Running Reunion: Sanjay Rawal - Ep. 4

Have you ever wondered what a podcast guest has been up to since you heard them interviewed? We have, and so Running Reunion was born.

Tina last interviewed filmmaker Sanjay Rawal in 2019, after the release of 3100: Run and Become, a documentary about the world's longest running race, the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race. You can learn more about the race in Running for Real episode 277 with Harita Davies, who has completed it three times.

Since then, he's released Gather, about Native American food systems, looked at through the eyes of an Apache chef from Arizona. It's also, Sanjay says, about "resilience. People who value their relationship with the land, whose people have had histories with particular pieces of land or areas of the world, in their words, 'since time immemorial,' and what it means to be a steward, rather than a consumer."

Living through Covid for the past couple of years has reminded Sanjay of something he was told by a Hopi elder, that "the point of running and life is to find the joy in the exertion." Sanjay volunteers at a little natural foods store in Jamaica, Queens, and has found "a little pocket of joy" by being of service to others during the pandemic.

He also runs every day, and would "like to remind people that we've got the biggest blessing in the world to be able to go outdoors, regardless of our capacity, to take a few moments on our own. To take a deep breath, to connect to the sky, to connect to the earth, and feel not only what that means to us, but to really every other human being that's out there on earth today."

You can find Sanjay at Guru Health Foods, or on Instagram.

To hear his original episode from December 2019, you can go here.

Thank you to UCAN for sponsoring RUNNING REUNION!

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"Thank you" to Sanjay. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the show.