Inner Fitness: Healthy Deviance

Week of April 12, 2025

Intro to Healthy Deviance: From Chronic Depletion to Empowered Flow
The nature of the Unhealthy Default Reality (our real-life version of “The Matrix”); the vicious cycle it creates for health seekers; our “unseen problem” and the renegade solution offered by Healthy Deviance; scientific findings on the phenomena of “Ego-Depletion” and “Learned Helplessness” and where they might be showing up in your life. Tool/Exercise: Weird Symptom Checklist: Are You Breaking Yourself?

Nonconformist Competency 1: Amplified Awareness
The health-and-sanity-preserving importance (and challenge) of paying attention to what is going on in and around you in the midst of nonstop distraction; noticing the signals your body is giving you; the value of cultivating awareness and willingness rather than focusing on what we commonly think of “willpower.” Tool/Exercise: Renegade Ritual: Morning-Minutes Practice

Nonconformist Competency 2: Pre-emptive Repair
The power of getting ahead of accumulating damage that is done to your bodymind just by virtue of living in the midst of a pro-inflammatory culture; avoiding states of reactivity and vulnerability; building vitality, resilience, and autonomy in micro-doses. Tool/Exercise: Renegade Ritual: Ultradian Rhythm Breaks(URBs)

Nonconformist Competency 3: Continuous Growth and Learning
The necessity and reward of embracing a “Growth Mindset” around health and self-improvement; getting comfortable with the natural tension between where you want to be and where you are, between what you want to know and do, and what you are capable of right now; building on existing strengths and areas of success and identifying areas of opportunity (as observed from abbreviated Life Wheel exercise). Tool/Exercise: Renegade Ritual: Nighttime Wind-Down

Healthy Deviant Know-How: The Survival Skills of the New Era
An overview of the broad base of key skills and literacies (beyond “diet and exercise”) that one needs to be healthy in an unhealthy world, and how to move beyond information-overload toward selective experimentation and practice; Healthy Deviance as a Flow experience. Tool/Exercise: Your Hierarchy of (Healthy Deviant Skill) Needs

 

Pilar Gerasimo is an award-winning health journalist, pioneering social explorer, and author of The Healthy Deviant: A Rule-Breaker’s Guide to Being Healthy in an Unhealthy World (North Atlantic Books, 2020). Best known for her visionary work as founding editor of Experience Life magazine, which today reaches more than three million people with each issue, Pilar has also served as top health editor for The Huffington Post, and as visiting faculty for the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.
Today, Pilar co-hosts a top-rated podcast called The Living Experiment and teaches online courses through her digital learning platform, Healthy Deviant Academy. She guest lectures at universities, leads workshops at top retreat centers, and consults for organizations committing to transforming health and happiness at work and around the globe. When she’s not traveling, Pilar hangs out on her family’s organic, communal farm in Wisconsin with her pit bull pal, Calvin.
Learn more at https://avanan.url-protection.com/v1/url?o=www.healthydeviant.com&g=NGI1YjYzZGE4YzQ5NDkyNA==&h=YzgxMTU3YjI5YTBhOGViYzhlNjFkNDViZjliOGYyMjk1ZTJmMzMwNDA3YmFmNDE1NzM3OWFhZWFmMGZhZjhjMw==&p=YXAzOnJhbmNob2xhcHVlcnRhOmE6bzoxY2NhNjJkZmQ5MGE2ZTBlODQ0MTg0MzZlNTA0NjFiMzp2MTp0OlQ=(where you can also take the “Are You a Healthy Deviant?” quiz). Join Pilar’s private Healthy Deviant Facebook Group or follow her on Instagram at @pgerasimo.