Christiane Wolf is a former physician turned internationally recognized mindfulness teacher and ultramarathoner. She discusses the importance of interoception—listening to your body for peak performance. The conversation explores how to cultivate a compassionate relationship with your body, the foundations of mindfulness, and the balance between discipline and self-compassion in exercise. Wolf shares insights on overcoming psychological barriers to fitness, the benefits of endurance sports, and practical tools to reduce stress and enhance body awareness.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Christiane Wolf's Ultramarathon Journey
Christiane Wolf became an ultramarathoner in her late 50s, running distances over a marathon on trails.
She started gradually, walking and running incrementally, emphasizing longevity and injury prevention through strength training.
insights INSIGHT
Interoception: Trust Your Body
Our culture obsesses over body appearance but neglects listening to bodily signals, creating mistrust of the body.
Interoception is the brain's process of receiving signals from the body, vital for recognizing needs like hunger or pain.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Train Body Awareness with Mindfulness
Practice body scans or mindful movement like Tai Chi to increase interoception and body awareness.
Regularly focus attention on often unnoticed sensations, training your awareness like a muscle.
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Mindfulness and Self-Compassion to Help You Leave Chronic Pain Behind
Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD
Outsmart Your Pain offers evidence-based strategies to manage chronic pain through mindfulness. It includes guided meditations and practices such as rewriting the 'pain story', practicing loving acceptance of the body, and strengthening support systems. By separating pain from stressful thoughts and emotions, individuals can live more joyful lives.
A Clinician's Guide to Teaching Mindfulness
Christiane Wolf
Beyond the cliché: listening to your body.
Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD is a former physician and internationally known mindfulness and Insight (Vipassana) meditation teacher. She is the author of “Outsmart Your Pain” and the coauthor of “A Clinician’s Guide to Teaching Mindfulness”. She is also a senior teacher at InsightLA in Los Angeles. And in her spare time, she runs ultramarathons.
In this episode we talk about:
How to develop and hone interoception
How to do practices like a body scan — and how helpful it can be for all aspects of life
How to shift how we relate to our body
The four foundations of mindfulness — one of the crucial discourses of the Buddha
What a healthy relationship to the body looks like
Translating monastic practices to our modern day lives
How to reduce stress and suffering in the body
Indifference vs equanimity / serenity
Helpful questions to ask yourself in cultivating a new relationship with your body
The four sources of reluctance or resistance to exercise
Discipline vs self-compassion
Unpacking the dysfunction among people who overexercise
What we can learn from injury
Paid subscribers of DanHarris.com will have exclusive access to a set of all-new guided meditations, led by friend of the show Cara Lai, customized to accompany each episode of the Get Fit Sanely series. We're super excited to offer a way to help you put the ideas from the episodes into practice. Learn all about it here.
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