Pilar Gerasimo

"Normal is Overrated"

Pilar is the founder of Experience Life Magazine and self-taught wellness expert.  She now hosts a podcast called The Living Experiment and started a movement called The Healthy Deviant to change the way people approach their personal health and well-being.

Episode Description

From the moment we sat down for this conversation, my guest today gave me a sense of genuine inspiration to be a better person, to be a more authentic person, living with gratitude, acceptance, and grace.  Her name is Pilar Gerasimo, and many of you know her as the founder of Experience Life Magazine, which she ran for 15 years.  But now she has embarked on some new ventures including a wonderful podcast called The Living Experiment with her co-host Dallas Hartwig, she has developed a concept called The Healthy Deviant which forms the basis for an upcoming book.  We will get into all of that in this conversation, and her perspective on how to approach health and wellness is very exciting, but what endeared me to Pilar is that she created her life from the ground up, in complete alignment and respect to her upbringing.

She grew up on a communal organic farm in western Wisconsin, which is where she now calls home and where we met for this interview.  She was the daughter of a sociologist father whose main interest was understanding why we live the way we live, and a mother who was a back-to-the-land farmer, an early environmentalist who started this organic commune with her friends to grow their own food and live a more natural life.  But for Pilar growing up, this wasn't necessarily ideal and she had the same cravings, desires, and struggles with self-esteem and body image that afflict so many teenagers and young adults.  But the roots of her family heritage and upbringing gave her the confidence to trust her instincts, and when nothing in the popular media gave her the answers to her health and fitness questions, she went ahead and found her own answers.   

We start off this conversation talking about her upbringing and the difficult but often beautiful appearance of living off the land, that I think so many of us crave in a world of complexity and technology.  Pilar was a gracious host, spending almost two hours on the mic with me after a tour of the farm, and I left there realizing that this conversation was about a person living with a distinct sense of meaning and purpose.  She has been living life of curiosity and acceptance, looking to help others live better and healthier lives by first charting her own course to discovering what works.  Experience Life Magazine, Healthy Deviant, the Living Experiment, in their titles, embody the spirit of how Pilar has lived her life. 

Ok, let's get started with my guest today, Pilar Gerasimo. 

Thanks for listening,

PF