"You have to BE in your body in order to move your body. You have to be IN your reality in order to change your reality." (Soulspeak with Tim Van Orden of www.runningraw.com)
Thursday, May 23, 2013 18:02
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“I think most of the violence, crime, disease, obesity, and other challenges that people deal with stem from a lack of self-awareness and self-acceptance. Most people don’t see themselves as they really are. They tend to focus only on the negative and therefore can’t accept themselves. They don’t believe that they are enough. They blame themselves for their misery and feel so horrible that they need to numb out with food, alcohol, drugs, sex, or television. They need to bury the pain…bury their truth – because they can’t stand being themselves. They wish they could be anyone but themselves. Or they blame others and build resentment, hold grudges or become violent, not seeing their own contributions to the challenge at hand and not seeing the perspectives of others. If you can teach people how to become more aware of themselves and then embrace themselves and their circumstances, then suddenly most misery and suffering goes away.”
A few months ago a friend of mine introduced the work of Tim Van Orden to me. I’ve always been looking for movers and shakers and people who positively influence the lives of others and the world at large after having seen some of Tim’s videos I became an instant fan. If I were to describe Tim in one word it would be INSPIRATION. Unlimited inspiration.
Tim VanOrden is shattering the myths and misconceptions that surround a plant based diet. Since the creation of the Running Raw Project (www.runningraw.com) in 2005, Tim has transformed himself from a sedentary, couch potato suffering from severe depression and chronic fatigue syndrome into one of the world’s fittest men over forty. Now, a sought after coach and presenter in the fields of motivation, nutrition, and athletic performance, Tim has inspired countless people around the world to improve their health and change their lives.
But Tim doesn’t just talk the talk – he walks the walk: • Four U.S. Masters Runner of the Year titles • Ten U.S. Trail Running Championship titles • Fourth place finisher (top American) at the 2011 World Stair Climbing Championships at the Empire State Building • Tenth place finisher at the 2011 World Masters Mountain Running Championships in Italy • Twelfth place finisher at the 2012 World Snowshoe Championships in northern Quebec – proving that an athlete eating a plant based diet can excel in some of the world’s most grueling sports.
Tim has been featured in GQ, The Wall Street Journal, VegNews, The London Guardian, Competitor Magazine, Fast Forward, the Food Network show “My Life in Food” and many other international media outlets.
It is truly an honor and a dream alike to feature Tim on Soulspeak today.
WHERE ARE YOU NOW IN YOUR JOURNEY?
That’s a really good question. When I first started this journey of Running Raw, seven years ago, I had a very specific goal and everything was very simple. I wanted to show the world what one could do as an athlete on a raw vegan diet. So I tried to make an Olympic team. One goal and one plan – train my butt off and eat raw foods. It’s now seven years later and so much has happened. I didn’t make an Olympic team, but I have won many National Championships. More importantly, I’ve learned a great deal about running, about diet, and about myself. The best journeys are the unexpected ones.
Throughout this journey, what has really stuck with me the most is that a lack of understanding in the fields of fitness and nutrition is not the main problem. The real challenge for most people is a lack of understanding of their own mental processes… awareness and knowledge of self. This really tipped me on my head, because I came out of the gate telling everyone that fruits, vegetables and a raw diet will fix all that ails them. But that’s simply not the case. Sure, things may improve for you if you increase your fresh fruit and vegetable intake, but everything isn’t suddenly perfect. No, you really need to get under the hood and learn about who you are and how you function – not just physically, but emotionally, mentally and spiritually. You need to learn the complete package. Unfortunately, the user’s manual for that complete package doesn’t exist yet.
So, where I am right now in this journey? Trying to write a book and navigate the endless sea of information that I stumble upon. My goal is to try and communicate our complex inner workings in very simple, basic terms. This involves creating stories, metaphors, analogies and allegories that explain the human condition. Hopefully, this will help people see themselves and understand themselves more clearly and learn to accept themselves more readily. Again, the biggest challenge that I see is getting people to accept where they are and who they are. Getting them to reach out and grab what is… embracing it and doing something really incredible with it.
I think most of the violence, crime, disease, obesity and other challenges that people deal with stem from a lack of self-awareness and self-acceptance. Most people don’t see themselves as they really are. They tend to focus only on the negative and therefore can’t accept themselves. They don’t believe that they are enough. They blame themselves for their misery and feel so horrible that they need to numb out with food, alcohol, drugs, sex, or television. They need to bury the pain…bury their truth – because they can’t stand being themselves. They wish they could be anyone but themselves. Or they blame others and build resentment, hold grudges or become violent, not seeing their own contributions to the challenge at hand and not seeing the perspectives of others. If you can teach people how to become more aware of themselves and then embrace themselves and their circumstances, then suddenly most misery and suffering goes away.
Eating a clean, plant based diet can definitely make that process easier. Because moving to a clean diet is itself a loving choice. But, one needs to first be in a place where they feel worthy of loving choices. That’s where I’m heading now: to help people to see that they are worthy of love, health and vitality. That’s a much harder journey than the one I started on. [Laughs]. It’s not as simple as training to reach a specific athletic goal. This is a much bigger challenge, because I’m learning what it means to be human.
IS THIS SOMETHING YOU SAW YOURSELF DOING BACK WHEN YOU WERE A KID?
Absolutely not. [Laughs]. When I was a kid, my first dream was to be Albert Einstein. I think I might have been 4 or 5 years old and I wanted to be smartest man in the world. [Laughs]. A bit later in life, I realized that most kids don’t think being smart is cool, so I changed my direction and dreamed of being a professional sports star. But the sport kept changing. I wanted to play football in the NFL at first – and then I wanted to be an Olympian in track and field and eventually I settled on winning a gold medal in cross-country skiing.
The first dream – being as smart as Albert Einstein – that was for me, but, all the sports stuff, that was for everybody else. I just wanted to look cool. I wanted people to like me. So no, helping people was never part of my journey as a child. [Laughs]. It was all about trying to fit in and be liked.
Once again, this goes back to what I was saying. That as kids, we are not taught how to navigate this social world – how to navigate ourselves. We are not taught how to grow up. We don’t learn those skills in school. We learn language, we learn math, and we learn science. If we are lucky, we learn a musical instrument or some form of art. But nobody is teaching us how to be ourselves and interact with others. So, we are thrown into this world confused, overwhelmed, upset, frightened and angry. Our bodies and minds are changing so rapidly, our worlds are changing, and people are yelling at us and calling us names and laughing at us… so much happening in such a short period of time and we are totally unprepared for it. It’s sink or swim and many kids sink. My goal now is to do something about that. But not by proposing to have “the answer,” or the “perfect solution,” but hopefully a workable solution, that works for a lot of people.
THERE IS A MISSION STATEMENT ON YOUR WEBSITE AND I THOUGHT THAT WAS AWESOME. HAS ANY PART OF IT CHANGED?
“To see what’s possible and to be what’s possible” – absolutely, still my priority.
“To unite people in a global effort to create a better world through sport” – that’s part of what I’m up to but it’s not the main focus anymore. I still believe that athletes can be a powerful force for change in the world, considering how many people look to them as role models… especially children. So I’d still like to get athletes promoting positive, helpful information and products, rather than just endorsing whatever company or product pays them the most. Their voices can make a huge difference – especially with the youth of the world.
For instance, Michael Jordan sells underwear on TV for Hanes. Does Michael Jordan know anything about underwear? Is he an expert? Does he have a PhD in underwear science? No! Does he know anything about elastic bands or stitching or fabrics or any of that stuff? [Laughs]. No! But, yet the marketers know that if they put Michael Jordan in an ad, people are going to say, “I want to wear the same underwear he does!” They listen to the athlete’s voice whether the athlete knows anything about the product or not. So if we can educate and empower athletes with information that not only changes their lives, but can change the lives of others, rather than just selling a product, we can really affect change on a large scale.
So, I’m creating a new venture to be the successor to Running Raw. It’s called “Compassionate Competition” and it’s going to be much bigger than Running Raw in its scope. It will be a team based on teaching the principles of compassion and understanding through competition. It will emphasize a coming together and cooperation in sport, rather than domination, victory and defeat. It will be a place where people can learn about each other and learn about themselves. It will be a place where people can bring out the best in each other and challenge each other to greater heights. They can support each other in experiencing greater growth and possibility than they could on their own. They need somebody else there playing the game with them. So it’s a different meaning of competition, one that fosters growth for everyone involved. The entire group wins rather than just one team or one person.
IT’S ALMOST LIKE IT’S NO LONGER COMPETITION, BUT ‘COOPERATION’.
Well yes, if you look at the origins of the word competition, it’s not about beating people. It’s about ‘petitioning’ together – that’s what competition means: “Let’s petition together. Let’s move toward something together.” If it meant to fight against each other, then that would be “adpetition” not “competition.”
TELL ME ABOUT A MOST CHERISHED FEEDBACK FROM A VIEWER OR FOLLOWER OF YOURS.
Positive comments come in every day and it always surprises me. I have my doubts and I often wonder if what I’m doing has any real value or makes a difference in anyone’s life. My life has become quite challenging because of what I’m choosing to do, and it’s a great relief to get some positive feedback. [Laughs]. I’m grateful for all the comments. They really touch me. I’ll never take sole responsibility for changing someone’s life, but it’s nice to know that I’ve been a part of it. It’s nice to be validated for something that you’ve put so much time and effort into.
WHO ARE YOUR MENTORS IN LIFE?
That’s a really good question. I keep a list of important people in my life broken down by category. One of the categories is “mentors.” There was nobody in that category for a long time. [Laughs]. “Who are my mentors?” For the longest time I couldn’t think of anyone. But I’ve got a couple of people on that list now. Unfortunately, one of them is dead. That would be Anthony DeMello, who I think was one of the most profound, brilliant, honest men in all of recorded history. The other would be Pema Chodron.
OH MY GOD! I LOVE THEM BOTH TOO.
They are both so honest and down-to-earth. The main belief that they share is to love who you are no matter how ugly you think you are. And when I say ugly I mean that in a very general sense. People fight who they are instead of living fully inside of themselves. “This is what you’ve got; so use it to your best advantage.” Stop making up reasons and stop waiting to use it. Stop waiting for it to change, before you use it. Use it and love it and be gentle with your perceived flaws and imperfections, because to be human means to be imperfect – that is perfectly human. They have both had a huge impact on me. I keep going over their books again and again and again, and each time I get new insights from them. Their teachings have really shaped me in a significant way in the past few years.
I SAW ONE OF YOUR VIDEOS AND YOU TALKED ABOUT THE PROTEIN MYTH. NOW WHAT CAN YOU SUGGEST AS AN ALL NATURAL MUSCLE BUILDER WITHOUT THE USE OF PROTEIN SHAKES AND THE LIKE.
The best natural muscle builder is, first of all, your own genetics. Nothing builds muscle faster than your own genes. In order for those genes to function properly you need to be giving them they building materials they want and not giving them what they don’t want.
For instance, when I was a vegan – before I became a raw vegan – I wasn’t heavy, but I wasn’t really muscular. I was just kind of soft. But when I switched over to a raw diet, my muscles changed, even though I wasn’t working out at that time. I was eating a raw diet for a year before I started working out, but yet I became quite muscular in that first year. It’s not that the diet built muscle. It’s that my genetic potential was being more accurately expressed.
Your genes are a blueprint for your best self. But if you’re not treating yourself well – if you’re not eating a clean diet - then your genes are not going to express you the way that they were intended to. So by just getting diet out of the way, suddenly you might find out that you are actually a muscular person and you never knew it, because you haven’t been eating what your genes require for proper expression.
At this point I have quite a bit more muscle than I had before but, other than running, I’m not really doing anything to build it. It’s just my genetic expression. For a lot of people, they may find that they’ll gain muscle just by cleaning up their diet. But only up until your genetic predisposition – you won’t continue to gain more after that without weight training. You’ll find where your body wants to be – your genetic set point.
As far as consuming protein shakes and supplements, that’s mostly a big sales pitch. It’s not necessary, especially for the average person. The body wasn’t designed to consume massive amounts of quickly absorbed protein in one sitting. But this is what the marketers want you to believe. Our ancestors would get their protein over the course of an entire day in a slow trickle, and they were working much harder than we were. So their requirements were probably higher than ours. Not only do we work less, and therefore require less protein, but we’re not patient enough to eat a slow trickle throughout the day. We want it right now: “I want this one smoothie to give me everything that I need for the entire day.” Well, the body can’t handle all the required nutrients all at once. Some nutrients compete with each other. That’s a big problem with protein supplements that biochemists understand, but the average person doesn’t. Amino acids compete with each other. So if you’re consuming a huge protein shake, many of the amino acids – some of them that are essential – are not going to be absorbed, because they’re outcompeted by other more dominant amino acids. So, even though they are on the label and you consume them, that doesn’t mean that your body is actually absorbing them or using them. But, had you eaten fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds throughout the day, you’d get a nice slow trickle and then there’d be much less competition for delivery among the different amino acids. People think their giant protein smoothie is all they need, and they are now set for the day. But there is a high likelihood that some nutrients were outcompeted and never absorbed.
To put it very simply: there are 20 amino acids that the body uses, but only five transport mechanisms. So, you can think of it like 20 busloads of football players waiting in the parking lot to be transported to the big game. But there are only five buses. Which means that the most dominant players are going to get on the buses and less aggressive players will be left behind – the weaker amino acids. This is why spreading out your protein intake is the best way to do it.
Also, protein is not the limiting factor in muscle growth. Exercise and genetics are the limiting factors – no way around it. People think steroids build muscle. Steroids don’t build muscle either – steroids allow you to exercise more. That’s all they do. They allow you to work out twice as hard. But you still have to do the workout.
WHAT OTHER PASSIONS DO YOU ENJOY WHEN YOU’RE NOT RUNNING?
Well, I’m a thinker. [Laughs]. I’m always researching. I don’t go a single day without reading at least 10 studies and listening to at least two to four hours of some lecture or science book. Every day is dedicated to learning on various topics. Then I’ll think about what I’ve learned and I’ll look for ways to relate it or ways to describe it that are simple and easy to understand. I’m always playing around with ideas – condensing them and refining them. I then make videos about what I come up with. This is fun for me.
One of my big passions is clearing trails. [Laughs] I spent a few hours this morning clearing some trees off of a trail and I love that, because I am doing something active, I’m in a beautiful natural environment and get to listen to some amazing book. I have a little voice recorder so I can record my thoughts about it and then process them when I get home. I can clear a path in my mind and through the woods, all at the same time. That’s heaven for me. It doesn’t get any better than that.
OTHER DREAMS AND ASPIRATIONS
The book that I’m listening to right now, Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, was one of the most influential books of my early twenties. So I wanted to go back and listen to it again from my current perspective and see if it still held as much value for me. I’m at the point in the book now where he’s talking about being an ascetic. He’s given up all his worldly possessions, he wears nothing but a loincloth, he sleeps outside under the stars, he meditates, fasts, and endures all kinds of hardships. He does this in an attempt to evolve spiritually. Not that I’m comparing myself to his character in the book, but I see that I’ve given up so much in my life to do what I do and I’ve endured a great number of hardships along the way.
A big part of my journey now is learning how to be okay with those hardships, learning how to accept them and embrace them. But at the same time, I’m trying to find ways in which I can bring some abundance back into my life, so that I can be more effective in my sharing. I don’t need a lot of money for myself personally. I wouldn’t know what to spend it on. But, if I had money, then I could open a school, or I could buy a farm and turn it into an educational center or I could travel more and give more talks. I could build more teams and really help people in a bigger way. I am realizing that money is important to do these things. My goal is not to get rich, but to find a way to financially grow this project so that it has a bigger impact. That’s the challenge.
WHAT IS LOVE?
Oh, this is something that I think about on a daily basis. I’ve been writing a lot about it lately.
Love is a choice that you make. Love is… my kitty, who is sick and old, deaf and blind in one eye, and sometimes she gets frightened and scared, or she doesn’t feel well and she’ll bite me or she’ll scratch me. Love is being patient and kind, even when she does that. Love is a choice that I will take care of her no matter what. No matter what she does – no matter how she may react. It’s a choice that I will make over and over and over again to be her caretaker.
Love is not this beautiful blissful feeling that people think it is. Falling in love – that wonderful sense of bliss and happiness – that’s a neuro-chemical delusion. One in which the world is suddenly transformed into a magical, amazing place, without problems or cares – at least when the feelings are reciprocated. That’s a wonderful thing to experience, but it’s very seldom grounded in reality, and it can lead to intense pain and suffering.
Most people who are experiencing ‘love’ are having an out of body experience. They are not present in the objective world around them, but instead have been transported into a neuro-chemical-induced alternate reality. They have chemically bonded with someone and are now operating in a haze of hormones and other bonding/feel good chemicals. They project positive qualities onto their partners that they may not possess, and they ignore any evidence to the contrary. Gradually, the haze clears and they are left to face the truth. A partner that seldom looks and acts like the fantasy image they painted onto them. They thought they were at the finish line, but now they suddenly find themselves back at the starting line… and they resent this. The bonding chemicals have passed out of their system and now they have to make a choice. Resent the other for being different than they imagined them, and possibly leave them, or choose to embrace the real person standing before them and get to know them as they are. Celebrate them as they are. Not how you’d like them to be. Choose them at the start line.
Pema Chodron has written a book about this, entitled – “start where you are.” You can’t start anywhere else, because you’re not there. But this is what people try to do. To start in some delusional place, rather than the one they are presently standing in. Love is a choice that you make while standing right where you are. No BS. No delusion. No fantasy. That’s what compassion is as well. It’s about saying, “Okay, this is what I’ve got. It may not be pretty, but I choose it, and I choose to take care of it no matter what it does. I choose to be kind and I choose to be gentle in the face of anything that shows up… and if I embrace the sweet chemical fog that lifts me into the sky and a storm comes in, then I choose to be with that storm. I choose to be with the rain, thunder and lightning… this too shall pass.”
I’m learning how to do this in my life. It’s not always easy, but it makes things so much easier when I make that choice. And there are moments when I allow myself to fall in love as well, and that’s amazing, but then I also have to make sure that I can bring those feelings back down to the ground to check in and refuel so that I don’t crash.
Love is a verb. It’s something that you do; it’s not something that you feel. It’s an action word.
ANY REGRETS?
Regrets? [Long pause]. No, I don’t think I do. I’ve lived a pretty full life. I haven’t gotten everything that I wanted, but that’s okay. Everything that I have done has taught me something, regardless of how painful it was or how embarrassing it was. If I look back on it, I can always learn something from it. It’s brought me to the place that I am now; therefore, I’m grateful for it.
YOUR ONE MESSAGE TO THE CHILDREN OF THE WORLD.
Well, since I don’t speak any language but English, if I were to communicate a message to the children of the world, it would simply be a picture of me smiling. That’s it. The message wouldn’t have any words, because words are simply containers – that’s all they are. They’re not the contents of the container – they are not the emotion, just the container for the emotion. What you fill them with is what matters the most. Like love. I can say “I love you,” but those can be empty words. What is inside of those containers? What feeling inhabits those words? How do they inspire you to act? That’s what matters. So, just a smile to symbolize play, joy, gratitude, humility and awe. Just smile at the world.
FOR MORE ON TIM VISIT HIS SITES
Source: http://junocristi.blogspot.com/2013/05/soulspeak-with-tim-van-orden.html
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