Intense or excessive running has been used across many cultures to induce spiritual and transcendent states and is being used to address alcoholism and drug use.

“Running. So the reason I’m giving this whole preamble is, it is amazing to me the number of cultures in the world that have used intense, maybe excessive running, as a way of inducing, you know, sort of powerful spiritual states. You see it all around the Native American world, right? I mean, oh, it’s just crazy how many cultures use this. It’s become a movement nowadays in Native American communities to use running as a way to sort of overcome a lot of the challenges: alcoholism and drug use, and those things that exist in those communities. And it’s been very successful, it’s interesting.”