Inside Out with Jimi Hunt - The Mental Fitness Podcast

“Today can be the most mentally unfit you will ever be, if you choose it to be.”

Jimi explains how just like your physical fitness, mental fitness is a lifetime game and the most important step in your journey is the first one - drawing a line in the sand and opting into your mental fitness journey. He challenges us to make the decision today that we will commit to improving our mental fitness by as little as 1% every day.

He unpacks the reality of beginning your mental fitness journey, explaining how unlike the time he decided to walk 53km in one day without training, taking small steps every day and increasing them over time is the key to moving up the mental fitness continuum.

He discusses the three areas where we draw influence from - the close, the many and the powerful, and delves into how vitally important it is that you carefully curate the people you surround yourself with and how this impacts your growth.

Challenging the norm of goal setting Jimi believes that “we don’t want to be trying to achieve goals, what we really want to be able to do is create a new identity for ourselves.” He talks about how, unlike physical fitness, mental fitness is difficult to measure and how important it is to focus on the journey, opting in and being consistent.

LINKS

The Well Wellington https://www.thewellwgtn.co.nz/

(Mentioned) Buttabean Motivation https://www.thebbmprogram.com/

Claire Robbie https://www.clairerobbie.co/

Everyday Habit Tracker https://everyday.app/

Jim Rohn - One of the most quoted men ever https://www.jimrohn.com/

Jimi chats with Nikki Ralston, world-class yoga teacher and creator of The Ralston Method about how yoga can be one of the best tools to have in your mental fitness toolbox.

Nikki explains the importance of regularity in a yoga practice and how doing a little bit every day or just a few days a week will benefit both your body and your mental fitness.

She tells us how yoga helps ‘turn down the volume’ of the loud voice we often have in our heads and how it guides us back to clarity. She describes it as “the clearest mirror you’ve ever looked in to observe yourself and your habits”.

Jimi gives us insight into his love-hate relationship with yoga and that while he still thinks it’s hard and not enjoyable he explains why committing himself to a consistent practice has been so important and why it’s not just about putting on your stretchy pants and doing a few moves. He also lets us in on the epiphany he had at the end of one particular class while lying in savasana.

Jimi and Nikki discuss that despite the stereotype of a modern day ‘yoga person’ the practice of yoga should be available to everyone and Nikki reveals her ambitions to make yoga accessible to a far broader group of people and communities and talks about her diversity scholarship within her teacher training series.

They discuss the importance of shopping around for different varieties, teachers and classes until you find the right one for you and the benefits of choosing to turn up for something every day, especially on the days you don’t want to.

LINKS

The Ralston Method - www.theralstonmethod.com

Diversity Scholarship - https://static1.squarespace.com/static/541e8f00e4b09194f767acdf/t/606be7c326be53510a79dc8e/1617684420785/Equity+in+yoga+scholarship+info.pdf

Books - The Body Keeps the Score - Bessel Van der Kolk

Trauma Sensitive Yoga (with funding available through ACC sensitive claims) - Google: Trauma Sensitive Yoga to find practitioners near you.

Fat Yoga NZ:  www.fatyoganz.com

Five Tibetan Rites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Tibetan_Rites

The original 1939 Tibetan Rites book: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AhZdtOt69M2bkzEx4Al0jmU3lXKc?e=MrAUFe

Libby and Jimi are currently thousands of miles apart for over 6 months and Jimi has had a few LDR's before that have ended horrifically. So we sit down and talk about how we make it work in regards to communication and how we deal with the lack of physical touch.

We also answer some listeners questions about time zones, communication, jealousy, love languages and the freedom to sleep with other people.

In this episode Jimi dives into what exactly a Mental Fitness Toolbox is and what some of the tools are that you can put in there to help keep your place on the continuum as well as move you up.

Understand how and why it's so important to have a toolbox full of tools and what happens if you're caught short. 

This is a fundamental episode that allows us to understand all the teachers on the podcast that will enlighten us on particular tools in the future. 

Ever since I became friends with Art Green I have been mightily impressed by his dedication to improving his physical fitness. If you look at his Instagram you can see what I mean, the man is a specimen. What most people don't know is that he works almost just as hard on his Mental Fitness.

In this episode we chat about how to opt in to your own fitness, where he finds his Mental Fitness tools and why they are so important for him in his life.

Art isn't a 'subject matter expert' per se, he's a normal guy who is figuring it out as he goes along and I think that his journey can give you insight into yours.

In 1992 Dr Gary Chapman wrote a best-selling book outlining what he called 'The 5 Love Languages'. Libby's and mine are completely different. We talk about what our love languages are, how giving the same as you want to receive is a massive problem we overcome and how understanding each other's love languages has lead to a much happier relationship. (This works for single people too though...)

Libby also breaks ground on her mythical 'Sixth Love Language' - Food.

In 1992 Dr Gary Chapman wrote a best-selling book outlining what he called 'The 5 Love Languages'. Libby's and mine are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. We talk about what our love languages are, how giving the same as you want to receive is a massive problem we overcome and how understanding each other's love languages has lead to a much happier relationship. (This works for single people too though...)

In this episode I talk about the disease I suffered from; 'Whatnextism'. It was a drug that affected me like any other. It made me happy, then ultimately unhappy and I was always craving the next hit.

I outline the pitfalls and how I ended up having to let it go, for my health and the health of those around me. 

Nigel Beach is a master of many things, but in this episode we look into how to train your body to get out of flight, fight, freeze through breathwork and hot & cold therapy. Key Mental Fitness Tools for the toolbox.

This is one of those sayings that Libby and I heard once and it then fundamentally changed our relationship for the better.

We are both on our own journeys, we happen to be choosing to journey together at the moment but that does not mean we own each other or we owe each other anything. An interesting chat where we delve into some of the realities of that.