SPEAKER_05 0:00

So you're thinking about running, but not sure how to take the first step? My name is Brian Patterson, and I'm here to help. Welcome to Brian's RomPod. I'm here with more running tips and tricks and insights to keep you moving and motivated. As always, this podcast is about discovering new perspectives on the running journey, and today's episode is no exception. I'm thrilled to be joined by Julie Feldman, the founder and CEO of Allrunder or.us.us, great. Julie is a yoga and Pilates and fitness trainer with a deep passion for neuroscience, spirituality, healthy living and self-development. Having looked at her Instagram, I can tell that Julie is very passionate about her sex in about her subject. So if you're feeling at a low point in your running journey, maybe Julie might be able to help you with direct you on that path. In today's conversation, we'll Don be diving into the power of self-belief, how it can transform not just your running, but your overall well-being. And Julie's energy and insights are going to leave you feeling very inspired. So let's get into it and give a Brian's Run pod welcome to Julie.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

That's amazing. I feel so famous.

SPEAKER_05 1:42

If nothing, I know, if nothing else. So great. I'm so pleased you've agreed to come on the podcast. Now, usually how I usually start the podcast is I'd like to sort of delve into people's background as to when they were growing up in high school and kind of what was the beginning of their journey. So were you a natural athlete or were you very much into your books when you're at school?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

I love this. You know, it's really interesting. I'm not, I think I was a natural creative, but my parents were natural athletes. And I think that that brought the athlete out in me that was there, but just wasn't like the the forward moving, the one that was bring bringing it to the table. So my mom and dad were avid skiers and tennis players and runners and exercise was just a part of like our family time. So yeah, go on.

SPEAKER_05 2:43

Did that and so was that the case throughout high school and through into college?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Absolutely. I think I sometimes had trouble being motivated, to be honest. I felt just as a teenager, I just remember feeling really tired a lot. But my mom was like, 7 a.m., let's get up and hit the slopes. Or um I was on the tennis team, I was on the field hockey team, I was on the softball team. Like sports were just a part of what we did. Um I had tennis lessons after school. It was our family culture. Um and my parents weren't super competitive, but they really believed in health and wellness as like a foundation to life. So I actually at this point can reflect and am so grateful for that lesson and having that pattern be really instilled within me at a young age.

SPEAKER_05 3:48

I know um how I mean exercise was important to me because I was diagnosed with epilepsy when I was eight. So, and although I was very much drugged up throughout my teen years in my high school, sort of thing, I think a very good outlet for me was was exercise. And I think I kind of took inspiration from my teachers at the time because I was at boarding school. So um I, you know, but as you said, you kind of took inspiration from your your parents to a certain certain extent.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Yeah, I mean, I definitely did. And I think that's really interesting that you chose running as like an outlet for you know the diagnosis of epilepsy and the medication, because really it when you run, I mean, it's stepping into that flow state in your mind can release and really your nervous system can release. And I don't know much about epilepsy, but there is a lot of like nervous system triggers with that. And so I think that would seem like a beautiful balance to help heal.

SPEAKER_05 5:00

Obviously, I can tell that you know, w you are from the states. Which part of the states are you from?

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Is it my accent that gave me away?

SPEAKER_05 5:09

No, and and also the fact I wasn't sure whether you were um from part of the states where you're quite near ski slopes, because as you said, you grew up skiing.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yeah, actually. Uh so I grew up on the East Coast.

SPEAKER_05 5:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Outside of Philadelphia, New York City area. Oh, right. Okay. And then we uh actually after college, I moved out to California. So I'm in Southern California now. Yeah. And on behalf of the United States, I apologize for everything.

SPEAKER_04 5:39

We will we won't go there, yeah. We won't go there today, but I just you know maybe, maybe, maybe post podcast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:49

Um the um the so did you from going from leaving college, I know, did you what what did you do at what did you do at college? I mean, was it a very uh normal academic subject? And then kind of what made you gravitate after from college into the the health and fitness world?

SPEAKER_01 6:12

I really believe in stepping stones. I think we're all on a path where one stone leads to the next. And my education in college, I double-majored in education and psychology. Oh, although I had this mindset of either becoming a therapist, a child therapist, or um, a teacher. And when I moved out to California, my path went a little like off of what I had envisioned for myself. And I started teaching internet to seniors. Okay. Which was it was a little bit off the path. And then, but it took me to going back to school and studying exercise science and nutrition. So and then I took a a good year or two years studying that, getting a certification so that I could be a trainer and started training. And then it then I just wanted more. I loved the field. Everyone was so happy, honestly. Like it was because when you're working out, you do always release these endorphins. And it was just such a kind, happy industry. And there was always I was fascinated by the body. And so then I went back and became a Pilates instructor, spent a year again studying, and yeah, just kept that thirst for knowledge of health and wellness, and then it became into mindset. So it was like that natural, like mind, body, spirit. And I think as a child, I'd always been, pardon me, slightly spiritual, but didn't know it.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

And so it was really just all these little stepstones just put into a nice package of like the mind-body-spirit connection and curiosity.

SPEAKER_05 8:16

Do you think we as I mean, I'm not just talking about runners, but people who do regular exercise don't tend to see those three elements being connected. I mean, when people talk about spirituality, it could be it in a very religious context. Or mind and body, maybe we're thinking, okay, if I do some exercise, it it helps with my mental health well-being, especially now that it's talked about a lot in the, you know, in the last 15, 20 years. But no one really talks about the spiritual side, as it were.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

It's true. And I think it's if we really break it down, it's really hard to teach movement without mindset. That's what gets us out of bed in the morning. That's what motivates us to put on your tracksuit and get outside. And for you and your listeners, go for a run or go to the gym. There's a mindset component that's huge in that. Or any athlete, you know, you visualize the field or you visualize the sport, you think of the event and you also connect that body movement with it. So, right there, if you're just like thinking non-spiritually, you really are, in a way, being spiritual because you're creating this vision for yourself with your body. And when you do that, right, you're connecting, I think, to your heart. And your heart is actually a brain. I think there's like 40,000 neurons. I mean, have that number wrong, but I think that's right in your heart. And so they're discovering that your heart is your brain, and your heart is what pumps blood and oxygen through your body. So right then and there, the science is the spiritual in a way, because your heart is your intuition and it leads us to our passions.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

You know, like if you want to think just science, it's right there. And then you can take that one step further and bring in the spiritual of like, well, what is like my quest?

SPEAKER_02 10:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

You know, why am I motivated, you know, um, and bring and bring in more of more of in spiritual terms, the light, right? And clarity, that essence of who you are.

SPEAKER_05 10:40

I mean, I I said I listened to you on a podcast today because um I can do at work anyway. And I find that someone like yourself makes me makes my heart rate go down by about 10 because you have a very calming, calming voice. And it's something that maybe we don't have enough of in today. I mean, we are very, I think, compared to when I was younger, I just find there's a lot of anxiety, we're anxious a lot of things, you know, a lot of sort of polarization. I know this is a running podcast, but I mean, the thing is, is that, like you said, it's all very much interconnected. And maybe it's something that we don't take stock and sort of think, well, you know, we need to be thinking about these other uh these other areas of our life, sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Absolutely. Um, one of my teachers, she was so it was such a simple advice, but it was so smart. She's like, we all have our own metric. We all have our own like measure, our own pulse, our own beat. And that's our energy. And if we don't tap into that, we get caught up in all the things going on outside of us: the push, the hard, the go, the accomplishments, the ego kind of takes us down a funny road as well. And that's fast. And if we really think about that, if you really take a minute to think about that fast pace, what happens to your body? It starts to go like like you can't see my hands, but contraction, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Yeah. It's like your heart contracts, your pulse intensifies, and your metric is suddenly not your own. You know, you're getting you're going on this fast beat train. But if you use your breath, which runners do all the time, yeah, your breath is like your body, it's your home, it's your it's your life, it's your metric. And so that is just the first thing we can do to tap out of the race and start to slow it down, start to breathe in. And then all of a sudden, everything opens up, right? Your pulse can return to normal. And if that's just the one thing that you can connect to to slow down, to start to slow down your life, then practice that, you know, once a day in the morning when you wake up and before you go to bed. And I love like there's so many different ways to practice breath, right? We can like, you can feel it in your abdomen first, and then like inhale from your abdomen up to your chest, and then hold it at the top for a beat, and then exhale slowly. And you can do four in, four hold, four out, and just repeat that a couple of times and see how that breath slows you down. And then connect that to when you run. Are you running with like really fast breath? No, you'll spin out and you'll stop.

SPEAKER_05 13:59

Yeah. I mean, I've I've heard, yeah. I mean, that's a uh well, forgive the pun, but that is a kind of like a running theme I've had with when talking to quite a few people. Um, be it, I mean, I've talked to Pilates and a Pilates instructor who um who I've had on the podcast, but also someone who very much centered her treatment around breath. And she found that it could help with uh performance sort of thing. Um, she even said to me that even looking at me, I tend to have my shoulders my shoulders up or something like that. And maybe that's but breathing Yeah, that's right. But people without even thinking about it aren't um or it maybe it takes time for them to breathe properly or they're just to relax. And like you said, maybe just maybe doing that once a day can help, you know, lower their um, you know, the heart rate, um, and then sort of open up their mind, as it were.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Absolutely. And I think that if we when we ignore those signs of like contraction and fast pace and push, push, push, and I have to get my like, was it the PR? And maybe you are on the right way to doing that. But maybe there are signs that saying, I need to take a pause, I need to slow down, I need to pay attention to that shin splint, I need to pay attention to the knee that's throbbing or the hip that hurts. Maybe you don't push through that. Maybe you give yourself grace, maybe you listen, and then that you're not defined every day by getting out the door and doing that race or that that mile marker that you have set, that goal. It's like maybe if you pause and you tend to what hurts, you can in it might take longer getting to your PR, but you you will get there and you will also learn other things along the way, like self-care, tuning to the body. So we may have like plans for ourselves, and like it's always said in like the spirit world, but like God or spirit will laugh at you and be like, oh, these are your plans. Watch what happens when I do this. And I think that's so true. Cause we can know our why, but we don't always have to know the how, if that makes sense. Like we can know our why. Like, I am a runner, I'm an athlete, I want to accomplish this. That's your why. How you get there, you can have like an idea of like, I'm gonna train this amount and I'm gonna do this. But if you ignore the whole picture, mind, body, spirit, it's gonna be a more difficult journey that if you take all of those pieces in with you.

SPEAKER_05 16:58

And you kind of touched on on kind of my, you know, my next uh sort of subject area is that when people are going through, and I know it's something that I went through last year having injury, because it's something that even just you know, I'm no athlete, but if I, you know, just from a recreational point of view, I go, I go out running because it's my time to be by myself, to enjoy the outdoors, the fresh air, that kind of thing. But if I'm injured, I can't do that or I can't enjoy it, sort of thing. And it's something that can affect me, sort of, you know, you know, mentally, and I'm not able to enjoy that fact. So what advice would you give? And I think maybe you've just talked about it just there, as to how to sort of push through that.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Yeah, I mean, it it is really painful when your body isn't working the way you want. And there's so many examples of that in life. I think it's really important to know your worth outside of the body, to know that there are other things you can accomplish. So when the body is down, because ultimately we're human. So at some point in our lives, you know, we do tend to ignore some of the signs because we want to do things and we don't want to stop. So ultimately, at some point, we are going to have hit pause. Knowing your worth is that's when it comes really into center. It's like I may not be running, my body may feel tired. How can I feel successful in this moment when this isn't working? How can I know that this isn't the end of that? It's just a reframe, or it's a start of another chapter that I don't even know what the possibilities are for me yet. So I think mentally I can speak to being in the and one of my teachers taught me this, and I think it's so useful because being in the and allows you to grieve, allows you to be sad, allows you to have permission to just think this effing sucks, right? Like it does need exercise to do the things you just spoke of, to release, to have peace, to do all the things. Yeah. So how can I do that if I'm injured, right? You're gonna have to find that way. But it's because it's so beautiful to have those things to get outside. So being an and, so having permission to have that itself, and knowing that this isn't your story, this isn't the end, this is just a beginning.

SPEAKER_03 19:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

I think when we can really learn that, we can get through a lot.

SPEAKER_05 20:03

Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of it it's a kind of like a uh giving yourself permission. It's not the end of the world, it's just a chapter. And for me, I did get through it because I did get advice and professional advice. But I knew it was like an it was for in for me, it was like it was the new journey of rehabilitation, sort of thing. But like you said.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

And I think we can make it like, like you said, a new, a new journey. Rehabilitation, it's like a new goal. And another piece, so that's one thing I wanted to say. And another thing I wanted to say is that it's really hard to do it alone, especially if you've never been injured. And so it's so important. Like I just went through a really, really hard time in my life, and I couldn't have done it alone. So I used the tools and I and I researched tools and I pulled them in. And every day there was something that I did for myself that almost recreated what it feels like to go and run or to hike or to be outside that calm to learn how to find tools that do replicate that same feeling. And for me, it was like I found, and of course, I'm in this more of a spiritual, but sound bowls. There sound bowls are noted to like actually heal our energy systems, um, energy work or a massage, or they're you'll find the tool that is right for you, but knowing that you don't have to do it alone. And the third thing I want to say is don't Make it your story. Like we can all be a victim of something, but we don't have to live the victim life. Right?

SPEAKER_05 22:11

So now a thought just sort of popped into my head in that some people may think, uh, and there's no criticism, but some people may think that people within the sort of yoga stroke Pilates world, although I think the the profile is changing over the years. Let's say from someone who's done, you know, a lot of running, they go to the gym four to five times a week and they're thinking, I don't need to do yoga. That profile doesn't fit what I am. I'm Mr. The Muscles, or I'm the one who's the does the HIPAA training sessions, I do the interval training sessions and whatever. What would you say to those people to sort of try to include them as part of your world, as it were?

SPEAKER_01 22:53

No, it's a great question. And I would say that I do all those things too. So I'm not just a like a typical yogi that only does yoga. And I think everyone has their special recipe of what we're and if you want to add mindfulness into your life as a practice to calm, to breathe, to get through times when you're injured and you've tried a yoga class and you're like, this was so weird, then find a friend.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Or a friend of a friend.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

They may know a yoga class that is perfect for you. They may know a yoga class that has nothing to do with spirituality, but all you do is sit and you do slow stretches and you breathe, and they don't talk about anything spiritual. Because yoga is really just the practice of tuning into yourself and slowing down, is what I think. It's like that connection to something higher or just peace. And I think there are many different people who offer it in different ways. And just a funny story. I think 25 years ago, 20 years ago, and I could not stop laughing.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

I was like, what is going on? Why is everybody breathing so hard?

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Like these people are nuts. I mean, honestly, it was the wrong class for me at the wrong time in my life. However, I think if I had tried a class where it was just stretching and just like slow breathing without the very loud breath, I think that would have been much more palatable for me. So it's a winded answer, but I do think that there is the right yoga or stretching class for everyone.

SPEAKER_05 24:59

Yeah. And I think even more professional athletes, you know, I keep reading every so often that professional athletes are maybe moving more to that and using that as an alternative treat treatment to help supplement their particular training.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

So absolutely. Yeah. It's a it's a great way to stretch. It's a great way to take time to visualize the goal.

SPEAKER_05 25:23

Well, if you got this far into the podcast, then thanks for listening. So here are some insights into what I learned from speaking to Julie in part one of our chat. The mind-body-spirit connection is crucial for athletic performance and well-being. Yet most people overlook the spiritual aspect of movement. Recognizing the integrating spirituality into physical activity can deepen motivation, enhance focus, and promote holistic health. A runner who visualizes their goal, connects with their heart and reflects on their purposes, imbues their activity with spiritual meaning, transforming exercise into self-discovery. Slowing down and tuning into your breath disrupts high-paced, ego-driven routines, allowing for clarity and self-regulation. Breath awareness creates space between stimulus and reaction, fostering resilience and preventing burnout. Injury or setbacks reveal that self-worth extends beyond physical capabilities. Recognizing this shifts the narrative from victimhood to growth. Esteem rooted solely into benefits. Performance fosters fragility. Embracing a broader identity cultivates some mental resilience and accelerates recovery. During injuring an athlete who reframes that experience as a new chapter, emphasizing a self-care and new tools, maintains progress by avoiding victim mentality. Plus, there's so many other points she's covered, like personal metrics and overall holistic health. So don't forget, as is usual on this podcast, we have part two of my chat with Julie, where we delve deeper into the subject areas that I've just spoken about. So till next week, bye for now.