you tune into your own thoughts and feelings about unwanted sexual attention — and its real-life impacts.

“Sexual Harassment” Episode Highlights

• Power dynamics between men and women and how they impact relationships
• Degrees and shades of sexual harassment
• Dallas and Pilar share some of their personal experiences and impressions
• Tips on navigating sexual harassment and interpreting the cues given by others
• How to handle and adapt to relationship “rules” that change situationally

Engage in a conversation with one or more friends and ask about their personal experiences with sexual harassment. Listen deeply, striving to understand how it affected them, and how they feel about it now. See if you can expand your empathy and understanding by seeing this uncomfortable experience through their eyes. 

If you have been on the receiving end of sexual harassment, reflect on one or more of those experiences. Journal about your experience or describe it aloud, to yourself or someone else, noting any emotions that arise. Next, imagine how you could rewrite that experience from a more empowered place, or perhaps give it a different ending.

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Resources

• “Violence Against Women — It’s a Men’s Issue,” Jackson Katz’s revelatory TEDx talk on what men need to understand about women’s experience with violence and sexual assault.
• From Psychology Today: Eight reasons sexual assault victims don’t come forward sooner.
• From The New York Times, “The Power of Touch, Especially for Men,” an article on why we have to find a way to make platonic touch safe for all genders.
• For levity, a “Should You Catcall Her?” flow-chart from Playboy, of all places, guiding you on “when it’s okay” to catcall a woman, and more to the point, when it is not.
• From the feminist site Jezebel, an entire vertical dedicated to sexual harassment stories.

Plus …

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There’s so much merriment, so much anticipation, and yet … the holidays can also feel like a lot of pressure to perform, to conform, to consume.

Here, we share our thoughts on navigating this season with your sanity and sense of inner peace intact.

From challenging the shop-and-spend cycle, to speaking your truth without inciting unnecessary conflict, we advocate for creating a satisfying holiday experience — your way.

And of course, we offer you some experiments to get you started in that direction, even as the holiday madness kicks into full swing.

P.S. We also happily announce our new sponsorship by Experience Life magazine, and the special, discounted subscription offer and free e-newsletters now available to The Living Experiment listeners.

“Holidays” Episode Highlights

• Thanksgiving as the model for what the holiday season could be — a celebration of gratitude for life, family and friends — rather than the frenzied weeks of hyper-commercialism and stress it has become
• Pilar and Dallas share their childhood experiences of Christmas, and their enduring preferences for simpler, less commercial celebration strategies
• Tips for getting along with people you disagree with at holiday gatherings, and why it’s important to expose yourself to different viewpoints
• Challenging the assumption that you have to be someone you’re not at family parties, or do the same things with the same people every year
• Substituting experiences for objects at gift-giving holidays
• The mismatch of social and consumer pressure with the quiet inwardness that naturally feels good in winter

Feel free to indulge in some unhealthy seasonal treats, but not just because they are there. Pick only those foods that offer a truly rich physical or emotional-social experience.

Consciously design a pleasurable, beautiful experience that is just for you. It could be decorating your home, taking a candle-lit hot bath, having an electronics-free evening, or making a special meal or drink. It shouldn’t be expensive or consume a lot of time. Revel in the experience and note how much satisfaction it brings.

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Resources

• “Guilty Pleasures”, an article on conscious holiday food indulgence, via Experience Life magazine
• “Reinventing Traditions,” an article about the opportunities we have to revise long-standing rituals, and “The Six Best Gifts You Can Give Your Partner“, also via Experience Life.
• Listen to more healthy holiday recommendations from Pilar on Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl’s WCCO Radio Show, Off the Menu.

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about the health of others — the struggles we face in trying to influence the choices of those we care about, and the opportunities we have to offer appropriate support without creating unhelpful stress and resentment for all involved.

From dealing with the real impact that others people’s health-depleting habits can have on our lives, to acknowledging the folly of trying to move anyone before they are ready, we explore the sometimes painful space of meeting and loving people where they are — even when we can see them going downhill fast.

Sharing insights from well-respected behavior-change models as well as our own real-life experiences, we offer strategies for making peace with what is, while still holding open the door to healthy evolution — if and when our loved ones seem ready to embrace it.

And of course, we offer you some experiments to help you re-frame your approach to addressing the health challenges of the ones you love.

“The Health of Others” Episode Highlights

• Becoming a model for change by transforming yourself
• Providing supportive cues for others, rather than trying to force them into change
• Understanding Prochaska’s stages-of-change model, and the real-life continuum of “readiness to change”
• How trying to change the people you love can lead to co-dependent behaviors and contribute to your own health crises
• Recognizing the right of others to make their own decisions, and to deal in their own way with the consequences
• Health and fitness differences as a common source of conflict for couples
• Three questions of interest: What matters to you (or to us as a couple)? What are you planning to do? How can I support you?
• Conversing with aging parents, and the fear and pain behind our desire to make them live a healthier life
• Taking the opportunity to work on your own responses and reactions to wanting someone else to change before they are ready

Talk to someone who matters to you and whose health concerns you. Tell them openly about your feelings and fears as well as the hopes and desires that underlie your investment in their well-being — but with zero expectation that they will agree and without any pressure for them to take action. Then be willing to listen and observe. See what happens when you share your authentic feelings in the context of a vulnerable, empathetic conversation, rather than doling out judgments, instructions, and expectations. 

Think about someone in your life who is struggling with their health, and try to identify which of the six stages of change they’re in (pre-contemplation, contemplation, etc.). As you become more skilled at identifying the stages of readiness, and understanding what they entail, you’ll become more discerning about what kinds of support are likely to be most helpful, and when. 

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Resources

• Dr. BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model.
• Change Your Habits, Part 1 (The Cue) and Part 2 (Willpower), from the Whole30 blog.
• “The Stages of Change” of Dr. James O. Prochaska, via Experience Life magazine.
• Our “Therapy” episode — advice for seeking support.
• “Fit to be Tied: A Couples’ Survival Guide” and “Your Parents, Yourself: Aging Parents” via Experience Life magazine.
• The Work of Byron Katie — challenging your feelings, assumptions, and reactions.

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking Conscious Eating — the art of more fully enjoying your eating experiences and relating to your food in healthier ways.

We explore how rushed and unconscious eating tends to stoke body’s stress response, and also how it undermines digestion.

We look at how distracted eating robs you of satisfaction and numbs you to your body’s natural satiety signals.

We share some practical techniques for bringing more awareness to your pacing, posture, breathing, and sensory experience.

Finally, we offer you some experiments that invite you to begin developing your own approach to conscious eating — starting with your very next meal.

“Conscious Eating” Episode Highlights

• How you eat is as important as what you eat — Pilar and Dallas share their background with building mindful eating habits
• Chewing as a self-soothing action, and all of the pro-digestive and metabolic signals that occur even before food enters your mouth
• Being present in the experience of eating — taking time to notice how your food looks and smells
• Slowing down the eating process by thoroughly chewing and enjoying flavors and textures
• The stress-busting benefits of good eating posture (and posture in general)
• Why interacting with technology while eating works against conscious eating
• The important role meals can play in promoting ultradian rhythm breaks (what Pilar calls “URBs”)
• Our human need for pleasure and beauty, and how mindful eating is a healthy way to feed it
• Seven suggestions for integrating healthy eating (via an article in Experience Life magazine): eliminate distractions, slow down, sit tall and still, breathe, take small bites, chew thoroughly, and enjoy

Set aside one meal to eat on your own and try at least two of the seven suggestions, starting with removing all distractions. Notice how trying one technique might lead you to naturally adopt some of the others.

The next time you eat a meal, put your phone away. Take note of how that makes you feel — awkward, uncomfortable, anxious, self-conscious, etc. — especially if you’re eating in public.

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We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Pilar’s Revolutionary Act #32: “Savor What You Eat”.
• Dallas’s More Social Less Media program — resetting your relationship with media and technology.
• Our “Pause” episode — more on the myriad benefits of ultradian rhythm breaks.
• From Experience Life magazine, an article on “Conscious Eating”.
• From food psychologist Marc David: “Eating for Pleasure” and “6 Ways to Simplify and Improve Your Relationship With Food”, both via Experience Life magazine.

PLUS …

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Body Image, and exploring the challenges of maintaining a positive self-regard in our body-shaming culture.

From disturbing statistics about widespread self-loathing to pop-culture and media trends that appear to be making matters worse, we explore the individual and collective costs of promoting unachievable, hyper-perfected body ideals.

We also share some of our own body-image insights, including the places we struggle to shape healthy values and viewpoints in the face of dysfunctional social programming.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you develop more awareness about your own sense of body-image, and to evolve it in ways that work for you.

“Body Image” Episode Highlights

• Pilar shares some statistics about how common negative body image is and the effect it’s having on both kids and adults
• How weight and appearance affect both women and men not just in romance, but in the workplace
• Why the public outcry against hyper-perfected body ideals doesn’t seem to have meaningfully changed the pursuit of those ideals
• Believing it’s possible to be truly happy by living in line with your values and prioritizing a healthy, happy body, rather than a “perfect” one
• Thinking beyond physical attractiveness as an important feature of a potential date/mate
• Challenging the notion that beautiful people are more important, more gratifying to be around, or any happier than anybody else
• The value of trading self-criticism and self-loathing for self-appreciation and self-respect

For 10 minutes, in public, move the way you would move as if you loved the way you look. Observe what happens.

For the next week, strive to avoid, clear, or ignore all the images that make you feel bad about your body (magazines, catalogs, social feeds, TV, etc.). Notice first how hard it is to tear your eyes away from these pictures, then notice how much time and energy you could reclaim for yourself by opting out of them. At the end of the week, evaluate whether they hold less power for you and/or whether you are more conscious of their intrusion into your life. For bonus points, send yourself a loving message every time you see one of these images.

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We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Statistic Brain’s body image stats.
• “Build a Better Body Image”, “Body Positive”  and “Your Body, Reframed” via Experience Life magazine.
• Pilar’s “Revolutionary Acts” column on the importance of getting past obsessions with six-pack-abs and buns of steel: “Raise Your Sights”.
• Our “Healthy vs. Hot” and “Fitspo” episodes.
• Dove’s global research on female body image.
• Some criticism of Dove’s Real Beauty campaign: a post from Salon.com; a feminist-analysis thesis; a piece from Business Insider.
• Lindsay Kite’s Beauty Redefined website and TEDx Talk.
• Dallas’s Instagram post on redefining beauty.

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Astroturfing — the insidious and increasingly common strategy by which special interests create the illusion of grass-roots movements in order to manipulate public opinion, promote unpopular policies, and even subvert elections.

From shady mis-information campaigns waged by Big Business to the rise of “fake news” and fake social-media feeds created with the express purpose of dividing a nation, we’re seeing the emergence of a new and highly effective form of public brainwashing.

So here, we explore the potential this sort of dis-information has to undermine our media and democracy. We look at how astroturfing is being used to mess with our minds, influence our behavior, and to subvert our common interests.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you get wise to how astroturfing works, and where it might be showing up in your own life.

“Astroturfing” Episode Highlights

• Pilar and Dallas share their first-hand experiences with astroturfing
• A current example of astroturfing — Russia’s widespread efforts to influence recent elections in the U.S. and Europe
• Other issues, industries, and topics where astroturfing is common
• How organizers of these campaigns use social and mass media to spread their messages
• The influence that fake news, social-media polling, and personal attacks can have on legitimate journalists, compounding astroturfing’s reach and impact
• How to recognize astroturfing, and why it’s so difficult to publicly uncover and extinguish
• Avoiding the herd mentality that astroturfers rely on
• The importance (and practical challenges) of doing deeper research before forwarding, sharing, or reversing your own position based on what looks like strong “public” or “scientific” support (but isn’t)

Pick a notable new thing you’ve learned online in the last year — some idea that really grabbed you or that changed your opinion. Think about how you came upon that new idea, whether you spent any time at all checking out its legitimacy, and if groupthink played any part in your perception of reality.

Check out an item from the Resources section below to educate yourself about what astroturfing is, how it works, and for whom. See if these new insights inspire you to become a more discerning media consumer, and if you can now better spot astroturfing when you see it. 

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Resources

• Trust Us, We’re Experts by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, on the insidious efforts of industry to influence opinion through lies.
• The New York Times article, “The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election”.
• “Turf Wars” via Experience Life magazine.
• From The Guardian, a terrific article on astroturfing by George Monbiot.
• Our “News” and “Health Media” episodes — more on how to find reliable sources of information.
• “Monsanto Hired this Guy to Help it Win Over Millennials” via NPR’s The Salt.
• Sheryl Attkison’s TEDx talk on astroturfing.

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• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Television — the often too-dominant role it has in our lives, and the opportunities we have to right-size its presence in our reality.

We take a look at just how much time Americans are spending watching TV, and why that might be. We also look at the high cost of all that screen time, and we explore some more rewarding alternatives.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you evaluate your own relationship with television, and how you might like to see it evolve.

“Television” Episode Highlights

• The real goal of most television programs: hook your attention for advertisers
• The many reasons that “vegging out” in front of the TV or playing video games is a stress-inducing distraction rather a recuperative activity
• Why using TV or other similar diversions to avoid unresolved situations with ourselves or other people only leads to larger problems
• The fear mongering model of television news programs, and how it creates chronic anxiety and overwhelm
• The responsibility we all have to ourselves and our loved ones to wisely choose how we spend our precious free time
• Dallas and Pilar share their current relationships with TV, and their preferred alternatives
• Children and media use, including so-called “educational” programming

Kill your TV for 30 days — no movies, no shows, no news programs — and consider unplugging or covering all the devices that connect you to your TV. Notice what else changes in your life, and how you feel if you decide to turn the TV back on at the end of the month.

1) Sit down to watch TV like you normally do, but set a timer to alert you at some point mid-program. When the timer goes off, freeze. Keep your face and body exactly as they were, and take a selfie in the exact physical and psychological state you were in while watching. Notice what you look like when you’re being passively “entertained” in this way, and ask yourself if that’s how you want to be.

2) Make a list of a dozen things you would enjoy doing as an alternative to watching television — things that make your life more beautiful and enhance your pleasure in being alive. If you run out of ideas, walk through your front door and look around with fresh eyes at what projects or activities might be awaiting your attention.

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We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Television watching statistics from Statistic Brain.
• Our “News” episode, on finding a balance between being informed and bombarded by negativity.
• For more info and tips on taking recuperative breaks, listen to our “Pause” episode.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations for media use by children.
• Dallas’s More Social Less Media initiative (re-launching soon!), and his Kill Your TV program.
• Pilar’s “Media-Diet Makeover” article, via Experience Life magazine.

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Feeding Healthy Kids — the challenges involved with that, and the choices that matter most.

We talk about overcoming the unhealthy eating habits today’s children are culturally programmed to adopt, and how parents can successfully sway their children toward healthier preferences — even in the face of dietary mixed messages and misinformation.

We explore how nutrition can influence both kids’ current health status and their future health outcomes.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you nudge your own family in healthier directions.

“Feeding Healthy Kids” Episode Highlights

• The confusing messages parents receive from government guidelines, nutrition “experts,” mass media, and ubiquitous marketing from the processed-food industry
• Two words for a healthy diet from birth through adulthood: Whole foods
• Getting and keeping kids on a healthy path: Parental modeling of enthusiasm for healthy living, honest conversations about food choices, preparing meals at home as a family, and (sometimes) tough love
• Why nutritious eating at any age — and embracing a healthy lifestyle in general — requires active rejection of a lot of our cultural norms (a great example of what Pilar calls “Healthy Deviance”)
• Tips for healthy meals (including school lunch), and why it’s OK to meet kids in the middle while they’re transitioning to better nutrition
• Paying attention to symptoms of food sensitivities in your children — digestive and skin problems and earaches are the most common — and how elimination diets can help pinpoint the problem

Start the day with your kids, eating a meal of protein and vegetables (example: Eggs, sausage and wilted greens). Talk with them about how they feel after eating a healthy breakfast, and how it compares to eating a breakfast laden with flour and sugar.

Consider the health status of kids a few years older than your own. Notice the health problems they’re beginning to develop — weight issues, allergies, skin conditions, asthma, attention and behavior challenges, etc. Evaluate whether it might be worth making some changes now in the service of warding off any future food-and-lifestyle related troubles for your own children. Regardless of what you decide to do, empower yourself with proactive inquiry rather than feeling a victim of inevitability.

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Resources

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s MyPlate program — influenced more by industry than science
• Ack! The National Institutes of Health’s wrong-headed dietary recommendations for kids
• Ending the Food Fight: Guide your Child to a Healthy Weight in a Fast Food/Fake Food World by Dr. David Ludwig, and Pilar’s conversation with Dr. Ludwig about his optimal-weight program for kids
• Michael Moss’s book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us
• For more advice on nutrition that applies to kids and adults, check out our seasonal episodes (“Seasons”, “Winter”, “Spring”, “Summer” and “Autumn”) and “Nourished”
• Recommended articles from Experience Life magazine: “Feed Your Family Healthy”, “Kitchen-Smart Kids”, “Low-Fat Milk May Produce High-Fat Kids” and “Connecting ADHD and Nutrition” (for many more options on these and related topics, use the search feature at ExperienceLife.com)
• Michael Pollan’s ode to the power of preparing food at home in Cooked
• The Whole30 — a guide to a month-long whole food diet that includes basic cooking and meal preparation tips
• Our episode on “Healthy Deviance”, Pilar’s way of describing the art of being a healthy person in an unhealthy culture
• Pilar’s Quick Trick Snack Stack for a simple, kid-friendly breakfast that covers all the nutrition bases
• Search for slow cooker recipes on Melissa Joulwan’s “Well Fed” and Michelle Tam’s “Nom Nom Paleo” websites

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Autumn. This is the final installment in a series of episodes we’ve built around Dallas’s Seasonal Model of Health, and if you’ve listened to the others, you know they all include explorations of the physical, mental, emotional and social aspects of the season.

In this episode, we consider Autumn’s contracting energy. We look at how it encourages our bodies and minds to wind down the high energy of summer and, as Dallas puts it, “start coming home” for the winter to come.

From seasonal nutrition, fitness, and sleep recommendations to self-care and decluttering wisdom based in Chinese Five Element Theory (thank you, Cat Thompson!), we share suggestions rooted in science and personal experience. And of course we offer you some autumnal experiments to help you make the most of this beautiful season in your own way.

“Autumn” Episode Highlights

• Dallas recaps his Seasonal Model of Health — balancing your life in accordance with natural seasonal shifts
• Autumn as the transition between the frenetic energy of summer and the quiet inwardness of winter, and as the celebration of the productivity of the year
• Our cultural tendency to celebrate productivity with perpetual over-consumption
• Fall’s association with the metal element in Chinese Five Element Theory, and the emotion of grief
• Autumn nutrition from what’s available locally — dark leafy greens, root vegetables, hearty soups and stews, and warm breakfasts that tend to be higher in protein and fat than the carbohydrate-rich diet of summer
• Why it’s OK to gain a little weight in the fall
• Adjusting our sleep patterns and bedtime rituals with the shortening daylight, and with the energy wind-down of pre-winter
• Autumnal social re-connection in line with your energetic capacity
• Varying your fitness activities to match the season, and the higher-intensity, shorter duration focus of fall exercise
• How to keep yourself healthy without relying on flu shots and toxic antibacterial products

Call the three to five most important people in your life, family or friends, and find the time to catch up with them in person, in an intimate environment. Get together with each one of them at least once over the next few weeks.

1) Sometime this week, take a look around your space, identify a drawer or closet that has accumulated too much stuff, and clear it out.

2) If you’re a habitual television watcher or other electronics user, try going without that stimulation for an evening. Instead, lower the lights and dedicate that time to quiet contemplation or some other wind-down ritual. Notice if you sleep a lot better that night.

Healthy-Living Wisdom, Delivered to Your Door

Get your discounted print subscription to Experience Life magazine for just $19.95 — and sign up for their free e-newsletters, too!

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Resources

• The other Seasonal Model of Health episodes in the series: “Seasons”, “Winter”, “Spring” and “Summer”.
• “Why is Autumn the Only Season with Two Names?” via Slate magazine.
• Our “Creativity vs. Consumption” and “Enough” episodes, on replacing fear of scarcity with a mindset of abundance, without going the over-consumption route.
• Pilar’s Nighttime Wind-Down Ritual — one of her Healthy Deviant “Backbone Practices” for post-day calm, healthy neurotransmitter and hormonal regulation, and better sleep.
• “Intimacy and Connection”, our episode on creating and maintaining healthy relationships.
• The Experience Life magazine article on “The Debate About Flu Shots”.
• “The Fitness Almanac”, a seasonal guide to healthy choices via Experience Life magazine.
• Advice on “Eating By the Rainbow” and Seasonal Eating, also via Experience Life.
• Minnesota’s first-in-the-U.S. ban on the antibacterial agent triclosan via Experience Life; also contains links to other articles about the hazards of antibacterial products.
• A recipe for broccoli leaves via Forager Chef Alan Bergo.

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• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Breaking Up — the factors that shape our decisions to end a romantic relationship, and the strategies that can make that a somewhat better experience for all involved.

We talk about the difficulties of knowing when to call it quits, the pains involved with that process, and also some opportunities that decision represents.

We share some of our own break-up insights, and as always, we offer you some experiments to help you evaluate your own breakup experiences in ways that serve your relationships now, and in the future.

“Breaking Up” Episode Highlights

• Pilar and Dallas share their personal breakup experiences, and the wisdom they gained in the process
• The cycles that occur in most long-term relationships; and the fear of failure and scarcity that keeps people in unhealthy, doomed situations
• Skills for getting through the lows that might otherwise result in a breakup, including compassion, communication, self-respect, emotional intelligence and a willingness to be vulnerable
• How to know when a breakup is the best, healthiest option (hint: there’s no simple answer)
• The importance of understanding and admitting your responsibility in a troubled relationship, and of forgiving yourself and the other person if it ends
• Leaving (and staying out of) abusive relationships
• How one person in a couple can make a difference

Examine your past breakups and look for patterns. Can you regard the other person with more compassion and take some responsibility (if you haven’t already) for the dynamics that brought on the breakup? And can you have compassion for yourself for doing the best you could at the time? Think about how these insights might help you in your current or future relationships.

Look back at your past relationships, and think about the points of friction that led you to end them. Is there a pattern that points to something you don’t like about yourself? Is it showing up in your current relationship, or do you want it to be there in the future?

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We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Psychologist Linda Carroll’s Love Cycles, on enjoying and growing through the recurring patterns most romantic relationships go through.
• Insights on “Intimacy and Connection”, “Winning Cycles” and “Win-Win Relating” in our special episodes with Lafayette Morehouse teachers.
• The idea of “conscious uncoupling” in “A Better Breakup” via Experience Life magazine.
• A roundup of some research (via the Veteran’s Health Administration) that Pilar mentioned, linking quality of relationship to incidence of heart disease, and including this reference: In a study of 10,000 men with high heart disease risk, those who agreed with the statement “yes, my wife shows me her love” had 50% less angina and 50% fewer ulcers (Madalie, JH, American Journal of Medicine, 1976, 60(6): 910-21).
• More research via the American Psychological Association on the effect of close relationships and cardiovascular health.
• Dr. John Gottman’s “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” metaphor for communication styles that are good predictors of a doomed relationship.
• The Work of Byron Katie, and the “Judge Your Neighbor” worksheet.
• Dr. Alexandra Solomon’s Loving Bravely book, and her “The #1 Quality to Look for in a Romantic Partner” blog post that also appeared in Psychology Today.

  PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Asking — the art and importance of making requests based on your authentic desires, and the role that sort of enlightened asking can play in helping you create a more satisfying life.

We explore the perceived risks and fears of loss we tend to encounter in asking other people for anything — whether favors, changes, or resources.

We also address the opportunities that asking gives us to create more intimacy and connection with others, even as it helps us build a more compassionate and courageous relationship with ourselves.

Finally, we suggest some tips for more successful asking experiences, and we offer you some experiments to help you explore the transformative possibilities that asking might open up in your own life.

“Asking” Episode Highlights

• Our cultural bias against inconveniencing others by asking for what we want, and the paradox of expecting to get what we want if we don’t make our desires known
• The career freedom Pilar discovered when she realized — through asking — that her most essential desires were never going to be met in her current job
• Why a lot of our default ways of trying to get what we want tend not to work out so well
• Understanding our core desires, and exploring fears around the possible outcomes of expressing those desires
• The feelings of frustration and inadequacy created by not being honest about what we truly want
• Finding the good in the situation as it is, uncovering the seed of desire, and involving others in our improved health and happiness
• Strategies for honest expression of our wants and needs that will help everyone feel good, regardless of the outcome

As you listened to this episode you probably thought of at least one thing you would like to ask for. Ask for it now.

Think about requests you’ve received from other people. Pick one that felt good to receive, and one that was harder to handle. Notice what made those asks feel the way they did, and explore the relational dynamics at play. The next time you ask for something, keep those insights in mind. Get started with a small request.

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We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Guidance for tapping into and understanding your desires from Danielle LaPorte.
• Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk and book on “The Art of Asking”.
• “Talk RX”, a fascinating feature on the healing power of authentic communication by Neha Sangwan, MD, via Experience Life magazine.
• Related: our episode on the art of “Saying No”, which might help you feel better about asking and being declined, or declining the requests of others.
• Our guest episode on “Winning Cycles” (featuring Morehouse teachers Boris Shekeloff and Sugar Goens-Baranco) which centers on a brilliant way of asking for what you want, and of building intimacy the process.

PLUS …

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Intuition — the signals we get from our unconscious mind, and the powerful part they can play in directing us toward our own best choices.

From the science of intuition and its intimate relationship with our intestinal tract, to the concept of “thin slicing,” in which our brain processes more data than our conscious awareness can keep up with, we explore the essentials and finer points of what many call our sixth sense.

And of course, we offer you experiments to own and hone the signals your intuition is sending you.

“Intuition” Episode Highlights

• Defining intuition, or our “gut sense,” and why we associate these unconscious feelings and insights with our gut rather than our brains or hearts
• The subtle differences between intuition, instinct and wisdom
• The imperfect science of learning when to trust your intuition and when to second guess it — and the influence of prejudices
• Using your body’s signals to discern between the excitement of a positive intuitive “hit” and a warning instinct
• How continuous over-stimulation is numbing our ability to sift out the useful data from the noise, and the dangers of allowing the noise to overrun our inner wisdom

Think about a decision you have to make. Within two seconds, based on your gut feeling, say out loud what your decision is.

1) If you’re a person who has a hard time making a decision, make a game of challenging yourself to make low-importance decisions (like a menu choice) quickly. Notice what you learn from that experience — the education that comes from every decision you make, good or bad — and see if your fear of choosing the “wrong” thing diminishes over time.

2) The next time you have to make a decision, flip a coin and notice your reaction to the heads-or-tails result. If you get a sinking feeling based on that outcome, that’s your signal to go with the other choice.

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Resources

• From Experience Life magazine — “5 Gut Instincts You Shouldn’t Ignore”.
• Also from Experience Life — “Intuitive Eating for Weight Loss” and “Intuitive Training for Fitness”.
• Intuitive psychiatrist Dr. Judith Orloff’s book, Second Sight, and her blog.
• The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr.
• Pilar’s video interview with Alexandra Jamieson and Alexandra’s book, Women, Food, and Desire.
• Dr. Michael Gershon’s The Second Brain — why our gut and head need to cooperate for optimal health.
• The concept of “thin-slicing,” and stories of great and not-so-great decisions, in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink.

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This week on The Living Experiment, we bring you the fourth and final episode in our pilot series featuring teachers from Lafayette Morehouse.

For the background on this series, check out the introduction to Lafayette Morehouse Episode 1, on “Resistance to Pleasure.”

In this episode, Pilar talks to teachers Boris Shekeloff and Sugar Goens-Baranco about a concept they call “Winning Cycles” — a friendly, productive way of asking for what you want, and of creating a positive experience for the other person in the process.

A lot of the Morehouse philosophy focuses on creating and sustaining satisfying, mutually pleasurable relationships with others, and particularly in intimate relationships. Here, Sugar and Boris explain how Winning Cycles work, and why they can be a valuable tool for achieving that goal.

All the episodes in this special series were recorded live on location at the Lafayette Morehouse campus, in Lafayette, California. You can find out more about the place, and the courses offered there, at the main Lafayette Morehouse site and in the related episodes listed in the resources section, below.

“Winning Cycles” Episode Highlights

• “Two ways to win, one way to lose” — getting good with things the way they are, changing the circumstances to better meet your liking, or … doing nothing and suffering the consequences
• Why it’s easier to make changes when you accept a situation and find some good with the way it is — while also seeing the opportunity to make it better — rather than starting from the notion that it’s all bad or wrong
• The training cycle for interpersonal relationships: Start with a genuine statement of approval; request one small, easy change; and gratefully acknowledge movement in the right direction
• How that differs dramatically both from typical modes of complaint and disapproval, and from the manipulative, disingenuous “compliment sandwich”
• How to identify when you’re choosing to lose, the importance of appreciation, and small steps for moving towards winning

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Resources

• The main Lafayette Morehouse site: “48 Years of Pleasurable Group Living.”
• The other episodes in this special series, “Resistance to Pleasure”, “Win-Win Relating” and “Intimacy and Connection”.
• Byron Katie’s The Work — another helpful approach to “loving what is.”

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Therapy — the role it can play in our personal healing and evolution, and our suggestions for employing it in the service of your highest goals.

We both share a little bit about our own positive experiences working with therapists, and what we took away from our sessions.

We also talk about how therapy is different from coaching, why both can have a role in our personal growth and success, and how to go about finding a qualified therapist that’s right for you.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you explore whether therapy might benefit you at this point in your life.

“Therapy” Episode Highlights

• The reasons Dallas and Pilar have sought therapy, and what they got out of it
• Finding a good therapist that’s right for you, starting with defining what you want help with
• Thinking about a therapist like a personal trainer for your mental patterns and emotional processing
• The importance of knowing, understanding, loving and forgiving yourself — and how therapy can free you from what’s holding you back
• The difference between life coaching and therapy — “from here forward” vs. “life up to now and beyond” — and why you might choose one modality over the other, or both
• Cost as a barrier to seeking help, some tips for lessening the financial burden, and therapeutic techniques that teach you tools in just a few sessions

Look at the “Do I Need Therapy?” quiz or the “8 Signs You Should See a Therapist” article and see what it brings up for you.

If you’ve never been to therapy, try at least one session; if it doesn’t feel right, find another therapist. If you haven’t been to a therapy in a while, recommit.

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We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• The “Do I Need Therapy?” quiz.
• “8 Signs You Should See a Therapist” via HuffPost.
• A guide for “How to Find the Right Therapist” from The New York Times.
• Wendell Berry’s Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, from which Dallas read the passage about the practice of love.
• The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower–and Inspire You to Live Life in Forward Motion, a terrific book by therapists Phil Stutz and Barry Michels. For more info on the individual “Tools” and related resources, see www.thetoolsbook.com.

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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Summer — a season so full of potential, projects, and activities, it can leave you feeling exhausted.

So in this episode, we talk about how to make the most of summer, while coming through it as healthy and happy as you want to be, and while setting yourself up for the fall season to come.

Dallas shares wisdom drawn from his Seasonal Model of Health, including tips for nutrition, fitness and sleep. Pilar offers insights for managing your physical and emotional energy.

And of course, we offer you some experiments to help you enjoy summer’s best gifts in ways that work for you.

“Summer” Episode Highlights

• Dallas discusses his Seasonal Model of Health — balancing your life with the seasons and the available daylight
• Summer as the season of productivity, abundance and consumption of new ideas, and the biochemical roller coaster of the seasons
• Why getting stuck year-round in the stressful go-go summer cycle is hard on our emotional and physical health
• The fire energy of summer in the Chinese Five-Element Theory
• Summer nutrition — locally-available, nutrient-dense, organic animal proteins and plants — and the relationship between the season of activity and an abundance of available antioxidant foods
• Taking a moderate, pleasure-based approach to seasonal fruits
• Varying your fitness activities to match the season, and the lower-intensity outdoor focus of summer

1) If you’re not exercising or don’t normally take a morning walk, go outdoors and walk for 15 minutes first thing in the morning.

2) If you have a structured, high-intensity exercise program, take a break and focus more on spontaneous, lower-intensity movement.

When you go shopping for food, find two vegetables and two fruits that are in season and that are different colors — for example, raspberries and tangerines, or radishes (sliced with butter and salt!) and leafy greens. Stretch a little beyond what you normally eat, and incorporate a rainbow of foods into all of your meals.

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We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Our other seasonal episodes: “Seasons”, “Winter” and “Spring”.
• “Where Did Summer Go?”, a thoughtful article from Experience Life magazine on how to make the most of the summer-time you’ve got.
• “The Fitness Almanac”, a seasonal guide to healthy choices via Experience Life magazine.
• Advice on “Eating By the Rainbow” and Seasonal Eating, also via Experience Life.
• Dallas’s Whole9 Seasonal Model of Health infographic.

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
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This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Forgiveness: The important role it plays in our health and happiness, and the rich opportunities it can offer — if and when we’re ready to embrace them.

We talk about our own personal experiences with forgiveness, and we share some expert recommendations for approaching forgiveness in ways that are healthy, safe and rewarding.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you more fully explore the potential of forgiveness in your own life.

“Forgiveness” Episode Highlights

• “Forgive and evolve” vs. “forgive and forget” — the value of learning from our experiences before moving on
• Pilar shares her most significant opportunity for forgiveness and personal growth following a childhood trauma
• Dallas reflects on what causes people to hurt each other, and how it usually stems from a lack of understanding, capacity, or insight rather than an intentional desire to harm
• The physical, mental and emotional damage caused by holding onto unresolved resentments and grudges
• Mary Hayes Grieco’s outline for the process of forgiveness
• The empowerment available in coming to resolution with a traumatic experience, and why it doesn’t necessarily involve confronting the person who harmed you
• Helping others consider and explore the forgiveness process without forcing them through it

Think about something or someone you hold a grudge against or carry guilt for. Consider how things might have gone differently if you or the other person had more information, strength, insight, willpower, ability, better coping skills, a different early life experience, more understanding of the long-term impact on yourself or others, etc. Then notice if you feel the relief of forgiveness.

Use either Byron Katie’s “Judge-Your-Neighbor” worksheet or the three questions of the Naikan method of self-reflection to look deeper into a grievance you hold against someone, and notice if your feelings about the issue start to evolve.

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Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! Every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• The work of Mary Hayes Grieco and The Midwest Institute for Forgiveness Training.
• The Life Gets Better Now podcast from Mary Hayes Grieco and Erin Warhol.
• Byron Katie’s The Work — help with letting go of your story of what “should” have happened and dealing with how it is.
• “Forgive and Forget”, an article from Experience Life magazine on finding peace in the process of forgiveness.
• Unconditional Forgiveness, a book from Mary Hayes Grieco featuring her eight steps to freedom.
• Louise Hay’s audio program Forgiveness/Loving the Inner Child.

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re available.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Non-Toxic Bodycare — the importance of having some personal safety criteria for the products we put on our skin, and some strategies for avoiding the chemical compounds most likely to negatively affect our health.

From phthalates to fragrances, we talk about the long list of commonly used ingredients known to cause trouble in the human body. We also explain why regulatory organizations like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) don’t provide anywhere near as much protection as most people think.

We suggest some guidelines for selecting better, safer options, and we offer some experiments to help you upgrade your own use of bodycare products in ways that work for you.

“Non-Toxic Bodycare” Episode Highlights

• The potentially harmful effects of chemicals in personal care products, and the surprising lack of industry oversight and regulation
• How much of what you apply to your skin makes its way into your bloodstream, tissues, and organs
• The worst chemical offenders in commonly used products, and their known negative health effects
• Why conventional deodorants and antiperspirants are of particular concern
• The increased cosmetic and bodycare product use in children and teenagers, and how it contributes to a greater toxic body burden over a lifetime
• Practical suggestions for starting the conversion to less toxic products
• The psychological aspects of our “need” to use products that make us look younger or feel more attractive

Search the EWG’s Skin Deep Cosmetics Database for one product you use regularly. If it has harmful ingredients, replace it with a healthier option.

Study the ingredient list on the bodycare and cleaning products you use on a daily basis, including the supposedly “natural” and “healthy” ones. If they contain known toxins and irritants like parabens, phthalates, sodium lauryl/laureth sulfate, or synthetic fragrances, consider switching to a safer option. 

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! Every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• The Environmental Working Group: the top resource for research and education on chemicals and other toxins in your environment, including cosmetic and bodycare products.
• The EWG’s Skin Deep Cosmetics Database: a great tool that lets you research the ingredients in almost 70,000 brand name products and assess their safety.
• The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics: another respected source of information and advocacy related to common bodycare products.
• “Beauty Beware”: a terrific article via Experience Life magazine that describes the most harmful chemicals in personal care products and how to avoid them (also includes lots of helpful links and study references).
• Another great one from Experience Life: “Beauty Makeover”, offering wisdom and practical tips on choosing safer, better cosmetic products.
• “Obesogens: an emerging threat to public health” via PubMed from the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
• “Busting Cosmetic Safety Myths” via the Environmental Working Group.
• “Urinary phthalate metabolites are associated with insulin resistance in obese subjects” via the journal Environmental Research.
• Not Just a Pretty Face by Stacy Malkan, and her website.
• Toxic Beauty: How Cosmetics and Personal Care Products Endanger Your Health . . . and What You Can Do About It by Samuel Epstein, MD, with Randall Fitzgerald.
• Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power by Mark Schapiro.

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Aging Gracefully — what that means to us, why it matters, and how to go about doing it well.

From challenging dominant cultural norms and entrenched anti-aging messages, to feeling comfortable in our own skin as the decades pass, we discuss what it means to grow older in a culture that tends to glorify youth.

We offer suggestions for reclaiming your own aging experience. And we offer some experiments to help you expand your assumptions about aging, to release some of your judgments about it, and to more fully embrace its positive possibilities.

“Aging Gracefully” Episode Highlights

• First, we cover a listener question: Do collagen supplements live up to the marketing hype?
• Then, Aging Gracefully: The fear we’ve been taught to have about losing social value and relevance as we age
• Why women feel greater cultural pressure to maintain a youthful appearance
• The financial and psychological burdens that result from our obsession with staying young
• Aging as a discovery and growth experience vs. a scary, losing proposition
• The value of questioning the idea that we become less desirable as we age
• Challenging assumptions and social norms regarding who we should be attracted to; Pilar shares her experience
• Aging gracefully in the face of our chronic disease epidemic — the value of maintaining good health and high vitality

Define the age range of the people you tend to be romantically attracted to, and then question why you chose those ages. Could you expand it a few years either way? If not, why not?

1) Identify one or more older role models who are aging in a way you admire. Keep a photo of them on a bulletin or Pinterest board to remind you how attractive and cool aging can be.

2) Develop a vision for your future self as someone who has aged gracefully. Think of the qualities you want to grow or develop as you age, and start to invest yourself in a version of aging that looks and feels good to you.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! Every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• From the listener question segment: “Expert Answers: What Are the Benefits of Collagen?” from Experience Life magazine.
• Pilar talks with her 60-something friend, pro-age revolutionary and makeup-artist-turned-supermodel-turned-entrepreneur Cindy Joseph, about her age-positive stance in this video via Experience Life.
• More of Cindy Joseph’s pro-age philosophy movement from her pro-age cosmetic company, BOOM by Cindy Joseph. Plus her cool TEDx Talk.
• Dallas and Pilar riff on conventional ideals of sex appeal in our “Healthy vs. Hot” and “Attractiveness” episodes.

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Satisfaction vs. Success — the sometimes surprising tensions that can exist between our pursuit of those two goals, and the ways we can redefine both in the service of our own health and happiness.

In a world where it can seem like everybody on your social feeds is oozing wealth and glamour, it’s easy to feel like you should be keeping up somehow — striving harder, achieving more.

At the same time, slogging away at a dead-end job or a feeling stuck in a not-quite-right career can also be a soul-crushing endeavor.

So here, we talk about our own relationship with our work and our ambitions, and we share the insights and open questions that we’re still exploring in establishing our own definitions of a life well-lived.

Finally we offer you some experiments to help you experience more satisfaction and success in your own life.

“Satisfaction vs. Success” Episode Highlights

• First, a listener question: Following up on our “Sleep” episode, an inquiry about how electromagnetic frequencies (like Wi-Fi) can influence our sleep patterns and health
• Then, Satisfaction vs. Success and the complex dynamics we encounter in pursuing them both
• Do you really need to “go big or go home?”
• Why our society’s definition of success often presents barriers to satisfaction, and how to overcome those obstacles
• The importance of connection with others, the pursuit of a higher purpose, and goals built on our personal values
• How our fear of disapproval and uncertainty keeps us stuck
• Noticing and expanding on the little things that make us feel good
• The lure of “The Hustle” — and how not to get hustled yourself
• The value of questioning the notion that the harder we work, the more we’ll achieve

Sit down and ask yourself what you’re hungry for — more time, fun, beauty, sleep, whatever — and trust your first answer. Then find 5-10 minutes each day to create some small version of that experience as a way of practicing getting more of what you want. Notice any resistance or excuses: Those are probably the obstacles that are preventing you from obtaining satisfaction on a larger scale.

Assess something in your life that is causing you distress, irritation or discontent and ask yourself if it will matter in a year. Trust what comes up first.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! Every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Related to the listener question: “Wake-Up Call” via Experience Life magazine, a summary of the unseen hazards of electromagnetic frequencies.
• Why we feel dissatisfied despite having it all in “Desperately Seeking Satisfaction” via Experience Life.
• The study by two Princeton Nobel prize winners on happiness as it relates to income.
• “Diagnosis: Affluenza” — a great 2002 article by Jeremy Hunter, PhD from Experience Life that still rings current and true today.
• Affluenza: How Overconsumption is Killing Us and How to Fight Back by John DeGraaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor.
• “The Art of Enough”, counsel on reconsidering  your quest for more, via Experience Life.
• “Refine Your Life” — Pilar’s framework for periodically revising your life in keeping with your core values and desires.
• A one-hour video overview of Pilar’s “How to Refine Your Life” course, which walks you through vision, values, goals, action planning, and more.
• Financial planner Carl Richards discusses the relationship between satisfaction, success, personal values and money in his Behavior Gap Radio podcast.
• Steph Gaudreau’s Harder to Kill Radio podcast episode on The Hustle.

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about the art of the Commute — the strategies that can make our daily trips less stressful and more rewarding, and the subtle shifts of attitude that can make them easier on your body and mind.

From redesigning your commuting environment to being more mindful of your media, we explore the skills and techniques that can rescue commuting from the realms of drudgery and elevate it to a daily practice you actually enjoy.

Finally, we offer you some experiments that can help you make your commute work better for you.

“Commute” Episode Highlights

• First, a listener question: What role can desserts play in a healthy eating plan?
• Next, Commute: Research that says the longer your commute, the less happy you are likely to be — but there are ways around that
• Why your commute might be decreasing your quality of life, and strategies for becoming a more conscious commuter
• The different characteristics of trips to and from work, and tips for entrepreneurs who are never off duty
• Using your commute to get some outdoor time
• The high costs of going unconscious in the car

For one week, instead of listening to talk radio, podcasts, news, or music that includes advertising, create your own playlist of songs or listen to an audio book. Or try silence and deep breathing.

1) Consciously redesign your commute environment. Declutter your car, organize its contents, introduce some essential oils and other sensory pleasures. If you don’t commute by car, think about other ways you can create a healthier, more enjoyable experience for yourself. Notice how the act of making those changes shift your commuting experience.

2) Practice Commuting Kindness, where you actively look for opportunities to accommodate other drivers, behave in friendly ways, project kind thoughts, and graciously anticipate their needs. 

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! Every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Upgrade your commuting environment using tips from Pilar’s sister, Feng Shui and decluttering expert Andrea Gerasimo, in “Order out of Chaos: The Car” via Experience Life magazine.
• Tips for transitioning from work to home in “Making the Transition” from Experience Life magazine.
• “10 Things Your Commute Does to Your Body” via Time magazine.
• Some compelling research on the health and happiness benefits of bike commuting via Experience Life magazine.

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re available.

In this episode of The Living Experiment, we go on a One-Year Ramble, reflecting on what we’ve learned over the course of our first year of doing this podcast, warts and all.

We explore what we’ve both taken away from our conversations and our friendship, and from our personal and professional journeys over that time.

From observations on the state of health media, to insights about our own strengths and weaknesses, we consider the body of work we’ve created, and where we see ourselves going next.

Finally, we offer an experiment that gives you the opportunity to connect and reflect with a friend on the nuances of your own life experience.

“One-Year Ramble” Episode Highlights

• Reflections on what Dallas and Pilar have learned about podcasting, and themselves, over the past year
• How their lives and work have brought them here, and some current life experiences
• The challenges of creating deep, authentic, useful content in today’s hype-driven health-media environment
• What’s up next — for Dallas and Pilar individually, and for the podcast
• A call to send us your questions for our listener Q&A feature

This Week’s Experiment

From Dallas and Pilar: Sit down with a friend and have a one-hour, face-to-face conversation about the year behind you, where you are at now, and how you feel about things. Take turns sharing from the heart and being good listeners.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! Every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• The May 2017 Functional Forum session on the “Evolution of Primary Care”, for which Pilar was a panelist.
• The very first episode of The Living Experiment, “Welcome (Freak)”.
• “The Art of Conversation”, a feature article via Experience Life magazine

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we bring you the third in a series of four special guest episodes featuring teachers from Lafayette Morehouse. For more background on this series, check out the introduction to the first Lafayette Morehouse episode, “Resistance to Pleasure”.

In this episode, Pilar talks to teaching trio Judy St. John, Colin Selig and Janet Ribaldi about Intimacy and Connection – our human longing for it, the fears and social programming that get in the way, and the steps we can take to create the deeper sense of authentic connection that most of us desire.

A lot of the Morehouse teachings focus on the value of relationships, and the opportunity we have to amplify our enjoyment of life by relating to others with more attention, awareness and authenticity. Morehouse teachings also focus on sensuality as an important aspect of a gratifying life, so we touch on that, too.

A quick reminder that the episodes in this series were recorded live on location at the Lafayette Morehouse campus, Lafayette, California.

“Intimacy and Connection” Episode Highlights

• The human need to feel connected to other people, and why putting on a facade can lead to loneliness rather than acceptance
• Our tendency to lie or omit in our personal interactions, how much that costs us, and how revealing our authentic feelings builds intimacy
• The loss of mutual interest that happens in some long-term relationships, the distance caused by making wrong assumptions, and how to continue growing together rather than apart
• Why the way we treat people influences how we feel about them
• Ways to enliven intimate connections

Healthy-Living Wisdom, Delivered to Your Door

Get your discounted print subscription to Experience Life magazine for just $19.95 — and sign up for their free e-newsletters, too!

Share the Love!

If you’re enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it. People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook — share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

Please note that while neither this episode nor its show notes includes any graphic or explicit sexual content, they do reference sensual experiences, and the links within this section may take you to sites through which you may discover more explicit content. Please explore at your own discretion.

• The main Lafayette Morehouse site: “50 Years of Pleasurable Group Living”
• The other episodes in this special series, “Resistance to Pleasure”, “Win-Win Relating” and “Winning Cycles”
• The risks and rewards of showing up as your authentic self in our “Vulnerability” episode
• Pilar’s column “Big Stretch”, in which she references the value of “decloaking” — a term she borrows from sex educator and erotica expert Susie Bright
• Dallas’s “Porn, Shame, and Doughnuts” blog post, about the temptations of the forbidden
• The power of shared positivity in Dr. Barbara Frederickson’s Love 2.0

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re released.

This week on The Living Experiment, the final episode of our fourth season, we’re talking about Attractiveness. What makes us attractive? What do we find attractive in others, and why?

From health and beauty to intelligence, kindness, confidence and self-esteem, we explore the whole-person factors that come into play as we size each other up — and evaluate our own mojo.

We also consider some of the psycho-emotional and scientific underpinnings of those factors.

Finally, we suggest some experiments to help you expand your awareness of what attractiveness means to you.

“Attractiveness” Episode Highlights

• First, a listener question: We address the biochemical and psychological reasons for obsessive food thoughts
• Then, attractiveness: The characteristics we find attractive, how we make ourselves more appealing to others and ourselves, and our cultural fixation with physical appearance
• Dallas shares his Instagram post on the evolutionary biology of attractiveness
• Pilar’s history with the cultural pressures of physical appearance, and how finding yourself right as you are tends to make you more attractive to others
• How unresolved childhood experiences and dynamics may play into what we find appealing in ourselves and others
• Some science behind the relationship between the outward signs of good (or bad) health and what people see as attractive

1) Notice who you’re attracted to (not just sexually, but socially and interpersonally) without judging on the basis of a certain set of physical characteristics. Instead, focus your attention on the small things – sparkly eyes, a pretty smile, a graceful walk, good energy – and note if these observations expand your sense of your own attractiveness.

2) Pick a physical feature in yourself that you feel self-conscious about or judge as unattractive. For a brief period, go out in public and act as though it’s the thing you’re most proud of, noting your experience and the response you receive from others.

Without any self judgement or moral overlay, notice what’s attractive about your friends and family. Make a list of a few things that attract you to each of them, note any patterns that arise, and ask how these patterns reflect your own values and inspirations.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! Every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• From the listener question on food obsession: We recommend the book Always Hungry? by Dr. David Ludwig on the biochemical reasons for food obsession.
• For more on the psychology of cravings and food obsession, particularly in women, we suggest the books Women, Food, and Desire by Alexandra Jamieson, Women Food and God by Geneen Roth, and Appetites by Carolyn Knapp.
• Our “Healthy vs. Hot” episode, which further explores the sometimes inverse relationship behind health and physical attractiveness.
• Dallas’s thoughts on attractiveness in his March 7 Instagram post.
• Pilar’s article “Health: The New Sex Symbol” from Experience Life magazine.
• Terri Cole’s website and her Love Blueprint that Pilar spoke of.
• From Psychology Today, a 1990s article from Helen Fisher, PhD, that explains some timeless essentials about the biology of attraction.
• Helen Fisher’s website and more information about her book, Anatomy of Love.
• “Fruit over sunbed” via The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology – the study Dallas referenced on the influence of skin color on perceived facial attractiveness.

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about “Idleness” — those all-too-rare moments when we allow ourselves to do nothing in particular, and the surprising magic they can bring to our lives.

From the neurological rewards of daydreaming to the value of more extended sabbaticals, we explore the possibilities of doing less, rather than more, as a means of enriching your life experience, and expanding your gifts to the world around you.

And naturally, we offer some experiments designed to help you experience the counterintuitive rewards of idleness for yourself.

“Idleness” Episode Highlights

• First, a listener question: Lindsay asks about her sense of urgency in sharing newly-acquired information and the stress that entails
• Next, idleness: Dallas describes the function of the default-mode network, and the important background work your brain is doing while you’re “tuned out”
• What happens when you don’t find time to let your mind wander and allow your default mode network to activate
• The importance of self-reflection, how that’s only really possible during idle time, and why we may keep ourselves busy to avoid having to feel our true feelings
• Pilar on her Morning Minutes practice, and how claiming a few quiet moments on waking can transform your entire day
• Why social media time can’t be considered “idle” time
• How to protect your idleness in a culture that doesn’t value it
• Challenging the assumptions and choices that keep you from leveraging idleness to your advantage

In the next two weeks, schedule 30 minutes to walk or sit and let your mind wander. Don’t read, don’t answer texts, don’t meet with a friend, don’t meditate. Notice what concerns and resistances arise. Also notice any feelings of sadness, regret, or resentment — whether you resent yourself for not doing this more often, or resent others for keeping you from this pleasure.

Challenge yourself to claim idleness in small increments. Two options:

1) After completing a simple task (like washing your coffee cup), take a full 30 seconds to do nothing (just be, breathe, look around, etc.), rather than racing to the next task; or

2) Double the time it normally takes to do something (like folding laundry) by doing it verrrry slowwwly. Notice the emotions or physical sensations this elicits, and the sense of promise or ambivalence you might feel about producing more experiences like this for yourself.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! Every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Reasons to build in more idle time in “Give Yourself a Break”, via Experience Life magazine.
• Also from Experience Life, “The Upside of Downtime”.
• How to be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson, and The Idler magazine.
• Dallas’s More Social Less Media program (counsel on reclaiming time currently squandered on digital distractions).
• Collected elements of Pilar’s “Healthy Deviant” strategies, including two of her pro-idleness Backbone Practices (Morning Minutes and Ultradian Rhythm Breaks) in the “Morning” and “Pause” episodes.
• More help on finding quiet time and challenging the convention of over-scheduling in our “Busy” episode.

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Perfect — the pressure we feel to achieve that impossible standard, and the strategies we can use to escape perfectionism’s often-agonizing grip.

From the tendency we have to compare ourselves to unattainable ideals, to the shame-based frustration that can result when we find ourselves lacking, we share insights from our own perfection-seeking experiences, as well as counsel from recognized experts in the field.

Finally, we offer experiments to help you explore and evolve your own relationship with whatever “perfect” means for you.

“Perfect” Episode Highlights

• First, a listener question: We address Michelle’s concerns about finding ways to remain meaningfully engaged, yet sane, in today’s politically-charged, high-stakes environment
• Next, a question for listeners: Would you be interested in a Facebook group for The Living Experiment listeners? Let us know!
• And then, perfect: Pilar and Dallas share their differing experiences with (and thoughts on) the pressures of perfection
• The state of constant stress brought on by the perpetual feelings of current inadequacy or impending failure
• The confirmation bias we experience when we attribute our successes to perfectionism
• Recognizing when your perfectionistic tendencies are benefiting you, and when they’re working against your health and wellbeing
• A short (related) aside: Why we haven’t yet done a follow-up episode to “Sensuality” — plus an update on past (“Win-Win Relating”; “Resistance to Pleasure”) and forthcoming special episodes featuring Lafayette Morehouse teachers
• Tips for cultivating a healthy relationship with perfectionism, starting with finding yourself good enough as you are

Pick something about yourself – physical, mental, anything – that you don’t like, that you feel is bad or broken. Question whether that negative perspective is really true, and instead find the perfection in it.

Think of a personal experience of perceived failure, or a painful moment of imperfection, and retell that story in a strong, empowered way — as a story of growth, discovery, transformation, and ultimately, of present-moment perfection/success.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! Every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Two books on perfectionism that Pilar referenced: Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar’s The Pursuit of Perfect and Dr. Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection.
• Also referenced: Byron Katie’s process, The Work: four simple questions for finding truth and present-moment rightness of any situation:
  • Katie’s book, Loving What Is
  • An Experience Life article that summarizes The Work and offers a helpful worksheet link: “Coming to Terms”
• From Experience Life magazine: “The Unexpected Gifts of Imperfection” (a feature-length round-up of perfectionism-related Brené Brown wisdom).
• A perfectionism quiz via Psychology Today.

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Sleep — why it’s so hugely important, and how you can get more of the healthy sleep your body deserves.

After touching briefly on some science-y fundamentals, we delve into how you can get the kind of high-quality rest your body needs to repair damage, rebalance itself, and thrive.

We share insights about how to overcome important but little-known barriers to a decent night’s rest.

And of course, we offer you experiments to help you start sleeping better — tonight, and for the rest of your life.

“Sleep” Episode Highlights

• First, a listener question: We weigh in on a married couple’s difference of opinion on “cheat meals”
• Next, sleep: Why humans need it so much,  the importance of our daily circadian rhythms, and the negative effects of interrupting them
• Daily habits that prepare you for a good night’s rest, starting with sunlight first thing in the morning
• The effects of caffeine, alcohol, electronic screens, high-drama entertainment, light, and noise
• The importance of a bedtime wind-down ritual, a lowered thermostat, and natural, breathable bedding
• Tips for dealing with sleep interruptions and trouble falling back into sleep

Every week for one month, get into bed 15 minutes earlier. Notice if you feel sharper in the afternoon and less cranky in the evening.

1) Make a mindful pre-retirement ritual of preparing and slowly drinking a cup of herbal (non-caffeinated) tea while you get ready for bed.  Carry it around with you, sipping it slowly, noticing how the temperature decreases with each sip.

2) While drinking your tea, prepare your bedroom for sleep by eliminating all sources of light and making your space as calm, clear, and comfortable as possible.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! Every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook. Tell us about your experiments, and share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Our discussions of seasonal sleep patterns in other The Living Experiment episodes “Seasons”, “Winter” and “Spring”.
• Our discussion of sleep while traveling and staying in hotels: “Travel”.
• A collection of recommended articles on sleep from Experience Life magazine:
  • “The Healing Power of Sleep”  (opens with the cautionary tale of the guy who tried to forego sleep in order to net more productive time for work)
  • Your top 10 sleep mistakes, solved
  • “Social-Media Use Linked to Sleep Problems in Millenials”
  • How sleep influences your DNA (and your metabolic machinery)
  • For more articles, type “sleep” into the search engine
• A fascinating, scientific exploration of sleeping, dreaming and awakening in Dr. Rubin Naiman’s book Healing Night.

 PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we bring you the second in a series of four special guest episodes featuring teachers from Lafayette Morehouse. For more background on this series, check out the introduction to the first Lafayette Morehouse episode, “Resistance to Pleasure”.

In this episode, Pilar talks to Morehouse teachers Sugar Goens-Baranco and Boris Sheckeloff about the concept of Win-Win Relating.

The now popular term “win-win,” as Sugar explains, was actually coined by her father — Morehouse founder Victor Baranco — back in the 1960s. And as you’ll learn, he used it to describe a dynamic rather different from the one most of us now associate with the term.

Within the Morehouse philosophy, win-win relating is a foundational concept — one that provides the basis for more successful relationships, and a happier, more rewarding life experience. And as Sugar and Boris describe it, this more nuanced definition of win-win might challenge some of your assumptions about what true winning entails.

“Win-Win Relating” Episode Highlights

• The Morehouse definition of “win-win,” where everyone gets everything that they want (and then some) — versus the “mutual compromise” and “settle for less” standard we’ve come to know
• Why a “win-lose” mindset is completely incompatible with healthy personal relationships
• The importance of taking into account the viewpoints of everyone who has a stake in your decisions, and why it makes sense to start with the people who will be most resistant
• The fear of loss as the root cause of resistance
• Morehouse’s “one no vote” philosophy of win-win group decision making
• Start with a belief that everyone is perfect the way that they are, that everyone’s opinion is valid, and that a win-win decision is possible

Share the Love!

If you’re enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it. People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook — share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

Please note that while neither this episode nor its show notes includes any graphic or explicit sexual content, it does reference sensual experiences, and the links within this section may take you to sites through which you may discover more explicit content. Please explore at your own discretion.

• The main Lafayette Morehouse site: “48 Years of Pleasurable Group Living.”
• The first episode in this special series, “Resistance to Pleasure”.
• A discussion of the scarcity mentality that prevents us from true win-win relating in our “Enough” episode.

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Energy Drinks — the surge of popularity they’re currently enjoying, and the widespread energy-deficit that appears to be driving their consumption.

We explore where real energy comes from, the mechanisms by which energy drinks may give us a real or perceived boost, and why that boost may come with some serious strings attached.

Whether you’re a fan of energy drinks, or concerned about the effect they might be having on you or someone you love, we offer you insights into their potential pros and cons, and we suggest some experiments to help you generate more sustainable energy in ways that work for you.

“Energy Drinks” Episode Highlights

• Humans’ longstanding relationship with caffeinated drinks like yerba mate and coffee, and the recent rise of energy drinks (now “the most popular dietary supplement consumed by American teens and young adults”  according to the NIH)
• Dallas dives into what energy is and how humans turn food into fuel, the relationship between energy and alertness, and the different forms of fatigue
• Why an optimally-functioning person doesn’t need energy supplements, and the habits and inputs that make a person function optimally over their lifetime
• The use of energy drinks as a symptom that the stressed body’s natural needs and rhythms are being ignored
• The immediate stress-hormone-elevating effects of one 16-oz serving, and how regular consumption can impact health and make fatigue and anxiety cycles worse
• How energy drinks can lead to panic attacks, risky behavior, and more
• The potentially habit-forming ingredients in many energy supplements
• Alternatives to energy drinks as a short-term solution, and the importance of addressing the underlying causes of a lack of energy and focus vs. only dealing with symptoms

If you currently use energy drinks or coffee to keep your energy up:

1) Drink two glasses of room-temperature water within 15 minutes of waking. Notice if you feel you need less (or any) caffeine to get going.

2) Repeat in the mid-afternoon when you usually feel your attention flagging, and take a brief movement, deep-breathing, or sunlight break. Note again if it decreases or eliminates your desire for an artificial energy boost.

1) At first sign of energy dip, fatigue, or loss of focus, take a 10- to 20-minute ultradian rhythm break (listen to our “Pause” episode) to allow your body to rapidly replenish your energy by natural means.

2) Pay attention to the display, marketing, and packaging of energy drinks. Notice how much of what you’re being encouraged to buy into is an appealing image or ideal, as opposed to what the drink actually provides.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! We are admittedly not all that great at promoting ourselves, so every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook — share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• The NIH’s consumer advisory on energy drinks.
• “This is Your Body on Energy Drinks” via Experience Life magazine.
• The FDA’s investigations into illness, injury, and deaths allegedly related to energy drinks and supplements.
• “Energy Drinks: What Teenagers (and Their Doctors) Should Know” via Pediatrics in Review.
• The “Risks of Energy Drinks Mixed with Alcohol” via the Journal of the American Medical Association.
• Caffeine Informer’s “Top 14 Energy Drink Dangers”.
• The study linking energy drinks and increased risky behavior in college students via the Journal of American College Health.
• Our “Pause” episode on the multitude of benefits of taking regular breaks during the day, and how to optimally fuel your body in “Nourished”.

PLUS …

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Generosity —  the instinct we have to share with others, and the mutual benefits that giving can confer, not just mentally and emotionally but also at the physiological level.

From the surge of feel-good compounds our bodies release in response to generous acts, to the value of giving others the benefit of the doubt, we explore the ways that generosity serves both giver and recipient.

We also consider the ways that giving more than you can share joyfully tends backfire, creating anger, resentment, and regret.

Finally, we offer some experiments to help you explore your own generous impulses and refine them in ways that work for you.

“Generosity” Episode Highlights

• The science of altruism — the body’s release of pro-social, anti-inflammatory, feel-good chemicals in response to doing good things for others
• Why giving anonymously seems to have special benefits, and why any giving is good
• Dallas and Pilar share some if their recent experiences with generosity
• Pilar talks about the value of giving someone the benefit of the doubt, finding others right the way they are, and other forms of generosity that may be even more meaningful than gifts of money, goods, services, or time
• Dallas reflects on the value of compassion and understanding — believing that people are always doing the best they can in that moment, and relating to them from that more generous frame of mind
• How increasing the generosity of your viewpoints, attention, and relating to others directly changes your experience of the world around you
• How Dallas’s generosity of attention recently brought Pilar to tears — and the rareness of that sort of continuous, caring, “tell me more” focus on others
• The irony of a culture where material wealth is increasing, but everyone feels like they have less time, energy, and attention to share
• How “duty-based” giving can play out negatively (i.e. with judgment) in soup kitchens and other charitable settings
• Is it really best to give ’til it hurts —  until you notice, or until it feels really, really good? How and why to make sure you’re giving in ways that feel great, do good, and make you want to do more
• The value of regarding others with “soft eyes,” and intentionally relating from a heart-centered place
• Tips for coming back to gratitude

The next time you have a conversation that is difficult, charged, or contentious, stand your ground and remain in integrity, but soften your face. Notice how things change when you feel and project openness and connectivity.

Focus a lot of intense generosity on one person for one day. Get creative about how many ways you can be kind and generous with them, and notice how that affects you both.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! We are admittedly not all that great at promoting ourselves, so every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook — share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education.
• NPR TED Radio Hour segment on networks and how trees generously collaborate, rather than compete.
• Research from Dr. Sonya Lyubomirsky on generosity as a common trait of happy people, a benefit of being happy and an essential element of sustainable happiness.
• “A Behavioral Analysis of Altruism” via the journal, Behavioral Processes.
• “Five Ways Giving is Good for You” via Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.
• The book Give and Take by Adam Grant — how personal success is tied to our ability to connect with and give to others.

PLUS . . .

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Spring — the essential nature of the season, and the shifts your body wants to make in keeping with it.

In a continuation of Dallas’s Seasonal Model of Health, and the season-by-season series we started this winter, we talk about the value of adjusting your eating, activity, sleep and social activities in ways befitting spring.

We also explore the energetic and psycho-emotional dynamics you might be noticing this time of year, plus some insights from Chinese Five-Element theory, and the value of integrating rather than fighting your body’s natural rhythms and desires.

Finally, we offer up some experiments that can help you get your own body and mind in sync with the gifts of this spring season.

“Spring” Episode Highlights

• The true and essential nature of spring, contrasted with its oversimplified “spring forward!” media hype
• Dallas’s description of the seasonal shift from the quietude and darkness of winter to the increased energy and light of spring
• A recap of Chinese Five-Element theory that Pilar introduced in our “Winter” episode, with a focus on the movement and decisiveness of spring
• Why spring — rather than January — is the optimal time to launch into the action phase of resolutions
• Nutritional elements of the change of seasons: taking advantage of what’s growing locally, and the role of plant-based carbohydrates in a seasonal diet
• How sleep, social and hormonal patterns naturally shift with the lengthening daylight, and the importance of listening to what your body wants (regardless of what experts say “should” drive you seasonally)

Act on the plans you’ve been ruminating on over the winter. Choose one change you’d like to make and move into action now.

This morning or as soon as possible, step just outside your door and simply take note of the season’s light, smells, sounds, and the feel of the air on your skin. Observe what is new and different with spring’s arrival. If you enjoy this practice, do it every morning.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about  The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! We are admittedly not all that great at promoting ourselves, so every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook — share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Our episodes on “Seasons” and “Winter”, about simple lifestyle shifts that can help you stay in step with nature’s cyclical rhythms.
• Cat Thompson’s “The Energy of Spring.”
• A seasonal approach to fitness from Experience Life magazine.
• Also from Experience Life – “Stuck Inside”, hints for getting some quality outdoor time this season.

PLUS . . .

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed as soon as they’re available.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Sensuality — what that word really means, and the important, underappreciated role that sensual experience plays in our health and happiness.

We live in a culture that often distorts sensuality — glorifying sex and promoting certain forms of consumer-oriented decadence, but limiting our appreciation of our own inherently sensual natures.

So here, from the biological benefits of sensual of pleasure to the difficulties we have in talking about it in polite company, we take a look at what’s known about sensuality and where it fits into our lives.

“Sensuality” Episode Highlights

• Housekeeping details: A few shifts we’ve embraced in response to helpful listener feedback, and a call for more ideas on where we might go from here
• A new segment: Listener questions! We address Ryan’s inquiry about which healthy lifestyle shifts to start with, and how to avoid getting overwhelmed by taking on too much at once
• The difference between sensuality and sexuality
• The dearth of scientific data on sensuality, and the many limitations of research into sensual and sexual satisfaction
• Factors that limit our sensual experiences
• Revisiting elements of the 1960s human potential movement and its modern-day expressions
• The similarities between certain popular schools of sensual practice and nutritional reductionism
• The role of sensual experience in a healthy, happy life
• The opportunity to embrace sensual experiences wherever you happen to be, and some good reasons to do so
• Our cultural squeamishness around long hugs and other forms of extended physical contact, even among close friends and family
• Our human need for physical touch, and how we go about getting those needs met
• This week’s experiments

Find or create a situation where you can experience some form of sensual touch that isn’t sexual.

• It might be with a close friend or romantic partner — either way, the goal is the same: feel-good, non-sexual contact.
• Notice that opportunities for physical touch are all around us, but sometimes we need to make an effort in their direction.

Decide to have a positive sensual experience right now, wherever you are.

• Look around for what’s available for one or more of your senses to enjoy, and tune into the experience for at least 15 seconds.
• If you’re having trouble finding something sensual to enjoy in the moment, decide which sense you most feel called to indulge, and make arrangements to address it at first opportunity.
• Repeat as often as possible.

Bonus experiment:

Tell us what you’d like from us, and how. 

We launched The Living Experiment podcast with no business model, no sales funnels, and no marketing plan. And we’re glad we did!

Now, we’re in love with doing the podcast and we’re excited to make it sustainable for the long haul. We welcome your thoughts on how we might best do that.

Our goals:

• Help people get healthier and happier, even in a world that makes that challenging
• Think and talk about the things that interest you and us, and that have real impact on real people’s lives
• Connect with a growing audience of individuals interested in the other content streams and experiences we create

We’d love your thoughts on how we can do all of that better.

Share the Love!

Have you told your friends and family about  The Living Experiment? If you dig it, please do! We are admittedly not all that great at promoting ourselves, so every recommendation from you means a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook – share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

Please note that while neither this episode nor its show notes includes any graphic or explicit sexual content, they do, at occasional intervals, reference sensual experiences. Some of the links within this section may also take you to sites through which you may discover more explicit content. Please explore at your own discretion.

• Pilar’s article “A Real Pleasure”, from Experience Life magazine, which explains the science of pleasure, and references some hormones and neurochemicals (including the feel-good antibacterial agent, proenkephalin) associated with pleasure.
• The ABC News Primetime American Sex Survey that Pilar referenced.
• “What Do You Mean When You Say You Are Sexually Satisfied?” from the journal Feminism & Psychology, on the lack of consideration for gender and sexual orientation perspective in sexual satisfaction research.
• Our recent “Resistance to Pleasure” episode, featuring teachers from Lafayette Morehouse, an intentional community that has been pursuing sensual research since 1968.
• The quote from Hermann Hesse (written in 1905!) that Dallas shared, plus more on busyness as a source of unhappiness, from Brain Pickings.
• OMGYes, referenced by Pilar as an example of recent mass-culture focus on sensuality-based studies (in this case, focused on female pleasure).
• The scientific case for the health benefits of hugging — a roundup via David Wolfe.
• “The Power of Touch: How Physical Touch Can Improve Your Health” from The Huffington Post.
• A roundup of the science on “The Power of Touch” from The New Yorker.

PLUS . . .

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications when new episodes are released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

It’s high time we had a serious talk about pleasure. Because it can have a huge positive impact on your health, because it’s fun— and because (weirdly) a lot of it avoid it like crazy.

This week, in en effort to make sense of that conundrum, we’re bringing you the first in a series of special guest episodes featuring teachers from Lafayette Morehouse, an intentional community founded in 1968 with the goal of maximizing the potential of its members, and on having life be, in their words, “as much fun as possible.”

One fundamental principle of Morehouse teachings is that they don’t prescribe solutions or try to fix anybody (they think you’re perfect the way you are). Rather, they simply describe what they’ve seen work (and not work) in closely observing their own lives and the lives of others. And their #1 rule is this: Don’t do anything you don’t want to do.

In this first of four Lafayette Morehouse episodes that we’ll share over the course of the next two seasons of the The Living Experiment, Pilar talks to teachers Judy St. John, Colin Selig and Janet Raibaldi about a dynamic they call “Resistance to Pleasure.”

Here, they describe their approach to “responsible hedonism,” and offer some useful strategies and perspective shifts that might just help you enjoy more pleasure and fun in your own life.

“Resistance to Pleasure” Episode Highlights

• A little background on Lafayette Morehouse and Pilar’s reasons for recording this episode series
• Why we are inclined to resist pleasure, and to view it with suspicion and ambivalence
• Our childhood conditioning to avoid things that appeal to us
• Our adult misconception that hard work and success are the best (or only) paths to pleasure
• “No pain, no gain” and the fallacy that pleasure must be earned
• The importance of prioritizing pleasure on a daily basis vs. just waiting for it to happen
• Why gratified people are more functional, creative and energized
• Pro-pleasure strategy: Start by noticing and approving of the good things already in your life, and add in more pleasure and fun wherever you can
• The necessity of going from good to better (and how that’s different from going from bad to good)

Share the Love!

If you’re enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it. People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook — share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

Please note that while neither this episode nor its show notes includes any graphic or explicit sexual content, it does reference sensual experiences, and the links within this section may take you to sites through which you may discover more explicit content. Please explore at your own discretion.

• The main Lafayette Morehouse site: “48 Years of Pleasurable Group Living.”
• Lafayette Morehouse’s foundational course, “Basic Sensuality”.
• The Morehouse origins of the 15-minute sensual practice that Tim Ferris highlighted in his book, The Four Hour Body (Morehouse teachings have inspired many other recent bodies of work, too — generally without the larger life philosophy and relational context in which the practice was originally grounded).
• Dr. Linda Carroll’s Love Cycles work, referenced by Pilar (five essential stages of lasting love, and where we tend to get stuck or bail on the relationship.
• Barbara Fredrickson’s Love 2.0 work, also referenced by Pilar.
• Pilar’s article “A Real Pleasure”, from Experience Life magazine, which explains the science of pleasure, and references some hormones and neurochemicals (including the feel-good antibacterial agent, proenkephalin) associated with pleasure.
• “Eating for Pleasure”, another great piece from Experience Life magazine by conscious-eating expert Marc David, MA.

PLUS . . .

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications as soon as each new episode is released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Saying No, that magical word that can set you free – or feel like a one-way ticket to a guilt trip that will never end.

Whether it’s declining a request or rejecting an offer, the discomfort we feel in saying no — or feeling that we can’t — is an immense source of stress for a great many of us. It’s also a necessity that none of us can avoid.

So how can we get better at managing our authentic “nos” more consciously, and saying them with more clarity and conviction? How can we manage our desire to say “yes!” to life with our responsibility to set healthy boundaries that help us create a life we enjoy?

We get into all of that, and we offer you some experiments to help you say “no” with confidence, so you can say “yes!” when it matters most.

“Saying No” Episode Highlights

• The anxiety inherent in many “yes” and “no” situations in a culture where the onslaught of offers and opportunities can be overwhelming
• The difference between the saying an enthusiastic “yes” to life (embracing the exciting things that might scare us or pull us out of our comfort zone) vs. saying yes because we feel obligated or afraid of the outcome of declining
• The value of authenticity and the betrayal of self that comes from projecting a “yes” you’re not feeling
• “No, thank you.” How to turn down a request graciously (without undermining your answer by over-apologizing, lying, or qualifying the response)
• The vulnerability inherent in asking, and the possibility that a “no” might not be taken well by the recipient
• The costs of saying “yes” when we really want or need to say “no”
• The particularly challenging implications that “no” can have for women (who are socially trained to be “nice” and accommodating)
• How codependence shows up in our resistance to clearly stating what we want/mean/need
• Differing social expectations for how men and women communicate, and why women may be socially punished for being straightforward
• Pilar’s biofeedback tip: Your body will tell you whether something is a “yes” or a “no.” Listen to your body’s response to a request or invitation and feel for the lifting lightness of “yes!” or the sinking heaviness of “no”
• Consider the decision formula: If it’s not a yes (or “heck yes!”), it’s a no
• The value of practicing direct, succinct “no, thank yous” — and when it’s worthwhile to soften the blow by articulating the reasons (and/or just being kind about it)
• A Lafayette Morehouse tip: Look behind a “no” (your own and others) to discern the “fears of loss” that are precipitating it

Plan an empowered “no” in advance.

• Scan your schedule for something (an existing obligation, or a potential request) that you might want to bow out of in the next week, and decide in advance how you will go about declining or renegotiating it.
• Consider practicing your response — perhaps while looking in a mirror. Refusals are generally better received when they come from a confident, positive place, and using the mirror can help you refine your delivery.

Practice saying “no” without apologizing for, or qualifying, the answer.

• Just say a polite, clear “No, thank you” — and stop there. Start with a small or trivial request or invitation, and build up your “no” muscle over time.
• For a more significant or personal request, consider replying “no” and offering an alternative “yes/and.” For example, when turning down a romantic date with someone you’d like to keep as a friend, you might offer: “No, thank you — and I’m getting a group of friends together for dinner next week if you’d like to join us.”

Share the Love!

If you’re enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (check out the “Share This” widget and other social-media tools on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook — share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• “Getting to No” via Experience Life.
• “Your Ultimate Guide to Saying ‘No’ to People You Can’t Say ‘No’ To” via Fast Company.
• “Why Women Have a Hard Time Saying No” via Psychology Today.
• “The Gentle Art of Saying No” via Lifehack.org.
• “10 Guilt-Free Strategies for Saying No” via Real Simple.
• The Living Experiment‘s episode on “Vulnerability”, an experience that figures into most requests and invitations.
  

PLUS . . .

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications as soon as each new episode is released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week we’re talking about News – the kind that comes at you 24 hours a day via all sorts of media. The kind that can make you feel a little crazy and hopeless if you let it.

Particularly in times like these, when competing headlines come fast and furious, and when so much of the news seems disturbing or difficult to interpret, it can be tough to moderate your intake – and your response.

So here, we share our counsel on how to balance your desire to know what’s going on in the world with your need to maintain some sense of sanity and resilience.

We also offer some experiments to help you manage your news consumption in ways that work for you.

“News” Episode Highlights

• Why habitual (or excessive) intake of news can distort rather than inform our view of the world, with anxiety-inducing effects
• “If it bleeds, it leads” – the predominant media bias toward fear-producing, violent, and disturbing topics
• The increasingly blurred lines between marketing, propaganda, and actual news
• The importance of understanding where your news is coming from, and discerning the slant or agenda behind a story
• The value of being informed via a wide variety of sources (including some that don’t necessarily confirm your biases and beliefs)
• Counsel of moderating your news intake — balancing the responsibility of informed citizenry with the physical- and mental-health risks of news overload

Challenge your world view by reading or watching a short snippet from a news source you wouldn’t normally go to.

• Instead of getting angry or agitated, try to find the truth and human experience in the different perspective. Know there is some truth and some bias in every story.

Expand your awareness of news streams in your midst, and recognize how much more pervasive, manipulative, and invasive they have become over time. 

• 1) Strive to consciously divert your attention away from TV screens and monitors wherever you go (restaurants, airports, gas stations, taxis) and notice how hard it is to avoid or ignore them. Recognize how effectively media has been designed to co-opt your attention, and to work continuously on both your conscious and subconscious awareness.
• 2) Find some online video of a vintage TV-network newscast from the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s and observe how much simpler, more neutral, and more civilized the news production was back then (no ticker tape, minimal graphics, very little drama, etc.), and see how the comparison affects your perception of today’s media.

Share the Love!

If you’re enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (check out the “Share This” widget and other social-media tools on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook — share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• “The Psychological Effects of TV News”, an article from the Psychology Today site.
• More on why News Is Bad for You from The Guardian.
  
• Pilar’s “Media Diet Makeover” article in Experience Life magazine.
• The NPR interview with Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker about the disconnect between the long-term trend toward a more peaceful world and the media’s focus on sudden, violent events.
• Our “Health Media” episode – navigating confusing and contradictory health headlines and data, and the effects of excessive media consumption on your health.
• Good Life Project interview with Michelle Gielan, former CBS news anchor turned positive psychology researcher, on “Broadcasting Happiness”.

PLUS . . .

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications as soon as each new episode is released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week we’re talking about Vulnerability – the experience of being susceptible to wounding, and the value of embracing that capacity as a strength rather than as a weakness.

We talk about both the risks and rewards of allowing ourselves to be vulnerable – to injury, criticism, embarrassment, and more.

We explore the potential of moving beyond a state of armored self-protection in the service of forging deeper, more satisfying connections with others, with ourselves, and with the experience of being alive.

Finally, we offer some simple experiments to help you explore the potential gifts of vulnerability in your own world.

“Vulnerability” Episode Highlights

• The difference between “elective” vulnerability (risking being hurt by people we know or whose approval we seek) and exposing ourselves to dangerous situations
• The physical manifestations of always being armored against vulnerability, as well as the stress state and health implications that result
• The deep human need to be accepted – how our fear of public speaking (concentrated social judgment) outweighs even our fear of death
• The vulnerability conundrum: Our tendency to hide those aspects of ourselves that are most likely to form the basis for authentic connection
• The vulnerability fallacy: Our flawed belief that assiduously protecting ourselves will spare us from experiencing pain
• The difference between sharing sensitive information about our historical experience vs. expressing current emotions surrounding that experience
• Tips for navigating vulnerable situations and relationships, and for maintaining boundaries while softening our habitual armor
• The importance of discernment when deciding with whom to be vulnerable, and the rewards that can result when both people are willing to take risks

Revisit a situation that has not been well resolved, and start with a very small step toward resolution.

• Don’t use facts and figures in an attempt to coerce – instead, come in with emotions.
• Mentally rehearse in advance and make sure your comments reflect how you feel right now.
• It might go badly, but you might create space for the other person to express their feelings too.

Look for an opportunity to give someone heartfelt appreciation or positive feedback in a deeper, more intimate way than you normally would.

• For example, instead of just saying “thanks” or “good job” to a co-worker, take the time to praise their approach or performance in a very specific and heartfelt way.
• Authentic gratitude can create a sense of connection that creates a tangible intimacy (and thus vulnerability) in both the person giving the feedback and the receiver.

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If you’re enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (check out the “Share This” widget and other social-media tools on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook — share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• The Man in the Arena — excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt’s “Citizenship in a Republic” speech featured at the opening of Dr. Brené Brown’s book, Daring Greatly.
• More research and insights on vulnerability from Brené Brown: her audiobook The Power of Vulnerability, her TED Talk on “The Power of Vulnerability”, and her website.
• Wisdom from Brené Brown from Experience Life magazine, including her thoughts on embracing vulnerability.
• “The End of Fear” — an article from Experience Life about psychotherapist Richard Schaub’s work on acknowledging vulnerability on the path to serenity.
• Our episode on “Shame”, an emotion intertwined with vulnerability.
• A fun conversation-based game Pilar enjoys playing and giving as a gift: Vulnerability Is Sexy by Roundtable Companies (they make fun t-shirts, too!).
• Synopsis of Franz Kafka’s short story, “Before the Law”, referenced by Pilar as an apt symbolic description of the dynamic of being forever “kept out” of a desired experience that is in fact available and meant for you, and for which nobody but you can you can grant you permission.

PLUS . . .

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications as soon as each new episode is released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about one of Pilar’s all-time favorite topics: Healthy Deviance.

It’s a favorite because it’s the subject of the book she’s writing (update: now available wherever books are sold, and also as an audiobook!), and also an idea at the core of the work she’s been doing for the past 15 years or so — including this podcast!

So, what does it mean to be a healthy person in an unhealthy culture? What’s required of us, and what’s available to us, when we choose to reject the norms of a society that’s making a lot of us sick and unhappy a lot of the time?

And how the heck can you even hope to do that when there seems to be so much working against you?

These are questions that both of us are fascinated by, and that we each explore in our own work in different ways.

So here, we journey together into The Way of the Healthy Deviant, and we offer you some fun opportunities to experiment with Healthy Deviance in your own life.

“Healthy Deviance” Episode Highlights

• Pilar’s personal health journey and how it led her to become a rebellious health experimenter, a media-industry disruptor — and, ultimately, a Healthy Deviant
• The evolution of Healthy Deviance as expressed through Pilar’s earlier works and projects, including Experience Life magazine, her Manifesto for Thriving in a Mixed Up World, and the “101 Revolutionary Ways to Be Healthy” mobile app
• Seeing what Pilar calls our “Unhealthy Default Reality” as a real-life Matrix of sorts — understanding the challenges and rewards involved in unplugging from the dominant-culture definitions of “normal”
• Evolutionary biology 101: Seeing the origins of our health crisis in the agricultural revolution, and understanding why “Paleo” diets and workouts alone can’t provide a solution to our modern-day challenges
• Pilar describes The Way of the Healthy Deviant, including what she sees as three key competencies:
  • 1) Amplified Awareness (valuing, developing and safeguarding your own attention);
  • 2) Preemptive Repair (getting ahead of the daily damage that causes depletion, inflammation, imbalance and illness); and
  • 3) Continuous Growth and Learning (progressively building and expanding the “skills of the healthy person”)
• The value of embracing the quest for Healthy Deviance as a Hero’s Journey — an energizing adventure and opportunity for creative self-expression — rather than just a tough, thankless slog

1) Choose a task or activity you already do, and make it a little healthier.

• Examples: Minimize the amount of time you spend on social media, add a second vegetable to your meal rather than accepting the default offering of starch.

2) Deviate from the status quo or challenge a social norm, and experience what happens.

• For example: Disengage from the onslaught of news, or pause some other “normal” habitual choice or action, just to observe the result and reaction.
• Pilar offers up the example of an assignment her father, the late sociologist Jerry Gerasimo, PhD, loved to give his students to help them understand the power of social norms: Upon entering an elevator, face the back rather than facing the front; notice how incredibly uncomfortable this makes everyone, including you.

Start seeing our Unhealthy Default Reality. For one day, pay close attention to the forces that lead you to make less-healthy rather than more-healthy choices, and notice all the subtle and not-so-subtle ways the Unhealthy Default Reality shapes your choices and behaviors.

• Don’t feel obliged to change your behavior in the moment of noticing. Just become more aware of the process by which you are influenced.
• Consider jotting your observations in a journal so you can see them accumulating.
• At the end of the day, review your notes/experiences and decide if you feel motivated to do anything differently tomorrow.
• Unhealthy Default Reality factors might include limited available food options and promotions/pricing for unhealthy products (e.g., “Supersize” and “two-for-one” offers); limited opportunities for movement; exposure to streams of advertising and media; social norms that dictate how you manage your energy and time; social and environmental contexts that affect your mood and stress; limited opportunities for rewarding/authentic social interaction; inadequate recovery time; scheduling requirements or media habits that limit your sleep; and so on.

Share the Love!

If you’re enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (check out the “Share This” widget and other social-media tools on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook — share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• The Healthy Deviant: A Rule-Breaker’s Guide to Being Healthy in an Unhealthy World by Pilar Gerasimo. Find links to retail purchase options for print, e-book, and audiobook versions here.
• Dallas and Pilar share their respective paths to Healthy Deviance in the podcast’s very first episode, “Welcome (Freak)”.
• Pilar’s article, “The Making of a Healthy Deviant”, featured in Best Self magazine.
• A great way to cultivate Healthy-Deviant competency No 1. (Amplify Awareness): Build awareness of your body’s present state and signals by following Pilar’s ultradian rhythm break recommendations as outlined in our “Pause” episode.
• An example of a non-conformist, outlier resource dubbed “crazy and weird,” but that gave rise to the now-mainstream Paleo movement:  The Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation.
• Pilar’s Manifesto for Thriving in a Mixed-Up World (get the downloadable PDF when you sign up for Pilar’s newsletter).
• Pilar’s “Top 10 Tips for Being Healthy in an Unhealthy World” (get the downloadable PDF when you sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter).
• Pilar’s 101 Revolutionary Ways to be Healthy (interactive infographic with links to download the free mobile app, which includes links to relevant articles for further reading on each of the “101 Ways”).
• Pilar’s award-winning “Revolutionary Acts” column in Experience Life magazine.

PLUS . . .

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications as soon as each new episode is released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week we’re talking about Fasting, the power of periodically foregoing food, and the significant health benefits that can proceed from doing it intelligently.

Pilar shares what led her to embark on a seven day, medically-supervised water fast (yes, she consumed nothing but water for seven days, and lived to tell about it!). And Dallas shares what he knows about the increasingly popular intermittent fasting phenomenon.

We talk about the potential pros and cons of fasting, and why it’s not for everybody. We wind up with fasting experiments and suggestions you can try on your own, and offer up resources for further study.

Finally, Pilar comes back to report on how her week-long fasting experiment went, and why, even though it wasn’t all roses and rainbows, she’s likely to do it again.

“Fasting” Episode Highlights

• The history and ancient wisdom of fasting, and its potential dark side (e.g., eating disorders and orthorexia)
• The difference between fasting (long-term and intermittent) vs. restricted diets and detoxing
• The essentials of intermittent fasting protocols, including potential benefits and risks
• The reasons for doing longer-term and more “extreme” water fasts, and why they should always be medically supervised
• The phases the body goes through during and after the fast
• Warnings against fasting when it isn’t a well-reasoned part of a nutrient-dense, whole foods diet
• This week’s experiments
• Postscript: Pilar shares her water-fasting experience and invites questions (follow-up episode, anyone?)

1) If you don’t currently observe any sort of intermittent fasting protocol, try limiting your eating to daylight hours.

• A longer break between your last meal of the day and bedtime can support good digestion, improve assimilation and metabolism, and help you maximize rest and repair during sleep.

2) If you have been doing a regular fasting protocol for a while, try pausing it for a bit and just eating however you feel inclined. Notice how that feels, and observe how your relationship with food may have changed since you originally embraced fasting.

Learn something new about fasting, challenge your assumptions, then experiment accordingly if you feel inspired.

• Check out the resources below (from popular books and articles to scientific papers to a fun This American Life podcast) and pick one to dive into.
  

Share the Love!

If you’re enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (check out the “Share This” widget and other social-media tools on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook — share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• The Perfect Health Diet by Drs. Paul and Shou-Ching Shih Jaminet promotes intermittent fasting as a way to help the body detoxify and repair itself.
• Ori Hofmekler’s The Warrior Diet, one of the first books Pilar read on the logic and value of intermittent fasting.
• TrueNorth Health Center, where Pilar went for her week-long water fast.
• Two articles on the pros and cons of intermittent fasting and tips for getting started: Experience Life’s “The Case for Intermittent Fasting”, and “Intermittent Fasting and Weight Loss” from Dr. Jennifer Marano, co-founder of TrueNorth Health Center.
• The underlying science: “Fasting: Molecular Mechanisms and Clinical Applications” by Drs. Valter Longo and Mark Mattson and “Prolonged Fasting Reduces IGF-1/PKA to Promote Hematopoietic-Stem-Cell-Based Regeneration and Reverse Immunosuppression” by Dr. Chia-Wei Cheng et al.
• The New York Times interview of several leading fasting researchers in “Fasting Diets are Gaining Acceptance”.
• Two classic pro-fasting books by respected medical doctors: The Complete Guide to Fasting by Dr. Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore, and Fasting and Eating for Health by Dr. Joel Fuhrman.
• This American Life podcast featuring fasting as a spiritual practice in “Promised Land”.
• Michael Mosley shares his own life-changing fasting experiment in the documentary “Eat, Fast and Live Longer”.
• The Quantified Body podcast’s “5 Day Water Fast Results” episode — the story of a water fast undertaken to fight cancer and other chronic diseases.

PLUS . . .

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications as soon as each new episode is released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.

This week we’re talking about the fine art of being Nourished. By that, we mean not just being adequately fed or fueled, but being amply supplied with all the subtle nutritive and sensory properties that our bodies and minds require for optimal function and satisfaction.

We look at the epidemic of chronic undernourishment — driven both by under- and over-feeding — and we explore the strategies that most reliably lead to a happy nutritional balance. Finally, we suggest some experiments to help you fine-tune your self-nourishing strategies in ways that work for you.

“Nourished” Episode Highlights

• The advantages of getting your nourishment from whole, unprocessed, nutrient-dense plants and animals vs. processed foods + nutritional supplements
• Moving beyond nutritional reductionism
• The common “overfed/undernourished” and “underfed/undernourished” phenomena associated with standard American diets
• Why “well-nourished and overfed” is not a common scenario (thanks to the leptin signaling and hunger/energy regulation of healthy systems)
• Effects of food choices in nourishing the body and brain
• Why a lean and muscular appearance doesn’t necessarily signal vibrant health
• The key to moving from overfed/underfed to properly fed and nourished (it’s not just a macronutrient problem)
• How low-nutrient, empty calories lead to the “always hungry” problem
• The role of the thyroid gland in regulating nourishment and body composition
• Why calorie-focused diets don’t work for most people (and often compound the undernourishment problem)
• The process of getting to an optimally nourished state

For one week, replace one processed or lower-nutrient food with a whole, nutrient-dense food.

• For example: have butternut squash instead of a side of rice, or replace croutons on soup with arugula.

Try this simple blended drink in addition to your breakfast to get several servings of veggies first thing in the morning, and to get your body craving more nutrient-dense food later in the day:

• 1 cup water (preferably filtered)
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup organic apple cider
• Two stalks of celery, cut in chunks your blender can handle
• One whole, unpeeled cucumber (cut in half or quarters)
• 1/2 of a lemon, rind and all
• Two leaves of organic kale
• Little nib of ginger (about the size of your pinkie fingertip)

Ideally the ingredients are all organic; if they’re not, wash them well before adding them to the blender. Blend to smoothie consistency, but still with some chewy bits. Pour into a tall glass and enjoy (to get the most nutrition and satisfaction, be sure to chew each sip before you swallow).

Share the Love!

If you’re enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (check out the “Share This” widget and other social-media tools on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.

We’d also love to have you connect with us on Facebook — share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.

Resources

• Our “Healthy vs. Hot” and “Paleo vs. Primal” episodes.
• Pilar’s informative video interview with David Ludwig, MD, PhD (Harvard Medical School nutrition professor and author of Always Hungry?) on the importance of whole-food, nutrient dense, fat-friendly eating.
• Pilar’s lively video chat with Alexandra Jamieson, author of Women, Food, and Desire, about whole-person nourishment and its connection with female sensuality.
• Michael Pollan’s discussion of our nutrition-obsessed (and decidedly unhealthy) culture: In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.
• It Starts With Food, Dallas’s first New York Times Bestseller, which offers detailed explorations of how our food choices affect our health, and the keys to optimal nourishment.
• Pilar’s “Revolutionary Act No. 23: Eat Fresh” column, which offers insight on the finer points of making nourishing food choices.
• “The Whole Thing”, an article from Experience Life explaining why whole foods have the advantage over fortified, enriched, fragmented and isolated “health foods.”

PLUS . . .

• Sign up for The Living Experiment newsletter so you can stay up to date with us, get free gifts, and receive new-show notifications as soon as each new episode is released.
• Subscribe to The Living Experiment on Apple Podcasts to have fresh episodes delivered to your podcast feed each week.