In the final episode of our birthday series, Rebecca Rusch explores how timeless wisdom and cutting-edge science come together to help us grow, heal, and perform at our best. Through conversations with world-class thinkers, athletes, and teachers, this episode dives into the practices, mindsets, and research that bridge the old and the new—reminding us that the most powerful tools for transformation are often found where tradition and innovation meet.

Featured Guests & Clips:

Andy Walshe

Andy shares stories from the world of elite performance, describing how uncertainty, mindset, and ancient selection rituals are used alongside modern data to push athletes beyond their limits. He reflects on the importance of learning, shifting expectations, and the untapped frontier of the mind.

Florence Williams

Florence discusses her research into awe, resilience, and the healing power of nature. She explains how ancient practices of noticing beauty and connecting to the natural world are now being validated by science—and why we need both the data and the reminders to seek out what our ancestors knew intuitively.

Teddi Dean

Teddi, a former pro skateboarder turned mindfulness teacher, explores how meditation and Buddhist philosophy help us build a relationship with our minds and bodies. He shares practical wisdom on sitting with discomfort, tuning into our emotions, and using heart-centered practices to transform daily life.

Michael Gervais

Michael, high-performance psychologist and host of Finding Mastery, reflects on the path from high performance to true mastery. He discusses how ancient insights and modern psychology both point us toward self-knowledge, purpose, and connection as the foundation for a meaningful life.

Key Themes:

1. The intersection of ancient wisdom and modern science in personal growth and performance
2. Mindset, uncertainty, and the power of learning
3. The healing and transformative potential of nature, awe, and mindfulness
4. The importance of self-knowledge, purpose, and community

Join the Conversation:

How do you blend ancient wisdom and modern science in your own life? What practices or research have helped you grow? Share your thoughts with Rebecca on social or by leaving a review.

Thank you for being part of this journey and for celebrating a year of meaningful conversations with us. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to What’s the Rusch wherever you listen to podcasts.

Click the links below to listen to the full episodes mentioned in today's podcast:

1. Andy Walshe on the Future of Performance
2. Florence Williams on Healing through Nature and Heartbreak
3. Teddi Dean on Identity, Meditation, and Purposeful Pacing

In this second episode of our special birthday series, Rebecca Rusch explores the theme of redefining success and identity. Over the past year, What’s the Rusch has become a space for honest conversations about what it means to grow, change, and find purpose beyond the finish line. This episode features stories from athletes and leaders who have reimagined what achievement looks like, let go of old expectations, and found new meaning in their journeys.

Featured Guests & Clips:

Caroline Buchanan

Caroline opens up about building her identity both on and off the bike, navigating reinvention, and learning to define success on her own terms. She shares how she’s found purpose beyond podiums by mentoring others and embracing new challenges.

Kate Courtney

Kate reflects on what it means to define success beyond the podium. She shares how she’s learned to measure achievement by effort and growth, not just results, and how her work with the She Sends Foundation is helping to expand opportunities and redefine what winning looks like for herself and the next generation.

Allen Lim

Allen shares how growing up as part of an immigrant family in Los Angeles shaped his sense of identity and belonging. He reflects on how the bicycle, the Olympic movement, and the power of community helped him redefine what success means—not just as winning, but as connection, dignity, and inspiring others.

Alexandera Houchin

Alexandera talks about how her identity has evolved and so has her sense of responsibility. She shares how her early drive to right past injustices and give voice to her family story has shifted toward embracing her own presence and authenticity, and creating space for others to do the same.

Key Themes:

1. Redefining what it means to succeed
2. Letting go of old expectations and embracing new identities
3. The power of community, mentorship, and giving back
4. Finding purpose and meaning beyond traditional measures of achievement

Join the Conversation:

How has your definition of success changed? What does identity mean to you? Share your thoughts with Rebecca on social or by leaving a review.

· Thank you for being part of this journey and for celebrating a year of meaningful conversations with us. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to What’s the Rusch wherever you listen to podcasts.

Episode Summary:

To celebrate one year of What’s the Rusch, Rebecca Rusch brings together some of the most honest and courageous moments from the past year. This special episode is all about embracing vulnerability, slowing down, letting go, and sharing the real stories behind the highlight reels. Rebecca introduces and reflects on powerful clips from four guests who have opened up about their struggles, growth, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.

Featured Guests & Clips:

1. Stacy Sims
2. Stacy shares her experience of moving to New Zealand, facing postpartum depression, and reaching a breaking point that led to a suicide attempt. She talks about the importance of support systems, rebuilding, and the need to reach out for help—even when you feel you have to be stoic.
3. Jess Kimura
4. Jess opens up about the loss of her partner, the overwhelming grief that followed, and how she found herself again through surfing and allowing herself to be vulnerable. She discusses the pressure to appear tough in her sport and the relief of finally letting herself be seen.
5. Rush Sturges
6. Rush recounts a harrowing experience in Nepal, surviving a massive earthquake while on a river expedition. He describes the trauma and PTSD that followed, the physical symptoms he endured, and the long journey of healing through therapy, mindfulness, and learning to listen to his nervous system.
7. Chris Burkard
8. Chris reflects on a transformative darkness retreat and the power of being vulnerable with others. He shares how opening up to a stranger after the retreat changed his perspective, and how he’s learning to bring more honesty and connection into his everyday life—not just during extreme adventures.

Key Themes:

1. The strength in sharing what’s real, even when it’s uncomfortable
2. Navigating grief, trauma, and mental health challenges
3. The importance of support, community, and self-compassion
4. Redefining what it means to be strong and successful

Connect with Rebecca:

Website

Instagram

LinkedIn

Substack

Blood Road

Brain Storm Podcast

Join the Conversation:

What does vulnerability mean to you? How have you learned to let go or ask for help? Share your thoughts with Rebecca on social or by leaving a review.

Thank you for being part of this journey and for celebrating a year of meaningful conversations with us. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to What’s the Rusch...

Episode Summary

In this episode, Rebecca welcomes Dr. Jaimie Lusk, a Marine Corps veteran, clinical psychologist, and endurance athlete, whose life’s work bridges the worlds of trauma recovery, adventure, and community healing. Their conversation moves beyond the surface of resilience, exploring what it means to truly thrive after survival. Together, they unpack the messy, beautiful process of listening to your inner wisdom, honoring the body’s need for rest, and finding clarity through movement and nature. This episode is a deep dive into the art of staying open, even after life cracks you wide open, and the power of community in the healing journey.

Show Notes

Rebecca and Dr. Lusk explore:

1. The difference between surviving and thriving and how to recognize when you’re ready for more than just getting by
2. How Jaimie’s experience as a Marine and psychologist shapes her approach to trauma, moral injury, and complex grief
3. The role of nature, movement, and adventure in building resilience and self-trust
4. Why healing is never a solo endeavor, and how community and purpose fuel recovery
5. The importance of tuning into your “inner knower” and honoring intuition, even when it runs counter to external expectations
6. Practical ways to integrate mind-body practices, from breathwork to outdoor experiences, into daily life

Transformative Insights

1. Healing is a practice, not a destination—one that requires both fierce compassion and honest self-reflection
2. Sometimes the nervous system needs space and movement before words can land
3. True resilience is about staying open and choosing connection, even after hardship
4. The “script” of toughness can drown out our real needs; learning to listen inward is a radical act

Vulnerable Moments

1. Jaimie shares her journey from the battlefield to the therapy room, and how her own healing informs her work
2. Rebecca and Jaimie reflect on the challenges of letting go of high-performance identities to embrace rest and recovery
3. Both discuss the ongoing process of moving from impenetrable strength to authentic vulnerability

Practical Wisdom

1. How to use nature as a co-therapist: simple ways to bring the outdoors into your healing process
2. Tools for checking in with your intuition and honoring what you need in the moment
3. The value of community, mentorship, and shared adventure in sustaining long-term growth

Personal Growth

1. Jaimie’s evolution from “mud-loving kid” to Marine, psychologist, and advocate for...

Kaya Turski’s story isn’t just about medals or firsts, it’s about what happens when the thing you love most gets taken away, and you’re forced to meet yourself without the helmet, goggles, and identity that once felt impenetrable. Kaya shares how pain shaped her from the very beginning, starting with a catastrophic crash at 18 that led to emergency pancreatic surgery, and how a lifetime of impact, whiplash, and chronic symptoms eventually pushed her out of competition before 2018, whether she was ready or not.

In this conversation, we explore what “Fly Always” really means when you can’t do your sport the way you used to, and how Kaya has rebuilt her life through honesty, values work, and learning to create space for herself and others. From the moment she told her coach, “I’m done…pull me out,” to the dark, quiet years of healing back home in Montreal, Kaya walks us through the hardest kind of courage: the kind that looks like surrender, asking for help, and choosing self-care on an 8/10 pain day.

In this episode, Rebecca and Kaya explore:

1. How rollerblading and skateparks became Kaya’s foundation for freestyle—and why she taught herself to ski at 17 by taking the Greyhound to Whistler every day
2. The misconception that elite freestyle athletes are fearless—and why fear is part of staying alive on “hundred-foot kickers”
3. The difference between chosen pain (growth) and unchosen pain (life, injury, heartbreak)—and why the second one is where “the real work” begins
4. The crash that sliced Kaya’s pancreas in half, the ICU in San Francisco, and being told to leave skiing behind before her career even began
5. How chronic headaches, cumulative impacts, and undiagnosed concussions became an invisible war that forced retirement a year before 2018
6. The moment at Worlds in Spain when Kaya finally said, “I surrender…this is enough,” and made the call to stop
7. Why identity can get dangerously fused to performance—and what it takes to become “more than one thing”
8. The question Dr. Mike Gervais asked that cracked Kaya open: “Why are you here on this earth?”
9. The real meaning of “Fly Always”: create space, take the leap, inspire—and why “creating space” starts with honesty
10. What “flying” looks like now: self-care, hard conversations, sitting with pain instead of escaping it, and “standing in the center of the fire” with yourself
11. How mindfulness “micro-breaks” and Rebecca’s “brain breaks” help regulate the nervous system and bring you back steadier, brighter, more present
12. The six-year healing chapter: moving back to Montreal, low capacity, and rebuilding from a dark period—one phone call at a time

1. Pain has layers. There’s pain that expands you (chosen) and pain that humbles you (unchosen)—and the second one asks for a different kind of strength.

In this episode of What’s the Rusch, Rebecca welcomes explorer-author Craig Childs, a man whose life is spent listening deeply to the land. Known for tracing ancient migration routes, following water across vast deserts, flying through curtains of Virga, and biking into the darkest sky in America, Craig’s work reveals a world still full of mystery for those willing to pay attention.

This conversation moves through ghost-lit writing rooms, ritual landscapes, long bike journeys, serendipity, and the internal shifts that only happen when we slow down enough to let the world permeate us. Together Craig and Rebecca explore why immersion, not arrival, is what transforms us.

1. Why Craig must be in a place—feeling the ground, light, wind—for the story to reveal itself
2. How walking ancient routes or biking across deserts becomes a form of listening
3. The difference between reading landscape through photographs vs. letting it enter your body

Hemingway’s House & the Ghost of Influence

1. Craig’s three-week writing residency in Ernest Hemingway’s preserved home in Idaho
2. The strange, creative tension of living where Hemingway lived—and even feeling watched
3. How inhabiting another writer’s space reshaped Craig’s awareness of language and simplicity

Energy, Memory & Mystery in the Natural World

1. The ineffable sensations some landscapes hold—ritual sites, ancient paths, places marked by loss
2. How intention sharpens awareness of what we cannot explain
3. Rebecca’s story of biking 1,200 miles along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to reach her father’s crash site, and the unexpected peace found there

The Wild Dark: Riding Into the Night

1. Craig’s decision to bike—not hike or drive—from the brightest sky (Las Vegas) to the darkest sky in Nevada
2. Understanding the Bortle Scale, and how each night revealed an entirely different sky
3. What humanity loses when we stop looking upward—and the questions the night sky asks of us

Creative Curiosity & How Stories Choose Us

1. How Craig selects each new book subject: serendipity, timing, emotional bandwidth, personal readiness
2. Why some stories (such as those rooted in trauma) demand discernment, and why he sometimes says no
3. Moving from archaeology, to animals, to geology, and now to mountain lions

Internal Exploration & the Dialogue Within

1. The constant internal conversations that unfold when moving across landscapes

In this episode, Rebecca welcomes her friend, author, and legendary peak-performance researcher Steven Kotler for a conversation that weaves together science, sport, creativity, and the deeper human quest for what’s possible. Steven has spent decades decoding flow, the neurobiological state where we feel our best and perform our best, but this conversation goes far beyond definitions.

Together, Rebecca and Steven explore why flow is accessible to everyone, what happens when you chase it too hard, and why recovery is a form of grit. Steven also opens up about the period of his life when Lyme disease left him bedridden, suicidal, and stripped of his identity, and how an unexpected moment in the ocean became the spark that rebuilt everything.

This is a conversation about curiosity, resilience, and how the smallest actions, walking the dog, doodling on a page, stepping outside, can literally help us find our way back to ourselves.

In this episode, Rebecca and Steven explore:

Understanding Flow & Peak Performance

1. What flow actually is from a neurobiological perspective
2. Why flow follows focus—and the 28 triggers that bring us into the present moment
3. The different forms of flow: individual, interpersonal, group, and communitas
4. Why flow operates on a four-stage cycle (and why you can’t be in flow all the time)

Chasing Flow vs. Working With It

1. The danger of using risk as a flow trigger
2. How novelty and creativity create safer, more sustainable pathways into flow
3. Why action sports athletes often “break things” chasing that feeling
4. How micro-changes—like interpreting terrain creatively—can upgrade performance without increasing danger

Recovery, Afterglow & the Science of the Come-Down

1. What happens in the brain after a massive flow state
2. Why a big flow day almost guarantees a low-performance day right after
3. The neurochemical crash that mimics the comedown of recreational drugs
4. How to use healthy recovery habits to shorten the “cost of flow”

Steven's Journey Through Illness

1. Steven recounts the years when Lyme disease left him unable to walk across a room
2. The suicidal moment when he believed he’d become a lifelong burden
3. The friend who insisted he go surfing—and the wave that triggered a full-blown, mystical macro-flow state
4. How repeated exposure to flow helped reboot his immune system and rebuild his life
5. What neuro-immunology reveals about the connection between flow, healing, and homeostasis

Flow, Longevity & Life Design

1. Why immersion in nature is one of the most potent flow triggers
2. The role of action sports and outdoor movement in mental health and aging
3. Why walking—even slowly—is medicine for the nervous system and the brain
4. How Steven teaches older adults to park-ski using creativity instead of risk

1. Flow is trainable. With the right structure, most people can increase flow by 70–80% within eight weeks.
2. Recovery is a grit skill. High performers burn out not from doing too much—but from never shutting down.
3. Creativity microdosing between tasks keeps you in flow and prevents ego spikes that knock you out of it.
4. Tragedy can be a teleportation chamber. Sometimes the hardest experiences become the doorway to the life we wanted but couldn’t reach on our own.
5. Movement + nature = neurobiological reset. Just 20 minutes outdoors begins to flush stress hormones and restore baseline...

In this episode of What’s the Rusch, Rebecca dives into the deep currents of creativity, purpose, and healing with legendary kayaker, filmmaker, and musician Rush Sturges. From first descents on the world’s most powerful rivers to producing award-winning films like The River Runner (on Netflix), Chasing Niagara, and Edge of the Unknown (on Disney+), Rush has lived his life on the edge of adventure and artistry. Together, he and Rebecca explore how nature, trauma, and creativity intertwine—and how slowing down can be the most radical act of all.

Rush shares his journey from world champion athlete to filmmaker and mentor, the lessons learned from loss and risk, and how a devastating earthquake in Nepal reshaped his understanding of fear, nervous system health, and what it really means to live fully. This is a conversation about flow, healing, and the art of coming home to yourself.

Show Notes

In this episode, Rebecca and Rush explore:

1. Growing up at his parents’ kayak school, Otter Bar, and discovering a lifelong calling on the Grand Canyon at age 14
2. The parallels between rivers and life—how chaos, calm, and flow teach us who we are
3. What expedition kayaking reveals about presence, teamwork, and vulnerability
4. The evolution from athlete to filmmaker to musician, and the importance of building creative “teams” off the river
5. The transformative impact of mentoring Indigenous youth through Ríos to Rivers and the Paddle Tribal Waters project during the historic Klamath River dam removal
6. Lessons from loss—processing death, danger, and risk in the adventure community
7. Rush’s experience with PTSD after surviving a deadly Nepal earthquake and how it forced him to confront the limits of endurance
8. The healing power of therapy, meditation, and slowing down
9. Why true mastery is learning to move—and to rest—with intention

Transformative Insights

1. The river as teacher: Its turbulence and stillness mirror the flow of life.
2. Healing the nervous system: How mindfulness, breathwork, and community restore balance after trauma.
3. Creativity as connection: Music, film, and art as extensions of nature’s flow.
4. Redefining performance: Moving from risk and recognition toward service, purpose, and self-awareness.

Vulnerable Moments

1. Rush recounts surviving a catastrophic earthquake in Nepal that triggered years of tremors and insomnia.
2. He opens up about witnessing loss in the kayaking community and how grief shaped his view of risk.
3. Rebecca shares her own recovery from brain injury and how both learned the power of stillness and surrender.

Practical Wisdom

1. Small shifts—like walking more slowly or unplugging from your phone—can reset the nervous system.
2. True strength comes from knowing when to stop pushing and start listening.
3. Building “teams” in life, art, and healing creates the support needed for real transformation.

Personal Growth

1. From adrenaline and ego to empathy and awareness—Rush’s evolution as a creator and human being.
2. How service projects like Paddle Tribal Waters reconnect purpose to passion.
3. The practice of slowing down as a daily meditation—one mindful step, one quiet breath at a time.

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