We’ve spent the last three-and-a-half years criticizing a range of wellness ideas, charismatic charlatans, abusive self-styled gurus, and conspiracy theories. We’ve also discussed our own beliefs and highlighted many people and ideas that we believe are getting it right.
Derek has never really explored what motivates him on a physical and mental level despite having spent many years doing so inside of gyms and studios. This is no motivational speech, but rather an exploration of a motivational mindset, weighed against how some popular influencers position the concept. Derek uses his recent experience summiting Mt St Helens to frame the conversation.
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I've never stared two miles straight up into the sky and said, yeah, I'm gonna rush up that before.
Not at that grade.
Not bouldering and scrambling up volcanic rock and ash.
But on Friday, I climbed the side of Mt.
St.
Helens and witnessed a view that I've seen in photos but could never quite comprehend the scale of.
110 people climb Mt.
St.
Helens every day.
That's how many daily passes the government sells.
Some much braver mountaineers ascend its 4,600 feet in the winter with ice picks and a much heartier constitution than I'll ever muster.
So, I know it's not an outlandish activity and a lot of people do it.
And I met a range of people along the way.
Some were in their 20s and others were in their 70s and they all moved at a pace that suited them.
But it was a goal of mine, and it's one I've been training for since I finished an 80-mile, 5,800-foot ascending bike ride up Mount Hood in early August.
And for this goal, I had to motivate myself to crawl out of bed before 5am and drive an hour and 40 minutes to tackle.
And it's one that I was supposed to do with a good friend who unfortunately got hit with COVID for the first time this week.
So I had to keep myself motivated to climb by myself.
I'm Derek Barris, and this is a Conspiratuality Bonus episode.
And we've spent the last three and a half years on this podcast criticizing a range of wellness ideas and conspiracy theories.
We've also discussed our own beliefs and highlighted many people and ideas that we believe are getting it right.
But, oddly, I rarely engage with the sort of motivational talking and thinking that, for decades, defined a substantial part of my life and career.
Now don't worry, this isn't going to be a motivational speech.
But I do know that you need motivation to climb a mountain, to even set a goal to climb a mountain, and then follow through and do it.
And so for this week, I want to briefly peel back my own process and thought patterns for doing so.
Not with the hopes of convincing you to motivate yourself or tell you how to do it.
We all have our own ways of getting things done.
But I am interested in what health and wellness influencers get right and where they go astray.
And it's often to do with a certain way of thinking and language.
So I want to consider some of those ideas.
I taught group fitness at Equinox for 17 years, about half that time in New York City, about half that time in Los Angeles.
I mostly taught yoga, but as I became acclimated to the gym culture, I became certified in studio cycling, kettlebells, I taught weight training and high-intensity interval training.
I got certified in this oversized piece of plastic called a Viper, which I really loved and I actually really miss playing with.
As I grew in my career, I relied on that sort of expectable, metaphysical language of yoga less and less, though I never really got into it too much anyway, but it was probably there earlier on.
And I thought more about finding that precarious balance of helping students push through their boundaries, but also knowing that whatever effort they could muster was good enough.
Showing up in the room is really tough sometimes, and they had already accomplished something by being there.
So, for example, if I'm holding 49 people in Warrior 3 for what feels like an eternity, and someone is in an early Shavasana, both sticking it out and lying down are the right responses for that person at that time.
And that is actually easier to accomplish, this sort of understanding that that is okay, in actual studios compared to the social media spaces that many of us occupy.
In online spaces, we sometimes have a habit of treating our anecdote as reality for others, and that's really just not right.
There's less friction in brick-and-mortar spaces in this regard.
Now the pandemic created a lot of the friction, this anecdote as a reality that I just discussed, especially as our physical environments collapsed.
And so the boundaries of our mental space shrunk along with our built environments.
