Hi, this is Paul Zelizer and welcome to the AwarePreneurs podcast. On this show we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app. It helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today I am thrilled to introduce you to Anthony Clegg and our topic is Building Community through Movement.

The Running Medicine Story. Anthony Flegg is a family medicine physician at unm, the University of New Mexico in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Originally from Baltimore, Anthony grounds his healing work in undoing racism, health equity movement as medicine, and with a focus on strengths and holistic health. He co founded the Native Health Initiative, NHI and its Running Medicine program, a unique approach to wellness through movement. He is a proud father of four children, an avid runner, and is about to release his second book, Writing to Heal. The Journey Continues and full disclosure, Anthony and I went on a seven mile run this morning to celebrate a mutual friend's birthday and I had the awesome honor of going to a running medicine gathering track workout day about a week and a half ago. So have some experience of how this community feels on the ground and I will tell you it is amazing. Anthony, welcome to the show.

I am so glad to be part of the wearpreneurs legacy. Thanks Paul. I'd rather be running with you but.

Well, that was fun too, but you know, it's not an either or. We're doing both in one day. A run and a podcast interview. How awesome is that? Yeah.

Yep.

So Anthony, before we get into the specifics of the Running Medicine program and how it started and why it started, this idea of movement and healing in a holistic health way, this has been a passion of yours for a long time. How did that thread get started in your life?

I'm a family medicine doctor and so I'm constantly seeing patients that don't move enough and those who have significant health issues because of a variety of things. But one of those that's sort of consistent is not moving enough, not having a lifestyle that's around that. And so I think it somewhat, Paula, comes from just my desire to do the best medicine and you know, prescribe movement, prescribe things that are beyond pills and, and sort of the medical solutions which often aren't really solutions at all. So I think my own life. I find that on. On many levels. And it's not even though running is my. My mode of choice, but biking, hiking, Zumba, yoga, hiit workouts, there's just some real intangibles that come with movement that allow us to center, to settle, to be with ourselves, to slow down all things that.

And actually really important, I think is connecting with other people, creating. Creating community. And so that's. That's sort of my backdrop to, you know, then having the sort of idea pop in my heart and mind to really more of like a vision of, you know, what I saw in that moment to be a community that we would call running medicine. And that was 10 years ago. So it's been a fun journey.

And this theme of movement and how good it is for humans and how it is an equalizer in terms of health equity. This has been going on for a while. Somewhere along the way you got particularly interested. You co founded the Native Health Initiative. Tell us a little bit about like, what was the connection with Native communities?