The Lucas Rockwood Show

The quality of our lives are very much defined by the quality of our relationships, and that person next to you in bed is the most important relationship of all. So how are you doing with that? Do you have a plan? Are you growing or just getting by? Like most of us, it’s probably a work in progress. On this week’s podcast, you’ll meet relationship expert Maya Diamond shares her experiences from her field work.

I always wanted to be a writer. Kerouac, Hemmingway, and Carver were my heros. Later it was playwrights Kushner, Ibsen, and Chekov. I’d drag home backpacks full of books from the public library, and I finagled my way into just about every theater I could find in New York City from Broadway to deep Brooklyn fringe venues. If you met me at age 20, you’d never predict I’d be teaching backbends and low glycemic diets at age 40 - but here we are.

The three largest mental health facilities in the USA are Rickers, Cooks Country and LA Twin Towers Jails. The mentally ill have literally been relegated to prisons since there are so few public resources for those in need. This is devastating to the mentally ill, of course, but also to their families, neighbors and communities who are forever impacted.

Most of us have the potential for exceptional health, but some of us enter the world with serious health disadvantages that make it much more difficult to survive and thrive. Your parents’ nutrition and even your grandparents’ diet might be influencing your genetic expression right now, today. Scary stuff, but potentially empowering too.

I have a challenge for you. Take a pencil to paper and map out your past five years on a line graph with peaks being the great experiences and valleys being the lows. I’d be willing to guess you have a deep valley (or two!) every single year, but what about a peak? Most people who listen to the podcast value experiences over possessions, but are we doing enough to actively craft amazing moments in our lives? I’m not. I’d like to do better. Listen in on this week’s show to get ideas.

Steve Jobs had genius-level intelligence and built one of the largest and most influential companies in the world. At the same time, Jobs denied fathering his own daughter, was forced to take a DNA test, and ended up paying a tiny amount of child support for her entire youth despite having millions. Intelligence is often put on a pedestal, but the trappings are often glazed over. On this week’s podcast, we’ll unpack the “intelligence trap” and provide a new perspective on contextualizing brainpow

I started moonlighting as a yoga teacher and nutritional coach in my 20s while I still kept my day job. I didn’t know if I could turn my passion into a career, so I dipped my toe into the water to see how it felt. I’m not going to lie, it was hard. It’s still hard, but I figured it out. I know many of my podcast listeners are yoga teachers, trainers, health coaches, and entrepreneurs; and many of you are in the early days of trying to figure out how to make things work business-wise.

Loneliness, living alone and poor social connections are as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It’s worse for you than obesity. And you’re much more likely to suffer from dementia, heart disease, and depression if you’re isolated and alone(1). The importance of social connections and touch has been proven in both human and animal models, but the solution is much less obvious.

My guest on this week’s podcast has spent much of her career studying and dissecting human habit formation and change. The reasons why you do what you do are not obvious and not even conscious, so changing them requires a deeper understanding of self.

I’ve set a personal goal to live to be 122, and I specifically chose this number because it seems like a stretch but also totally within the realm of reasonable given my age and the advances in science. My children, I’m almost certain, will easily surpass my age simply because they have even more time for science to make it possible. So if 80 is the new 50, what does that mean for our hair, teeth, and liver? What choices should we make now to extend not just our lifespan but our healthspan too?

When you’re fasting, your body undergoes rapid healing that is very well-documented and exciting, but it’s also extremely impractical. When you spend a few days without eating, you’re weak, tired, hangry, and no good for much of anything except lying around the pool (hence the need for fasting resorts). But what if there was a way to get many of the same hormone-balancing and neuroprotective benefits of fasting while still eating and feeling good? This is where ketosis comes in.

My worst fear with aging is losing my cognitive abilities, forgetting my kids’ names, and just becoming an old fool. It’s easy to assume that the brain will go along with the body, but there’s pretty good evidence to suggest that your mental age can be a decade younger than your physical body’s age, but you have to start working on it now.

Hormonal birth control has been directly correlated with weight gain, mental health problems, and decreased libido—not exactly an ideal mix when it comes to sexuality. But what are you supposed to do? What is the alternative? With anything health and wellness, all decisions are personal, but unfortunately, most decisions are uninformed.

Technology and I have a complex relationship, but when it makes life easier, I’m a fan. Meditation is really hard, and anyone who tells you differently is actually just walking their dog (and calling it meditation). The real practices require deep work, and it’s very hard to do all alone at home, even with books and apps. This is why I love yoga breathing, and it’s also why frequency-following music can be very helpful, particularly when you’re just getting started or in a mental and emotional jam.

I wanted to run a marathon this year. Sounds great, right? Here’s the problem—I didn’t do it. I don’t even think I wanted to do it. If I had been smarter, I would have set a tiny goal, like running 5 km per week for a year for example. Then I could “win” the goal, and if the marathon happened, it’d be gravy. In this “dream big” era, it can be difficult to dial it back and make tiny goals and tiny habits. On this week’s show, Dr. BJ Fogg shares his behavior change research from his upc