About

RunGnosis is a newsletter, online journal & podcast created & curated by running coach Steve Sisson. He coaches pursuit & performance focused distance runners on the road, the track & the trail at Telos Running.
This project, however, is a beast of a different stripe.

It is a nearly universal sentiment from those who actually run & do so consistently that it encompasses far more than exercise or sport. If this includes you, then you have found your place. RunGnosis is a project where we explore the running experience beyond its surface relationship to fitness  & racing culture.

Running is, at its core, a movement practice where one explores the embodied human experience as inherently purposeful, meaningful & mysterious.

-Steve Sisson

If you are interested in exploring the ways that running deepens & expands your connection to the world, then we suggest you subscribe to our free newsletter for biweekly updates or subscribe to the RunGnosis podcast. We also write essays related to these topics that are available at the online journal.
If all this content creates a desire to explore these concepts in a community of other runners, then we encourage you become a member of the RunGnosis community.

RunGnosis has some core values we hold as guiding principles.
Below are a selection of these:

• Running is a path with heart. The Yaqui shaman Don Juan, introduced to the world by the enigmatic trickster Carlos Castaneda, illustrates this concept most eloquently. See his quote here.
• Running is gnosis. We don't take gnosis to mean secret knowledge, rather we hold gnosis to mean wisdom hidden in plain sight, revealed through the inner knowing of direct experience. If it is esoteric, it is so only because so few make an effort to explore the ways running deepens & expands our perception. "It's right here!" we shout, "Under your feet, caressing your skin; it's fluid, it's intense. It calms, it burns; it grounds, it returns."
• Running is an embodied alchemy. No one runs even one mile without expecting to be transformed by the process. We don't put one foot forward without the hope of being changed, physically & metaphysically, by our conscious act of moving through space.  
• Running is a mode of askēsis. The French philosopher, Pierre Hadot, argued for philosophy as a way of life.
• Running is a movement practice.
• Running is play.