"Die to Live." Well Said, Ashish...

60 full marathons in 60 consecutive days…in other words, running 42.2 kms every day for 60 days, thereby setting a new Guinness World Record, is what 50 year old Ashish Kasodekar achieved on 26th January 2022.

I remember interviewing him in 2019 when he ran 555 kms in the tenth edition of La Ultra -The High, in the cold, desert mountains of Ladakh.

When Ashish ran 555 kms in 2019. Photo credit: Kunal Vijayakar

“My competition is only with myself, and with no one else, and that is what I am setting my mind to,” is what he had told me. And being the only Indian to finish 555 kms in 126 hours and 18 minutes, Ashish mentioned that it was the many people cheering from him across India that gave him the energy to finish that magnificent feat. He crossed the finish line holding an Indian flag, along with his crew members.

At the finish line of 555 kms at La Ultra. Photo Credit: Chetan Sehgal

And here is Ashish again, calling his 60 marathons in 60 days, a celebration, a “Festival of Running.” Celebrating the joy of living, of community, of kinship, of spirit and passion, of accomplishments big and small, of stories that touch the heart, of having the purpose of spreading happiness, of infusing people with enthusiasm and energy to move and get active, and of coming together to make one person’s dream come true.

In 60 days, about 2500 people ran different distances with Ashish, people who had never run before, people who celebrated birthdays and anniversaries, mother-daughter duos, senior citizens, a man from the Army who injured his spinal cord and was in a wheelchair, who wanted to do his first full marathon with Ashish, and he did. Thirty to forty people did their first full marathons with him, and many did their first ever 5k, 10k, 20k, 42.2 kms who were inspired by Ashish’s dream.

It all started with a celebration of Ashish’s milestone 50th birthday last year.

“Divya, you must hear this punch line I came up with.” I was all ears.

“Die to live.” He said. “There is so much more to life than just paying bills. There has to be one thing you do that must bring you happiness. For me it is running, for others it could be whatever they choose to do. But be happy doing it.”

His 50th birthday celebration started with planting 50 trees, and then he came up with the idea of running 50 full marathons in 50 days.

But wait, the current Guinness record is of 59 marathons in 59 days, so might as well try and beat that. The only difference was that it wasn’t for himself. Ashish wanted to build a community of people who came together, to cheer, to participate, and to realize that they had it within themselves to run the distances of anything between 5 and 42 kms. He wanted to hear peoples’ stories, their reasons for running, their life stories, he wanted to set an example and get people to move, so even if they came to cheer him on, before they knew it, they did a 5 km lap with him. His method was such that it naturally made people join him.

Ashish ran the track at the Pune University. One loop was 5 kms so he would keep meeting different people at the start line who ran different distances with him as he repeated the loops. People had travelled from all across India to run with him. One such man was Sushil, who had reached Pune the night before from Lucknow, had borrowed a cycle from his friend, reached Pune University, slept for a couple of hours while waiting for Ashish and his team to arrive at 5:30 AM. Sushil ran the full marathon in an astonishing time of 3 hours and 5 minutes, and as Ashish invited him for lunch and to spend some time with him, Sushil’s simplicity stood out. He is a cook for a family, who support his love for running and sponsor his marathons wherever he chooses to run. So while he would have loved to take up the lunch invite, he needed to return his friend’s bicycle and head back to Lucknow the same day. There were people like these who motivated Ashish daily.

“I did not set an alarm for a single day in these 60 days. I would wake up on my own at 4:30 AM and start my runs by 6 AM. It was the anticipation of meeting everyone who showed up, whose stories I heard, who touched my life, that gave me the energy to run, every day.”

I asked Ashish how he prepped for 60 days of consecutive marathons. Focus and discipline were his influencers. He slept well, ate well, emphasized on recovery after each run, and again revelled in the energy from the community that came together and shaped his life too in ways which even he had never imagined. He underwent medical check ups every few days to make sure his parameters and vitals were all normal.

The moment he entered the Guiness Book of World Records. Photo credit: Team Ashish Kasodekar

And so, 60 days and 60 marathons were done. But that wasn’t enough. Ashish did a 61st marathon just for himself, to test his endurance and see in what time he finished it, just on a whim. And while he averaged 5.5 hours per run for those 60 days, walking and running and encouraging people to run along, his 61st was in a record 3 hours and 45 minutes.

You would think someone like Ashish would have been running for decades. So I asked Ashish about his entry into running. In 2013 he ran his first run of 15 kms, and from 2015 he did three full marathon (and a tad bit more) distances, twice ran the Comrades (90 kms) in South Africa, and then onwards it was running the ultra distances at La Ultra The High in the Himalayas: 111 kms in 2017, 333 kms in 2018, and 555 kms in 2019. I haven’t known anyone like Ashish, who has such a steep trajectory as far as running performance goes.

So what’s next, I asked.

The Badwater Ultramarathon in California’s Death Valley, a distance of 217 kms, with temperatures ranging from 50-54C is where Ashish is headed to in July.

“If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough…” Drive, dedication, and discipline,” are must haves when it comes to starting any journey, be it running or whatever you choose to do with passion.” That piece of advice stayed with me.

Any life lessons from this experience?

“The Himalayas taught me to listen, and not just to hear. This event taught me to embrace people, their stories, their trials and tribulations, dreams and aspirations. To listen to what they had to share with me. I learnt so much from everyone who came out to support me.”

I have always known Ashish to be this unassuming, humble person, and it shone through again this time over. The credit of his accomplishment was not just attributed to him, it was his crew, friends, the people from all over who came out to run with him, and what he learnt from them, which he said he will always remember.

It was the senior citizens who stood on the podium and received their first medals ever, who thanked him for influencing them, is what I will remember. And Sushil, who showed Ashish what drive and dedication meant and to what lengths he could go to pursue his dreams, is what I will remember. And so much more from Ashish’s experiences, his grit and spirit, his love for life, and how he is forever helpful in motivating and training people who want to take up running.

Thank you, Ashish, for inspiring so many of us out there, and once again, congratulations on an achievement that seems so personal to some of us. I will be rooting for you at the Badwaters this July

My Experiences With Inner Child Healing.

I’ve often shared my journey of life through my writings. Well aware of the fact that it is in the public domain, I will have potential clients who would read about my psychotherapeutic clinical approach, and also my ability to be resilient, my strengths and the lens with which I view the world. And they will also get a glimpse of my vulnerabilities, my grief, the pain and anguish I have gone through, only to rise yet again. I am proud of my battle scars. And if I wouldn’t have had them, my perspective on life may not have been this rich, this deep, or this expansive. I feel it makes me more empathetic, more compassionate, and more connected to the people I work with. And in case I experience any obstacle in establishing an effective therapeutic relationship with a client, I attempt to resolve those as well. People should know who they are trusting their inner lives with, and choose whether they want to work with me or not.  

And so, I thought I would share some glimpses of the journey of inner child healing that I delved into, a concept that therapists may touch upon briefly when they work with someone but when I went into it in depth, it opened up a whole new world that was waiting to be discovered.

Have you, as an adult, ever wondered when you react to situations impulsively? Why we fear rejection, or abandonment, or why we react to certain people as if they remind us of someone from our past? Why am I so clingy, so quick to tears, so sensitive to criticism or the slightest feedback which may be constructive even? Why do I feel less than others when I have everything in life that should make me happy? Why do I react with so much anger and irritability to people who remind me of my mother/father who I had a dysfunctional relationship with? Why do I blame everyone on the outside for my misery? Why do I clam up and shut down when I am faced with a specific situation that I always find overwhelming? Why do thoughts of “I am not good enough?” “I am not worthy enough?” keep popping up and making me doubt myself all the more? The list of such reactions can be endless but you get the drift.

You may be a high functioning adult who is working and is successful, has a family, friends, and is able to cope with most of life’s stressors. But some situations may be sticky, where you react impulsively, which others or you even may think, “This was so childish of me,” and you are perplexed or you find it difficult to understand what makes you react that way, and the cycle perpetuates. Only to flare up again, and again, and again, leaving you more confused, frustrated at times, and even people around you wonder, “what the hell gets into you every time?”

When we are children we develop ways in which we interpret our worlds and the people in them. Our first socializing agents often are our parents and siblings, and then of course teachers and friends. We have rudimentary needs, for safety, belongingness, comfort, love, food, clothing, shelter, appreciation, and we are figuring out ways in which those needs get met, and when they don’t get met, or we undergo a significant trauma in our family of origin, we react in ways which we as children know best. We don’t have the psychological resources to often cope very functionally as we now know, so those reactions could look like shutting down or withdrawing emotionally, blaming, being super quiet, crying, becoming anxious and tense, changing ourselves to please others, being clingy, brooding, being moody, acting out, giving too much or too little of ourselves to safeguard ourselves, manipulating others, giving our power away, lying, playing victim for attention, feeling inferior, feeling unworthy, suppressing emotions which end up showing up as anxiety or depression, and so much more.

Think back to some of these tools you may be using even now as an adult, and reflect on when you started using it first. Did it show up in your years till you turned 20-21? If yes, then your wounded part is still showing up all these years later, waiting to be acknowledged and heard, and eventually healed.

I always thought (outside of donning my psychologist’s hat), “This is how I am, and can’t really change now.” A part of me would wonder why I was like this? We attribute our behaviors to our “personalities,” but then I am talking about behaviors, covert and overt thoughts, feelings, which translate into how we are interacting with our world when under stress or in reaction to triggering situations.

For instance, I would shut down, withdraw, and then bury my head under the sand and hide when I was overwhelmed or distressed. I thought I was doing it to process what I was going through, that it was an attribute of me being resilient, and in a way it was. I would take a few days to find my emotional balance, and then be able to work through the situations. Sometimes it would take weeks, and I realized in the last three years it went into months, after my mother’s passing. And then I realized it was costing me my relationships with friends and even in my relationship with myself. I was growing more disconnected with my own authentic self, and would focus on taking care of others, getting into fixing mode. I didn’t like reacting this way but I didn’t know how to go about changing my patterns. Or why I was this way. Till I decided to dig deep, and what a storehouse of knowledge and realizations emerged, as I went about tracing the history and antecedents of some beliefs, behaviors and reactions.

Inner child work is a bid to reconnect with that unhealed, wounded part of us that remained frozen and suppressed, but kept resurfacing and showing up as dramatic reactions to similar situations that once hurt us, which we may not be aware of, till we shine a torch within, and see what exactly is brewing there.

Think of it this way: we have an argument or a fight with a loved one, which causes us deep anguish. And we reach out to them to talk, resolve, and reach a deeper understanding of how to interact in triggering situations. When we have meaningful, deep conversations, coming from a space of love and healing, there is an easing of the pain, and connecting in a plane that neither of us previously experienced.

The rejoining and forming a heartfelt connection with the lost inner child involves a discovery, a voice within that we never gave ourselves an opportunity to hear before, and which holds the key to the chest that has our unhealed emotional pain. It’s when we get into deep insight oriented inquiry, and get some answers, do we notice a softening and a revelation of our core wounding, that shows up in insidious ways as an adult. There is so much wisdom and healing within us, but we keep seeking comfort and answers outside. And no individual can provide those answers, as much as our own compassionate self-inquiry often supported by facilitation or guidance, patient listening, finding our own answers, realignment of our beliefs, letting go of assumptions, and forgiveness of self and others can.

What did this journey do to me, you may wonder. I started using more functional coping systems such as clear, authentic communication, expressing feelings and needs fearlessly, establishing more effective boundaries with people and ensuring I didn’t get affected by the resistance or the non-compliance with it. There was more self-compassion, centering and grounding myself when emotionally distressed, and reconnecting with loved ones; I let go of self-flagellating beliefs I held onto, and trusted and acted on what my authentic self wanted, rather than what would make me  better liked, or not be judged by. It was liberating, to finally not live in pain and anxiety at a personal level; to live freely and authentically. I started living in the here and now more, started savoring the daily moments more, that had gotten buried under the emotional baggage I was carrying. I prioritized my self-care and stayed with it, I didn’t just focus on fixing people but being with them too, the way they would have liked me to be. And I am still discovering the joy that the healing is continuing to bring as a ripple effect. It trickles down to work and relationships as well, often transforming codependent ones to healthier, wholesome ones.

Some obvious resistances that may come up to inner child work is the fear of the muck that may rise to the surface and finding ourselves unable to cope, and several other reasons that are beyond the scope of this post. But if we can learn to trust the process and not fall prey to our fears, if we can make space for all the thoughts, feelings, and reactions that rise, to focus on authentic healing rather than suppressing, avoiding, and running away from what influenced us when we were a child, we will truly experience meaningful happiness, resilience and freedom. We will not be buffeted under the weight of our own demons when we have healed inside out. Because when we close the loop, we truly, genuinely open up new possibilities that can uplift us to a new plane. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful place to find ourselves in?