Krista Scott-Dixon is the founder of Stumptuous.com, the best strength-training website for women. (Krista profile.) Krista is a sharp, very intelligent individual (she’s a former Toronto University professor). Stay tuned for a podcast with Krista here; meanwhile, here’s the link to our conversation — it’s 53 minutes long.
I love to return to the basics of Joyful Sports, the roots of which lie deep in human nature. My discovery of the basic principles started with a personal spiritual search. I was looking for what humanity has sought since the dawn of time. The spiritual path is a scientific, objective quest for two deceptively simple-seeming goals: happiness and freedom from suffering. If you could talk with the mystics of any path — Christianity, Buddhism, Sanaatan Dharma (the “Eternal Religion” that the British labeled Hinduism), Judaism — they would tell you the same thing: religion is about the search for happiness.
Long story short, an elderly monk encouraged me to run, at a time when I was just out of college and desperately needed exercise. I had recovered from a three-year shoulders-down paralysis and was comprehensively dried out and drained from living in the head-first environment of Stanford University. I was primed for joy and found isolated flashes of it in running. I sensed that there were hidden laws that, if I could discover them, would take me to a higher level of happiness reliably when I exercised. For twenty years I looked hither and thither on my own, guided by my mind and will.
My quest only began to be truly fulfilled when I discovered the immense power of the heart. Oddly enough, I found that the inner laws of the heart were described, very impersonally and non-sectarianly, in the wisdom-lore of the spiritual path that I had been following for several decades.
I tell a good part of the story in the podcast. I thank Krista for her sparkling energy and intelligent questions. I promise that in the forthcoming podcast with Krista, I’ll keep my mouth shut and let her do the talking.
Cheers,
George