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The Current Transcript for January 3, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

MATT GALLOWAY: It is the beginning of a new year. How are you doing? 2020 was rough for a lot of people, 2021 as well and now we are deep in another COVID winter. In many parts of this country case counts are surging. The start of the school year has been pushed back in many places as well, and it feels like there's been a steady stream of bad news. Just when things felt like they were starting to get back to normal. And so today on The Current, we are stepping into this new year with a different take on resolutions. Instead of setting out plans to lose weight or get in shape or climb that corporate ladder, we're talking about how to be a bit easier on yourself in 2022. You'll meet a former producer on this program who gave it all up to become a meditation teacher, an influential fitness coach who's learning to dial it down in the gym. The musician Shad is here to talk about embracing Black averageness, and the great songwriter Tamara Lindeman on how the music she makes with the weather station helps her cope with the anxiety of climate change. There is a lot going on right now, so take a deep breath. We're going to ease our way into 2022. Good morning. Happy New Year! My name is Matt Galloway. This is a special edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Taking care of yourself this year

Guests: Debra DiGiovanni and Tamara Lindeman

MG: Off we go. Dieting or losing weight is often at the top of many New Year's resolution lists. But my next guest will be making no such promises to herself or anyone else this year. You might know Debra DiGiovanni as a very funny stand up comedian and a regular on CBC Radio's The Debaters. Lately, though, she has also been sharing her journey through rehab for an eating disorder. We've reached her in Los Angeles. Debra Happy New Year!

DEBRA DIGIOVANNI: Happy New Year, Matt. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thank you for being here, and thanks for talking about this because I know it can be hard to talk about this sort of personal stuff. But you have been doing this. You've been doing it on TikTok to great success.

DEBRA DIGIOVANNI: Yes.

MG: Why did you decide to... Well, tell me about this? Why did you decide to go there and talk about your experience of rehab for eating disorders?

DEBRA DIGIOVANNI: Well, I always... I've always found a real sort of connection when I'm honest. You know, it's sort of always been one of the driving forces of my comedy that, you know, I'm very relatable because I just I don't... I mean, I guess I want to say I don't have a lot of boundaries on stage, but I thought in terms of this, it's like you know instead of always being joke, joke, joke. I thought, why not, you know, share something that's very important to me that was affecting my life. And I thought maybe other people would be interested in it and I was pleasantly surprised to see that, yeah, it's really been embraced. A lot of people either have sort of a similar problem or just want to know about it or feel relieved knowing they're not alone. And it's just a really lovely way to connect. I mean, for myself and I think for others as well.

MG: Do you mind telling me a little bit about rehab and when you realised that you needed some help?

DEBRA DIGIOVANNI: Sure. I, you know, through all of you know, my entire life, food has been a problem. But I kind of always thought it was sort of the lesser problem. You know, I don't make... I don't make a secret that I'm also sober. And I thought, Oh, that will fix everything. And then once sober for almost six years now, I realized, oh no, okay, food has been at the forefront. So when the pandemic started in 2020, in the beginning of 2020, it was, you know, I think we were all doing these things of like, Oh, I'm going to get fit and I'm going to do... You know I'm going to take all the time and... And I just really found myself kind of going the other way, you know, the first six months were OK. And then something really reared up, you know, I was alone, sort of like the isolation and the privacy, you know, with a person with an eating disorder, that's all you want is just to be alone. So being forced, you know, into this real isolation, it just made things get much worse. So after, you know, not kind of even realising it, just... I would say, a substantial weight gain, you know, everyone was like 15 pounds with COVID and it just... it just really took a toll. And then, you know, my best friend and a therapist that I've been seeing for a really long time, we're like, This is the time you've got the time. First of all, I had the time off, you know, I mean, it's like I wasn't travelling. So it just... they suggested rehab. I was very scared of rehab because in my brain, for some reason, I'm assuming because of television and movies. Rehab was like a mental institution, prison like it just... it seemed so, you know, I thought they were going to take my shoes and not let me talk to anybody. And but it's really just it's just a lot of therapy. It was basically like a spa for therapy, and it was the most meaningful and really most beneficial and most glorious gift I'd given to myself in my entire life.

MG: What did you learn? What did you learn in rehab?

DEBRA DIGIOVANNI: Here's the thing it's like I'm sorry that I'm going to use, you know, such as sort of an advertised, you know, marketing sort of. But I unlearned. So here's the whole thing. It's my whole life. You know, it's been your diet, after diet, after diet, after diet, and they only are successful for so long. And then usually what would happen. And I'm not alone in this. Usually what would happen is that I'd lose 30 pounds and then gain 40 and then lose 40 pounds and gain 50, you know, just the cycle continued. So what I really did, I made sure through help of again, a therapist and friends that I went to a rehab that was based on HAES, which is health at every size. So it wasn't based on weight loss, it was based on intuitive eating...

MG: Let me say that again, health at every size.

DEBRA DIGIOVANNI: Yes. Health at every size. So it was not about weight loss, and it was under the belief that, you know, all the things that we've been told that fat equals unhealthy. It's not actually true. And every person could be at an optimum health, but you don't have to necessarily be a size four, you know, and we've been told our whole lives that you have to be, that's the way you have to be. So this is, you know, it was about health and it was about intuitive eating... it sounds like a fake fantasy, but it's real. And it's probably one of the greatest things I've learnt because this is what I know now that all dieting leads to bingeing for people with my disorder, binge eating disorder. So any time I would try to diet, it would throw me into the... I'd do great for three months, and then it would go the exact opposite way because the minute I told my brain, you know, you just never stop eating carbs and there's no sugar, your brain, my brain just says the only thing I want is carbs and sugar. And then you take it to a weird level of stealing and sneaking, and hiding and getting up in the middle of the night to eat instead of just being like, you know, I had... One thing that I had told friends, You know, I said, I haven't had a piece of birthday cake like on my birthday in 30 years and my friends, like, you haven't had cake for 30 years! I was like oh no, I didn't say that, but I never had cake, you know, in front of people when it was like socially...

MG: A celebration kind of thing. Yeah.

DEBRA DIGIOVANNI: You know what I mean? What I would do is go and say that's it for me, I'm fine. And then, you know, five slices of cake by myself in private as a punishment for not eating cake. And it's this. It's this whole thing. It's like I just gave. It was too much power in food. I gave food morality. And that's a big part of unlearning diet culture.

MG: And so, you come out of this and you start sharing this on TikTok. And I mean, this is... people have... people have really responded to this. What does that tell you?

DEBRA DIGIOVANNI: Yeah, it tells me that we are all... We are all under the real like choking grip of diet culture. We just are... Now that I'm aware of it. It's just everywhere, like people that I... You know that I would look at and go, Oh, they don't struggle with their weight or this isn't an issue for them. You know, then within conversation. They have a diet tip for you. Or they say something about, you know, I feel fat or I can't have that because today I already had... And it's just like, Oh yeah, it's everywhere. It is absolutely everywhere. If you've been alive since, you know anyone that's been born since around the sixties, you have just been, you know, enveloped in diet, culture and it is sneaky and it just gets in there and it tells us, you know, that carbs are bad and this food is bad and you can never have this and that makes you fat. And even think of the words that we say "a cheat meal", oh, that was bad, dirty, eating clean, eating dirty. We put so much morality on food that it's hard to have a good relationship with it.

MG: So before... Just before I let you go, I mean, we started this off saying that we... We're going to start the year in some ways, giving people, you know, some conversation around how to be easier to yourself. What would you say as this year gets rolling for people who there's a lot that's going on and people feel the weight of it all?

DEBRA DIGIOVANNI: And I would say is that, you know, feeling the weight of it all, let the last thing you feel be your body weight, you know, put away your scale. This is not the time, especially now. This is not time to punish ourselves because of our weight. It's, you know, the real thing of intuitive eating is, you know, having the unconditional permission to eat what you want, but also, you know, include gentle nutrition. So yes, eat vegetables, sometimes when you want to. Get some loving movement, go for walks because they feel good, ride your bicycle because it's fun, dance because you love it, you know, just it's really, be gentle and respecting our bodies rather than trying to manipulate and punish. So, I mean, this is not, you know, it's not a weight loss program. It's a real, sort of mental and emotional, you know, break for yourself and your body, and then they all start to work together nicely when you're respecting all parts, the psyche, brain, body, all the things. So it's gentle. It's really about gentleness. There's no punishment necessary.

MG: I'm glad you're... I'm glad you're doing well, and it's really great to talk to you as always.

DEBRA DIGIOVANNI: Thank you always, always, always. Happiest of New Years!

MG: And to you. Debra DiGiovanni, Canadian Stand-Up Comedian She now lives in Los Angeles, California. As I mentioned, she has been talking about what she has gone through, the journey she's been on on TikTok. And you can find her @debradigi. That's Debradigi talking about diet, culture and intuitive eating.

[SOUNDCLIP: a piece of the song Separated by The Weather Station]

MG: Song called separated by The Weather Station, the album Ignorance was on just about every best of list in 2021. This is a beautiful record about love and loss and about the grief that comes with climate change. Tamara Lindeman is the singer songwriter. She is The Weather Station, and she joins me now. Tamara, happy New Year to you.

TAMARA LINDEMAN: Oh, thank you. Happy New Year to you!

MG: How would you describe your year? I mean, you had this wild year in which you put out this amazing record. And as I said, so many of us said this was the album or one of the albums of the year. And it comes out in a year that is difficult to say the very least. How would you describe 2021?

TAMARA LINDEMAN: I mean, yeah, I had a really unusual 2021 in that maybe I'm the one person I know that had this, you know, career, you know, incredibly successful moment in my career, but it was all really wild because I was just home like everyone else and so much was happening. But it was all on the internet. So everything had a bit of a surreal feeling for me because I, uh, I knew that people were experiencing the music and were, you know, loving the record. But I still hadn't seen any actual humans. So yeah, it was. It was a wild year for me. A lot, a lot happened, but very little happened at the same time.

MG: What do you see as your role in this moment right now as an artist? Because one of the reasons why people... you know this, one of the reasons why people connected with this record is because what you're singing about is what we are in right now.

TAMARA LINDEMAN: Yeah, I mean, this year's been... I've been so honoured by it because I felt like I had made this record that I made, you know, to be beautiful and, you know, rhythmic and fun. And, you know, I thought that people would be able to hear it and take it in. But you know, there's a lot of darkness in the record and there's so much conflict and there's so much pain and more I think even then, I realised when I made it. And what I found so amazing about this year is like by putting out this record, I've been able to connect with people all over the world who are really resonating with what I was saying, and I feel like I've been thrust into this role in a way of. Just articulating darkness, I guess, articulating this conflict and sort of holding that space in the world for people and with people. And it's really amazing for me.

MG: Why is it important to lean into that darkness? I think of a song like Parking Lot on the record, which in some ways is about not running away from what's happening. That is easy to skitter away from that. But that's not what you're doing. Why is that important?

TAMARA LINDEMAN: I mean, yeah, as I said before, you know this, this record, I wrote it in the middle of this awakening that I really think was one of the most important moments in my life where, you know, basically, I just started reading about climate change at the end of 2018, early 2019. I just started reading about climate change and then I became obsessed, and then I became obsessed with understanding everything about it. And, for example, the song you just played. You know, I wrote that in the wake of... I started to talk about climate change on social media. And what I found was instantly, you know, just those words. I found myself in so much conflict with people coming at me so angry that I was saying something. You know, which was true, right? Like if I said something on Twitter that you know about climate change, people would come yell at me and I found that it in this thing. You know, that's happening where there is this crisis unfolding, but we don't know how to talk about it with each other. And there's so much denial and fear and, you know, wishful thinking. It felt like that pulled me into understanding actually so much of the way the world works and so much of the way my mind works and so much of relationships. And, you know, through the lens of climate, I felt like I was understanding everything. And one of the biggest things I felt I came to understand was that, you know, what's difficult about the climate crisis is it's just so hard to face it and to truly understand that it's happening and how heavy it is. And I think that most people are engaged almost every day with running away from facing it. And yet it's like the running away is what causes the problems, it's what causes the anxiety and the denial and the jitteriness. And there's so much power to be found from facing, facing the heaviness and truly feeling your grief or loss.

MG: In that heaviness. How are you planning to take care of yourself this year? That's in somewhat what we're talking about over the course of this morning is there's a lot that's going on, but people needed in some ways figure out strategies to take it a bit easier on themselves. How are you going to take care of yourself?

TAMARA LINDEMAN: Yeah. I mean, I was resonating with what Debra was saying about care and softness, I think. I think like so many people, I've been going through my own experience of facing myself and, you know, realizing the ways that we all sort of try to punish and push ourselves away. And I think that for me, I've learned a lot personally about, about how to be kind to myself and how to be gentle. And, you know, a lot of what I'm thinking about for next year, very pedestrian things about, you know, wanting to eat right and exercise and do yoga. But you know, all of those things feel really meaningful, especially in the absence of knowing, you know, what happens next in the world and with our jobs and lives. I think, you know, the one saving grace is having the time and space to take care of oneself.

MG: I hope you get to play this in front of people again soon because this is a beautiful record and people deserve to hear it face to face in the meantime. Thank you very much and Happy New Year!

TAMARA LINDEMAN: Yeah, thank you so much.

[SOUNDCLIP: piece of the song Tried to Tell You by The Weather Station]

MG: That's Tamara Lindeman and The Weather Station in a song called Tried to Tell You from her new album Ignorance.

[SOUNDCLIP: continue song Tried to Tell You by The Weather Station]

MG: Your CBC news is next, and then we're back with more words of wisdom for the year ahead. My name is Matt Galloway. This is The Current easing our way into 2022.

[SOUNDCLIP: Tried to Tell You by The Weather Station]

Taking it easy

Guests: Shad Kabango and Allison Hill

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Well, here we are, starting another year with another wave of COVID-19. So instead of trying to overachieve and set long lists of goals for the new year, we're dedicating our first program of this year to taking it easy talking about easing into 2022. Still to come. Why you might not want to hit your fitness resolutions too hard this week or any week after that. In defence of dialling it back in the gym in just under 30 minutes. But first, we're talking about the average achievers and the beauty of getting a B or C.

[Music: Theme]

[SOUNDCLIP: a piece of the song Black Averageness by Shad]

MG: That's Shad and Black Averageness and is a call to embrace being just OK. It might sound strange coming from a successful artist who's been nominated for the Polaris prize more than once. But it is also a liberating message if you think deeply about it. Shad, Happy New Year!

SHAD KABANGO: Happy New Year, Matt.

MG: "Not broke, not rich, the only chalet that you're going to is Swiss." would much be the line of the year of 2021. What is Black Averageness mean to you?

SHAD KABANGO: To me, it's about, um, well, it's about reality. First of all, because average to me by definition is what most of us are and Black Averageness in particular is obviously, it's a fun song. It's a funny song, but there is a message to it. And the message is that we as Black people should get to be ourselves and who we are is average, meaning we... there's things we're good at, maybe. There's a lot of things we're not good at. We should get to try and fail and thrive in spite of our imperfections and not... not have to live with all of the stereotypes that exist negative stereotypes, but also the... There's... I think there's a lot of negative stereotypes for Black people, but there's also this stereotype that we're supernaturally gifted or something sometimes. When the reality is, obviously there's outliers, but for the most part, we're average like everybody else. And we should be able to thrive and enjoy some, some comfort and some pieces of dignity in spite of that.

MG: Why is that important to hear right now? I mean, at the beginning of the tune, you talk about Black excellence and Black excellence has been driven home. There's the idea that you need to be twice as good in class because of all of the things that you're going to be up against, not just in class, but at your job as well. Why is it important for people to hear this message now?

SHAD KABANGO: Yeah, because Black excellence is a beautiful thing to celebrate, especially in a society, like I was saying, where there's so many negative stereotypes about us. But I think that freedom, real freedom is when we can be ourselves and who we are is average for the most part, by definition. And that shouldn't have such a negative connotation, that word. I was always taught that average actually means you can do most things. You can do almost anything, practically speaking. You know, if you want to take running, for example, it's like, I'm not going to go and participate in the Olympics. But as an average athlete, I can play with my kids. I can play with my nephews. I can, if I practise enough, maybe run a 10k or hold my own on a basketball court. I can do everything in my life that requires running. So why does it have such a negative connotation? And that's for everybody. And so, yeah, I think there is something timely about that for Black people, but also for everybody, because there is such a vague but big social pressure out there to be amongst the outliers, to be something that frankly, we're not.

MG: How difficult has it been for you to embrace that idea of being normal or being average?

SHAD KABANGO: Well, I think I had the advantage of my parents reinforcing that for me, growing up that, hey, like you, you are average and that is totally OK. That means you can do, as I was saying, basically anything that you want to do.

MG: What did your parents teach you?

SHAD KABANGO: They taught me that, well, first of all, that I was average and that I shouldn't think of myself any differently. Average is not bad. Average is good. Average means I'm just about like everybody else. And so that... that's a good thing to know. I think it gives you some compassion for other people and takes a lot of pressure off of you. It took a lot of pressure off of me. I think I felt a freedom to try things, to fail, to I don't know, just a freedom. So I do think on one hand, I was given an advantage in terms of what I was taught by my parents. But on the other hand, I also live in this society with the pressures that exist. So yeah, I've lived with that. At the same time, because of what I've been taught, that song Black Averageness. This was not a hard one for me to write.

MG: There's a video that comes along with the song it features, amongst other things, you gardening and you out working on your jump shot and not sinking the basket that the ball clangs off the rim numerous times. Why is... I mean, there's... That's hilarious, but it's also real, right? I mean, we don't make the shots.

SHAD KABANGO: That's it. The reality is that everybody, the best, the best players ever, you know, we see Michael Jordan's highlight reels now, but he missed a lot of shots. He missed about half his shots. And in fact, he doesn't make the big shots unless he allows himself the freedom to miss a bunch of shots. So, yeah, I wanted to show that in the video. I wanted to show simple joy, like I wanted to show a Black man gardening. I wanted to show simple joys, simple pleasures that all of us should get to enjoy. And yeah, so all of that, it was important for me to include that in the video, because it is funny, but it also makes you stop and think, Well, why is this funny? This is just ordinary life.

MG: It's you living your life?

SHAD KABANGO: Yeah, exactly.

MG: What do you talk... I mean, failure is something that you've mentioned a couple of different times. How do you talk to kids about failure?

SHAD KABANGO: Well, I'm still learning. I got to get some tips from you at some point, Matt.

MG: I fail, I fail regularly. [chuckle]

SHAD KABANGO: But I do want my kids to know that that's OK, that that's normal. And the important thing is. Is something else you know, there's beauty and dignity and just who they are and that they're loved. They're loved by me and my wife and their family, but also they're loved on a cosmic level, you know, they're inherently good and beautiful. And there's other things to... I also want them to know there's other things to focus on besides their own success or failure in life. There's much, much bigger things. There's opportunities to contribute, opportunities to help. And I think that that's liberating as well. And hopefully one of the messages in the song. But yeah, those are all things I hope to be able to pass on somehow to my kids. I'm still figuring out how to do that. I'm sure parents are at every stage, but that's something I'm really keen on passing, passing on to them.

MG: Just before I let you go, let me go back to the why now kind of part of this? Because again, the reason that we're having these conversations this morning is because of the year that we've just come out of and what seems like the year that we're stepping into, where these are tough times and people are putting the weight on themselves. The weight's being put on them, but they're also putting a lot of weight on themselves. What do you think embracing averageness just broadly could help us do when we're trying to get through what we're in right now?

SHAD KABANGO: I think of it... I think of a couple of things, I think of compassion for other people and compassion for ourselves. I think when we think of other people as just about the same as us. For one thing, it gives us more compassion for other people and it makes us want to see other people succeed because it's just like seeing ourselves succeed. And I think it gives us some more compassion for ourselves, which we definitely need as we are all trying to survive and navigate all of the challenges. And saying, you know what? Surviving is... surviving this is OK, and it's actually something worth celebrating and yeah, and just making it to another day. So yeah, I think about those two things. This is definitely a time when, yeah, maybe we need to take our foot off the gas a little bit and just think about... think about getting through like everybody else and not not having to... I don't know, prove that we’re more than what we in fact are.

MG: I appreciate you. And this is... It's an important song. It's a great song from a great, great record. Happy New Year Shad.

SHAD KABANGO: Thanks a lot, Matt. You too.

MG: That Shad, his new record is called TAO.

[SOUNDCLIP: the song Black Averagemess by Shad]

MG: That's Shad. This is The Current on CBC Radio one. My name is Matt Galloway. We are kicking off this new year talking about easing into 2022. My next guest is somebody who's committed to helping folks in the Black community make time to care for themselves. Her business Hill Studio began as a hair salon, but over the past couple of years it has become so much more. Allison Hill, Happy New Year to you!

ALLISON HILL: Happy New Year!

MG: You heard what Shad was saying there about embracing averageness. I mean, does that resonate with you at all?

ALLISON HILL: Well, you know, first of all, thank you, Matt, for having me. I want to start with that. I'm a longtime listener, first time caller. And I would hate to start this with disagreeing with you. But I mean, I have a different perspective. Can we talk about it?

MG: Please.

ALLISON HILL: Okay. So we're talking a lot here about averageness, and I think that's an amazing thing if you're allowed to live in that space, but a lot of the Black community and especially like I'm a first generation immigrant. We didn't really get the space to live like that. So we have a different narrative that kind of pushes us. And I understand Shad's perspective around being and being allowed to be average. But the word I would call it is being content and not comparing. I do believe that we are all excellent, that we were all made in the image of God, we are meant to be excellent on this Earth. The problem is, is the comparison is the ideas of what excellent is and often that excellence is not seen through a Black lense.

MG: So don't compare, but be excellent.

ALLISON HILL: Be excellent. Be yourself. That's what you're meant here to be. You might not be the best at everything, but you can be your best.

MG: Tell me how you bring that to life through your salon. I mean, salons are always in the community more than a haircut, and your space is emblematic of that. What have you done to branch out beyond styling to... You're offering wellness programmes, you're offering connection for the community. What are you doing?

ALLISON HILL: Right. Well, Mat, do you have a favourite barber?

MG: I do.

ALLISON HILL: Okay, so you're going to get this. Salons, barbershops, they’re our churches, right? They’re our community centres. This is where we come together. We exchange ideas. You can put your hair down literally and really be yourself in that space. This is a space especially where a lot of our ideas, where a lot of encouragement, where a lot of our history is shared, these Black barbershops and salons and Hill Studio is no different. It's literally and I mean, shout out to the Mermaid Gang, but it's literally been like a clubhouse for us here. It's where women in the city come to power up, and it was a natural transition for us to move into wellness because I believe that hair is a medium of wellness.

MG: What are the programmes that you're offering?

ALLISON HILL: Okay. I'm glad you asked, because right now, one of the things that we're working on is melding all of our programming together. Over the past couple of years, we've done breathing, movement, meditation classes together. We've done spinning together, we've cooked food together. But this summer in particular, over two hundred women signed up to be a part of our run club. Are you a runner, Matt? I heard you're a runner.

MG: I am indeed. And I know about your run club. It sounds fantastic.

ALLISON HILL: Do you? Well, we'd love to have you. So when the pandemic started I was really into spinning and a couple of times I'd gone outside and like, tried to run. But the pavement is pretty hard. So I wasn't really sure that it was something that applied to me. And the truth is, I never really saw myself represented in the imagery around running. I'm not super tall, lanky, slim. So when I run, it looks a little bit different. And because of that, I didn't feel like running was accessible to me. But when the gym shut down and we didn't have access to the regular equipment that we used to, I just took to the streets and I started running and I started sharing that with my community at Hill Studio and a lot of women who look and feel just like me thought to themselves, Well, if Allison can do it, maybe I can do it too. And during that time, I just dreamed up the idea of like, what would it look like to have Black women out here running along with me? You know, when you're running in the first 10 minutes or so and your mind just trying to tell you like, you don't need to do this?

MG: You should stop running because it hurts. [laughter]

ALLISON HILL: Exactly. That's that... Working through that feeling of having to tell my brain, you can do this, right, this is not something that's out of your reach. You're not tired. You're just looking for a way out of this. Running gave me that practice of doing that daily. So when it came back to coming back to my office and working on like, what is my business going to look like through a pandemic? How am I going to deal with the stresses of life? I was able to apply that technique that I learned in running to my everyday life. And I wanted to make sure that in the run club that despite how fast we were going, the distance we were going, what we look like. That principle of spending time with yourself, talking to yourself, reminding yourself that excellence is accessible to you. That's what I wanted to give to my community.

MG: How difficult is it to convince members of your community? I mean, there's this idea of self-care, this idea that you need to, you know, look out for yourself, look out for number one. But how difficult is it to convince people in your community, women, Black women to do that, to take that break?

ALLISON HILL: OK. Well, let's think of who the Black women are. Right? We're mothers, we're sisters, we're front line workers. Black women are historically overworked and underappreciated. That's an idea that is often ingrained into us. So although we know the idea of self-care is important, we're not always given the privilege to indulge in that. So although some people might think, Oh, what's the big deal? Just go out and run. Many people don't appreciate the amount of barriers that women have to, especially Black women have to get passed before they can even get 30 minutes to themselves to run. Right. So this is kind of a radical act for us. It's about pushing everything else aside and saying, if you don't take care of yourself, nobody else is showing up to take care of you. You've got to make this space for yourself so that you can continue to pour out and be excellent for your family, for your friends, at work and ultimately for yourself.

MG: And that's advice that could apply to anybody.

ALLISON HILL: Absolutely. And it does. And that's why I think this idea picked up and resonated with so many women because they saw themselves being well, right and taking charge of that in their lives.

MG: We just have about a minute or so left. We're talking on the program about being kind to ourselves and again, you've hinted at this, but if somebody feels as though they don't have the space, they don't have the time because of everything that the world, you know, is asking of them. What would you say about how to start that?

ALLISON HILL: Well, first thing I would say is unplug, get away from the things that you're comparing yourself to. The second thing I would say is spend time with yourself. I'm a big proponent of meditation. There's so many voices and outside forces that are hitting us all the time. I think it's really important to daily, hourly check in with yourself and say, who voices that? Whose idea is that? Is that how I feel about myself? Or is there an outside force telling me that I can't or that I'm not good enough? Because I mean, this might be against what we're talking about today, but I do believe that there is excellence within all of us. And the deeper that you can look inside and the less that you can compare yourself, you can find out what paths you are supposed to be on and you can shine on that path.

MG: Allison, it's great to talk to you and Happy New Year.

ALLISON HILL: It's great to talk to you, too. Thanks for having me. Happy New Year!

MG: Happy New Year! Allison Hill is the owner of Hill Studio in Toronto. It's a hair salon and a wellness hub for Black women in that city. That idea of taking it easy and being kind to yourself is becoming a bit of a global thing. In the United States, there's a group called the Nap Ministry. It's been encouraging people to take some time for themselves and discover the liberating power of naps. I've discovered that of late, and it's quite powerful. In China, there was an explosion of interest in a movement called tangping or lying flat. This is about lying down as resistance, a protest against what's known as the 996 lifestyle that is you working nine a.m. to nine p.m. six days a week. Instead of chasing career success and shopping on credit, some young people in China are embracing a simpler life. And this song has become kind of an unofficial anthem of that movement, even though it has been repeatedly removed from Chinese social media.

[SOUNDCLIP: the song Tangping is the Right Way by Zhang Xinmin]

MG: The singer is Zhang Xinmin. Five years ago, he quit his advertising job in Wuhan to become a folk singer. It's a black and white video that accompanies this song shows him reclining on a sofa, strumming his acoustic guitar "competition is a waste of energy that wage slaves make for themselves", he sings. "Lying flat means you can't fall down".

[SOUNDCLIP: Song continues]

MG: Coming up after a regional update, I'll be speaking with someone who quit journalism for a more relaxing career. Jeff Warren was one of the founding producers of this program. He left the profession to become a meditation teacher and now runs a weekly event. It's called the Do Nothing project. He'll tell us how to do more, nothing. Coming up in just a few minutes. My name is Matt Galloway. You're listening to a special edition of The Current "Easing into 2022".

[SOUNDCLIP: Song keeps going]

Lifting the weight

Guests: Lou Schuler and Jeff Warren

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current. This is our first program of the New Year. And we are easing into 2022. My next guest has dedicated his career to helping people get strong. He's the former fitness director at Men's Health Magazine and the author of many fitness books, including The New Rules of Lifting Series. Last spring, though, he suffered a devastating injury to both knees, and he thinks years of training too hard may have been to blame. His advice now is you might want to take it a little bit easier. Lou Schuler. Hello.

LOU SCHULER: Hi Matt, Happy New Year.

MG: Happy New Year to you! How are you doing now?

LOU SCHULER: I'm about seven months post-surgery and I feel like I'm about 90 percent of the way back. So I like to think I'm a little ahead of schedule because I'm really special. But that's probably not true at all. I think it's just pure luck and not doing anything stupid for seven months.

MG: What happened to you in the spring?

LOU SCHULER: So it was May 31st. It was Memorial Day here in the U.S. and we had, my wife's family was over. I'd just barbecued dinner for everyone, and I had gone upstairs for some reason and was walking back down. And my best guess is that the quadriceps tendon right above my left knee just spontaneously ruptured as I was walking down the stairs. So I went airborne. I just, you know, my leg collapsed under me. I went airborne, landed on the tile floor at the bottom of the stairs. I landed on my right knee and that right quad tendon exploded. So I was within, you know, an hour or so, I was in the emergency room with two torn quadriceps, tendons, two wrecked knees, basically, and I had surgery about 24 hours later and I've been recovering ever since.

MG: You were in excellent shape up to that point, but were there warning signs that you think you missed? If you look at, you know, hindsight's 20/20, as they always say, but are the things that you think you missed up to that moment on the 31st of May?

LOU SCHULER: Oh, there's a trail of tears. I didn't just miss things I wilfully ignored. I played basketball for years, even though it would leave my knees hurting for days afterwards. I did exercises that all the cool kids said you should do, which I also told people they should do. And I wasn't wrong about the exercises. What I was wrong about was this idea that everybody needs to work out in a certain way with a certain range of motion. And I gradual.... And I did back off that in later books, but I did put out this message or help put out the message, that others were pointing out that there is a right way to train and the right way is with a barbell and to do a squat down to a certain range of motion and to do deadlifts where you lifting this heavy weight with a straight barbell, you know, from flat on the floor. And human bodies, maybe we adapt well to it at first, but if your body isn't perfectly aligned for those exercises, they're going to catch up with you sooner or later.

MG: Tell me more about that. I mean, one of the things that you wrote in the wake of these injuries was that you suffered the devastating injury because of your history and expertise, not in spite of, but because of that history and expertise. What do you mean by that?

LOU SCHULER: Well, that's right, because when you have a large network of sources, you obviously are going to weed out the ones... You're going to pay most attention to the ones who seem to have the best message or the most entertaining who are the most quotable, you know, when I'm writing magazine articles. So I would gravitate toward them, and a lot of them would be absolutist about these things. You know, we didn't call them influencers back then. We called them gurus kind of cynically. But the non cynical part was that we all paid attention. So if somebody said, well, you're not strong unless you can do X and maybe X might be, squat one and a half times your body weight with a barbell down until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Well, then everybody would. You know, I won't say everybody. Lots of us would try to do that, even though the exercise itself was telling us, this isn't for you. Same thing with deadlifting a barbell off the floor. Same thing we're doing barbell bench presses, which you know there are so... Human anatomy is odd in that we are not... We don't have perfect bilateral symmetry. So exercises that force your joints into a certain range of motion or force both joints at the same time, both hips or both shoulders oftentimes are going to create injuries because your shoulder sockets are simply different from each other and your hip sockets may be different from each other. You may have one leg that's slightly longer than another. You may have a slight rotation in your lower leg that would cause one foot to flatten out more than the other foot. And you probably encounter... I know you're a runner and you may encounter this all the time amongst runners is that when you don't have that perfect bilateral symmetry, but you're doing exercises that call for you to be perfectly aligned as you get more aggressive with those exercises and as you do them longer, you're going to create some really long lasting damage.

MG: Why do you think we do that? Why do we go back to the things that we think we need to do, even though they might hurt us, even though we know that these exercises might lead to some sort of damage, either in the short or long term?

LOU SCHULER: Well, I think it comes down to survivor's bias, where we look at people who are the survivors of these things who are still doing these things after many years and getting strong and still lifting heavy weights. And we look at them and say, well, they must know what they're doing. So we should do what they're doing, not thinking that they're... that they might be completely anomalous. They might be part of a very, you know, a single digit percentage of the lifting population who can get away with doing these things for years and years and thrive on them. Possibly more than 90 percent of us won't thrive by doing the things that they do in the way they do them for the amount of time they do. Now it's fine. Everybody's going to start off pretty much the same way. But when that discomfort starts, when you are feeling... When you kind of walk funny two days after you've done squats, when you feel that... when the discomfort doesn't stop, when you stop the exercise, when it lingers for hours or maybe even days afterwards, you're doing damage to yourself. And if you keep going like that, you may think that your hard core and you're leaving it all in the gym and you may think that you're heroically training your body into the best condition it can be. But you're, at the same time even if that is true, you're foolishly training your body into a state of alarm and alarm becomes injury, and your body will give you lots of warning signs, but it will never tell you exactly when things are about to explode. It'll never tell you when that knee's about to go out, but it'll give you... most of the time to give you a lot of warning along the way.

MG: There's a whole industry that's built around this, and you've been part of that industry for a long time. Do you feel, having gone through what you've gone through and knowing what you know now, is there advice that you wish you could take back in some ways?

LOU SCHULER: Well, the yeah, the main advice I wish I could take back was the emphasis on using barbells early on in a program. I think for a lot of people, it's the easiest way to do things because it's such a common piece of equipment and a lot of people prefer to work out at home, and it is really hard to stock a home gym with enough weights to get a thorough resistance training workout without using a barbell. Now today, I would probably say most people don't need to use that barbell, but back then I honestly, I thought I was giving the best advice I could, and I was helping a lot of people, especially the ones who wanted to workout at home to be able to inexpensively stock a home gym. In retrospect, I wish I'd been more nuanced, but this was a period we're talking about where I'm writing these books between like, say, 2004 and maybe 2007. And after that, all the new ones started coming in and I started... My co-authors and I started giving people many, many more options and started being more vocal about the nuances of these things and about all the other options they have. And I say that not... because there are lots of... There are some people out there, very famous people who are still giving that same advice about everybody using a barbell. And if you don't use a barbell, there's something wrong with you. It's not because of the exercise, it's not because of my advice. There's just something wrong with you. If you can't do this and there are people out there and they're still thriving and they're still extremely influential. And I suspect that there's a lot of people out there who are still going to get hurt because this is the message they're hearing.

MG: What about more broadly? I mean, as we start this year and again, people are thinking they often... If you could go to the gym, this would be the time when people would go to the gym in huge numbers because they feel like this is the moment where they can lean into that fitness routine. What would you give people in terms of advice for people who might be tempted to overdo it?

LOU SCHULER: Well, first off, I would say that the calendar is a terrible reason to start a workout routine because if you're only doing this because you've made a resolution to do it, you're probably not... It's probably not going to stick. The way an exercise resolution sticks is if you have a better reason for doing it than just, well, it's January 1st I need to do something for myself. Nothing. You know, I have no problem with a New Year's resolution, but I think the resolutions that stick are the ones that you make for a reason other than turning a page on the calendar. So that would be my first bit of advice. My second piece of advice would be. And it's weird on your program. I'm between the woman who's talking about taking it easy on yourself and the guy who's telling you to do nothing and then the guy playing the guitar while lying on his back. I've always been a big fan of doing a lot of stuff. Walking is awesome. I can't imagine how you would get hurt walking unless you just have like a chronic injury or you get hit by a car or step in a pothole or something. That is the most awesome injury. And if everybody did a little walking every day, probably the populations of your country and ours would be much healthier. However, that's not very inspiring to most people. So if you're going to do something inspiring, I'm all for it. I'm 100 percent for it. I just say start gradually and pay close attention to what your body is telling you as you go along.

MG: Lou, it's great to talk to you. Happy New Year and thank you very much.

LOU SCHULER: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Lou Schuler, the former fitness director for Men's Health magazine and author of The New Rules of Lifting. Some of us are not trying to lift barbells in the gym. It's just life that is weighing us down. If you've been feeling that way. My next guest may be able to help. He used to be a producer on The Current, but a number of years ago made a big career change. He's now a meditation teacher. You can hear him on the Calm app and the host of, as Lou was hinting at the Do Nothing project. Jeff Warren, Happy New Year to you!

JEFF WARREN: Happy New Year to you, Matt, nice to hear your voice.

MG: It's great to have you on this program once again. This is the time of the year that a lot of people talk about those big self-improvement projects, and Lou was saying, You know, a calendar is a terrible idea in terms of being a motivator for fitness activity. But you also push back on this idea of using this moment as some sort of jumping off point to make yourself better. Why does that strike you as a strange prospect?

JEFF WARREN: Well, I mean, I guess in the big picture, there's so much doing that's happening in our life. There's so much messaging that we give ourselves around not being good enough, around needing to change this, around needing to fix this and that momentum of needing to always... that message of needing to always change ourselves and update ourselves and fix ourselves is itself very stressful and very exhausting. So we need to balance that. I think with just a kind of very simple message of take it easy on yourself. Just instead of doing more, find ways to do a little bit less to kind of really let the system reset. And I think actually, it's not unlike what your previous guest was saying. You know, there's A. a way to do this in a way that's kind of right for you. You don't have to take the generic messaging around it, but B. when you do come to rest, you're then able to see more clearly what your system, what your life actually needs, and then you can implement the right practice from there. But often we don't know what the right practice is because we are continually spinning our gears and go, go, go. And we're just listening to all the messaging around us whenever getting quiet and actually paying attention to what we really need inside.

MG: How did you figure this out for yourself? How did you decide that you wanted to leave being a producer here at the CBC on The Current and then move toward teaching meditation?

JEFF WARREN: Well, it was sort of two things, I mean, The Current gave me a platform to start to get sort of intellectually interested in how the brain works and what practice is. And so I started to do stories for that on The Current, but in the background was my own sort of mental health crisis. You know, I was just spinning the wheels. It was like I had a red hot turbine in my brain that was just I didn't know how to turn it off. And so I started to develop all of these challenging kind of mental health symptoms. You know, I eventually got an ADD diagnosis later bipolar diagnosis. So my own mental health was kind of coming apart. And so I had to do something and I didn't know, you know, the culture didn't really prepare me for thinking about things in this way. I kind of had the idea that I think a lot of us have, which is that, you know, when it comes to mental health, you're kind of, you're born, you just sort of coast. And when there's a crisis, you go to an expert or professional and you get fixed. And I didn't understand that most mental health challenges were actually preventable. So that was what this was the next place for me to go, well, what can I do internally in myself to begin to take care of myself, you know, to address some of these challenges? And so I got... that's what... I wrote a book called The Head Trip. That's sort of about, you know, what can we learn about our own internal processes that can help us get more regulated and sane. And that led me into meditation. And then I just started doing a ton of it and without ever any expectation that I'd be teaching it or sharing it with anyone other than as a journalist. But of course, the deeper you go into it, the more you see how helpful it is, and then the more you're motivated to try to share what you're figuring out. And then you know, you're not doing it alone. You have all these people that have supported you. So there's a sense in which you want to just sort of share the wealth, and that's what ends up happening. I just started sharing more practises and it ended up becoming a whole career path eventually. And I'm glad I did it, you know, because it's super rewarding and freaking helpful.

MG: Well, helpful is, I mean, it's true. I mean, I would say personally like creating a practice of meditation, of sitting down, of slowing my brain down has changed my life. Right. I feel like a different person because of that. What does it give you?

JEFF WARREN: Well, actually, I'd love to ask what it gives you. I'll respond to that, but what... You said changed your life, like how did it change your life?

MG: Well, just what you said, that in some ways that your brain is spinning. And this gives me some perspective and allows my brain to slow down a little bit and allows me to think a little bit about what's happening and why that's happening to me. And give me some control and some agency in some ways.

JEFF WARREN: Well, exactly. I mean, you can think of mental health practices like fitness practices. That there are a whole range of different kinds of practices that maybe create slightly different effects. And there are different reasons why you might take up one practice at one time versus another. But if you really look at the heart, the core of what's happening in a meditation practice, it's about coming into what's happening right now, being available in this open, sane, centred way for what's happening right in front of you. And you don't realise you're not doing that often until you start to take up a practice. That's only when you start to see, in a sense, all the levels of insanity that are happening inside you. All the different ways your thinking is distorting situations or your moods are distorting how you're responding. And then, of course, none of this is new. This is what meditations have been saying from time immemorial, but you begin to see that for yourself. And that's what makes all the difference. You're like, Wow. I mean, for me, after I sit down for 20 minutes of meditation or 10 minutes of meditation, the direct experience is that I'm more available for my toddler son, I'm more available for my wife. I'm more effective at my work. You know, it's like I had to kind of stop everything in order to begin to reset it and return back to the world in a way that was more effective and sane. And that's what... That's been the effect for me. You know.

MG: You've been hosting this online event called the Do Nothing project. What is it exactly?

JEFF WARREN: Well, it's... Well, first of all, it wasn't my idea. I have to... I have a friend, Lily, who helps me get my life organized because one of the challenges of ADD is that executive piece. But when I moved to a new town a few years ago, my wife and I, and didn't know anybody in the town and I had been used to my regular sitting group in Toronto. I started something called a Consciousness Explorer's Club with my friend James Maskalyk who, I know you've had on here.

MG: Yes.

JEFF WARREN: And that's a terrific group that's Toronto based and now international, actually. And it's run by my friend Aaron Oakes. So I didn't have the go to sitting group in Toronto anymore, so I decided... It really helped me decide to create this thing online. And the idea was that anyone could tune in from anywhere and at eight o'clock on a Sunday night and over the years it's just grown. You know, it's sort of a very minimalist presentation of meditation, you know, not trying to make it into some exotic thing. It's kind of connecting to the heart of it, which is just, can you just sit and be here with what you hear and accept what you hear and not need to change anything, not make a big deal out of it, not turn into some whole [inaudible] enterprise? And that's the vibe. And then it just, it's kind of grown from there, and it's awesome. I mean, it keeps me on the straight and regular for my practise. It gives me a chance, like it's a thing where I know every week I can check into this practice on a Sunday and I check in with the community. And what's interesting is kind of the silver lining of the pandemic is that lots of people are doing this now. Lots of teachers, lots of mental health folks, lots of online therapy groups and meetup groups and the support networks have kind of moved online in a way that is, it's one of the... Like I said, one of the silver linings is that it's scalable. A lot more people can join in when it's virtual like that. And that's kind of what happened, both with the Consciousness Explorers Club and with the Do Nothing project. Now we get really a lot of international folks that come in, especially from the States and from Europe. And it's amazing, you know, and that that ends up being a real support for your week.

MG: You could imagine some people's eyebrows might raise when they hear the name of it. The Do Nothing project that sounds indulgent, that sounds like a waste of time. That in this society, that's a luxury and a luxury that many people can't afford and a luxury that people might say is, as I said, you know, a waste of time.

JEFF WARREN: Well, yeah, I mean, I guess if you come from the perspective that time can be wasted. It is. I mean, it's slightly tongue in cheek, but the essential wisdom of it is that, you know, you have, you know, seven other, six and a half other days of the week and twenty three and a half other hours of the day to be in the doing mode. And that it's worth checking out if there's a contrast there that actually helps you be more effective in that mode. That's kind of what the... That's what the experience is and I think, you know, calling it The Do Nothing Project is just to kind of bring it down to Earth. You know, it's just to make it feel like anyone can do it because that is really the essence. You know, that's the sort of practice is to sit down and not try to make anything happen, to not try to implement anything special, but just to actually let yourself be the actual human being that you are. What I found interesting in the past couple of years is how much that message has really gotten out to activist groups, to change makers. There are all kinds of examples of people who maybe don't have the resources that are typical. You might imagine that you need to be able to indulge in such an indulgent practice who are actually saying, Look, this is the centre of our activism that we need to be able to rest and take care of ourselves in order to be effective at what we're doing out in the world. And I super believe that as well. And I think, you know, half an hour... half an hour, once a week, a lot of us can figure out how to kind of make that time. I mean, it's a juggling act for me and for my wife to figure out how to do it because it's right at the time when my toddler goes down, but the good thing is it's recorded and then people can come back to it later in their own time. And of course, this is just one resource of many, many, many. There are many other things out there that are very similar that can support folks, and I think this is what this is really about. You know, the big picture is this, it’s about accessibility. It's about how do you create practices that are accessible to everyone because that's preventable mental health. It's about being able to connect to the support structures and the practices that are going to work for your situation. And that is kind of the work of our time is to help people connect in that way. And so this is just part of that larger project.

MG: Just very briefly, before I let you go, if somebody is intrigued by this and they want to dip a toe into a meditation practice, but they don't know where to start, where, where do they start?

JEFF WARREN: Well, you know, the apps have been a really great source of support in this, and there's a great free app called Insight Timer so you can get it free on your phone. They have like a 10, 20 minute, 30 minute practice and you can just get guided by different teachers. And I'm on a couple of pay apps. So those are options: this one Calm, 10 percent happier. And there's lots of others. There's just tons of stuff online, you know, the Consciousness Explorer's Club, which is our non-profit. It has a ton of free practises. If you click on, I think it's like a guided audio section. They're all for free, all different teachers guiding different practises so you can kind of find one that fits for you. And they have an offering on Monday night that's basically free or scalable. And then my thing is on Sunday night. So those are some places to begin, but also begin in your own life. How can you stop in the middle of your day? Where can you take five minutes just to reset, to notice your breath, to notice the play of light in the leaves? And it's really about letting these small, good things land. That's the essence of what a practice is, and everyone can find a way into that in their own way.

MG: Jeff, it's great to talk to you and Happy New Year.

JEFF WARREN: Great to talk to you, Matt. Happy New Year!

MG: Jeff Warren, the host of the Do Nothing project and the co-author of Meditation for Fidgety Sceptics. Great title. That is The Current for this Monday. Coming up next on CBC Radio One it's Q. Hopefully the last hour and a half have got you thinking about ways to take the load off your own shoulders and head into 2022 feeling a bit lighter and a bit calmer. What are you doing to take care of yourself this year? It's been a tough few years and we're starting this year in a pretty tricky spot. You can let us know thecurrent@cbc.ca or tweet us @thecurrentcbc. In the spirit of losing a little bit of that weight. This is The Band. I'm Matt Galloway. Have a great new year and thanks for listening to The Current.

[MUSIC: The Weight by The Band]

Monday January 3, 2022 Full Transcript

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