“Let Buddy play his violin with you in the talent show,” Ella told her teenage sons, Larry and Travis.
The year was 1941. Larry and Travis weren’t happy. Both accomplished musicians, they were counting on winning at least a few bucks, which was nothing to sneeze at in depression-era Lubbock, Texas.
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This week’s episode is an accident.
I interviewed Elizabeth Bell in order to record a testimonial for WellStart Health, and ended up having a conversation so compelling and instructive and inspiring that I decided – with Elizabeth’s blessing – to share the whole thing.
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Josh LaJaunie returns to the podcast for a fifth (?) time, for a conversation about our relationship with nature.
We talk about the beauty and grandeur of nature, and the ways human beings benefit and grow from being exposed to that loveliness.
And also about nature’s dangerous and scary and yucky and itchy and hot and humid and freezing and soaking and uncomfortable aspects – and how we need those experiences in equal measure with the pleasurable ones.
Our sport, ultrarunning, is an invitation to both faces of nature. To the beauty and grandeur, and to the hassle and discomfort. To the nurturing and the threatening.
We also explore the lessons nature holds for us; in trees and eddies, in cycles of live and death, growth and service.
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Our lives have changed dramatically since 2007, when the first iPhone was introduced.As today’s guest, Glenn Murphy, points out, if we handled any other object over 1000 times a day, we would be considered severely OCD, or addicted, or certainly life-impaired in some way.Yet that’s exactly how many times most of us reach for our smartphones in a typical day.And this behavior pattern is not just weird – it’s damaging to our productivity and mental health.
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Kevin Davis is a WellStart Health “Supercoach,” and co-leader of the WellStart Health Coach Training Academy.Today we talk about his story, from being the “fat kid” in high school, to getting into bodybuilding and embracing extreme keto, to a traumatic car crash that led to years of agoraphobia, to his plant-based journey and healing of anxiety.With that as background, we cover the WellStart Health Attainment Model, the pyramid infographic that serves as a roadmap of change.If you’re a coach, or are trying to change your own habits, this will be a valuable model to help you diagnose and overcome obstacles.
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My buddy Josh LaJaunie returns the to podcast for his fourth? fifth? appearance. We’ve been busy building WellStart Health, dealing with logistics and curriculum and business development and whatnot, so we were both hungry for a slow, meandering, purposeless, deep conversation. The kind friends have, with no agenda, except with thousands of people listening in.
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Sarah Bofinger is an unlikely Olympic hopeful, a WellStart Health Coach, and a fountain of positivity. Today she returns to the podcast to update us on her Olympic dreams, and to share how becoming a WellStart Health coach has taken her training and life to a new level of awesome.
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Hillary Rettig is both an activist and a productivity expert, two vocations that don’t seem to have much in common at first glance. But as soon as I started reading two of her books, The Lifelong Activist and The Prolific Writer, I got the connection.
Unproductive would-be activists are disempowered activists.
And in a world that systematically tries to disempower those who challenge its structures of power and privilege, the last thing we need is to get in our own way when we stand up to injustice.
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While leading the morning run groups at Engine 2’s Plantstock this August, I met a young woman named Emily Skamla. She was fit and speedy – easily pounding out 6-minute miles, and smoking me during the hill repeats.
I figured that the combination of youth, a Plant Strong diet, and a commitment to training were the whole story. Instructive, mildly inspiring, but certainly not Plant Yourself Podcast material.
Boy was I wrong.
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Gary Whitaker is the founder and owner of Plant-based Fitness, a transformation gym located in Oakland, CA.
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